UK National Award for Excellence in Teaching Criminology
University of Lincoln
Jan Gordon FHEA Senior Lecturer in Criminology
There follows below a number of examples as to how our Criminology degree
meets the criteria for the award.
Level 1 – Applying Research
The module assessment requires the students to use their individual and
group work skills through developing, designing, conducting and analysing
both qualitative and quantitative data. There are three different assessments:
The first focuses upon qualitative methods, requiring the students to become
more independent in their learning. They can choose between conducting a
semi structured interview and analyse the transcript and language data, or
they can conduct a methodological critique of an academic article. In both of
these the students are developing their critical approach to understanding
methodologies within their discipline area.
The second assessment is a group work based design of a quantitative
structured questionnaire on a topic of their choosing. This requires the
students to utilise their understanding of methodological issues, and to work
collaboratively on the design of the project.
The final assessment requires the students to develop their skills further in
producing an individual quantitative research report based on the group work
findings. To this end, students undertake analysis of their results using SPSS.
The skills acquired through this module are invaluable for their pedagogic
development as they progress through their degree. By offering them the
choice of topics for their research projects the students are given the
opportunity to develop their own interpretation of their academic discipline.
As a final note, level 2 and 3 students took part in a mentoring scheme
designed to help level 1 students on this module undertake their research
project (Burton et al, 2012; Cushan and Laughlin, 2012).
Level 2 - Model UN
This is a module delivered by International Relations staff as an option on the
Criminology programme. As the staff concerned have noted elsewhere, this
module operationalises the institutional implementation of the ‘student as
producer’ agenda to guide curriculum development and pedagogy (Obendorf
& Randerson, 2012). This module uses discussion of contemporary
international issues to explore some of the procedures of international
diplomacy and introduces students to issues of international organisation and
international law.
Students meet weekly in a two-hour teaching block which facilitates a greater
level of interactivity among students and staff and allows students to work in
small groups on allocated tasks or skills development. These encompass the
areas of public speaking, caucusing, negotiation, using the rules of procedure
and giving in-class presentations on their country/issues. A concurrent
fortnightly session is held in a computer laboratory to facilitate student
research on their countries and the issues under debate.
Once the issues to be debated have been finalised, teaching staff offer
detailed briefings on the specific subjects to be discussed, giving all students
a baseline of knowledge from which to research and write about their
countries’ positions on the chosen issues and to prepare for debate.
The highlight of the module, a formal conference simulation, is held over an
entire day, using the debating chamber of the Lincolnshire County Council.
Level 2 - Youth, Culture & Resistance
This module makes the students responsible for researching and building their
own course reading list. They work collaboratively in large groups within wikis
to construct a reading list for a given essay topic. Each entry into the reading
list is required to be annotated, demonstrating that student's understanding of
the source and its relevance to the essay.
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This task acts as preparation for their essay writing, both in encouraging them
to research a wider range of sources, and promoting early reading rather than
last minute cramming. Students also gain skills in using wikis and working
collaboratively in online spaces without face to face meetings. Negotiating
conflict and imposing structure and organisation online can prove challenging
but these are also essential employment and life-negotiating skills.
The end of the module sees a team-taught, multi media lecture which asks
students to reflect upon a number of visual artefacts including music videos,
blogs and TV documentaries in order to draw upon the theoretical frameworks
of the module and to consider the utility of visual research methods in
researching young people's identities and cultural practices. The module is
flexible and inclusive in its delivery because it does not always require the
physical presence of the student on campus. In addition, the use of
technology in delivery of the programme and in the assessment means the
module is very much centred on skill building and self-development.
Students from the module also supported an ESRC Festival of Social Science
event for local school children, designed to find out more about what young
people want from youth centres in Lincoln. As well as helping with the young
people on the day, this developed into a research project and the students
presented their findings at BCUR and had them published (Burrows et al,
2012).
Level 2 Criminology In The Professions
Criminology in the Professions is designed to bridge the gaps between
academic knowledge/theory, professional practice and employability skills.
Students are encouraged to situate themselves within the discipline of
criminology by reflecting on their own ‘cultural capital’ and to then consider
how this might be developed to match and facilitate their future aspirations
beyond university. The teaching includes contributions from academic staff,
who discuss appropriate theoretical and methodological models and also from
various practitioners and alumni, who discuss examples of their practice.
