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This paper explores sensemaking narratives from teaching academics undertaking identity work in the context of a rapidly expanding digital education sphere. It considers the implications for emotional labour and status of digitised higher education teaching academics from the imposition of a rejuvenated New Public Management. We discuss possible tainting from fractured and short-term contractual arrangements alongside growth in managerialism, metrics and accountability. This study combines photographic ethnography and interviews to gain insight into uncertainties, anxieties, identity legitimations and participant responses to imposed changes within digitally evolving workspaces. The paper explores teaching cultures within two higher education institutions, on different points of a digital continuum, finding discourses of alienation, liminality and validation. Resultant 'sticky' or resistant behaviours in rapid adaptations to digital teaching life were heard as we aimed to understand what it means to teach in a digitised, neoliberal context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through this point-of-departure paper we aim to prompt discussion and action around redesigning university learning to help students tackle climate-related challenges in a personally and societally meaningful way. We use the lens of assessment to draw attention to how discipline areas without an explicit environmental or climate science focus can play a fundamental part in prompting climate action. We draw on the very limited number of studies to date of assessment related to climate learning and on an illustrative example of teaching and assessing leadership practices for confronting climate change to make recommendations with relevance for all curricula. We reflect on assessment tools, approaches, strategies, and good practice that not only gauge the level of learning at individual and whole cohort level but also prompt meaningful learning to take place through the way they are designed, with potential impact outside the campus walls and beyond the end of formal university study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent years have seen increasing initiatives to engage students as partners in higher education, some students tend to be privileged yet others are excluded based on certain selection standards. This paper situates near-peer mentoring within the 'students as partners' context, and investigates the mentoring experience of 3 student mentors whose self-perceived dispositions seemed 'unfitting' to the 'ideal' mentor standards in research and practices. These three cases presented how mentors' mentoring practices were influenced by their dispositions, and identified a growth pattern in holistic competencies which could in return benefit these student mentors' future development. A conceptual model has been designed to capture the potential relationship between mentoring, mentor dispositions and holistic competency development. Both theoretical and practical implications have been made to increase inclusive participation and to provide equitable learning opportunities for more students in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent feedback literature suggests that the development of student feedback literacy has potential to address problems in current feedback practice. Students' feedback literacy involves developing the capacity to make the most of feedback opportunities by active involvement in feedback processes. How the development of student feedback literacy can be embedded within the undergraduate curriculum has not yet been discussed in any depth. This conceptual paper fills that gap by elaborating three key mechanisms for embedding feedback literacy within the curriculum: eliciting, processing and enacting. These are illustrated through enhanced variations of four existing practices: feedback requests, self-assessment, peer review, and curated e-portfolios. The discussion summarizes the key implications for practice and identifies the need for further empirical work investigating how students elicit, process and enact feedback in situ, and longitudinal research exploring the impact of curriculum design on the development of student feedback literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of class participation (ACP) has been widely adopted in higher education because, presumably, it motivates students and facilitates active learning. Despite its popularity, evidence regarding how teachers perceive and implement ACP has remained largely anecdotal. This study explored teachers' perceptions and practices of ACP based on a survey administered to 1036 university English teachers and a case study of three participants in China. Findings reveal that the teachers perceived ACP as necessary for engaging students in language learning, but had some confusion over its reliable and transparent implementation. Their challenges in ACP practice include biased and unethical grading, absence of guidelines, and difficulty with consistent tracking and recording of class performance. Discussions revolve around ACP legitimacy and transparency, cognitive considerations of constructs in assessment criteria, and ethical dilemmas posed by power relations in the workplace. This paper concludes with implications for policy, practice, and professional development of effective ACP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, contentiously for some, universities have developed generalist skills lists and associated curricula in response to government demand for more ‘employment-ready’ graduates. Such training usually includes writing and communication. In Australia and the UK, guidelines designed to support the development of skills programmes describe research training as ‘generic skills’ and/or ‘discipline-based’. This framing effectively precludes a discussion of academic literacies perspectives on curriculum development and pedagogy for research training. In a review of some key insights from academic literacies and consideration of their implications for research training, the article discusses why academic literacies are not skills-based, strictly generic or informed by the students' discipline. The article suggests a reframing of the terms of research skills discussion to accommodate academic literacies perspectives. This would involve recognition of curriculum and pedagogy that aims to introduce the complex and diverse written genres, research purposes, rhetorical conventions, language functions and cultural norms that students are working with, an approach supportive of both effective student writing and subject learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The dominant narratives currently offering critique of the neoliberal university suggest a