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The paper critiques key international teaching excellence and higher education outcomes frameworks for their lack of attention to epistemic equality. It subsequently argues that adequate 'datafication' of these frameworks, to demonstrate the extent to which universities offer teaching experiences which promote intellectual equivalence of all 'knowers' could advance present understandings of teaching excellence beyond benchmarked performativity. The paper theorises the philosophical basis of a changed 'datafication' process under selected national and supra-national frameworks for measuring teaching excellence at universities and shows, by statistically modelling selected national data, how a 'metric' evaluating universities on epistemic equality could work in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how community, national and ethnic identities are affirmed, negotiated, marginalized as a part of hegemony-making and resistance in the context of English education in Indian universities. We argue and demonstrate that a complex and ambivalent hegemony that has been operational since the colonial times, continues to shape English education in India. Today, English and English education play a major role in articulating, binding and dividing multiple identities and knowledge systems. In the first part of the paper, we critically review debates and discussions on the significance of English language education in institutes of higher education in India. Specifically, we focus on discourses on the rationale behind continuing and contesting English education. The second part examines how in the postmodern context, English is being taught differently to different groups and highlights how these contexts of teaching have been defining knowledge systems, patterns of dominance and also, articulating resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Giddens’ theory of structuration as a theoretical framework, this paper outlines how five prominent United Kingdom universities aimed to integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches to the adoption and diffusion of e-learning. The aim of this paper is to examine the major challenges that arise from the convergence of bottom-up perspectives and top-down strategies. Giddens’ theory is used to understand the dynamics of organisational change as they pertain to the adoption and diffusion of e-learning. This is intended to support our understanding of the interplay between top-down strategy and bottom-up adoption of e-learning. From the research and from our findings, we present a set of change levers that are intended to provide practical value for managers responsible for the diffusion of e-learning strategy in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that knowledge is not a passive product of learning that can be possessed, but rather that it represents an active engagement with ideas, arguments and the world in which they reside. This engagement requires a state of 'knowing' - a complex, integrative, reciprocal process that unites the knower with the to-be-known. Exploring the notion of knowledge, this paper considers the roles of truth and belief in knowledge production, the relationship between knowledge and the disciplines, and knowledge as a social and cultural product. These ideas are contextualized in higher education practice with an example of a course designed to help science and engineering students develop criticality and a sense of 'knowing' about the world. The students are challenged to consider what it requires to turn facts and information into knowledge, and to unite their knowing with their own personal experiences and ideas about the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absence of data regarding UK university students’ sexualities and trans identities has, for too long, rendered lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT+) student communities invisible. This interview-based study aims to explore the experiences of LGBT+ students at a Scottish university, beginning to address this gap in research. This study argues that despite perceptions from staff and prospective students that universities are welcoming to LGBT+ students, and attempts from institutions to comply with equalities legislation, the reality is homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and queer phobia creeps into students’ lives both on and off campus. This has therefore necessitated the student-led provision of exclusively LGBT+ ‘safe spaces’ to allow LGBT+ students to explore and express their identities fearlessly. In order to challenge the current campus climate, this paper thus argues that a radical shift is required in order to transform institutions to successfully support and celebrate LGBT+ campus communities, allowing universities to truly call themselves ‘proudly proactive’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic Literacies, the most influential conceptual framework for writing practitioners at UK universities, is closely related to widening participation. At the same time, writing support is often justified with the argument that written communication is among the most important employability skills for graduates. While these concepts are often used simultaneously, their underlying premises are not necessarily congruent. This paper reflects on a writing intervention that highlighted the difficulties that can arise from a seeming ‘pick and mix’ use of these two frameworks, Academic Literacies and writing as an Employability Skill. Based on this analysis of the practice of teaching writing at a post-92 university, it establishes the need for an expanded, theoretical framework for writing support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon student narratives gleaned through qualitative interviews, this paper argues that teaching and learning ‘sensitive’ issues surrounding gender and sexualities through ‘creative’ pedagogies can be a mode of resistance against the reproduction of problematic social discourses, and to the negative impacts of neoliberalism on student’s learning within higher education. The findings point to the importance of speaking about sensitive issues; the value of creative approaches for enhancing learning; and that together these can enable students to articulate an agenda for social change. Students saw the ‘personal as political’ – of sharing personal journeys around sensitive issues as important. They further spoke of ‘apathy’ in an neoliberal era of student ‘consumers’ and how this could curtail ‘creative’ teaching and jeopardise learning. Overall, it is argued that creative approaches to teaching and learning sensitive issues can invoke a resistant potentiality which exposes the ‘hidden injuries’ (Gill, 2010) of the neoliberal university. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article looks on the challenges of curriculum planning and creating pedagogic strategies for students and classroom setting in Great Britian. It highlights the engagement with students to teach the contemporary exercise of their chosen fields and careers in higher education. Also mentioned is the evaluative judgments concerning the credibility and relevance of students curricular activity.

