September 2009 — Volume 3, Issue 5

Writing the past, writing the future

Receiving the Prime Minister’s Award for University Teacher of the Year has been
a transforming experience as Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington explains.

Should historians write about the future? Ten years ago I would have responded to this question analytically, noting the common assumption that the bigger the history you write, the more able you are to see actual and possible patterns of activity. Thanks to the ALTC, my response is now highly personal: I have learned to write myself into the discipline that has given me so much enjoyment as a teacher and researcher.

It is the world history students at Macquarie University that I first have to thank for triggering this shift in understanding. Out of curiosity, I sought their views on whether they considered the 13.7 billion years of change we studied together to be history, and asked them to reflect upon the ways in which their responses to the assessment tasks were changing. I had expected that, like me, they would talk about history in the third person; would reflect upon their written and oral communication skills in a critical and objective manner. I was surprised to discover that they used self-assessment as a means to write themselves into a large-scale
unit of study in which individual agency hardly figured in the lectures and readings. They told me of their struggles to let go of self-perceptions that stopped them from wanting to engage with science and history and their excitement in discovering new and emerging capabilities. They wrote about their pasts, their presents, their futures, and in so doing connected learning with making history.

A second shift in understanding came as I undertook more faculty- and institutional-level work on learning and teaching. As an Associate Dean, I was privileged in seeing the ways in which my colleagues refined their practice over time; and as chair of the university’s learning and teaching committee, I witnessed over and again how staff became agents of change and wrote themselves into an evolving policy landscape. They were historians making history.

A third—and to date the most dramatic—shift came the day I was told I had won an ALTC Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities and the Arts. My initial response was one of elation: the award was due recognition of the agent learners I had been so privileged to teach. As I walked into Parliament House to attend the awards ceremony, though, the marvellously cohesive worldview I had built in which I talked about how other people ‘wrote themselves’ into the past and the future began to fall apart. When I saw all of the other award winners and read about their achievements, I felt like the holder of the last gold ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and wondered why I was there. That astonishment was only compounded when
I learned that along with Stephen Barkoczy, I had been awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for University Teacher of the Year.

Within a day, people were asking me what I was going to do next. I have long wanted to work in leadership in learning and teaching, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. Furthermore, I was under the impression that declaring the aspiration that you want to work in university leadership just isn’t something that you do. Having won the award, I felt that I had been granted permission to own up, ‘out myself’ and moreover, to write a future for myself. So I told people what I wanted to do. To my surprise, not everybody laughed, looked at me as if I was nuts, advised me to wait a few years or remonstrated me for ‘throwing away’ my career or for ‘walking away from the classroom’. Not everybody engaged in a mission to save my soul, and not everybody responded with advice that better suited their own life histories or aspirations.

As I have discovered, leadership can be found in many places in higher education: in the 10-minute conversation with a vice-chancellor who asks ‘why shouldn’t you do this?’; in the performance management session with a professional staff member who reminds you that development is relational; in the meeting with a past award winner who continues to transform learning and teaching practice and scholarship; and in the email from a student who encourages you to keep on learning. It is in these moments that we have the chance to see ourselves anew and to take the risks that are needed to transform seeing into acting.

And so it is, nine months on from winning the Prime Minister’s Award that I find myself about to take a new career step, one that will allow me to continue to expand my understanding of myself as an historian. Additionally, I take that step with an expanded understanding of the purpose of teaching awards. The ALTC awards, quite rightly, recognise the efforts of teachers in transforming the lives of students. But they also recognise the dynamic nature of teaching itself. Awards aren’t simply affirmations of past practice; they are also intimations of possibilities to come. I would like to thank the ALTC for providing a means for teachers like me to write themselves into the future of higher education in Australia and beyond.

*Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington has recently taken up the post of Pro Vice-Chancellor
(Learning and Teaching) at Monash University. In 2008, Professor Hughes-Warrington received
the Prime Minister’s Award for University Teacher of the Year along with Professor Stephen
Barkoczy who teaches tax law at Monash. At that time Professor Hughes-Warrington was
an associate professor and associate dean (learning and teaching) in the Faculty of Arts at
Macquarie University.