Transgressing the Traditional? Teaching and Learning Methods in a Medieval History Access Course

This paper reports on a Medieval History Access course in which the author utilised teaching methods not traditionally associated with the discipline. The paper outlines the practice and outcomes of two of these methods: collaborative group work and embedded rhetorical training for essay writing. From her experience of these methods and her students' reflections on them, the author challenges her readers to engage more formally in discussion concerning the notion of discipline-specific pedagogical practice and asks whether such practice should ever be static.