Disciplines, discourse and Orientalism: the implications for postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching in higher education

Despite national requirements for accredited teaching qualifications to promote understanding of ‘how students learn, both generally and in the subject’ (HEA, 2006), there is a lack of literature internationally on disciplinary differences in student learning in higher education. Academics at a UK research intensive university were asked to report on the existence of literature or folkloric knowledge concerned with how students learnt in their subject. No relevant literature or folklore were identified but responses did demonstrate a discourse in which the academics constructed their discipline as ‘better’ than other disciplines: the finding with which the present paper is concerned. The discourse of the distinctiveness and superiority of ones own discipline can be understood as a form of ‘Orientalism’. A postcolonial analysis of the discourse of disciplinary relationships offers a partial explanation for challenges made to the validity of cross-university activities, such as postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching.

This is a post print version of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the journal Studies in Higher Education © 2009 Taylor & Francis. "Disciplines, discourse and Orientalism: the implications for postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching in higher education" is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070902929519