[:en]Earlier today the final version of our submission for the Teaching Excellence Framework, year three (TEF3) was submitted to HEFCE. I want, first of all, to publicly thank all those within the University who have contributed to, or helped to draft, this year’s document. A great deal of work has gone into this and it could not have been completed without the cooperation and dedication of a large group of colleagues, and coordinated by one in particular. I want to thank all those who were involved. Your effort is very much appreciated.

This is our second submission and each time we have looked at the metrics and begun to compile the provider submission (a fifteen-page document that supports and contextualises the data) we have seen different things and learnt different lessons about the University. The one thing that struck me this year was the realisation of just how much has changed since this time last year.

The University has been developing a number of programmes as part of its wider learning and teaching strategy, and I have written about these in earlier blogs. However, it was not just that the work of STEP4Excellence, that aims to enhance student engagement, or Go Beyond, that has been working on issues around the curriculum, have now born fruit and we can see some of the results of these projects in the life of the University. The change seemed to go further than that and is perhaps best expressed as a renewed commitment to learning and teaching, student engagement and the sense of value given to this across the University.

One central, and absolutely vital, part of this is the change that has occurred in the relationship between the University and our students. This can be seen in the growing relationship between senior leaders within the institution and our full-time officers within the Student’s Union, but it goes much further than this. We have hundreds of students, within every programme across the University, volunteering to be student reps and getting involved in meaningful discussions with academic and professional services staff about improvements in learning, in organisation, in facilities and in social activities. The majority of departments also have academic societies led by students, and providing many different kinds of activities, both academic and social, often with a very clear focus on employability and often bringing both students and staff together in the same events.

At one level, of course, none of this is new. Swansea has long had a reputation as a ‘friendly’ university with a clear sense of community, both among its student body and between students and staff. As we have grown, however, what we have seen in many cases is the transformation from informal and casual relations, built up through interpersonal relationships and a sense of common identity, to the structuring of our relationships between students and staff, and often among students themselves. This is not an easy transformation to achieve and there are times when we know that more could be done. But when it works well, as it does in so many parts of the University, we can see a continuity of community despite dramatic change, and we can be very proud of what we have achieved.

The other change I would identify is a renewed commitment to, and valuing of, learning and teaching across the institution. All Universities go through phases as we move through cycles of REF preparation and, increasingly, TEF preparation and NSS results etc. Learning and teaching is emphasised at one point, research at another, student experience at another and so on. Over the last couple of years, however, the metrics relating to Swansea have shown very clearly our ability to demonstrate excellence in both research and learning and teaching, something that probably sets us apart from many other institutions. This is not, however, something that we should take for granted, or something we have always seemed to believe internally.

What I have seen, in the almost three years that I have been at Swansea, is a renewed commitment to learning and teaching and a renewed self-belief that this is, in fact, something that we do excel at. Employability figures have remained consistently high, among the very best in the country, for a number of years now, showing that we are preparing our students for the world of work. The ‘outcomes’, as they say in TEF speak, are consistently outstanding. This demonstrates that we must be doing something right.

This time last year, as we wrote the provider submission for TEF2, I was fully aware of this record, but not quite sure of how we, collectively, actually achieved it. Over the year we have worked with colleagues in Colleges, with senior managers, programme directors, the various Academies, student groups and professional services staff to find best practice and to learn from all the excellent work that is going on. Colleges are focusing on learning and teaching, celebrating their outstanding teachers, and asking difficult questions about how to improve those areas that are still problematic, and overall, we appear to have a new confidence in our abilities and our strategies. This has all made the writing of the TEF3 so much easier in many ways (and also so much more difficult as there is now far more that we would want to include!) and we sincerely hope that we have captured this excitement within the text. All we can do now, however, is to wait to see what the reviewer’s make of it.

Once again, therefore, can I thank all those involved; those who have contributed to the writing of the submission, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to all of you, across the University, who have made your own contribution to our excellence in learning and teaching over the last year.[:]

[:en]Do you make New Year resolutions? As a rule, I don’t. I never find that I keep to them more than a couple of weeks or so anyway. What I have done, however, for many years now, is to use the time over Christmas (as well as the time just before the beginning of each new academic year in September) to review what I have achieved over the last year and where I am up to on a number of significant goals that I set myself every five years or so. Some of these goals are personal, some academic, some related to the job and, in this case, the work I am doing here in Swansea.

As ever there are some personal goals – writing a novel, completing a symphony – which I know may never materialise, although I can always dream. Others – moving to a small holding in the country with room, if not for a pony, at least for a flock of chickens and couple of goats, or creating the best collection of Dogon art in the UK – which are already a couple of steps closer given certain things that have happened over the last year. I wanted to complete the book that I am writing, and should have got that off to the publishers last summer. It is so close, and yet still not quite ready. I know I must make time in the first few months of this year, and be ruthless about not allowing other work and personal matters infringe on that time, in order to get that out the way so that I can move on to the next research project.

