When arts meet enterprise: Hybrid degrees, complex identities

Paul Stocks & Stella HarveyCentre for English and Academic Writing, Goldsmiths University of London

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Current trends in university programmes

– Challenges to traditional subject boundaries– Interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary approaches– Hybrid programmes with modules from a range of

academic traditions– Multiple forms of assessment, drawing on various

ontologies and epistemologies.

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Current debates in EAP pedagogies

– Genre-based approach: Focus on learning to write within the conventions of a specific discourse community (Tribble and Wingate, 2013; Wingate, 2012)

– Academic Literacies approach: Interest in identities in academic writing, and the perceived ‘mystique’ thrown up by academia in general (ibid)

– Do hybrid degrees therefore require students to learn the rules and worldview of multiple genres?

– What implications might this hybridity have for students’ identities?

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Our research project

– Focus on one department: The Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (est. 2008)

– Focus on two hybrid Master’s degree programmes: MA Arts Administration and Cultural Policy MA Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (CCE)

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Genres of written assessments

– Essay (5-6 000 words)– Academic business plan– Internship/placement report– Dissertation (up to 12 000 words)– Writing ‘portfolio’ (varied tasks, according to

pathway)

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Precariousness and the new precariat

– ‘…increasing numbers of workers in affluent societies are engaged in insecure, casualised or irregular labour.’ (Gill and Pratt, 2008)

– ‘Artists, (new) media workers and other cultural labourers are hailed as ‘model entrepreneurs’ by industry and government figures (Florida, 2002; Reich, 2000); they are also conjured in more critical discourses as exemplars of the move away from stable notions of 'career' to more informal, insecure and discontinuous employment (Jones, 1996)… they have been identified as the poster boys and girls of the new ‘precariat' ...’ (ibid)

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Methodology

‘The phenomenographic approach aims to understand learning from the learner’s perspective. It is interested in understanding how learners describe and understand learning’ (Lea, 1999)

–Focus groups: –Three focus groups–Total of thirteen participants–Nationalities: Chinese, Greek, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Syrian

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Focus group questions

– Why did you choose to do your current degree programme?

– Thinking of your degree programme as a whole, how do you see the relationship between the different types of writing assignments?

– Do you feel that you need to ‘wear a different hat’ for the different assignments?

– How do you feel about the different writing assignments?

– What do the following words mean for you in relation to your writing assignments? Academic Theory Analyse Research Philosophy

– Has your understanding about writing at university changed since you’ve started your degree? If yes, what has contributed to this?

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Interview with the convenor of MA Creative & Cultural

Entrepreneurship– Shown selected quotes from the focus groups and

asked to comment on them

– Does she herself see her programme as a hybrid? Was this mixing of traditions deliberate?

– What are the benefits and challenges for students of this type of course?

– Was a certain amount of precariousness deliberately embedded into the design of the programme?

Discontinuities

Essay Business plan (and dissertation)

Academic (‘traditional’, ‘research-based’, ‘pretty’ expression)

Past-oriented; based on what has already been written

Oriented towards the ideas of others

Practical

Future-oriented

Oriented towards students’ own ideas and desires

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Discontinuities

– ‘For the cultural industries essay … first I had to adapt myself –I did the Scott Lash one, so I had to adapt to Scott Lash’s mind by reading his books, understanding what he means by blah blah blah, then choose a case study, then find other theorists to see who has quotes I need to put my point. I don’t know if I think on my own or Scott Lash … I’m really confused … but with the business plan I think it’s for myself. I just know exactly what I want to do and I just find proof to prove myself … sure I have my own opinions in the conclusion, but it’s only a small part’

– I had to look for all the books I want and also I cannot add too many personal things which is a torture’

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Continuities

– Distinct tasks but all relevant to the MA programme

– All in English

‘I don’t feel there’s any relationship among those papers … it’s just different in format, I still have to tackle all the English difficulties I have.’

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Continuities: applied cultural theory

– ‘There’s a reason why you have the theory before the practical, in order to use it.’

– ‘When write about business plan or internship, maybe we can explain how theory works in the actual situation. Maybe we can connect that kind of thing.’

– ‘When I read academic books … it inspires my practical ideas for my career.’

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Continuities: criticality

– Theoretical/practical divide not straightforward

– ‘I need to find the value in different ways for each assignment type.’

– ‘ [for the Theories of the Culture Industries essay] we have to be critical, but [in the business plan] I’m the criticised one! … in the theory I criticised the industry, but now I’m the person in the industry.’

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Transforming generic boundaries

– ‘… what is an academic business plan?’

– ‘… actually the requirement for our practical assignment … we cannot explain it very clear, we are just feeling what we’re going to do’

– ‘… do it your own way’

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Self-transformations

– ‘..assignments for different lectures for me it’s like to get more knowledge to figure out what really I’m going to do for the research of my own final assignment so it’s kind of the way to explore yourself in this whole programme’

– The MA year as a ‘laboratory’ (programme leader’s comment)

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Performing precariousness

– ‘like entrepreneur has no certain job or career he can shift between different careers so that’s really important for entrepreneur to learn how to write in different writing styles … it’s really important we can adapt the different writing styles we might need all of them or some of them it depends’

– ‘Requiring risk-taking activity and high degrees of mobility from its workforce, cultural work also relies on disembedded and highly individualized personnel.’ (McRobbie, 2002:97)

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Self-concept as international students

– ‘… we have to compete with them …’

– ‘[In my previous studies in Korea] we had fixed form to write it … just follow the process as well, but in this course I had to make my own process’

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Tolerating ambiguity

Uncertainty and ambiguity are not always indicative of a state of ignorance, far removed from a state of ‘complete’ knowledge and control, as well as from a state of divine (or demonic) omniscience. On the contrary, they can be indicative of the fact that the ‘real’ and the ‘possible’ are not immutable domains, but rather processes in a constant state of becoming. (Ceruti, quoted in Montuori, 2010:118)

In broken images

He in a new confusion of his understanding; I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Robert Graves

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