Apart from this some level 3 students actively contribute to seminars by
imparting their experiences of undertaking voluntary and paid work and
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participating in an employer mentoring scheme. Students are encouraged to
treat the module as they would a job of work and therefore attendance and
participation are actively assessed. All students on the module are
responsible for designing and leading seminars about the various practitioner
lectures, and in this situation the staff join with the students in the class to
undertake the tasks set by those students leading the seminar. Students
produce a ‘Personal Development File’ which includes a career plan, group
seminar teaching materials, an individual PowerPoint presentation on their
potential future after university and a critical discourse analysis of the
practitioner lectures. In all of these elements students are expected to make
reference to appropriate criminological theory and consider issues such as the
influence of organisational cultures, managerialism and performance
indicators. Students recently collaborated with staff in undertaking research in
evaluating this module (Picksley et al, 2012)
Level 2 - Policing Studies
Policing Studies requires students to apply a ‘policing’ perspective(s) to a
given problem/ theme. Through the group assessment of both a written
conference paper and conference presentation to a student led conference
students are adopting an innovative approach to their teaching and learning.
In critically analysing the conflicts, contradictions and typologies of policing
within their chosen topic, students are developing their skills and a collegial
approach to learning over the course of this module. The assessment itself is
innovative and challenging to the students, they are responsible for both
presenting a paper, but also engaging with the conference themes through
questions. Skills such as co-ordination of time, organising other team
members, issues of working with respect for others and also taking
responsibility for their own work are developed and enhanced within this
module. Students are thus building their skills through the assessment
procedures in this module.
Issues of control and analysis of the nature of ‘policing’ are evaluated through
the development of the conference paper and presentation. The conference
paper requires the students to engage with the problems, tensions and
approaches of ‘policing’ a specific problem/ issue. Students have considerable
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discretion in both how they present their analysis and which issues and areas
they explore. The best work is both imaginative and perceptive in its analysis
of the key issues which arise from the assessment topic/focus.
Level 3 – Harm, Agency and Regulation
HAR is a module explicitly based around the emerging field of Social Harm
Theory. The competing claims of ‘individual/organisational’ agency feature
strongly in this module as do the variety of frameworks and the feasibility of
imposing ‘realistic’ sanctions. The module makes substantial use of the
literature on social harm theory; organisational and corporate crime; whitecollar crime/professional wrongdoing; international/transnational crime; and
harmful activities – or neglect - by the state. It reflects upon the consequences
for justice of deploying different frameworks of regulation/criminalisation and
the impact these may have upon the nature and scope of Criminology as a
discipline and upon the comparative standing of different forms of
victimisation. Identifying and then criminalising or regulating economically and
intellectually powerful groups as both criminal and or professional is a
complex task, and the module draws upon a range of examples to reflect this.
The assessment is based on an issue, incident, profession or ‘organised’
activity chosen by the student. The range of choice is virtually unlimited and
has included areas as diverse as Animal versus human rights; Authorisation
of Preventative Detention; Poverty as an agent of social harm; ‘Tesco-isation’,
in addition to more traditional criminological areas. Students are encouraged
to critically analyse the problem from their own perspective, and to formulate a
reasoned argument. The more esoteric areas very much require the students
to undertake their own research to generate appropriate resources. One
student eventually developed her work, on Conflict over ‘Blue Gold’ – fresh
water access, into a paper delivered to the York Deviancy Conference (see
also McGill, 2012).
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Level 3 – Human Rights
Students on the Human Rights module are encouraged to think critically about
human rights issues from around the world, drawing on historical,
philosophical, political and sociological literatures. In preparation for seminars,
they are asked to do individual research to find news stories on human rights
cases that particularly interest them. This builds towards the conference
poster and paper assessments, which are unique to Lincoln. Students must
imagine they are a human rights activist who is advising the United Nations on
what its work programme should be for the next five years, through the
medium of a poster. They choose the topic of their poster, which must (a)
persuade the UN that their chosen issue is important and requires urgent
action and (b) recommend ways the UN could address the issue. In the paper
they analyse their poster, justifying the choices they have made, based on the
academic literature on activism and the human rights system. Students have
worked on a diverse range of topics, from Spain’s stolen babies, to the death
penalty in Iran, to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, to sexual violence in Haiti. In
2011 some students became real-life activists, using their posters to lobby the
UN on their chosen issues.
