Becoming and Being a Specialist: anticipating and experiencing higher education English

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses a hitherto largely neglected area of academic and pedagogic research in one of the most popular subjects in higher education — English. The authors examine student‐held views of what constitutes ‘English’, focusing for part of the discussion on reading and reading logs in routine English teaching. The first part of the paper concentrates on the quality of students’ insights into reading as revealed by the novel experience of keeping a reading log. The second part of the paper places this pedagogic experience in a larger context. Here, students’ own views of English, anticipated and subsequent to arrival in higher education, are evaluated. The authors apply different theoretical constructs in both their methodology and interpretation of findings. They conclude that one significant challenge for students in higher education English today is to adjust themselves, with a balance between flexibility and coherence, to a new techno‐cultural world. This world demands the intellectual capabilities both of self‐reflection and community affiliation in an expanding disccurse called ‘English’.     

The Children's Television Workshop goes to school

Repackaging existing educational television series to fit the needs of more narrowly defined audiences is a cost-effective way of delivering high-quality educational television into the schools. This article discusses both the technological and program-design barriers to wider use of television in classroom instruction and details the steps that the Children's Television Workshop took to make3-2-1 Contact, its educational television science series, a more effective science teaching tool.