Abstract:
This talk is based on the early stages of my doctoral research into UK pre-sessional courses. I will introduce institutional ethnography (IE), which looks at the everyday work that goes on inside an institution and asks how this work is standardised. In other words: What is always being done, no matter who is doing it? This makes IE particularly useful for analysing pre-sessionals, where contracts may be temporary and turnover high. IE is exciting because it is methodologically radical. Drawing from anti-positivist feminism and critical theory, it directs us to really examine what we have normalised as our “work”, especially when it involves doing things that seem counterintuitive. I am not aware of any work that applies IE to EAP, so I hope my finished research will act as a sort of methodological template that others can pick up and apply to their own contexts.
Bio:
Sanchia Rodrigues is based in the UK. She is Assistant Professor of EAP at the University of Warwick, where she convenes and teaches a module for pre-undergraduate students of mathematics and computer science, and works as part of the summer pre-sessional team. Sanchia is also a part-time doctoral student at University College London, where she is researching hierarchies of language and race on pre-sessional courses.
Date/Location/Cost: Wed May 1st 12:00-13:30, Zoom, Free
Please register by Tues 30th April, 10:00am.
Attendees will be emailed the Zoom link the day before the event.
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