What concerns me more specifically in this blog, are goals and targets that I have set around my work at Swansea and the development of learning and teaching at the University.

Two of the projects that were on my list at this time last year are well under way. I wanted to complete the work around the academic year and the development of a new understanding of the curriculum at Swansea, which is tied up in the Go Beyond project. That is now out to consultation and I am planning to bring the proposals, modified from the consultation process, to the March meeting of Senate. I am very pleased with the way that is going. The other was to reinvigorate the work on technology enhanced learning and learner analytics. I was very pleased to be able to appoint a Dean of TEL during the year, and Paul Holland has already made significant progress with a TEL pilot across all seven Colleges and a number of other very interesting projects around the use of virtual reality and other related issues. The analytics work is also a major strand of the IT strategy development so I am content with the way in which that is developing.

There are other specific projects that I also began when I moved to Swansea, or shortly after, that have also made significant progress, or perhaps even run their course, and overall I am very pleased with the progress that we have been able to achieve. It is obvious, as we write the provider submission for TEF 3, the next iteration of the Teaching Excellence Framework process, that we have many more good examples, and positive achievements across learning and teaching than we had when we were writing the TEF2 submission at this time last year.

There is, however, still one thing bugging me. I always wanted to see the development of learning and teaching at Swansea as part of a larger programme, more than the accumulation of a series of specific projects. I felt that we had the opportunity at Swansea to do something different, something more far reaching than much of the rest of the sector. Our history, with its emphasis on the partnership between the University, industry and civil society, our commitment to diversity and the inclusion of many different one community (what many people still refer to as Swansea’s heritage of friendliness), and our sense of ambition, the can do attitude that led us to open a new £450 million campus at the height of the economic down turn, are all significant inspirations. All these, and many other aspects of our life, set Swansea apart. I am still not sure, therefore, whether the work on the new curriculum, or the new academic year, or technology enhanced learning, or any of the other achievements over the last couple of years, really capture this level of ambition.

If I am going to set a goal, or task, for 2018 then it is to stand back somewhat from all the everyday work, and the bigger projects, to open a discussion across the University, as to what University education is really about. Some commentators are saying that there is a crisis in our Universities just at the moment, with all the changes going on at a governmental level (both in the UK and in Wales) and with an increasingly hostile press challenging Vice Chancellor’s pay, freedom of speech and many other things. There is an implied understanding, from government and media commentators, about what Universities are for (providing recruits to, and support for, an increasingly challenging economy). There is also a reaction to that in many of the commentaries from colleagues across the sector, and a growing emphasis on ‘values’ within many HE institutions.

Just this morning, on Thought for the Day, a lecturer in Catholic Theology from Roehampton University used the Midas legend as the basis for a critique of the University sector for focusing on wealth creation rather than on the real work of interdisciplinary reflection on the big issues of the day (something she suggested Theology was ideally suited to). While I have some sympathy for this critique, and for the centrality of Theology as the ‘Queen of Sciences’, what the thought failed to recognise is that academics engaged in the big questions of life, including theologians, need paying for. If Universities are obsessed with raising money, it is to support research and education at a time when the government, and many private individuals and companies, are not prepared to contribute. There are much bigger questions here that do need to be addressed.

My New Year resolution, therefore, and yes I am going to make one, is to use this blog as a site in which to offer thoughts, reflections and commentary, on a weekly basis (how long will I keep that up?) and drawing on conversations already taking place in the media and around the University, about the purpose of University education. If this leads to a publication or two in due course, or an article in the Times Higher, then all the better. More importantly, however, I want to encourage as many of you who wish to join me, to enter the conversation and to offer your thoughts, reflections and critiques of the various ideas I am developing.

I wish you all, the very best wishes for 2018![:]

[:en]Over the last couple of weekends, for reasons that are probably best not discussed, I have been catching up on the audition rounds of X Factor. I know there are many things that we can say are not good about the whole phenomena of X Factor; its commercialisation, its glorifying of instant success, its raising of unrealistic expectations among the young, and so on. However, just watching the format of those auditions, and watching the response of Simon Cowell, and the other judges, even when the person in front of them really has no hope at all, started to raise questions about what it is that we are doing, the expectations we are setting and the way in which we engage with our own students here in Swansea.

As we approach the beginning of term I am very aware that on Tuesday morning, like so many of the rest of you, I will be meeting a new group of students in the module that I am co-teaching this term. What is it that I am expecting of that encounter? What is it that the students might be expecting? Who, perhaps, is auditioning whom?

