A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

316 ❘
Teaching in the disciplines
theoretical positions which underpin the different modes. The thesis lecture is, in
contrast, a piece of argumentation, frequently contentious, possibly provocative, but
always building a case. This mode of lecturing is designed to provoke a response, or to
deliver a surprising perspective on a familiar subject. Closely related to this is the
explicatory lecture, a lecture which seeks to mediate and make more comprehensible a
difficult area, the value of which depends almost wholly on the opportunities therein for
the lecturer to demonstrate how such concepts and ideas can be better understood, while
simultaneously periodically checking on the students’ progress.
Lectures can also be arranged around the provision or definition of context: the
consolidation of relevant materials through which the object of study may be illuminated
in different ways. The lecture may be a broad category, but it is constituted by several
subgenres, each of which is characterised by specific aims and objectives. In each case,
the lecture provides that which cannot be provided by other means: it offers the
dramatisation of intellectual processes, by which I do not mean an extravagant
performance, but the living exploration of questions, ideas, theories and counterarguments.
Further, lectures not only come in a variety of forms deriving from their purpose; their
styles or modes are various too. They can be informally interactive, inviting unscheduled
interruptions and questions; formally interactive, with such slots built in – usually with
predetermined lines of enquiry, and including discussion between the students as well;
they can be ‘dialogues’ in which two lecturers present contrasting arguments; they can
be one, or a series, of ‘mini-lectures’ where several lecturers may present for only five or
ten minutes in a carefully coordinated series.
Seminars
In their purest form, seminars are, of course, very different. Deriving from the Latin term
for seed-bed, ideally the seminar is precisely this, a place wherein students’ ideas and
intellectual development will be nurtured by way of discussion and reflection. Conceived
in this way, the seminar should not be a place for tutor ‘input’ so much as a place for his
or her guidance. In practice, seminars are not just this: the student group size frequently
exceeds the sensible limit for discursive activity (around ten), and the term ‘seminar’ is
used commonly to describe a one- to three-hour group event that may well include some
formal input from the tutor, followed by general or structured discussion. ‘Workshop’ is
an alternative name for such activity. Seminars and workshops, of course, may be further
divided into subcategories.
The rationale for choice of teaching mode here is almost always guided by the principle
of student engagement. Will students be best served by the structuring of group
discussions within the seminar, by presentations from groups or individuals, or by a
series of structuring questions set by the tutor? There is no single mode of teaching that
is likely to prove intrinsically more effective than another: the essential question is
whether it is fit for purpose.