Curriculum Development: Professional Practice and Culture

The following notes document some of the issues involved in the 2005 redesign of an undergraduate subject

Professional Culture and Practice is a 300 level undergraduate course in the B. Com. It is a compulsory course for all journalism majors and is available as an elective to any other 300 level BA.Com students.

Prerequisites: the only formal prerequisite is the 100 level subject Media Information and Society compulsory for all BA.Com students. Some aspects of the course such as issues of professional ethics and issues concerning journalists and their sources are covered in the 200 level course News and Current Affairs.

Articulation: Issues and models developed in this course are further developed in the Communications Honours Seminar and there could be an argument for making it a prerequisite for admittance into Honours

Aspects of this course currently overlap with the Postgraduate course Journalism Studies, which is a compulsory course for the Masters program. Although there are some differences in emphasis, the two courses substantially overlap and have been taught by the same team in alternating semesters since mid-2003. Continuous improvements have been made to course content and structures following on from informal and formal feedback and evaluation methods at the end of each semester.

Course review background

This course review of Professional Practice and Culture was initiated by the course co-ordinator and tutor following their 2004 revision and experimental delivery of Journalism Studies.

The aims of the revision in both cases were:

• To successfully integrate an investigation of theoretical models and empirical case study data into both the course content delivery and the student assessment tasks.
  
• To provide course content through lectures, tutorials and designated readings in a timely manner so that students had a comprehensive overview of the course content before proceeding with their major assignment.
  
• To encourage debate and discussion in class that focused on the inter-relationship between a series of topics rather than the isolated discussion of single issues.
  
• To develop a model for course assignments that prioritised and supported project based student learning rather than mere assessment.
  
• To encourage models of collaborative learning and teamwork.

The model trialed in Journalism Studies in 2004 consisted of:

• Providing all the lecture based content delivery in the first six weeks of semester. This was through two 55 minute lectures each week.
  
• Classes were organised in a 3 hour block. The two lectures bookended each session with a 50 minute tutorial in between.
  
• Tutorials were given over to formal debates that focused on 3 broad topics that represented the three key course topic areas.
  
• The debates were developed in teams and class and tutor feedback was given to each presenter before they submitted a finalised debate transcript for assessment.
  
• The debates were formally assessed through both tutor and peer assessment.
  
• The second half of the semester was given over to the conclusion of the debates and to presentation of work in progress reports on the major student assignment. Each student was given the chance to present twice and receive class and tutor feedback.
  
• The major assignment consisted of a case-study research report on an area of professional practice chosen by the student in negotiation with their tutor. The task outline emphasised the necessity of analysing empirical case study data within a strong theoretical framework.
  
• Class presentations were assessed through peer-assessment while the final case-study submission was assessed by the tutor.

Journalism Studies was evaluated using a combination of qualitative focus group style discussions and the standard university anonymous quality evaluation questionnaire. The evaluation indicated that:

• There were generally high levels of course satisfaction
  
• Most students indicated that the course had challenged and broadened their thinking
  
• Many students regarded the workload as too high
  
• Although some students appreciated the block delivery mode of course content many students indicated that the subject matter was too much to cover in six weeks
  
• The debates were a mixed success working well with some students in some classes and less well with other students in other classes
  
• The debates encouraged students to read and analyse at least one of the three major topic areas in a detailed manner. However because of the formal debating structure this analysis was sometimes limited to dichotomised thinking and rhetorical investigation of debate definition.
  
• The debates also led to a perception that the teaching approach adopted by the tutor was unvarried.
  
• Although students were given ample opportunity to develop their projects over time with supportive tutor and class feedback there was only a moderate improvement in the final quality of assignments. This form of project-based, supported, self-directed learning seems to work well with highly motivated students but less well with others.

Theoretical assumptions and background

A number of assumptions regarding student learning, appropriate subject outcomes and authentic assessment influenced the approach taken in the Journalism Studies course revision and the proposed revision of Professional Practice and Culture. Broadly speaking we have adopted a constructionist approach which emphasises that learning takes place though an active construction of meaning. This is particularly emphasised in our choice of assessable assignment tasks.

The revision of both Journalism Studies and Professional Practice and Culture are based on the assumptions that:

• student assignment tasks should be framed primarily as self directed learning projects not merely or primarily as methods of assessment;

• supportive feedback should be progressive rather than summative and should be aimed at increasing the quality of student understanding and practice;

• peer feedback and peer assessment encourages a sense of student learning as a collaborative social task.

• assignment projects should be integrated into the course delivery and used as a focus of classroom activities emphasising both personal and collaborative learning.

Developing a concept map of the subject

Drawing on this experience and these theoretical frameworks an analysis of the subject as it has been taught over the last few years was developed using concept maps.

This method allows the identification of the relationships of different elements of the course content.

The following concept map (download pdf) of the subject was developed as an aid to further reflection. This analysis took into account several factors:

• The stated objectives of the course as outlined in the course handbook
• The content of the course as it was delivered last year
• The desirability of abbreviating or eliminating elements of the course content so that it can be more readily taught in a compressed mode

It was decided to use a hybrid web cyclical concept map structure to better represent the dynamic nature of the interconnection between concepts explored in this subject.

An initial review of the course content established that the central concept at the heart of this subject was the notion of the “professional identity”.

This central concept is explored through consideration of a set of specific examples of professional identity related to the professional areas of journalism, public relations and law. These three examples are most relevant given that students are primarily drawn from these three professional areas.

Although a range of historical and sociological models are explored to explicate this central concept of “professional identity,” the primary theoretical lens applied is Bourdieu’s concept of “fields.” This is represented by the cyclical structure at the heart of the concept map.

Other concepts dealt with in the course are then organised in relationship to the symbolic, political, economic and coercive fields placed at the heart of the concept map.

Five other concept clusters or key concept nodes clearly emerge from this mapping:

• Professional regulation and ethics

• Globalisation and corporatisation

• Interest groups and cultures of difference

• Dissent and intellectual critique

• Professional archetypes and representation

It must be emphasised that this is only a preliminary mapping and there are a range of sub-maps and other linkages, which could be drawn out. The map could be further developed as part of both ongoing curriculum development and as a classroom learning prompt.

Reflections and Implications

The course has traditionally been organised in a three-part structure:

1. Individual and social agency

2. The professions and social power

3. The global city as workplace

This structure means that Bourdieu is not introduced until the beginning of part two and provides an introduction to a discussion of regulation but the issues of dissent and cultural difference are dealt with in part one. Globalisation is treated as a key case study which attempts to link issues covered in part one and two to a concrete case study.

The concept map suggested another way of presenting the course would be to focus on the notion of fields from the beginning and to treat the issues of power and agency as both emanating from field conflicts. This not only suggests a different sequencing but perhaps a different approach.

Currently globalisation is developed as the major case study however what the concept map suggests is that globalisation could be treated as one node while other case studies could be developed highlighting

• Interest groups and cultures of difference

• Professional regulation and ethics

• Dissent and intellectual critique

• Professional archetypes and representation

If the course is then conceived as a series of related case studies around a field analysis of professional identities this would bring the course content more in line with the case study method of the major assignment.