Three things about the X Factor auditions that particularly struck me were the challenge to ‘show us what you can do’, the care that the judges exhibit for the contestants alongside the real interest that they have in them as people, and the challenge to the contestants to be authentic and to do something original.

There is a real recognition, within the format, that the contestants come into the audition exhibiting some kind of talent. It might not be fully formed, a little rough around the edges, it might be quirky or somewhat from left field, it may be amazing and take the whole panel by surprise, but it is the talent that the candidate already has that is being encouraged when the judges say ‘show us what you can do’. How often do we enter the teaching context within a university, even with a final year class, and assume, perhaps unconsciously, that we, the teachers, are the ones with the talent, something that we wish to instill in the students. Do we see the teaching experience as one in which we are starting from a blank canvas? Of course, we often recognise that the students bring a great deal of experience, and perhaps particular skills and aptitudes with them but when we are teaching, for example, the philosophy of religion, do we ever start by asking ‘what do you know already?’, ‘What are the questions that you want to ask, and how might you approach them?’ before we introduce them to the literature and the ‘official’ way of asking and answering such questions. How often do we actually say to students (even in our traditional forms of assessment) ‘show us what you can do?’

X Factor is, of course, a talent show. The contestants have varying degrees of talent and it is the innate, or potential talent that is being sought at the auditions stage, not what the contestants have learnt (although there is often a recognition that some of the candidates have undergoing tuition and others have not). By its nature, many of those attending the auditions simply will not have talent, or perhaps it is fairer to say enough talent, or the right kind of talent. In these circumstances, the format, as it has developed, is actually very supportive and caring (unlike earlier series where there was some kind of implicit mocking of those who had an inflated view of their own talent). The responses of the judges are generally of the form, ‘thank you, but perhaps you are not ready yet’, or ‘thank you, but perhaps you are not quite right for this show’. There is a level of care shown, at what is recognised as a very stressful experience.

There were a couple of papers in last week’s Times Higher Educational Supplement that asked about the role of kindness and encouragement in the learning process, something, it was suggested, that is undervalued in many theoretical presentations of learning and teaching. This does not mean that we all have to suddenly become very cuddly or touchy-feely. The X Factor does show, at least in the most recent series, how it is possible to be hardnosed, to give really difficult feedback, while retaining a supportive approach. Kindness and encouragement are vital parts of the learning process and the way in which we support our students, even when they are failing, perhaps especially when they are failing, is a good indicator of a really special teacher.

Finally, therefore, the challenge to be authentic and original. It is great to see, on occasions, within the show, when a contestant suddenly realises what is being asked of them, not to be like everybody else, or to live up to other people’s expectations, but to express themselves, and their emotions, directly and authentically within the performance. I was told by one of my lecturers when I was at University that you can never get a first class mark simply by working hard (although that does not negate the need to work). The first class student is one who shows flair, who owns the material, and who does something significantly different with it. It is something that is very difficult to get across to students, that need to inhabit the material, make it entirely second nature, so that they can truly express their own ideas and create something entirely new from the information that is in front of them. When a student does grasp what is meant, when the penny drops, and they make that transition from describing the work of others, or mechanically going through the motions, to making their own mark in the field, then it is a real joy to watch.

Swansea University is not the X Factor. We all know that. What we are doing is something very different. Apart from anything else we are dealing with the whole community, not just those who get through to the next round. Everybody, we hope, can be a winner in their own way. However, there are always things to learn, the recognition of talent and the need for dialogue, the importance of kindness and encouragement, and the support for authenticity and originality, that I think are worth keeping in mind as we enter into a new academic year and meet the next cohort of students in our classes over the next few weeks.

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[:en]Yes, we got a silver award from TEF and that is, in fact, an incredible achievement. The comments from the TEF panel in their response to our submission, are really positive:

• Very high proportions of students from all backgrounds continue with their studies or progress to highly skilled employment, notably exceeding the provider’s benchmark.
• The metrics indicate full-time students have very high levels of satisfaction with teaching, academic support and assessment and feedback.
• Course design that provides scope for high levels of stretch, including by working with industrial partners in course development and review.
• High quality personalised learning that is embedded across the University
• An institutional culture that recognises and rewards excellent teaching through professional development, a teaching and scholarship promotion route and awards for excellence in learning and teaching.

These are all excellent commendations and reflect the hard work and commitment of all our academic staff, our students, and our professional services. The fact that we have got the highest metrics (when measured as z scores) or any of those institutions awarded a Silver, is also something to be very proud about. We are clearly doing many things right and well above the average of the sector. Can I therefore thank everybody, across the University, for their commitment and their contribution to this excellent award!

However, and it is a big ‘however’, I am very conscious of the fact that many across the University – and interestingly beyond the University in the various media stories around the TEF – felt that Swansea deserved a Gold.