Level 3 – Penology and Penal Policy
Penology and Penal Policy pursues issues of contemporary relevance through
focusing on social control in a theoretically sustained fashion. It also feeds
into/off other Modules at final level through providing a theoretical framework
for the interrogation of current penal practice involving more complex forms of
'agency' and intricately balanced considerations of 'justice'. It can, and has
been, utilised to support student work in other level 3 modules such as the
Criminological Project, Harm Agency and Regulation and Human Rights. It is
assessed, in part, by an oral assessment based on a defence of preprepared written agendas. It is the only individual oral assessment on the
programme. It is seen as providing students with invaluable experience of
interview style experience, whilst allowing those with stronger oral skills to
receive individual recognition their abilities. Although it is an assessment that
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divides student opinion, many of the student evaluations pass comment on
how useful an experience they felt it to be, comments which have been
echoed by graduates at alumni events.
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References
*Burrows, M. (2012), 'Youth Services: Listening to Youth?', Reinvention: a
Journal of Undergraduate Research, British Conference of
Undergraduate Research 2012 Special Issue, Available at:
www.warwick.ac.uk/go/reinventionjournal/issues/bcur2012specialissue/burrows.
See also the video of students presenting at the conference at the bottom of
the web page.
*Burton, K. et al (2012)
How mentoring can benefit second-year students
Available at:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/disciplines/socialsciences/ELiSS0403Student_paper05.pdf
*Cushan, T. and Laughlin, K. (2012)
A discussion of student research
evaluators in ‘student as producer’ activity at the University of Lincoln.
Available at:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/disciplines/socialsciences/ELiSS0403Student_paper05.pdf
Jameson, J. Strudwick, K., Bond-Taylor, S. and Jones, M. (2009) Criminology
in the professions: turning academic benchmarks into employability
skills. C-SAP report: UK14/C/09. Available at:
http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/media/com_projectlog/docs/UK_14_C_09.pdf
*McGill, C. (2012) The hidden environmental harms of the cut-flower
industry Neo: A Journal of Student Research Vol. 2(1) Available at:
http://ojs.lincoln.ac.uk/neo/
Neary, M. and Winn, J. (2009) The Student As Producer: Reinventing The
Student Experience In Higher Education. The future of higher
education: policy, pedagogy and the student experience. Continuum,
London. Available at:
http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/1675/
Obendorf, S. and Randerson, C. (2012) The Model United Nations Simulation
And The Student As Producer Agenda. Available at:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/subjects/csap/eliss/ELISS_vol4
_issue3_academicpaper4
*Picksley, E. et al (2012) Student as producer: undergraduate reflections on
research: Examining the concept of employability in the curriculum
Available at:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/disciplines/socialsciences/ELiSS0403Student_paper04.pdf
Strudwick, K, and Jameson, J. ( 2010). Employability skills in social sciences:
parent and student expectations. C-SAP Final Report: UK2/C/2010.
Available at:
http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/media/com_projectlog/docs/UK2-C-10.pdf
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University of Lincoln (2010). Student As Producer: Research-Engaged
Teaching And Learning At The University Of Lincoln. User's Guide
2010–2011. Available at:
http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2010/11/user-guide.pdf
*Criminology in the Professions OER Available at:
http://criminologyintheprofessions.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/
*Lincoln Social Sciences alumni blog Available at:
http://lsssalumni.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/
*Entries marked with an asterisk contribute to the evidence of student
involvement/development/research.
Acknowledgements
This entry would not have been possible without significant input from a
number of my colleagues – many thanks to one and all.
Jan Gordon
Jill Jameson Senior Lecturer In Criminology
Kate Strudwick Senior Lecturer In Criminology
Sue Bond Taylor Senior Lecturer In Criminology
Claire Randerson Senior Lecturer In International Relations
Simon Obendorf Senior Lecturer In International Relations
Adele Langlois Senior Lecturer In Politics and International Relations
Lisa White Lecturer In Criminology
Sara Mann Senior Administrator for School Of Social Sciences
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