Tell us a bit about what you are working on?
Two big developments keep me up at night: first, the pervasive sense of alienation and disenfranchisement across Western societies and especially among young people; and, secondly, the reinvention of language services in the face of technological change, cultural polarisation, the end of economic globalisation and a feeling among more and more people that it is hard to express yourself, be heard and be understood. At the University of Bristol, where I work part-time in a P3 role, as Associate Professor in German and Translation and a MA programme director in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, I try to address these two issues, primarily through curriculum design, new syllabi, and new forms of assessment, feedback and marking.
Can you give an example of using educational scholarship or evidence to transform your teaching or assessment practice, and what impact this had?
I work with Resonance Pedagogy (RP), which focuses on building relationships – involving teachers, learners, and objects of study – and sees them as preconditions for attainment. One thing that RP is keen on is “voice,” i.e. allowing yourself and others to enter into genuine dialogue. For translators, whom I train, the individual voice has traditionally been seen as bad, almost as a marker of failure: Your translation was considered good if you couldn’t tell that it was a translation. This is something I want to change – I want students to be able to point out how their clients can see that a translation is theirs. In spite of my own practical work as a translator, I don’t think I could have designed exercises around this issue in the rigorous manner I have if it had not been for my involvement with RP.
What innovative approach to teaching, learning, or curriculum design have you developed, evaluated, and shared with others?
As programme director in Translation I get to do a lot of onboarding: Translation classes are often taught by colleagues from a variety of different backgrounds, and often by people who don’t see themselves as translators. What I have tried to do quite relentlessly, and this is again to do with voice and relationships – including with one’s own self – is encourage colleagues to bring their own stories of multilingualism into the translation classroom. Even if they don’t have the business experience in language service provision in the strict sense, they can showcase through examples and exercises built on them how new forms of translingual exchange can be made to emerge. And for the students that is definitely more exciting than if a teacher has to go through a syllabus designed by someone else whose relevance they may not appreciate.
Can you describe a time when you contributed to or led an educational initiative that enhanced teaching practice within or beyond your School?
I led on a big review of translation teaching at undergraduate level, and we reported back to the Head of School and our School Plenary with lots of praise and also lots of recommendations. The term “translation” is used in two distinct ways, and one thing we are now trying to do, in the implementation phase, is disentangle the two. One is translation for the purposes of the students’ language learning, and the other is translation as a service that almost any professional in the world, in whatever domain or sector will benefit from. Again, for the nuts and bolts of this to work, practically speaking, in a relatively big School, we need a feeling that relationships between colleagues and our intellectual mission are strong, and that we are addressing real-world intellectual, cultural and business opportunities out there, against the backdrop of the societal challenges that I outlined above.
How have you built and demonstrated sustained impact through your scholarship of teaching and learning activities?
One thing I have been able to do is talk about my classroom- and programme-level application of RP principles to the people who developed these principles. This has been at conferences (including in France, where I had to overcome my ridiculously deep-seated fear of speaking French!) and also in publications. I have recently contributed to a new resonance handbook, where I was able to link sociological theory, pedagogical principles, classroom activities and business opportunities in ways that I think I wouldn’t have been able to do so confidently without a proper grounding in scholarship. And there’s at least a couple more articles in the pipeline that address different professional and disciplinary audiences, but what they share is a sense that the classroom, and reflections on dynamic classroom relationships, are a primary site of societal and cultural development.
What advice would you give to colleagues who are planning to apply for promotion and wish to meet the E4 criteria?
Start from an enjoyment of the fact that this criterion exists, and that the University has really come to embrace the value of pedagogical scholarship. Use every opportunity to discuss your thoughts and learning and plans with colleagues. Teaching, and related reflection, can be lonely, which is super paradoxical, but I think quite a few of us feel this way, so do seek out others. I’m certainly happy to be contacted!
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