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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]

This paper uses a macro, meso- and micro-level analysis of employability best practice in higher education institutions (HEIs) to question how employability is being conceived within higher education settings alongside academic goals. Thematic analysis is applied to: a range of academic articles and papers containing HEI employability best practice case studies (macro-level); papers from the 2016 Swansea University College of Arts and Humanities' Employability Conference (meso-level); and Swansea University Department of Media and Communication employability activities from 2013 to 2018 (micro-level). The results are visualised as an ontology of higher education employability, which has the notion of 'entrepreneurial spirit' at the centre. The paper finds that embedding an entrepreneurial approach can help drive innovation in subject-level teaching in a way which can enhance, rather than inhibit, critical academic enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the back of recent assessment choice projects this study seeks to reimagine higher education assessment as a means of shifting the 'locus of control' from the teacher to the student. Central to this shift is the belief that a flexible assessment approach will promote self-regulation in learners, increased self-efficacy and, subsequently academic engagement and performance. This paper details the design, setup and configuration of assessment choice for students studying an online business subject. Details are provided outlining the assessment choices made by students and the impact on student satisfaction and the student success rates. Overall students demonstrated receptiveness towards the provision of assessment choice. This was evidenced by positive feedback from students, as well as improved subject satisfaction. While further research is required, the findings presented here provide a case for greater assessment flexibility and the broader adoption of an assessment choice approach in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a Mad person affiliated with Mad/psychiatric survivor/disability movements, participating in pedagogical partnerships over the past four years has been confusing and ethically fraught. Through engagement with the scholarship on Students as Partners (SaP) practice in higher education, the emerging discipline of Mad(ness) Studies, and my own experiences as a 'partner' on various projects, this paper seeks to synthesize a Mad politics of student-staff partnership in the academy. These politics are explored through four themes: (1) Equity? Attention to power dynamics and resulting trauma; (2) Interpersonal concord and consensus? Anger, conflict and collective action; (3) Mutual collaboration? Independence and survivor-led/controlled initiatives; (4) Inclusion? Partnership barriers and possibilities for Mad/disabled students. I end by proposing a politics of respectful distrust as Mad Studies and Mad/disabled people further explore opportunities for coalition-building and alliance with SaP colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the pivot to online teaching as a result of COVID-19, a longstanding debate as to whether higher education should abandon traditional face-to-face lectures has reignited. In this paper, we set out our reflection on this issue based on the evidence available. We conclude that traditional on-campus lectures, and the recordings of those lectures have a place in higher education and the suggestion that they should be abandoned is as unhelpful as the suggestion that they should be the default mode of teaching. When lectures are deliberately chosen as the most appropriate method of teaching and when the same pedagogical care and attention is given as to other modes of delivery, they provide an effective, pragmatic solution, particularly for large classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although often suffering from a lack of conceptual clarity and definition, the use of problem-based learning (PBL) as a pedagogical approach has become almost ubiquitous across many disciplines in higher education in recent years. As well as purported benefits for student learning, the empowerment of students through increased autonomy is frequently cited as a rationale for the adoption and promotion of PBL. However, while significant research has been conducted on the relationship between student learning and PBL approaches, there exists a dearth in research regarding the impact on power relationships within the higher education classroom. This paper attempts to help address this dearth through the use of a qualitative research study involving interviews with 13 graduates (5 male and 8 female) from a PBL master's degree programme. The results suggest that the adoption of PBL as a pedagogical strategy does not guarantee a significant shift in the power relationships evident within higher education. Participants perceived that the dominance of lecturer power was maintained in the classroom via the employment of both explicit and implicit techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a perspective on the relationship between communities that conduct research on teaching and learning in higher education, focusing on Higher Education Studies (HES) and science Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER). The paper responds to HES debates about the strength of its epistemological base and who belongs to that community, and to a perception that DBER is marginalized in the higher education research context. To explicate our perspective, we describe the origins and trajectories of Physics Education Research and Engineering Education Research, as exemplars of DBER. Using Turnbull, we conceptualize HES and these two exemplars as distinct knowledge spaces, with different histories, orthopraxes and participants, and hence different unifying principles, research foci and trust mechanisms. We conclude that HES, DBER and other higher education research communities stand to benefit from multidisciplinary engagement with each other, because of their different perspectives on the problems of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a critical discussion of the ways that multilingualism is conceptualised in the context of higher education in Timor-Leste, a small, developing nation in South-East Asia. Drawing on a range of ethnographic data collected at multiple Timorese tertiary institutions from 2015 to 2018, I focus especially on the language-related beliefs and practices of a small group of petroleum studies lecturers, who are at the meeting