Scholarship and (dis)Illusio: Rereading the Language Scholar Manifesto

Alex Ding, Language Centre, University of Leeds

Six years ago I drafted a manifesto for the Language Scholar. It was approved and co-signed by the editorial board and published in December 2018 in the Language Scholar. The purpose of this short thought-piece is partly to reflect on the manifesto, why I wrote it, and stimulated by rereading it, why a degree of disillusionment although dangerous is both necessary and productive.

I was appointed to lead scholarship in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies (LCS) and the Language Centre (LC) at the University of Leeds in 2015. Despite strong support from leadership within LCS and LC, it is fair to say that the promotion of scholarship was not greeted with universal approval from colleagues. Reactions ranged from enthusiasm and curiosity to indifference and suspicion as well as hostility. Having initiated the creation of the Language Scholar, I used it as a platform to publish a manifesto for scholarship. The motivation for writing the manifesto was in part, and only in small part, to confront, challenge and provoke those colleagues who expressed hostility or confusion around scholarship. I was also under pressure to define scholarship from colleagues. To much frustration I resisted this. I resisted partly because research resists a simple, neat definition and epistemological virtues are not universally shared across all disciplines and indeed within disciplines. My reasoning was why demand of scholarship something that isn’t of research? Still, some parameters and contours of scholarship needed to be sketched. The manifesto attempted to do that.

Additionally, the university was only just beginning to grapple with scholarship as a legitimate and recognised form of contribution to knowledge and student education and it seemed to me that, rather than produce a restrictive and detailed definition of scholarship (and prematurely foreclosing forms of scholarship in doing so), definitions of scholarship should emerge, over time, through practices of scholarship. Describing rather than prescribing scholarship practices would allow a more generous and meaningful definition to emerge.

A major motivation for the manifesto was driven by a desire to distinguish scholarship from research. At the time (and even more so now) conflating research with scholarship, I felt, would be disastrous for practitioners. The social field(s) in which language educators and researchers operate lend significantly greater capitals (economic, social, cultural and symbolic) to researchers than educators. This lends them greater power and legitimacy. The motivations, rewards and distinctions available to researchers (as well as the significant constraints associated with this) mean that their practices are shaped by metrics of all sorts, as well as grants, prestige, competition, and the struggle for distinction. My view was that participating in this particular game would only lead to language educators being dominated and further marginalised. It also seemed perverse to attempt to play a game that many researchers derided themselves (even as some of them profited handsomely from it). This view was bolstered by a growing concern and realisation that the very persistent and very stale trope of the ‘research-practice gap’ in research articles and books was achieving little to nothing to redress this so-called gap. In fact, the suspicion occurred to me on more than one occasion (and perhaps unfairly in some cases) that the maintenance of this gap was necessary for the careers of these researchers. There appeared to be a parasitical relationship between researchers of practitioners and practitioners. Researchers appearing to need practitioners for data to then be written up, analysed and presented on their behalf. Practitioners objectified, dissected and discussed.

Furthermore, the pedagogical implications attached to research articles (often reading as an afterthought) sometimes revealed an alarming degree of ignorance about language practices, students and their teachers. More broadly, the field of applied linguistics reveals a carousel of claims to innovation, various turns, and new subfields and specialisms and concerns. It is an increasingly fragmented and incoherent field, making the discernment of valuable contributions to the field increasingly difficult. I felt that scholarship for and by practitioners could be a powerful means of answering back and holding research colleagues to account. It was also an important opportunity to ground scholarship in a different and distinct ethos. To create an illusio, i.e. our commitment to participating in a field and our investment in its stakes. In essence what makes a game worth playing and committing to. Primary in my thoughts was that scholarship should be grounded in understanding and developing scholarship for rather than about language education entailing a focus on praxis, practices, politics and policies that impact students, language education and language educators, all underpinned by a (contestable) ethics that strives to reduce the gap form the real to the ideal for all in universities. To orientate scholarship to what is meaningful for us as a community.

