The pedagogy of stylistics: Enhancing practice by flipping the classroom, using whiteboards and action research

Abstract

This article describes how teaching in a second-year undergraduate stylistics workshop was transformed in my attempt to increase student attendance and engagement, and the strategies that were put in place to achieve this outcome. The personal account describes how I changed my teaching pedagogy to facilitate learning through collaborative strategies and how I evaluated the impact this had on student learning using action research (Bradbury, 2015 (ed) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research. London: SAGE) as the investigative approach. Using the model of Plan-Act-Observe-Reflect process (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988 The Action Research Planner. 3rd edn. Geelong: Deakin University Press) and with data from a short questionnaire given to students, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of the value of the activities as perceived by students. The flipped classroom, where materials were given to students in advance to prepare, became critical for participation in the workshop and allowed for classroom time to be optimised for discussion and feedback. This article also presents photographs of the stylistic analysis produced on whiteboards as part of the collaborative activities with a summary of responses by students to the questionnaire which evaluated the impact that this approach to teaching had on their learning, confidence and preparation for the assessment.