1. MAKING HISTORIES
Oral accounts of the emergence and development of ALL
Alisa Percy, Bronwyn James, Reem Al-Mahmood and Tim Beaumont

2. John Clanchy
Australian National
University
Communication and
Study Skills Centre
1975-1994
Graduate School
1995-1997

3. Brigid Ballard
Australian National
University
Communication and
Study Skills Centre
1977-1999

4. Dr Hanne Bock
LaTrobe University
Language and Academic
Study Skills Unit
1979-1990

5. Associate Professor
Gordon Taylor
Monash University
1974-1998
Director, Language and
Learning Unit
Faculty of Arts
1988-1998

6. Associate Professor
Carolyn Webb
University of Sydney
1974-1995
A/P Inaugural Head
Learning & Teaching
Unit
University of Western
Sydney
1996-2006

7. JOHN CLANCHY
BA (Hons), DipEd, MA,
University of Melbourne
English Language and Literature
• Taught in schools in Victoria
• Started at ANU in 1975
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
• Initial observations: psychology,
pastoral care and reading machines
• He was one of the first to begin to
conceptualise the area of ALL as we
might recognise it today.

8. “…the transition from school to university is most
usefully seen in terms of cultural adjustment. Language,
which is perhaps the most potent and tangible
expression of culture, is both the biggest obstacle to
successful integration into an alien culture and the most
powerful means for unlocking it”. (Clanchy 1981, p. 24)
“..when we talk about the reading and
writing failures of tertiary students we are
dealing with a complex set of phenomena
which we cannot begin to understand
unless we consider the total learning and
language environment in which those
failures occur.” (Clanchy, 1976, p. 20)

9. John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
I was struggling when I first came
to the ANU because when I arrived
…I was told was that I was running
the reading laboratory, and I
thought,
What the hell’s a reading
laboratory?,
and there were these reading
machines…speed reading was the
big go in those years…

10. But anyway Brigid came along [1977]
and said,
Look, this really isn't very…,
and she gave all [the reading
machines] away. She solved the
problem.
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997

11. BRIGID BALLARD
BA, English Language and Literature,
Oxford University
MA, Teaching, Harvard University
GradDip, Intercultural Communication,
Goulburn CAE
Brigid Ballard
ANU 1977-1999
• International teaching experience (England,
Nigeria and Papua New Guinea)
• Started at ANU in 1977
• Worked with John to shape the
anthropological approach to ALL work
(language, knowledge and culture)

12. Language, whether oral or written, is indivisible from
the culture in which it functions.... This is true at the
level of the general academic culture, though it is far
more obvious at the sub-cultural level, the level of
disciplinary languages or „dialects‟.
The key to improving standards of student literacy
lies, we think, …in exploring this fundamental
relationship between the culture of knowledge and
the language by which it is maintained and
expressed.
1988 SRHE and Open University Press
By such an exploration we are seeking to redress the
imbalance in current thinking and discussion about
literacy in the university: to move beyond the focus of
attention from a concern simply with issues of
surface correctness to a larger concern with the
functions of and demands upon language in a
particular cultural context.
(Excerpt, p.7)

13. …if there's one thing that
characterised the way we thought
about it, we're kind of intermediaries
and interpreters of this whole culture
of knowledge and learning, and we're
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
in between the student in a sense,
we're in between the student and the
practitioner…

14. …and that whole idea of culture
actually spread because when we
were working with international
students …we began to realise that it
wasn’t just the disciplinary cultures, it
was the whole culture of learning,
whether you question, how do you
make an argument…
Brigid Ballard
ANU 1977-1999

15. …certainly working with international
students you realise that language
was NOT the key problem; it was
culture, cross culture, across major
cultures, across disciplines, across
what you could say and what you
couldn’t say…
Brigid Ballard
ANU 1977-1999

16. I think our definition of ourselves and
our work comes back to this whole
business of the focus upon the nature
of the context and …, I suppose, if
you've got to give it a name, it's
epistemology…
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997

17. …that is, a particular cultural system
of knowledge, a good understanding
of the underlying culture, and some
idea about the way that gets
diversified and differentiated by the
disciplinary base and how that
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
interacts with styles of learning.