This has important consequences. Firstly, it requires us, an imperative of sorts, to remain independent and potentially critical of university policies and practices around student education as well as dominant ideas in language education. Through scholarship, rather than opinion or authority, we can and should make a case if we have evidence (and this can come in many forms) that practices are detrimental to us and/or education. This position could be seen as negative, critical or uncooperative. And it certainly carries some perceived risks for those exposing doubts or criticisms. Yet, the alternative is simply to submit or possibly, at best, subvert. Critique should be seen and conducted as a sincere endeavour to improve or change practices. Fear should be mitigated by taking the time, care and effort to produce scholarship that provides arguments and evidence that helps rectify policies and practices or proposes different ones.

The manifesto was, in this sense, a means of encouraging scholarship that is meaningful and potentially transformational. I had hoped that the manifesto would inspire at least some colleagues and outline a common purpose. A rallying call of what scholarship could be and could achieve. More powerful and full of potential than a restricted and restrictive definition of scholarship.

University interest in scholarship resulted in the creation of the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence, the faculty-wide Pedagogical Research in the Arts and the school-wide Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching. Alongside this, new opportunities for recognition, rewards, and promotion emerged at around the same time as the Manifesto. This welcome shift in attention to scholarship and ways of recognising and rewarding scholarship, especially through promotions, was accompanied by other structures, such as time allocated to scholarship, and these had a much more profound and material impact than the manifesto in galvanising colleagues. Scholarship still solicits concern and occasional hostility but more marginally so. Scholarship at Leeds is now part of the accepted practices of language educators.

However, as with any field with rewards and recognition, practices are at least partly shaped by what is at stake and what profits and distinction can be accrued from scholarship. This has resulted in a proliferation of scholarship at Leeds. Scholarship, in theory, is not constrained by metrics to measure citations, impact and prestigious publications. This still leaves the problem of how to adjudicate the quality of scholarship. In theory, on promotion forms and other applications for rewards and recognition, all scholarship publications look alike with little to guide whether a contribution has value. The feat of publishing – as in research – tends to be celebrated rather than what its contribution might be to knowledge and practices. This can encourage publishing for its own sake and rewards rather than think of publishing as a stage in a long-term process pressing an idea or critique for educational change. Publishing in itself risks becoming the most important marker of status and distinction. Scholarship, like research, can be highly performative – and devoid of meaning. We have no system for evaluating scholarship. University policies around student education tend to shape what types of scholarship are valued and supported leaving a more marginal space and resources for scholarship that is critical or not aligned with university-wide objectives. This can encourage conformity rather than (useful) transgressions. The plethora of student education initiatives has enabled many language educators to participate in large-scale initiatives across the university, yet the suspicion remains that novelty sometimes trumps cumulative knowledge-building in the search for educational solutions. Because of the way rewards are structured, including promotion, they tend to accentuate individual achievement. Individuals should, of course, be rewarded and recognised but there is a risk that the collegial and collaborative fabric of professional life can be undone (or instrumentalised) through individual ambition. The field of research is replete with unhealthy competition and scholarship risks the same fate.

In the years that followed the publication of the manifesto, Leeds, like many universities, largely but not uniquely due to neoliberal pressures to satisfy student consumers and metrics such as the TEF, invested in scholarship. The paragraphs above have outlined just some of my (many) concerns (which can be qualified as a form of disillusionment) regarding practices around scholarship. The manifesto is saturated with pathos, it is a call or appeal for one version of an ideal for scholarship. A vision that might unite us. That it has failed in some ways is no surprise to me. What is needed in a reflexive, socio-analysis of scholarship (there are hints of elements of what that might look in this piece) to fully understand the conditions and practices of knowledge production in language education scholarship. Objectifying these conditions and practices will invariably break the illusio and risks disillusionment. But seeing things as they really are is the first stage of making them better – and suggests that an ethics of scholarship might emerge. The manifesto remains a useful reminder of what scholarship could be and could achieve.