Mr Martin Percy
I have been teaching at the University of Westminster for twenty-six years and I have thirty-five years of teaching experience in total. I initially taught EFL in Turkey and then transitioned to ESP (English for Specific Purposes) through various technical institutions across die neuen Länder in Germany and initially transitioned to teaching EAP (English for Academic Purposes) at Wroclaw University in Poland.
My most recent research is a stratified critical realist analysis of pedagogical practice in Academic English provision.The research explores the pedagogical assumptions and social practices in Academic English through the lens of a stratified critical realist exploration of the experiences, observations and reflections of practitioners and their concepts of agency and praxis. The research combines semi-structured interviews with practitioners with an exploration of student evaluations and artefacts. This study examines the layered social, cultural, and normative structures that shape interaction within higher education learning environments, alongside the embedded and contingent forms of scaffolding that support learners throughout the learning process. Practitioners are conceptualised as agentive actors who exercise pedagogical power to facilitate a social constructivist approach to learning. Through this lens, learners are guided towards the production of authentic socio-academic texts that reflect genuine engagement with academic discourse, rather than reproducing its surface features as often encouraged within traditional study skills models.The paper explores practitioners’ perceptions and their critical reflections on academic writing as a social practice, highlighting the potential to foster transformative learning and reconfigure academic writing pedagogies within higher education.