As a result of changing national values and unrest, demographic and population shifts, and ever-changing admissions practices and policies, implementing a diversity and cultural-competency agenda within university settings has become a priority across the UK, Europe, and US. Furthermore, public institutions across the UK, EU, and US are now more racially and ethnically diverse than ever [Snyder, T. D., C. Debray, and S. A. Dillow. 2016. ‘Digest of Education Statistics 2016.’ NCES 2016-006. National Centre for Education Statistics; Sursock, Andree. 2015. Trends 2015: Learning and Teaching in European Universities. European University Association. Accessed October 28 2017. www.eua.be/Libraries/publicationshomepage-list/EUA_Trends_2015_web.]. Yet, cultural competency efforts on campuses remain largely under theorized [Bezrukova, K., K. A. Jehn, and C. S. Spell. 2012. “Reviewing Diversity Training: Where We Have Been and Where We Should Go.” Academy of Management Learning and Education 11 (2): 207-227] and diffuse [Sue, S., D. C. Fujino, L. T. Hu, D. T. Takeuchi, and N. W. Zane. 1991. ‘Community Mental Health Services for Ethnic Minority Groups: A Test of the Cultural Responsiveness Hypothesis.’ Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 59 (4): 533-540]. This article seeks to outline an agenda for this work, highlighting outcomes of cultural competency learning and underscoring the role of campus leadership in the development of supportive characteristics. These characteristics include attention to shared knowledge, professional learning at all levels of the organization, inclusive instructional methods, integration with other campus initiatives, and inclusivity of diversity foci. Posited are six supportive conditions for successful implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘student voice’ is highly profiled in UK higher education, yet highly under-theorised. Over the past 20 years UK universities have gone from a taxpayer-funded, free at the point of use model, to one supported through tuition fees via Government-backed loans. Subsequently, there is a growth of discourse about universities as businesses and students as paying customers/consumers whose opinions and demands must be considered. This article outlines four possible theoretical lenses (or frameworks) through which student voice can be analysed, enabling an exploration of the vested interests and power relations entailed. These lenses draw on (1) research on student voice and power in compulsory education; (2) regulatory capture from Economics; (3) the notion of students voice as part of an incomplete whole and (4) non-representational theory, developed in Human Geography by Nigel Thrift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is lack of agreement as to what constitutes teaching excellence, there remains a steady effort to make an intangible, ambiguous, multifaceted concept incarnate in the form of ‘student-led’ teaching awards schemes within higher education institutions. What teaching staff say about such schemes have largely been ignored. This article attempts to address this gap in knowledge by accounting for the extent that academic teaching staff at one higher education institution in the UK value and perceive their teaching awards scheme. At the same time, this article presents some challenges in implementing a student-led teaching awards scheme for higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study aims to identify how students' epistemological beliefs or ways of knowing (comprising cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects) develop during work-based placement. Data comprise 32 semi-structured interviews with 17 business and accounting students at a UK university. Findings show that the taking of responsibility is the key stimulus for development: intrapersonally through a changing sense of self and interpersonally though changing relationships with others. A lack of cognitive development appears to arise from a student focus on how they participate within the workplace, rather than on their workplace practice. These findings support the need for a connective view of the curriculum: strengthening connections between formal (university) learning and informal (placement) learning, and between ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ development. In particular, there should be an emphasis on the student's ability to identify relationships between work experience, the knowledge and skills that underpin practice, as well as the context of participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]