18. That first conference we had, now
that was important, because we were
aware that there were other people
working in the other institutions but
we didn’t know that much about
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
them.

19. Study Skills Conference, ANU, 1980

20. And what we found was we had a lot
that wasn’t in common, and that was
a real eye opener because we realised
that we came from very different
backgrounds and had very different
understandings of what we were
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
doing. So there was the whole
psychological stream…out of which a
lot of people came…

21. And then there's a group of us who
come out of some more generalised
thing, I suppose it's either
epistemology or education...
So it's more,
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
What is the university?
What is its cultural system?
What is it aiming to do in bringing
students through and how is language
involved in that intellectual
development?

22. And then there was a third group
which was very much more heavily
…focussed on linguistics … and within
a subset of that was an interest in
second language, English for Academic
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
Purposes.

23. And so while we all started together
as having a common interest in
student development, intellectual
development and personal
development, our emphases and our
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
interests were actually quite diverse.

24. Brigid did lots of writing about her
particular interest in cross cultural
education and …that was appreciated
by the study advisors…but it was
much more appreciated by the
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
academics around Australia, who
[invited her] to visit virtually every
university in Australia at their request.

25. ANU Reporter, 10 June 1983

26. A selection of their commercial books

27. I think the books we wrote were
useful because they were the first.
They may not be the best, but they
were the first…there was absolutely
nothing in the field that was
pragmatic, and I think they were really
useful actually.
Brigid Ballard
ANU 1977-1999

28. Ballard, B & Clanchy, J.
(1991) Teaching students
from overseas: A brief
guide for lecturers and
supervisors, Melbourne:
Longman Cheshire.
Cited 371 times GS
Ballard, B & Clanchy, J.
(1997) Teaching
international students: A
brief guide for lecturers
and supervisors, IDPE
Australia
Cited 243 times GS
…the most used thing that we've produced is a one page
diagram about different styles of learning and different
styles of teaching in different cultures…We still get lots of
royalties from the UK ……

29. …you know, the books we produced
for teaching students from overseas,
are actually books about how to teach
at the tertiary level, but again they're
all saying,
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
We've learnt all this from working
with the students,
so we're coming at it from that end all
the time…

30. …when we went out to the
departments - this is part of
Brigid’s cunning - [she]
always said,
We're here to help your students work better.
We're never here to help you teach better, but actually
that's what you were doing...

31. …[we worked] alongside staff
through discussion and
sharing of experience and
then feeding in odd bits of
technique or theory as it
seemed appropriate. But it was always driven by what was
happening to the tutors at that time within their different
classes rather than here's a course you’ve got to go
through…

32. …you can see how the work we did
often got very close to academic
teaching development. Tricky
boundaries were happening, and the
CEDAM people went off more into
research, so it was alright, but we
were really treading, well we could
have been seen to be treading on
their paths.
Brigid Ballard
ANU 1977-1999

33. At one point when they were trying
to amalgamate [us with CEDAM]. We
were very uppity, and we said,
Yes, well, we will blend with them:
(a) if we can run it, and (b) if all
their staff have to work with
students for two years,
because they'd never taught and
worked with students…but that never
happened…
Brigid Ballard
ANU 1977-1999

34. The things that happened structurally
over [the 25 years] were more to do
with the gradual changes that took
place in the university, and so we had
to respond to that…gradually we
acquired resources and different kind
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
of styles as the university changed…

35. ANU Reporter, April 1987
“…far from being a purely remedial
service, [the Centre] provides assistance to
a significant proportion of students who go
on to obtain credits and distinctions…”

36. …I suppose we always saw ourselves
as responding to the context rather
than trying overall to shape it too
much…
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997

37. …it's still a highly flexible and open
variable field, isn't it. It's not like
you’ve got the set lines of a discipline.
…So it is much less settled, which is an
opportunity for people to do all sorts
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
of things...