There are probably many reasons why we were not awarded the Gold; all these decisions are the consequence of lots of different factors playing off against each other. One of these, and probably only one, that particularly strikes me on reading a number of the submissions from institutions that have been awarded Gold, is that there is nothing specific, within all that we do at Swansea, that really stands out as being ahead of the sector. We do everything ‘excellently’ (and that is no mean achievement in itself) but nothing is seen, by those outside the University, as ‘exceptional’ or ‘consistently outstanding’. This is clearly something that we need to change.

There are many things that we do, generally in small pockets across the University, that are exceptional and outstanding. One of the things I will be doing over the summer is inviting those involved in such outstanding activities to write about their work in guest blogs on this site. We need to make much more of the exceptional activities that do exist on all three of our campuses.

More significantly, however, I think that it is important to recognise where we are, and the journey that we are on in terms of learning and teaching at Swansea. I joined the University two years ago and colleagues were already thinking about how we could make a ‘step change’ in our delivery of learning and teaching and, particularly at that time, in our student engagement. This has led to two major programmes, STEP4Excellence and Go Beyond, and I have talked about both of these within this blog on numerous occasions.

Neither of these programmes were to be understood as instant fixes. They both recognised the level of cultural change and, in terms of Go Beyond, structural changes that would be need to deliver the benefits that we were looking for. We embarked on both programmes as part of three to four year programme and we are currently about half way through that cycle.

Over the last two years there has been a great deal of study, consultation, reflection, engagement with colleagues and exploration of best practice both internally and across the sector. This has identified a number of principles and practices that are embedded in the STEP4Excellence and Go Beyond programmes. In terms of STEP4Excellence, we are just about to embark on the first element of implementation. The Academic and Pastoral Support Framework is due to be rolled out across the University in the next academic year with a considerable programme of training for all staff in the autumn. The Student’s Union worked incredibly hard last year to build up a significantly higher level of student representation from all parts of the University, providing training, an annual conference and high levels of support for the new reps. We will only see the benefits of that in the next couple of years. On another level, SALT has been honing their work on peer review of teaching with a radical new approach, first developed in Australia, which will be implemented for the first time during the next academic year.

The same is true of Go Beyond. We have been working hard behind the scenes throughout this academic year, and I have been travelling around all the departments and subject areas in recent months talking about how this work is developing. We intend to roll out, in the autumn term, a series of tools, based on the mind-set expected of all Swansea graduates, on a sequence of principles to be embedded in all programmes, on a relaxing of the modular framework and on proposals for a more radical rethinking of the academic year, that, if accepted following consultation, will undoubtedly place Swansea at the forefront of thinking, and practice, in terms of learning and teaching, not just within the UK sector, but internationally.

We are not there yet. We are half way through our own journey. We are undergoing radical transformation, both as a University and in our approaches to learning and teaching. At this point in our journey, I have no doubt that a Silver award in the TEF is a real accolade, a confirmation that we are on the right track and a call to do better. In two years’ time, when all that has been begun in STEP4Ecellence and Go Beyond have been implemented and are clearly impacting on the student experience and the learning and teaching here at Swansea, I have no doubt that we will undoubtedly be recognised as Gold. What is clear, however, is that we all have a great deal of work still to do before we reach that point.[:]

Having bumped into Professor Tom Cheeseman yesterday, it reminded me of a wonderful evening spent a few weeks ago at one of the Volcano Fridays events that he is organising. Alongside a very mixed audience from across Swansea and beyond I enjoyed an evening, at the Volcano Theatre, of Arabic, Welsh and Chinese poetry, both in the original languages, in each other’s languages (Welsh poetry translated into Chinese and vice-versa) and in English. It is not perhaps the entertainment I might have chosen for a Friday evening in Swansea but there was such a great atmosphere, the poets clearly sparked off each other, and the poetry itself was both exciting and moving. I would strongly recommend those in Swansea to get out and go along to one or more of the remaining events in the series, you will be surprised, entertained and amazed.

This event, however, got me thinking about the place of language in teaching and research. I have always had a love/hate relationship to language thanks to my own dyslexia. I did not begin to read seriously until I was 12, and then, starting with War and Peace (the Napoleonic Wars were a particular obsession of mine at the time) I began to devour novels of all kinds. I failed the written element of the ‘O’ level French exam three times, although the oral never caused me any problems. It was only at University that the support and work of a dedicated lecturer in the anthropology of religion actually freed up my writing style and allowed me to enjoy the play of language on the page. Being dyslexic does mean that I never take language (either my own or that of other people) for granted, and for my current research project, over two thirds of the source material is in French.