professional environment that is both uncaring and unhealthy. This paper adopts a Deleuzian gaze on the rhizomatic multiplicity of teaching to identify and reinterpret key lines of flight within this assemblage – identified as care, pedagogic health and salutogenesis. It is argued that the perspective described by the coexistence of these lines may develop a more positive ontology as a basis from which a university may be able to work towards a more productive state of healthy learning. The point at which the three lines of flight co-exist is hypothesised as a 'triple point'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity and challenges of higher education (HE) in recent times have been widely discussed in HE literature, as have concomitant demands on university teachers and their professional learning needs. Much attention has been paid to new academics in these conversations, but less so to international PhD and post-doctoral researchers, who are often asked to teach, yet can be precluded from attending foundational pedagogical courses. This paper discusses an interpretive-hermeneutic study based on a pedagogical course developed for new academics in this very situation. Our discussion focuses on professional growth experienced by the course participants in terms of pedagogical understanding and self-confidence, and what enabled that growth from the participants' perspectives. On the basis of analysis of interviews, questionnaires and qualitative course evaluations, we consider the value of such purpose-built courses and offer insights into what may need to be considered by course developers to ensure that their impact is optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on emerging adulthood with a focus on the implications of generational theory on teaching and learning in higher education. During the past 15 years, researchers have described personality traits, attitudes, and behaviors of emerging adults. Two very different views have emerged: one that is prosocial, citing qualities like optimism and confidence, while the other is quite negative, using narcissism and anxiety as descriptors. The authors of this paper contend that both views may be correct, and suggest that contextual or environmental factors play a role in eliciting certain characteristics. Several key educational theories are discussed, with an argument posed for how learner-centered education may offer the most developmentally appropriate context for today's emerging adults to thrive in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I reflect on my experience as a member of the editorial executive board of Teaching in Higher Education between 1996 and 2005, during which period I was first reviews editor and then editor. The paper begins by outlining the editorial procedures established in the first 10 years of the journal and highlighting two major priorities in establishing pedagogy as a major field within higher education policy and practice: interdisciplinarity and internationality. The paper then opens up into a discussion of the challenges and opportunities posed by, on the one hand, successive research assessment regimes within higher education and, on the other, the corporatisation of the publishing industry. I argue that the combination of these two factors has had a significant effect on the opportunities open to academic workers for thinking together not only about their own pedagogic practice but about the implications of that practice for the wider social and political sphere. Teaching in Higher Education opens up potentially important spaces for thinking together about the nature and purpose of teaching and learning. But these remain highly contested spaces that academic workers are positioned both within and against. That positioning – as I suggest by way of conclusion – raises important questions for both academics and publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an analysis of the forms of meaning making in Teaching in Higher Education between 2005 and 2013. Unlike other papers which have reviewed higher education journals the analysis was based on reading full papers. Previous analyses of journals have commented on the a-theoretical nature of much research into higher education. As we encourage critical work it was important to read in order to identify the practices of authors. Exemplars of different forms of meaning making were identified and these are discussed in greater depth. They included: description, reflection and reflexivity, explicit theorising and diverse forms of theoretically informed empirical analyses. The paper argues for a view of theorisation as an active, agentic, social practice. The paper suggests that there are rich knowledge making practices in the field. Rather than an a-theoretical activity analysing and theorising teaching in higher education in its all its necessary relations appears to be flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Tronto's political ethics of care as a normative framework to evaluate a model of teaching and learning professional development. This framework identifies five integrated moral elements of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust. This paper explicates on each of these elements to evaluate the piloting and implementation of a teaching and learning professional development model at a South African higher education institution. The political ethics of care was found to be a useful normative framework for a group of higher educators to reflect on the process of engaging in teaching and learning professional development in that it revealed the importance of differential power relations, the importance of working collaboratively and being attentive to the needs of both caregivers and care receivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates undergraduate students' application of theory in their analysis of problems presented in authentic leadership cases. Taking a phenomenographic research approach, the paper identifies two levels at which students understand ‘theory’: Level 1-Theory as knowledge acquired from books; Level 2-Theory as support for problem solutions. Only the students at Level 2 understanding achieved the highest learning outcome described by the Bologna Reforms. This result may be accounted for by the difference in the students' pre-conceived understanding of the events and relationships in the analysed cases. The phenomenographic assumption explains why the authentic cases are problematic. The high relevancy of the learning object – as an authentic case – may reduce the effect of variation, in this case the educational environment that is the mechanism for learning according to variation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the experiences of women doctoral students and the role of emotion during doctoral