38. [ALL educators ] actually are very
valuable to [the university], if the
university recognises them, because
they see what's happening right
across the university.
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997

39. I think the important thing is that it
isn't static. It is actually responsive to
changes, and although you're right,
we've got a core of different things, I
think once we defined ourselves as
something specific, we'd be done for,
we'd be out-dated …
Brigid Ballard
ANU 1977-1999

40. …the biggest shift…in the 20 years
[is] that this became a field rather
than an oddity. It’s becoming a
field that’s serious about itself and
is taken seriously by the institution
John Clanchy
ANU 1975-1997
…even if they don’t understand
particularly well what is being
done…

41. Brigid and John‟s Research Publication record
1976
1997
1976 The „higher illiteracy‟: Some personal observations (John)
1978 Language in the university (John)
1981 From school to university: the transition between two cultures (John)
1982 Language is not enough: responses to the academic difficulties of overseas
students (Brigid)
1984 Improving student writing: An integrated approach to cultural adjustment (Brigid)
1987 Academic adjustment: The other side of the export dollar (Brigid & John)
1988 Literacy in the university: an 'anthropological 'approach (Brigid & John)
1989 Cultural Adjustment by Foreign Students : The Australian Experience (Brigid)
1990 The Cultures of Reason: Students in Strange Lands (Brigid)
1991 Assessment by misconception: Cultural influences and intellectual traditions (Brigid
& John)
1994 The integrative role of the learning advisor (Brigid)
1995 Generic skills in the context of higher education (Brigid & John)
1995 Some issues in teaching international students (Brigid)
1996 Contexts of judgement: an analysis of some assumptions identified in examiners'
reports on 62 successful PhD theses (Brigid)
1997 Through language to learning: Preparing overseas students for study in Western
universities (Brigid)

42. Students
Staff
Consults &Workshops
Working with tutors and teaching
teams in situated practices
Embedded practices
Working with academics on their own
literacy practices
‘How to’ publications
‘How to’ publications on teaching
international students
Spheres of
influence
Institution
Sector
Committee Participation
Conference hosting and participation
Internal Reports
Extensive Networks
Extensive academic and commercial
scholarship
Pivotal role in establishing Aboriginal
Centre and Graduate Program
Consultation to most Australian
universities
Various international visits

43. DR HANNE BOCK
La Trobe University (1979-1990)

45. DR HANNE BOCK
LITERACY TUTOR
LITERACY & STUDY SKILLS
SENIOR LITERACY TUTOR
LANGUAGE & ACADEMIC
SKILLS UNIT
YEARS 1979-1990
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL
SCIENCES
LA TROBE
UNIVERSITY

46. HANNE BOCK STARTED HER APPOINTMENT INITIALLY
FOR 9 MONTHS AT LA TROBE UNIVERSITY IN 1979.
SHE WAS TO REPORT TO THE DEAN ON:
WHY STUDENTS CAN‟T WRITE ESSAYS
“So the Dean was my boss
and I was very, very lucky
in [that] the Deans we had in those early years
the first 2 or 3 Deans,
they were very supportive and
they gave us a very free hand.
And one more thing,
I could use the secretarial services
of the dean‟s private secretary.”

47. IN THE BALANCE OF THINGS:
HERDSA
COUNSELLORS
STUDY SKILLS PEOPLE
&
THE STUDENT?

48. “There were the HERDSA people those who were doing
teacher development and teaching methods and so on.
Then there were the counsellors,
the psychological counsellors
and then there were what was called
study skills people like myself.
And we were the people who met occasionally, once a year
or so, and tried to learn a bit from each other and generally.
We ended up being in separate corners all of us
but anyway if I define my role within that triangle then in
contrast to those who worked with teachers
we didn‟t work on statistics,
we didn‟t work on models…”
Hanne Bock

49. HOW I SAW MY ROLE…
“Trying to explain:
students to teachers,
teachers to students…
and sitting on the borderline between the two groups, to
some extent debunking, to some extent drawing out the
blind spots”
Hanne Bock
Image Source Escher Bond of Union

50. “In relation to the counsellors we had a very funny
relationship with the counsellors at Latrobe they
kept saying: „Give them confidence and they‟ll get
competence‟, and we kept saying: „Give them
competence and they‟ll get confidence‟.
… And that sort of defined the relationship
we had with them but my point …was always
we think that we are right,
they think they are right
but where do the students come in?”
Hanne Bock

51. …BEYOND „STUDY SKILLS‟
“I found [existing study skills publications] practically
criminally insane in the advice they were giving…”
Hanne Bock