I do believe that one of the great gifts that a university education can give is that of a joy in language, in both senses of the word. There is a joy in being able to handle your own native language, to be able to use it well to express what you want to say, whether that is some sophisticated sociological theory, a critique of poetry, or a series scientific concepts. There is also a joy to be had, I would suggest, in learning other languages, using that experience to challenge our own often casual use of language, and the level of communication with others, and with other people’s ideas, that this can often bring. I would also want to include maths here. I studied maths up to ‘A’ level, and on to the first year at University. At its best mathematics is a very beautiful, and very specialised language that has its own rules and its own symmetry and inner poetry. The ability, the acquired confidence, to be able to work well, either in our own language, or that of others, or that of mathematics, dance, music or art is something that will always be useful and creative in many forms of employment.

However, language is more than words, sentences and communication. As an anthropologist language is also a way into culture. The translation of mid–twentieth sociological texts from French into English, as part of my current research, is not just a matter of the equivalence of words. There is a whole different set of cultural assumptions, geographical and historical references and different ways of thinking that cannot simply be ‘translated’ or easily grasped through English translations. Those who come to Swansea from across the world and work in English, often a second or third language, need support and encouragement to be aware of some of the more subtle references and assumptions that we expect our English speaking students to take on board without thinking. Being in Swansea also raises the question of Welsh. Is there something that those of us who struggle to learn Welsh are missing of the regional culture and colour? The importance of Welsh is something that, in my own view, is to be celebrated and encouraged, and it is often something that many of our foreign students actually want to engage with, and even learn, as visitors to the region.

The mastery of language, in its other sense, is also an important skill that all our students should learn. The ability to communicate, the careful choice of words, the turn of a phrase, rhythm, rhetoric, even poetry, is essential to the academic endeavour. I attended the Three Minute Thesis competition earlier in the week, when PhD students were encouraged to present their thesis in three minutes, and get the key ideas over to an audience of non-specialists without the props of power-point or visual aids. Language, and the ability to cut back language to its most fundamental points, is essential to such a task. It is also necessary to all forms of communication, whether oral or written, and something that can often be overlooked, something that is rarely taught specifically. PhD students have often asked me how they should write as an academic. I always say to them that the only answer to that is to read, to find those texts that really speak to them, and then to analyse how that author uses language to get their ideas across.

Language is often undervalued. We know that in terms of learning other languages and the paucity of applications that come through from our schools to language degrees. The undervaluing of language is also something that is common across the University and something that the kind of event celebrated in Volcano Fridays can really bring to our attention. Language takes many forms. Most of us – not just those who can claim to be dyslexic – often find language difficult and hence avoid any direct engagement with it. But is also so rewarding and something that we need, as a University, to make available to all our students in as many different ways as we can.

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Over the last few weeks I have been doing a great deal of research and thinking in the area of higher apprenticeships. Universities UK and HEFCE published a very useful report on Degree Apprenticeships, Realising Opportunities, and the Welsh Government published their own report on Aligning the Apprenticeship Model to the Needs of the Welsh Economy. There is also considerable debate across the sector with the introduction of the apprenticeship levy at the end of this month.

The situation in Wales is, of course, very different in this area, from that in England, and I do think there are some missed opportunities. While we are clearly in conversations with the relevant people in the Welsh government, and with colleagues in the local Further Education Colleges and other suppliers, it will, undoubtedly, take a little while for the situation to become much clearer (if we ever do reach that situation). That, however, is not really what I wanted to talk about in this blog.

As a University we are already involved in the delivery of higher apprenticeships, along with foundation degrees and other forms of work based learning, both through our own activities and in close association with local Colleges. There is some excellent work being undertaken in this area but it is also clear that this is an area of growth and, given all of the wider discussions, a potential area for further growth in the future.

What is also apparent, however, is that the way in which we approach growth in this area, and the delivery of programmes with a significant element of work based learning, has to be very different from the way in which we approach growth in standard, campus based, programmes. We are working with a much wider range of partners, and often in much closer partnership arrangements. We need to adapt the delivery model significantly, both in terms of where the programmes are delivered, and when. We need a different model of student support and we need to adapt our systems for monitoring and enabling students as they progress through the programme. Finally, such programmes also demand very different skills and different time commitments, in many cases, from those who are going to be involved in the delivery of such programmes.

When I started out in my own academic career I worked extensively for what was then the Manchester University extra mural department, delivering modules on community organising and sociology to a wide cross section of the general public, including those who were working in the community work sector. When I moved to Birmingham I inherited, and continued to run, a programme aimed at the wider Muslim community that was taught in a local education centre at weekends and in the evening. I have always enjoyed this kind of work, and the really exciting student body that engages with such programmes. Many Universities withdrew from this work in the 1990s or the early years of this century. Swansea continues to maintain this tradition, however, through the work of DACE.

