Identity and knowledge work in a university tutorial

Abstract

In the contemporary university the large classes associated with many core units mean that tutorials are often taken by many part‐time sessional who are typically employed on a casual basis, paid an hourly rate and not paid to attend the lectures. Given this situation, unit coordinators are often responsible for another phase in curriculum development, namely constructing written tutorial plans that outline the tutorial processes and explicate some of the central ideas and knowledge from the lectures. These plans are designed to be informative for the tutors as well as providing a guide for the teaching and learning in the tutorials. In this paper, using analytical tools made available in Critical Discourse Analysis, I analyse a written tutorial plan as an example of a university curriculum text. The analysis opens up new ways of seeing these texts and for reviewing and critiquing my university teaching practice.

Keywords:

• discourse
• knowledge
• professional identities
• tutorials
• university curriculum