In order to explore student-led approaches to postgraduate teaching and alternative means of research training a workshop was facilitated by postgraduate students at a conference entitled ‘Quality Controls: Anthropology, Pedagogy and Higher Education’ held by the National Network for Teaching and Learning Anthropology. During this workshop, the approriateness of anthropological training in imparting skills valued on today’s employment market was discussed, the diversity of teachng methods in departments across the country was commented on, and the inadequacy of fieldwork preparation was highlighted. In the light of these observations, the potentials of new initiatives, such as the ASA Postgraduate Network and student-led teaching and learning provision were put forward.
In November 1999, Members of E@TM were invited to contribute to a National Network for Teaching and Learning Anthropology (NNTLA) conference held at London House, London Goodenough Trust for Overseas Students, London, and entitled 'Quality Controls? Anthropology, Pedagogy and Higher Education'.
The contribution took the form of a two and a half hour workshop, jointly organised by postgraduate students involved in student-led training initiatives. It aimed to address some of the issues, risks and potentials of student-centred approaches to postgraduate teaching and learning in anthropology and to explore future approaches to research training. Four postgraduates - David Herold, Celayne Heaton from London, Karen Hough from Oxford and Neil Montgomery from Edinburgh, a graduate - Anne-Marie Martindale, from Keele University, and a recent PhD graduate (now a Fellow of Edinburgh University), Jakob Rigi, guided the participants through a series of talks, loose discussion sessions and more structured group work, with a view to generating practical recommendations and a plan of action to promote further student-led training.
Anne-Marie Martindale argued for a revised anthropological curriculum, one that would respond to the exigencies of the contemporary employment market. Undergraduate anthropology teaching and learning, she argued, would benefit from 'moving away from a culture of book learning to engagement and interaction with the world'; work based training, sessions on how to apply for funding, or dealing with a variety of 'crisis situations' using group work, role play, and problem based learning, were suggested as means to this end. Anne-Marie concluded with a warning: 'If we do nothing then we risk losing the vital role anthropology has to play in explaining our rich and diverse ways of life, and helping to resolve human suffering. If we do nothing, anthropology has the potential to become the Latin of the social sciences, an interesting intellectual deviance without place or significance in the real world!'
Like Anne-Marie, Karen spoke of student dissatisfaction with formal training provision, this time as expressed in the formal context of a NNTLA funded Workshop. The Marrett Project Workshop was organised and attended solely by postgraduate students from departments cross the UK in March 1998. Attendees were struck by the diversity of teaching methods in departments across the UK but simultaneously criticised the lack of transparency within degree programmes and a general disinclination towards curricular innovation. Participants almost unanimously expressed dissatisfaction with the current provision of research methods courses. Finally, it was observed that although academia is decreasingly either a career option or even a top choice for postgraduate anthropology students, postgraduate courses have not yet sufficiently addressed the implications of this change for teaching and training.
One way to address these concerns was suggested by Neil Montgomery, the current head of the ASA Postgraduate Network (ASAPGN). He announced that in the coming year, besides an interactive site on the World Wide Web that includes a database of postgraduates and their research interests, the ASAPGN would set up a forum for postgraduates to involve themselves in their own debates about 'anything' - from individual research issues to broader practical and theoretical topics in anthropology through specific postgraduate matters and what it means to be a postgraduate student at the start of the 21st century.
Informal discussions among postgraduates within the network have highlighted similar concerns to those voiced during the Marrett Project Workshop, namely, the general lack of adequate fieldwork training. Neil observed that the ASAPGN's potential for initiating debate and change inside and outside the network, even on such issues as research training, was immense; but the realisation of this potential, he cautioned, 'will inevitably depend on the extent to which the network remains alive'.
The presentations ended with a final instance of student 'self-help' with David Herold's introduction of the Ethnography at the Third Millennium (E@TM). This seminar was originally funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England funded student-led seminar, but has continued without funding during the academic years 98/'99 and '99/00.
The four presenters asked the audience to consider how we could: ensure the continuity of student-led initiatives; disseminate 'good practice' beyond the conference; deal with the perceived inadequacies of research training; and raise the status of 'student-led' training. Much of the discussion that followed the talks, however, homed in on the talks' portrayal of the (inadequate) formal training provision in a number of anthropology departments. The merits or demerits of individual projects did not attract much attention.
Overall, the workshop was effective in soliciting the participants' recognition of the pedagogical value of student-led - not merely student-centred - initiatives and engaging the teaching body in student initiatives, but on student terms - as facilitators in accessing funding or conferences such as this one - was seen, by all parties, as a satisfactory way forward for the further promotion of student-led teaching and learning. Suggestions regarding access to funding for future student initiatives - expanding student-student networking activities for instance - were forthcoming from the audience.
On the other hand, the issue of the relation of student-led teaching and learning and formal training provision was left unaddressed by the workshop. The response of participants to student experience of formal research training provision - that it is inadequate, despite persistent student efforts to draw attention to this fact - was a somewhat defensive consternation, even 'horror', in the words of one of the student facilitators. Despite expressions of sympathy for research students - and suggestions as to how student complaints might be addressed through formal channels - the student organisers remained sceptical as to whether their pleas for better formal training provision would be heeded. They were also concerned that student initiatives, clothed in the rhetoric of 'student empowerment', will become a convenient way to pass onto students the costs of increases in staff workload, but with few of the economic and symbolic rewards of formal teaching. It was concluded that, if student initiatives are to play a greater role in the teaching and learning of postgraduate anthropology, steps should be taken to hoist them out of their current subsidiary/marginal status. The workshop was one step in this direction.
Celayne Heaton is a post-fieldwork PhD student at SOAS, who is currently writing up her thesis.