My point here, however, is not specifically an advocacy of community based education, but to note the very different styles of teaching involved and the different expectations on those who deliver it. As we move into a very different world, with the emphasis on work based learning and apprenticeships, we must not assume that this will be simply what we do for our current undergraduates transferred to a different space.

Apprenticeships are not the only area of growth and development where this is true. As we move into more distance learning, and other forms of blended and online learning, and as we develop the transnational educational (TNE) offer of the University, then the very same principles apply. The expectations of ‘flying faculty’ to support a programme partially delivered in China are very different from those of a standard academic contract based primarily here in Swansea. We have to recognise this difference and build it into our planning, especially if we are going to look, as we need to, at the diversification of income across the Colleges.

I am therefore putting in place mechanisms for us to undertake serious discussions about the kind of systems and structures that we need to build, or adapt, in order to support a growth in work based, distance and TNE learning. This will involve some radical thinking, not just in systems and processes, but also in areas of the University that might not be immediately apparent, such as HR and Finance. It will also need some rethinking and perhaps a shift in priorities and commitments, within the Colleges themselves. There are some real opportunities here that we do need to grasp, but we need to do this systematically, with the right structures, processes and expectations in terms of staff commitments. This is a very large agenda, but one that we need to grasp and move forward on, building on the current excellent (but largely small scale) work in all these areas across the University and embedding them as part of the way the University works on a day to day basis.

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[:en]Last week my partner, David, and I visited Zurich and Basel to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary and also to indulge our shared passion for African Art. We visited a number of specialist museums but two, in particular, one in Zurich and one in Basel, set me thinking about issues of learning and teaching back here in Swansea.

The Museum Rietberg in Zurich is one of the leading institutions for the study and display of non-Western art (there is no better term for the collective). They were established as a private institution in the 1950s and have inhabited a couple of beautiful nineteenth century villas overlooking the lake. In the last ten years, since we last visited this collection, they have undertaken a complete refit and have installed two very extensive underground galleries that add considerably to the space they have to display objects without making any significant difference to the original villas and landscaping around them.

The Rietberg, however, remains a gallery for the connoisseur. They have a collection containing some of the best examples of African, Chinese, South East Asian and Pacific art in the world, and they have a publishing record that demonstrates a significant level of scholarship. In the display however, they present a relatively small number of really stunning pieces, now given space within the gallery for each one to be appreciated in isolation and admired for the skill and creativity of the artists. There is a small label for each item, giving provenance, date and the catalogue number, but there is no contextual information and if the visitor did not know what they were looking at then there is no possibility of knowing how the object was made, what it was used for, how its own creators understood it, or what role it played in the wider cultural context. This is a display of objects that are expected to speak for themselves, or perhaps more accurately, to speak primarily to those who are already in the know.

From our point of view it was great to meet up again with old friends, objects that we know well and have admired from previous visits, from extensive reading in the subject and from exhibitions in other galleries where these objects have been loaned for display. Ironically, however, it was the early Chinese porcelain that really captured our imaginations and the display clearly left us wanting more; more information, more context, more understanding.

The second museum, the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, was a very different institution. It had grown out of the anthropological collections of the University of Basel and is now housed in an incredible new building that both challenges and complements the medieval spaces around it. What was really fascinating here, however, were the choices made by the curators. On each floor there was a different exhibition, each geared to some kind of intellectual idea rather than driven by the desire to display the most important objects in their collection.

On the first floor, for example, was an exhibition entitled ‘Staying in Line’. Here the curators had broken with tradition and chosen a number of different kinds of object and displayed all the examples of that object that they had, either in a row or as a cluster. So much that any museum holds is generally relegated to the store and never sees the light of day, but here we saw all the middle European spinning wheels, all the New Guinea ritual hooks, all the Melanesian yam masks and so on, and it gave a very different perspective on the objects and their interrelations. Upstairs was an exhibition called simply ‘Big’ that contained objects that would not normally be displayed because they took up too much space, but in their scale offered an overwhelming experience. Many of these were from New Guinea and the islands around it and once again they presented a very different perspective on these cultures. Finally, on the third floor was an exhibition, Strawgold, which looked at recycling in many different traditions across the world. Once again a very different, and interesting perspective.

Of course, what David and I missed, in the Basel museum, was the chance to see those items in the museum’s collection that, as collectors, we most wanted to see because they related to our own particular collection. There were very few African items on display and while we loved the exhibitions, and were greatly stimulated intellectually by the ideas that were being explored within the displays, we left disappointed that we had not seen the objects that we particularly wanted to see.

