Alex Ding and Bee Bond
This paper argues that a focus on pedagogy reveals as much about praxis and the values and commitments of practitioners and the profession as it does about classroom practices. At the micro level, we consider local and specific issues that emerge through a focus on pedagogy, including the role of materials, practitioner agency in and beyond the classroom, the impact of timetabling and workloads, beliefs about students, beliefs about expertise in teaching in HE, practitioner habitus, enactments of knowledge and embodiments of EAP. At the meso level, we refer to the culture, politics and power of the centre within the institution and how these factors influence practitioners’ pedagogies, identities and opportunities to develop a knowledge base and to enact appropriate pedagogies. Macro level considerations highlight the impact of the lack of visibility, attention and value of pedagogy in publications. Here, the deskilling of practitioners, entropy of curriculum innovations through lack of time and resources to develop and the politics of profit are seen as endangering practitioner development in pedagogies. The pedagogic task of understanding, operationalising and teaching research-informed theories to meet students’ multifarious academic needs is at the heart of EAP, and this deserves much more public scholarship-informed attention.
