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By Jeff Pierce, 20 July 2009 08:58

It’s gotta be said, the stereotype of the Ivory Tower, that academics are lost in their research and out of touch with reality, exists for a reason.

The first week the fact that I was in a completely different realm hit home when I received the following handout:

The Rainbow of Confusion

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After some time to adjust I have found that I enjoy the challenges that this “Ivory Tower” brings with it. But at first there was culture shock.

To be frank, out of the dozen or so professors I have heard speak, a few of them spout out loads of rubbish, or (in American), they are full of bullshit.

But the professors are aware of it. In the first week, we heard the following in a lecture:

“Now when you are using a questionnaire or a survey to get data from students, you need be careful. Sometimes you get invalid results when you have subjects who are cognitively or linguistically challenged…[there is a pause, and then Prof X starts to laugh at herself]…I mean, students who can’t read very well!”

And then Professor Y opened the course on Multilingual and Multicultural Education with a lecture full of crazy new words…”degustation”, “bilinguality”, “equilingualism”, “plurilingualism”, “triskadekalingualism”, etc. (Okay one of those I made up.) But then he recognized how verbose he was being and ironically described it using more of the same sorts of language:

“I don’t speak this way at home to my wife. I am adopting an academic register, using vocabulary that I don’t use outside of this linguistic domain, this context.”

But it can be sort of infectious. At the end of the first week, when I was explaining my research proposal to my classmates, there was the following exchange.

Me: “…so one reason I am concerned about that approach to collecting the data is that it might not be very efficacious.”

Sitting to my right, SC shakes his head, “Huh?”

“It wouldn’t work.”

Does this look as nerdy to you as it does to me? Academia. Sigh. But coming up: the bright side of it.

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By Jeff Pierce, 14 July 2009 06:46

A couple of significant developments in my career are taking place this summer, so I thought that it was time to say goodbye to my old blog over at blogger and start up my very own domain here.

First, I am finally getting started towards a Master’s degree, in International Education from the University of Bath. It’s part-time, so I’m going to be reading my way through two courses while working this coming school year.

And second, I decided to return to my previous employer, Hong Kong International School. However I’m not going back to the high school: I’ll be teaching grade 7 & 8 Social Studies. I will dearly miss everyone in the Secondary Division back at The ISF Academy – colleagues, administrators, staff, students, and parents – but it was time to go.

My aim is for this blog over the next year is that it will be a place where I am able to refine my thoughts on my coursework. I’m enrolled in two modules: Research Methods in Education, and Multilingual and Multicultural Education.

And…that’s all I’ve got for now. But I DO have plenty of questions / plans / next steps for this blog. I want a new theme and I don’t like the title. I hope my professors will let me mention them by name. And as I fall asleep, I wonder: will I be able to turn this into a Real Blog that Real People read, or will the realities of school life crush my hopes and dreams yet again?

Talk to you again soon!