So what does this say to University education? I think there is something here about expectations, there is something about knowing your audience, and there is something engaging intellectual curiosity. We often imagine that people outside of higher education still expect Universities to be built on the model of the Rietberg. They expect them to be repositories of scholarship, of excellence and of clear, unambiguous classifications in terms of the disciplines that we are expected to offer. They know that the ordinary person is not expected to understand the outputs by way of programmes or research, they are expected to just stand and admire, in awe at the skill and the intellectual prowess, most of which remains hidden away in the background.

The modern University, however, including Swansea, is much more like the Museum der Kulturen. We know that we have to reach out to our audience, have to engage with real world issues such as recycling/climate change, and have to sell our learning through carefully crafted marketing and presentation (impact). The Museum der Kulturen took this one step further, however, and has begun to rethink how the objects can be displayed, to ask anew what links to what, what constitutes an appropriate object for display. How can the presentation inspire and engage the audience, not just as passive visitors, but as intellectual beings who can be encouraged to think about things differently?

Like the Rietberg we can build new spaces, new campuses, and wow potential students with the pinnacles of our achievements. How far, however, do we go on to rethink how the various disciplines of the University are connected? How far do we begin to reimagine the connections, to bring to the fore elements that are not usually seen, generate creative and inspiring links, new avenues of thought, and new ways of thinking, especially among our students? I am sure that we do, it is part of who we are. The question, however, might be how we begin to present that to a wider audience, those who come expecting to see the beloved objects that they usually find in such institutions? How do we manage expectations? How do we inspire future participants (both staff and students)?[:]

[:en]Over the last couple of weeks I have opened the Roma, Traveler and Gypsy Arts and Culture symposium at the Taliesin and spoken at a University event to mark National Holocaust Memorial Day. These experiences have raised once again the question of inclusivity in our curricular.

There are many ways of thinking about an inclusive curriculum but the specific question that was raised by these two events was that of exclusion; what is it that we fail to mention or fail to include within the presentation of our disciplines? Roma, Gypsies and Travelers are often excluded, both physically and intellectually, and I am sure play only a very minor role, if any, in curricular here at Swansea. One significant point that was made during the Holocaust commemorations was the need to remember, never to forget, never again to exclude.

In the mid-1990s David Sibley wrote an excellent book entitled Geographies of Exclusion. In this text Sibley looked at exclusion in two different ways. He talks both of the various topics, or peoples, that Human Geography tends to ignore and hence exclude in its academic work, and also of those Geographers (women and people of colour) who are not taught within curriculum and are excluded from what might be called the ‘canon’ of Human Geography. I am sure that, in many ways, and particularly here at Swansea, this message has been heard and things have changed in the research and teaching of Geography in the last twenty years.

What I am interested in here is the second of Sibley’s exclusions. Who do we reference when we teach our individual disciplines? How many of these people are women? How many have other protected characteristics (people of colour, LGBTQ, disabled)? Do we think to mention these other characteristics when we introduce their work into our teaching?

I always try to present academic work as a scholarly conversation. We introduce students to this conversation through our teaching, give them the knowledge and the skills in order to engage in that conversation and, ultimately, invite them to be a part of that conversation. It is very difficult being part of a conversation when all the other participants are presented as being different from oneself. If there is a point of contact, or a sense that many different kinds of people can be part of the conversation, then it is so much easier to feel as though you can also join in, become one of the conversation partners.

We don’t often think to introduce our students to the lives and background of the principle scholars in our field. However, to know where people come from, what they bring with them, perhaps their prejudices and constraints as well as how they engage with the discipline and all the wonderful things that they contribute, is important and often helps to engage students who are new to the field and nervous about their involvement. This is an essential part of what I would understand as an inclusive curriculum.

In the work that I am writing at the moment I am reviewing the history of the scholarly study of the Dogon people of Mali, from around the 1930s to the present day. That scholarship is dominated by one name, Marcel Griaule, a French anthropologist, and his is the only name most people have heard of in relation to this work. If you were to ask around Paris today then other scholars might suggest going to a seminar by Eric Jolly, the leading contemporary expert on the Dogon. What I find particularly fascinating about this history, however, is that the vast majority of anthropologists who studied among the Dogon were women: Denise Paulme (1930s), Deborah Lifchitz (1930s, who died in Auschwitz), Germaine Dieterlen (1940s), Genevieve Calame-Griaule (1950s, Marcel’s daughter), Barbara Mott (1970s), Jacky Bouju (1980s), Ann Doquet (1990s) and the study of Dogon art has been dominated by the work of Hélene Leloup from 1988 through to a major exhibition of Dogon sculpture that she curated in Paris in 2011. Despite all these wonderful women anthropologists, however, we still do not have any decent study of the lives of Dogon women; they all present, in their different ways, a very male perspective on the society.