52. “I cannot say anything
else, forget about
model theories, forget
about that student
doesn‟t fit into the
pattern, if a student
doesn't fit into a pattern
then it's up to you to find
where that student‟s
universe [is], how that
student‟s universe
looks. …”
Hanne Bock

53. “It really was the individual approach
that did it.”
“It is [a privileged space],
you have to guard it...”
Hanne Bock

54. ADVICE FOR A NEW ALL PERSON
“Don‟t presume you know.
Start listening. Start asking.
Ask, ask, ask specifically into that student,
that situation,
and then listen until you feel you have got firm ground,
and then always remember
that a student is an entire little universe
and you have to find access to that universe
to help the student
and the student has to allow you that access
and that‟s something you must treat as a very personal
and very precious thing.”
Hanne Bock

55. BEYOND THE CONSULTATION
THE DUCKS AND TOADS CAMP
Academic staff and the VC attended
& taught in the one week camp
pre-uni during summer holidays!
“One thing we did, we had 500 students in that course from the first
year, a 5-week course, and we had lecturers from within the school
teaching it, and Helene [Lewit, colleague at La Trobe] had an
incredible gift of convincing people they should take part.
There were a couple of professors teaching in it
and the nice Dean was teaching in it
and other than that several lecturers and tutors
and they all came back and said:
“They had learnt a lot from teaching that course.”

56. REWARDS OF ALL WORK
“The daily work with students
that‟s one aspect of it.”
Hanne Bock

57. REWARDS OF ALL WORK
“A student came and had finished her studies
and brought me an assignment and said:
“I realise this is what you were trying
to teach me in year 1
and now I have done it.
This is my first A paper,
and now I'm finished
and it's for you, you must have it,
you did it.
I didn‟t keep the paper of course because she would need
to look at that.”
Hanne Bock

58. HIGHLIGHT OF ALL WORK:
BEYOND THE UNIVERSITY
“Another highlight was another student
a tiny little thing who became a teacher
and the first year of her teaching career,
she was sent out to do sports with a group of HSC boys
who were head and shoulders taller than her,
and she was a square little Greek girl
who had never done a day of sport in her life.
It was a terrible situation, and she said:
„She really felt very, very badly about it.‟
And then she said:
„But then I thought: “What would Hanne have done?”‟
And so I did what you would have done, and it worked.‟”
Hanne Bock

59. Dr Hanne Bock‟s
Publications & Provocative Titles

60. Hanne Bock was one of the instrumental co-authors of
the seminal book in the ALL field:
BOCK, H. (1988) Academic Literacy: Starting Point or
Goal?, in G. Taylor, B. Ballard, V. Beasley, H. Bock, J.
Clanchy & P. Nightingale, Literacy by Degrees (Milton
Keynes, The Society for Research in Higher Education
& Open University Press.

61. SOME OF HANNE BOCK‟S PUBLICATIONS
----- (1988) In Search of a Task. HERDSA News 10: 3, 3-6.
----- (1986) Phenomenography: Orthodoxy and Innovation or
Innovation and Orthodoxy? In: Student Learning: Research into
Practice. Ed. John A. Bowden, Centre for the Study of Higher
Education, The University of Melbourne.
----- (1985) Interim Report on Transition Course with Peer Group
Support for First Year Students, Report commissioned by the
Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, La Trobe University.

62. SOME OF HANNE BOCK‟S PUBLICATIONS
----- and Lewit, H. (1984). Head Counting or Skull-Duggery: a Case of
Caput Mortuum? In: Proceedings from the conference Language and
Learning at Tertiary Level. Ed. R. Meyer, Community Services, Deakin
University, Vol. 2, pp. 1-12.
----- and Lewit, H. (1983). What are Remedial Problems?--A Tentative
Analysis. In Proceedings from the Conference: the Communication
Needs of Tertiary-Level Students. Eds. C. Webb and H. Drury, Language
Centre, Sydney University, pp. 1-19.
----- (1983). Essay Writing: Meaning as a Way to Language. Research &
Development in Higher Education VI, HERDSA, Sydney, pp. 273-284.
----- (1982). University Essays as Cultural Battlegrounds: The Problems
of Migrant Students. In Bock & Gassin (1982), pp. 140-155.

