Disciplinary Knowledge Practices in Distance Education

There has been much discussion in this journal of the development of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Indeed the effective enhancement of teaching and learning is more likely to take place when generic lessons are contextualized within the language of the discipline, and adapted to the needs of the students. We describe here a study of the teaching practice of distance tutors on a History course, who were given the opportunity for extended reflection on the demands of the course, and to consider their aims and share their strategies, stimulated by ideas from threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. In line with common practice in a distance environment, the reflection process took place in a workshop followed by participation in an online group, hosted on a wiki. We illustrate the significant or difficult areas of the course that staff reported, and describe their intentions and some of the strategies that they used for helping students with these critical areas. We propose a new approach to professional development which begins with reflection on the demands of the course itself and its students before considering appropriate facilitation strategies to meet those specific demands.