What is also clear, however, is that throughout the almost one hundred years of study on the Dogon the voices of Dogon people themselves are almost entirely absent from the scholarly record, except in a few instances when quoted by external writers. Despite this there is one family, the Dolo family from Sangha in the middle of Dogon country, who have acted as gatekeepers and informants, from father to son, to grandson, to great grandson, as well as acting as hosts to many visitors and dealers in African art, and their names keep appearing in text after text after text. It is very clear that, despite the colonial anthropological context of much of the writing on the Dogon, and the filter of French anthropology or the art historical world of European and American museums, it is the Dolo’s perspective on the Dogon that has been presented to the West, undoubtedly at the expense of so many other possible local perspectives.

Knowing all this makes the subject so much more exciting and, in my experience, really engages the students. Asking the students to respond to such information, to evaluate the scholarship in the light of such knowledge, and to seek to question it in their assignments, is what teaching is all about.

My example is in anthropology. The same kind of stories, however, can be told from many other disciplines. My question is how far do we deliberately, or unconsciously, exclude important voices from our classes because of the assumptions we make about what a scholar in our field should look and sound like? Something to think about…[:]

[:en]Over the last week my life, and that of three other colleagues, has been dominated by writing and rewriting the TEF submission. I am very grateful to my colleagues, and to the many other people across the University, who have put so much time and effort into this process. It has proved to be a really stimulating and thought provoking process. Not only has it highlighted all the really good things that are going on within education across the University but it has also allowed us to reflect critically on what needs to change and where we want to go next.

This has fitted in very well with the continuing work on STEP4Excellence and Go Beyond and on Wednesday afternoon we had a joint programme board for these two projects. This was a chance to catch up with where the various different work streams are up to and to look forward to what we have to achieve over the coming few months as we move towards a point where we can begin the process of implementation. For me this meeting clarified and confirmed that we are actually on the right track and that when everything does, eventually, come together it will be a real boost to the whole University.

One of the things that struck me particularly clearly this week was triggered not by the TEF or by internal University meetings, but by an article in last week’s THE. The Vice Chancellor of Sheffield, Keith Burnett, contributed a comment piece in which he compared the current state of the Higher Education Sector to the old Russian folktale of the Emperor and the Nightingale. In this tale the Emperor’s courtiers are captivated by a mechanical nightingale that has been given to the Emperor, and they go out of their way to praise its beauty and its song. The Emperor, however, has a real nightingale within a cage and knows the difference between the mechanical song of the toy and the natural beauty of the real bird. Eventually he asks what it is that the nightingale wants above everything else in the world, and she replies ‘freedom’, so the Emperor releases her to continue her song in the wild woods beyond the palace.

Burnett claims that many University leaders, and many others in our society, have become like the courtiers, captivated by the mechanical elements of HE: quality processes, regulations, the gathering of metrics and league tables, and we have forgotten how to listen to the real nightingale. We need to find ways, Burnett suggests, by which we can once again give our academics and our students the freedom to sing.

There is an important lesson within this little story and one that we are trying to learn as we approach the possibility of curriculum reform through Go Beyond. We need to find a way of loosening the regulations and the various processes involved in curriculum approval and review in order to allow each subject area within the University to develop the kind of curriculum that they wish to offer to their students.

So many times, both at Swansea and elsewhere, I have heard colleagues state, as they have tried to make changes and to loosen the structures of their programmes, that they cannot do – whatever it might be – because the regulations do not allow it; an academic version of ‘computer says ‘no’’. What we often fail to realise, of course, is that it is us, the various members of the University, who create the regulations in the first place, and that if we want to change them then, of course, we can.

This is not to say that anything should be allowed. Regulations and processes have their purpose, to ensure equity, to protect both students and staff, to provide reassurance on quality and standards and to allow interchangeability between programmes. We need to have a framework of some kind in order to assure ourselves, and prospective students, that we are offering a quality product. However, we often go overboard, and construct regulations for the sake of it, or impose frameworks that are too rigid and that stifle creativity and imagination in teaching and learning. There is not one way of doing things that must be imposed on all. There have to be ways of constructing process, regulations and frameworks that enable and facilitate, rather than constraining and forbidding. This is what we will be aiming to achieve alongside the more obvious elements of the Go Beyond process.

Having said that I have noted in recent months that I am already getting emails from staff saying ‘I would love to do x or y in my module, but don’t know if I can’, or ‘if only the regs. allowed it, I would want to try …’. There are points of creativity and experimentation emerging. As we prepare the TEF we are also becoming aware of large areas of really good practice that are pushing at the very edges of our current structures and systems, either intentionally or simply through the enthusiasm of staff to provide the very best for their students.

I want to be able to facilitate this more widely across the institution. I want to gently prise open the bars of the cage, loosen the mechanism of the mechanical birds, and I want to begin to hear many nightingales begin to sing out across our campuses. Is that perhaps too much to ask?[:]