63. SOME OF HANNE BOCK‟S PUBLICATIONS
-----, and Gassin, J. (1982). (Eds): Papers from the
Conference - Communication at University: Purpose, Process
and Product. School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University.
----- (1981). Teaching Essay Writing to First-Year Social Science
Students. Research and Development in Higher Education IV,
HERDSA, Sydney, pp. 304-317.
----- (1980). Essay Writing: The Purgatory of University Studies.
Laura 1979/80 (Legal Studies Students' Association, La Trobe
University), pp. 36-38. Reprinted Blackacre (Sydney University Law
Society), pp. 40-42.

64. WHERE IS HANNE BOCK NOW?
Hanne Bock returned to Denmark with her husband after
they both served in Australian universities for significant
years to embark on a new adventure and
establish a translating company.
She will be gifting her ALL resources, papers, and books to
our project.
She reflects on her 11 years of ALL work at La Trobe,
saying:
“It was a terrific experience.”

66. Key Thinker & Pivotal Founder of the ALL Profession

67. Monash University Appointments
English Advisor
1974-1975
Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, Higher Education Advisory and
Research Unit
1976-1987
Senior Lecturer and Director, Language and Learning Unit
Faculty of Arts, 1988-1995
Associate Professor and Director, Language and Learning Unit
Faculty of Arts, 1996-1998
Honorary Associate: School of Linguistics and Philosophy
Faculty of Arts, 1999-2000
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow: School of Languages, Culture and
Linguistics
Faculty of Arts, 2007-2010

70. Names
“The first thing to do was to get rid of remedial teaching
office. So I got rid of the teaching officer and turned that
into English advisor but still had the remedial in front”
“And it took me two years to get rid of the remedial bit,
officially that is. You know, because you have a plaque on
the door, Remedial English Advisor (laughter).”

71. Names
“It was going to be called the Language and Learning Unit
by hook or by crook. Fortunately the Dean agreed to it and
said, ‘yeah, that’s a good name.’”
“I just became the Director of the Language and Learning
Unit … And the only person I was directing was myself, at
first.”

72. Academic Status
“I also managed to change [the position] from an administrative
to an academic job, which I’d worked hard at for over two years
because I didn’t think I was going to get any sort of credence
from the academic staff unless I was also a member of the
academic staff.”
“And, of course, I would also say that if you don’t have an
academic appointment, then again you’d want to fight for one of
them because that’s the best way to start getting the ear of the
academic staff”.

73. Committees
“I spent a lot of time in the last few years at Monash on
faculty and university committees trying to influence the
thinking at that level.”
“So I was really able to have an enormous input into the
teaching that went on…So that committee work, I think, for
me anyway, was important.”

74. Staff club
“Being a member of the staff club helped. We had long
lunches with English department people, with
historians, with philosophers, and that became part of my
life, you know; long lunches with plenty to drink.”
“I got to know a lot of academics in the club. And that’s
just so important. And I think, a lot of people in the sort of
work we did felt isolated in that respect, socially
isolated, and so you’ve got to overcome that, and if you’ve
got a club in your institution, use it.”

75. Into the disciplines
“The first thing to do is to get inside the disciplines and get
to know the disciplines.”
“You’ve just got to specialise in a range of disciplines that’s
really the first thing, and if you happen to be in a position
which isn’t like that, then my advice to anybody would be
to say, agitate to get back into the faculties or schools.”

76. Building a presence
through university publications

81. Gordon’s publication legacy

82. Gordon's Prolific Scholarship
Gordon wrote across Linguistics, Higher Education, Philosophy,
Engineering, English Language, Grammar, Writing, History,
Education, etc., in a variety of genres:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Edited Books
Book Chapters
Books
Refereed conference papers
Journal articles
Monographs
Government & University commissioned reports
Reviews
Book Reviews
Keynote addresses

83. Gordon’s Scholarly Journals & Publishers
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Applied Linguistics
Australian Journal of Linguistics
Australian Universities Review
English in Australia
HERDSA News
Higher Education Research & Development
The History Teacher
Cambridge
University Press
Journal of Literary Semantics
Professional Engineer
Open University
Press & Society
Quadrant
for Research into
Regional English Language Centre Journal
Higher Education
Victorian Universities & Schools
Examinations Board
Oxford University
Press

84. Taylor, G. V., Ballard, B., Beasley, V., Bock, H., Clanchy, J. Nightingale.
P., (1988) Literacy by degrees. Milton Keynes: Open University Press and
Society for Research into Higher Education.