candidature. The paper draws on the concept of emotional labour to examine the two sites of emotional investment students experienced and managed during their studies: writing and family relationships. Emotion is perceived by many dominant stakeholders as soft, subjective and an impediment to acquiring objective knowledge. The importance of emotion is under recognised. When it is discussed, the role of emotion in the doctoral undertaking is often subsumed in the passionless language of bureaucratic rationalisation and economic imperatives. This paper builds on a growing literature that examines students' emotions and doctoral candidature. It draws on the experiences of women undertaking their doctoral studies at a large metropolitan university in Sydney, Australia, to show first, how emotional labouring can enable students to channel emotions towards productive behaviours that can contribute to successful doctoral candidature, and second, that studies that attend to emotion offer more nuanced insights into students' experiences during the doctoral undertaking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses an issue of increasing significance in the context of taught educational doctorates and argues that this may have wider applicability for doctoral students across a range of social science disciplines. It identifies the need to engage with policy analysis as a key element of such programmes and attempts to address students' concerns over a lack of practical approaches to do so by offering an analytical framework drawing on critical discourse analysis. This paper highlights the affordances of a taught doctorate context to consider the potential for more collaborative community approaches to doctoral pedagogies through reflecting upon the way the frame was introduced and used by one group of EdD students. In doing so, this paper offers both a practical analytical tool for doctoral students but also a pedagogical approach grounded in an invitation to dialogue and induction into the academic discourse community, through a notion of critical inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At a time when the context of teaching in higher education is difficult for many number of factors such as: reduced funding, changing demographics of students and demands to teach in flexible times and spaces, there are also higher levels of quality control, transparency and accountability over teaching which are exerted by institutions. This paper reframes these demands and difficulties to reclaim the disciplinary expertise of the academic as teacher and following Palmer sees teaching as an entanglement of ‘beings’: the teachers, the learners and the subject and explores what it means to be a teacher within these relationships. We argue for a relational pedagogy in which embodied teaching is guided by listening for and to the subject. Wishing to be consistent in the paper with its theme, we adopt a subject-centred approach. And since our core subject in this paper is teaching, we necessarily include reflections on teaching experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Higher education is understood to play a critical role in ongoing processes of social transformation in post-apartheid South Africa through the production of graduates who are critical and engaged citizens. A key challenge is that institutions of higher education are themselves implicated in reproducing the very hierarchies they hope to transform. In this paper, I reflect critically on my experiences of a course aimed at transforming teaching through transforming teachers. In this paper, I foreground my own positionality as a white female educator as I draw on feminist theorising to reflect on my experiences as a learner in the Community, Self and Identity course. I suggest that we need to teach in ways that are more cognisant of the complexities of the constraints on personal freedom in the past if we are to contribute to the development of social justice in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the feedback interactions in an intercultural supervision context between a white New Zealand supervisor and a Chinese international doctoral student, who is also the author (and researcher) of this study. Using mixed methods, it examines the supervisor's written feedback on a draft PhD proposal and the student's feedback responses reflected in the revised draft. Qualitative inquiries generated descriptive frameworks of feedback foci and formulations and the revisions made by the student. Quantitative investigations revealed the prevalent patterns of feedback provision and response. The effects that feedback foci and formulations exerted on the responses are also discussed, drawing on the student-author's critical self-reflection. The findings suggest the student's responses to the feedback materialise the tension and struggle between the student and the supervisor, between the student's cultural heritage and the institutional culture. It is important to distinguish the student's active inaction from passive resistance in feedback responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its beginnings in the late 1970s, punk culture has been associated with counter-mainstream ideology and anti- institutional antagonism. In particular, formal education has been criticised in punk for sustaining oppressive social and conceptual orders and associated behavioural norms. Drawing on literature and interviews, this paper focuses on the experiences of higher education teachers who self-identify as punks, and considers how they negotiate and reconcile their subcultural and academic identities in their academic practice. The findings reveal that participants' affiliations with punk subculture give rise to counter-cultural pedagogies in which both the ethics and aesthetics of punk are applied in classroom contexts. Furthermore, the participants draw upon subcultural ethical and epistemological narratives to formulate and rationalise their responses to the state of contemporary UK higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a period when international flows of higher education students are rapidly increasing and diversifying, this paper reviews recent research evidence about the experiences of ‘home’ students – those who are not mobile and study in their home nation. This is situated within the concept of ‘internationalisation at home’, which asserts that these students should also receive an international educational experience: through interaction with international students, curriculum development and new pedagogic approaches. However, the evidence to date suggests that this is considerably more problematic than might be imagined. For example, home students across the world are often found to resist intercultural group work and generally to avoid contact with their international peers, leading to concerns about unequal access to transformative experiences and powerful knowledge. The conflict between ‘global worker’ and ‘global citizen’ approaches to internationalisation is discussed, as well as the increasingly hegemonic role of English. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on the theoretical and analytical tools from the sociology of education, in particular the work of Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton, the paper explores the tensions within curriculum reform discourses and how these tensions play out in different global contexts. The analysis focuses on two curriculum reform policies – Hong Kong and South Africa. On the surface the policies appear to be addressing a similar problem of inadequate schooling systems and proposing a similar solution, the restructuring of the undergraduate degree from three to four years. Drawing on the principles of temporality and specialization from Legitimation Code Theory, the analysis shows that the underlying logic for these reforms is very different. A comparison of these different logics provides insight into the highly contested space of curriculum reform and the implications for addressing inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Promises of ‘teacher-light’ tuition and of enhanced ‘efficiency’ via the automation of teaching have been with us since the early days of digital education, sometimes embraced by academics and institutions, and sometimes resisted as a set of moves which are damaging to teacher professionalism and to the humanistic values of education itself. However, both the embrace and the resistance can be seen to be anchored in a humanistic orientation to the project of education which recent work in the theory of critical posthumanism draws into question. Working within the broad frame of critical posthumanism, this paper will revisit the notion of teacher automation in higher education, exploring how as teachers we might enact new, resistant ways of playing at the boundaries of the human and machine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on the technical, elite and political interpretations of the purpose of management, to identify demands for particular forms of educational knowledge in the management studies curriculum. The varied character of this knowledge is discussed using Bernsteinian concepts of verticality, grammaticality, classification and framing, and illustrations from a benchmark statement and MBA programme documentation. It is argued that the development of rational and technical knowledge for management education is confounded by the absence of a definable ‘profession’ of management, which could aid the specification of a body of abstract knowledge. Meanwhile, the promotion of weakly classified and framed forms of elite and political knowledge or ‘knowing’ in management programmes negates the potential for conceptual and contextual coherence in the curriculum, and suggests that the inclusion of forms of rational and technical knowledge may primarily support the consolidation of particular social formations and managerial identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A student-centred approach to learning encourages students to have more responsibility for their learning and is a process that relies heavily on professional confidence to ‘let-go’ of traditional teaching responsibilities. This paper describes the introduction of a student-centred approach within one further education college in Ireland, explores the facilitation role of the lecturer and identifies strategies that have enabled effective transition from traditional pedagogical practice. The research incorporated semi-structured interviews with five lecturers who adopted student-centred learning in their teaching, focus group sessions with 36 students who engaged in a student-centred module and two classroom observations. The research identified some common understanding of a student-centred approach, although the emphasis differed slightly between lecturers and students, highlighting some implications for on-going practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I report my investigation of the use of metaphors in teaching theory in electronic engineering. I give a description of the nature of metaphors, how they are used in teaching the theory and some of the problems that might arise in the process. I investigate how some people react to the metaphors and how others forget the metaphors once they have learnt the theory. I suggest some reasons why this might happen. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the idea that student-centred learning (SCL) is a concept and an approach that is internationally useful and transferable to a range of higher education settings. We present details of a British Council funded collaborative project between Hawler Medical University (HMU), in Erbil in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and the University of Glasgow (UoG) in Scotland, UK. The aim of this project was to support teachers within HMU to adopt SCL methodologies across the dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy curricula. We use experiences and evaluation from this project to explore the ways in which different teachers interpreted and enacted SCL. The project evaluation findings demonstrate that as a result of the SCL project, most teachers at HMU demonstrated a slight increase in their level of confidence as a teacher, their level of understanding of SCL and confidence in their own skills to undertake SCL. There was a willingness from most participants to try to adapt their teaching practice towards an SCL approach. However, some participants did not fully understand the shift in conceptualisation necessary in adopting a student-centred approach and some were uncomfortable with the need for a shift of power from teacher to student implied within SCL. We conclude by highlighting the key lessons learned from this project related to the translatability of SCL from one global context to another, highlighting the need to re-examine a range of Western educational concepts in the current context of increasing transnational higher education partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates a strategy to promote the uptake of support services by international students (ISs) at an Australian university. As part of their assessment, ISs completed a so-called ‘University Service Reflection Task’ (USRT) in a core first-year course. To complete the USRT, all ISs accessed one support service (e.g. language consultation, study skills workshop, careers guidance), then submitted a written reflection about the experience. Using responses to a questionnaire by 155 participants, the researchers investigated which services ISs attended for the USRT and patterns of prior attendance. Students' perspectives were explored by analysing 73 reflective essays. The results showed that two-thirds of the students participated in a service for the first time in order to complete the USRT and favoured services that had closest application to their coursework. Students expressed positive feelings about their experiences and reported learning gains, particularly in the areas of study skills and development of academic language. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I draw attention to a lively and accessible way of helping academics to make sense of their practice as teachers. First, I define ‘collaborative close reading’ and ‘teaching texts’. Then I invite the reader to eavesdrop on three (lightly fictionalised) reading sessions. Finally, I suggest some guidelines for facilitators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Collaborative learning and critical pedagogy are widely recognized as ‘empowering’ pedagogies for higher education. Yet, the practical implementation of both has a mixed record. The question, then, is: How could collaborative and critical pedagogies be empowered themselves? This paper makes a primarily theoretical case for discourse analysis (DA) as a form of classroom practice that provides a structured framework for collaborative and critical pedagogies in higher education, with a special reference to sociology classroom practice. I develop a tripartite scheme for building a framework for sociological imagination that is, first, sensitive to the discursive aspects of social reality (learningaboutDA). Second, I illustrate the use of DA as pedagogical tool and classroom practice (learningwithDA). Third, I discuss how discourse analytical ideas can be used in evaluating classroom interaction and how these reflexive insights can be used to enhance student empowerment (learningthroughDA). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper will review existing literature on Open Educational Resources (OER). It is intended to examine and critique the theories which underpin the promotion of OER in higher education, not provide guidance on their implementation. (1) I will introduce the concepts of positive and negative liberty to suggest an under-theorisation of the term ‘open’. (2) OER literature will be shown to endorse a two-tiered system, in which the institution is both maintained and disaggregated. (3) I will highlight a diminishing of the role of pedagogy within the OER vision and the promotion of a learner-centred model for education. (4) This stance will be aligned with humanistic assumptions of unproblematic self-direction and autonomy. (5) I will discuss the extent to which the OER movement aligns itself with economically orientated models of the university. I offer these critiques as a framework for the OER movement to develop as a theoretically rigorous area of scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent and current changes in higher education have been both top-down and bottom-up, i.e. regulation and control measures from authorities on one hand and increasing numbers of international students on the other. This has led to a dilemma between unification and diversification. There is a marked pressure towards more testing, more streamlining and less autonomy. This development is caused by both top-down regulation and increasing diversity in the student body. This paper will examine the consequent impact on pedagogy and assessment, current practices and educational philosophies. We aim to ask questions pertinent to the substantial values and goals of our higher education institutions and to begin a discussion of the what, why and how of the renewal process. In particular, it discusses the effects in relation to teacher and learner autonomy in an intercultural classroom with multiple languages, expectation and traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Even as an increasing number of universities commit to producing graduates possessing the attributes of ‘a global citizen’, discussions between academics suggest it is common practice to design programme outcomes which include the attribute of global citizenship without advancing discussion as to ways of embedding them in deeper learning. This presents a potential risk of defaulting to ‘empty rhetoric’ when trying to meet institutional agendas relating to graduate attributes. To address this issue, this paper opens up discussion about how to assess global citizenship within and across disciplines by offering an example of a four-step method. To support a further goal of framing global citizenship in contemporary Higher Education Institutions as an object of pedagogic and social theory, emergent findings of a discourse of interculturality in student work are presented. Findings serve to identify the ways in which students articulate the contested concept of interculturality, a key attribute of the ‘global citizen’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the introduction of key information sets (KIS) for all university programmes in the UK from 2012, the character, content and delivery of university degrees may be increasingly used by potential students to differentiate between degree programmes. Therefore, developments in curricula and the relationship to the profession are of growing importance. In this paper, we explore the role of programme content in prospective students’ decision-making and describe the prevalence of interdisciplinary content in civil engineering curricula. Following this, we detail student perceptions of interdisciplinary content. It is found that universities currently operate a varied approach to transparency regarding curriculum; students pay little attention to programme content before embarking on their chosen degree; and engineering students view interdisciplinary content in the curriculum with ambivalence, usually ascribing its necessity in the preparation for post-university employment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper argues for situating today's students as ‘global citizens’, emphasisingself-in-the-worldidentity overact-in-the-worldagency. It draws upon a three-year investigation into the lived-experience of sojourning UK undergraduate students, which surfaced examples of significant learning among new communities of practice. Their experiences of crossing learning thresholds is presented as change to the lifeworld, and argued to have enhanced their sense ofself-in-the-world. Because primary sites of learning identified within the narratives were within inter-subjective encounters outside the host culture and beyond what was planned within their mobility programmes, I suggest that similar learning might be enabled among diverse campus communities at home. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]