87. “What Should We Be
Doing As A University?”
Carolyn Webb
University Of Sydney
1974-1995
University Of Western Sydney
Associate Professor,
Inaugural Head
Learning And Teaching Unit
1996-2006

88. Early Days: A LITLE BIT OF
EXTRA WORK
s
A LIITLE BIT OF EXTRA WORK
In 1974 I started working at
Sydney, and in 1975 I started from
the role that I had just doing a little
bit of extra work which was tutoring
international – well, students of
non-English speaking background.
It was 1975 – a year in from starting
up work at what was then called
the Language Centre at Sydney.
And the reason was that there was
this flow of students starting to
come into the Language Centre… to
study English independently, using
tapes, the old tapes, spool tapes…

89. AND THERE WERE SO MANY OF THEM,
just this growing stream of students
coming in, and the Director of the
Language Centre at the time, suggested
that I start running some classes…and
as it got known more and more
students would be …attending these
classes. So the numbers of classes
grew and over a period of some years
this eventually became my full job, and
I got given a title of Tutor, then Senior
Tutor, and so on.
USyd News October 23 1984 – Carolyn Webb, Helen Drury, and students

90. And then during the rest of the 70’s,
that grew into something that
became a recognised service, and
then from probably about the
beginning of the 1980’s, it became
increasingly formalised and turned
into a centre, …
During the mid 1980’s, what I was
doing was then restructured into
the Centre for Teaching and
Learning, which was an academic
development unit in the university.
And then from the 1990’s I headed
up what was then the new Learning
Centre.
The 1980’s at the University of Sydney with Helen Drury

91. SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS:
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
And I guess it was logical that I was doing that, because of my
own background in languages and literature that was a
reasonable beginning.
I didn’t have any ESL teaching background, or any ESL
knowledge. So I just started learning it for myself and then in
1981 I enrolled in the Masters Degree in Applied Linguistics at
Sydney.

92. I had the enormous benefit of
working in the same building
that the Linguistics
Department was originally
located in … I was very much
an active part of that whole,
the Linguistic School…
I was really up-to-date and it
was, it was a very, very
exciting time, leading edge
stuff…
Michael Halliday was up on
another floor and Jim Martin
was there and it was, it really
was very exciting.

93. SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS:
INSTITUTIONAL ENGAGEMENT AND
RECOGNITION
It was always the work with faculties directly alongside them
working with curriculum, I found that was the highlight of my
work, the pinnacle. So I could be working with them as equal
colleagues coming from my perspective with their perspective
combined – that is where I always saw the best success.
I was really, really excited at the time when the Chair of
Academic Board at Sydney University asked me to take on what
eventually became the MASUS work. I thought that was a
significant initiative.

94. Bottom right are Jim Martin (pony tail) and me. I think Jim was on the Interim
Board of Studies. I had been invited to design a course on ‘introduction to
academic writing’ or some title like that as one of the foundation courses for
credit so that’s why I was at the meeting – I think. Sign of recognition of the
value of the work Helen and I had been doing. Of course none of that
eventuated and UWS was established quite differently...

95. EARLY DAYS: KEY FIGURES
I thought about the significant figures, for me Gordon Taylor was
always a really cool guy he had a lot to say and a lot of really
valuable stuff that was a reflection on language and learning.
And I really enjoyed what, what he used to say and what he
wrote. I think the Clanchy and Ballard stuff was quite interesting
for all of their work on cultural influences. I always appreciated
Kate Chanock’s work, I think she did really good stuff on the
pedagogical practices of ALL and it was always interesting
reading the views on individual consultations.

96. EARLY DAYS: KEY FIGURES
Of course all the work that was done at the Sydney
University Linguistics School, Jim Martin and all of those on
Genre Studies were really important even though they
weren’t exactly ALL practitioners, far from it. A lot of the
people that were working in teaching and learning centres
could’ve just about been called ALL practitioners. If people
like Peggy Nightingale, they, she wrote a book on assessment
that should’ve been written by an ALL practitioner, but of
course there’s been an enormous amount of work since
those early days.

97. SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS
But it wasn’t I suppose till the
1980’s that I started to see
the signs of people sharing
information, sharing ideas,
and a field really starting to
emerge where there was a
name for something that,
you’d promote the name,
you’d say there’s a meeting
and a number of people
would come along thinking
that it must refer to them.
And in a sense that was like,
preparing the soil.

98. SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS
EARLY DAYS
BUILDING THE FIELD
I think was a really fundamental contribution
that I and
many others made, we got things
published, we got
discussions going with other groups like HERDSA. We got onto
the agenda of HERDSA basically and I remember that going back
to early 1980’s where myself and a few other people met with
the HERDSA executive to get this as a recognised group within
HERDSA. But I think the research function was, was probably
quite important in that sharing ideas in a more scholarly kind of
forum was a valuable contribution. And not just from me, I
mean everyone who contributed from those early days, when
we were just building it.

99. SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS
COMING OF AGE – A FIELD EMERGES
I think in the 1990’s we started to see the seeds
were in and
the crop was starting to grow by the 2000’s. I think it was, it was
really probably around about 2000 or 2001, in fact for me a very
significant time was that conference at Wollongong, because it
was really focussed on what the profession was about, that 2001,
what was it called? Changing Identities?
I found that a really significant turning point, because it just looked
like it was such a professional sort of conference, there were so
many people speaking in a very interesting and insightful way
about what the role was. I thought, oh yeah this is great, the field
is really now properly developing into a profession.

100. SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS EARLY DAYS
KEY DRIVERS FOR ACADEMIC
LANGUAGE AND LEARNING
The whole business of internationalisation was very significant,
but I think even before that the bigger influence was the
opening up of education. What they call massification, I mean I
think that was a really critical part of it and it took quite a long
time I think for universities to come to grips with what that
would mean.
So I think that ALL as a field was really very significant in
helping universities interpret the meaning of that, on the
ground, so the equity drivers were really fundamental to all of
that

101. AND ONGOING:
KEY DRIVERS FOR ACADEMIC LANGUAGE
AND LEARNING
Quality assurance is something that the universities took really
seriously because of the audit processes that were put in train. It
took a long time before that started turning into quality
improvement, the QA/QI two sides of the coin, but I think what
really happened for, not just for the ALL field, but also for teaching
and learning support services across the whole plethora. I think
they helped universities to articulate what it meant to bring about
improvement processes, not just the simpler accountability
processes, but actually showing that, auditing and evaluating had
some goal, which was to bring about improvement, and clear
improvement that you could actually attest to the value for money
that public funding was giving.

102. FROM THE MID 80’S ON
SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS
WHAT SHOULD WE WE DOING AS A
UNIVERSITY?
The work that we did in running workshops for students,
fabulous, they were always fun, you always felt that you’d
enriched the lives of students in some way, and that they went
away having learnt valuable things.
So I loved doing those, but they were really frustrating because
you could never do enough, and the work that you did with
individual students, was always absolutely brilliant, but you just
couldn’t do enough.

103. FROM THE MID 80’S ON
WHAT SHOULD WE WE DOING AS A
UNIVERSITY?
…for me it was very much about not just having an immediate
impact on the students … but actually having an impact that had
a longer term that would stay. Even though a student had
finished their degree, someone else had learnt something that
had become part of a system. That things had a longevity
beyond the lives of each individual student, and that the whole
system was improving. And I think that was really driving my
thinking, probably from about the mid 1980’s and caused me to
get into a lot of discussion, a lot of argy bargy, as I tried to beat
people around the head, with what my view was.

104. TEACHING AND LEARNING
… taking up the job at UWS Hawkesbury was really exciting because I could
bring those 2 things [learning and teaching] together in a way that I wasn’t
aware at the time was being done anywhere else in the country. And they
were, they were really exciting years actually, even though I’d have to also say
they weren’t easy, because it was a constant process of trying to engage
other people in sharing that understanding. And that included both the staff
of the university outside the unit, but also the staff within the unit. I think
people struggled to understand how you could marry those 2 elements,
because it was just such a view that teaching and learning were separate, that
staff and students had to be dealt with in different domains. And I just never,
never really subscribed to that view…