point of diverse ideological forces that impact their teaching. I discuss their conceptualisations of both the 'language problem' facing them, and their own hybrid classroom communication practices, examining how these conceptualisations are shaped by wider political discourses favouring Portuguese, Indonesian and English. I argue that these discourses not only complicate due recognition of the considerable resourcefulness these lecturers display in communicating disciplinary knowledge to students, but also weigh heavily on their own perceptions of their everyday work as tertiary educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is essential in any kind of peer-based mentoring. Taking a sociocultural view, this study focuses on how trust emerges relationally in a higher education context where colleagues observe and give feedback on one another's teaching. The term peer mentoring refers here to a collaborative approach in which faculty staff observe and give feedback on one another's teaching. The data in the study draw on video observations of and interviews with a four-member (senior faculty) peer group observed over a 5-month period. The analysis of the group interactions shows how the members made themselves vulnerable during peer review and reveals the implication of trust in this collaborative setting. The sociocultural perspective draws here attention to the key role of turn-taking rhythms in the interactions constituting the development of trust. This paper also discusses the significance of developing suitable conditions for trust when arranging peer-based review of teaching in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Course Evaluation Instruments (CEIs) are critical aspects of faculty assessment and evaluation across most higher education institutions, but heated debates surround the value and validity of such instruments. While some argue that CEI scores are valid measures of course and instructor quality, others argue that faculty members can game the system, most notably with lenient grading practices to achieve higher student ratings. This article synthesizes the literature on course evaluation instruments as they relate to student grades to assess the evidence supporting and refuting the major theoretical frameworks (i.e. leniency hypothesis and validity hypothesis), explores the implications of research design and methods and proposes practical recommendations for colleges and universities. This paper also goes beyond the CEI-grade relationship and provides a framework that illustrates the relationships between teaching quality and CEI scores, and the potential confounding factors and omitted variables which may significantly deteriorate the informativeness of the CEI score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PhDs by publications are a relatively new model for doctoral research, especially in the context of the Humanities or Education. This paper describes two writers’ experiences of conducting doctoral studies in this genre and in these faculties. Each discover alternative ways of employing a body of published research papers in development of an overarching thesis. The writers argue that whilst it can be a pragmatic choice for some, PhDs by publications are more likely to be highly complex meta-narratives and that an overview of past research is fraught with theoretical, conceptual and epistemological challenges in the quest for coherence. They claim that the nomenclature ‘PhDs by publications’ or ‘through publications’ is misleading: in the epistemological space of Humanities or Education studies, this mode of doctoral research is more accurately represented as a ‘PhD with or alongside publications’. They conclude that the particular affordance of the model is that it privileges accounts of the process of knowledge building and of descriptions of the gradual emergence of ‘doctoralness’ in the person of the researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the interpersonal nature of the supervisory relationship in research degree supervision has been recognised and different models of supervisory styles have been developed, the research supervision literature has yet to acknowledge the relational individual differences and the relational dynamics that are at play within the supervisor-supervisee relationship. This paper draws on literature from the higher education, clinical supervision, and leadership fields and utilises attachment theory as a conceptual framework in an attempt to shed some light on the attachment processes and dynamics of the research supervisory relationship. The review of the evidence presented here clearly indicates the usefulness and applicability of attachment theory in the research supervision practice. This paper makes a contribution to the higher education and research supervision literature by offering new directions for research and by providing practical guidelines for the training of postgraduate research supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic literacies research emphasizes the importance of social context for understanding student writing development in higher education. In particular, students' choices of textual practices are shaped by perceptions of disciplinary norms and institutional expectations. In contemporary online learning environments, however, student writing is increasingly guided by advice from digital products – referred to in this paper as 'third-party products'. These are developed by commercial providers external to students' disciplines and institutions and include machine-based tools for analyzing texts, content-based courses on writing, and person-based services connecting students to writing tutors via online platforms. These products appear to offer universities the opportunity to outsource the task of developing student writing, however, they position writing as a technical process and elide the role of social context in determining what 'good' writing is. This paper locates third-party products within theories of academic writing, discussing implications for student writing development in 'distributed' university learning environments. [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]

Pedagogy is a term used broadly to refer to both how and why an educator influences learning. Given the importance of quality transformative learning experiences noted in the sustainability education literature, the role of an educator's values, assumptions and philosophy underpinning their educational capability for the provision of learning experiences are also worthy of further investigation. This necessitates a reflection on what is meant by pedagogy in sustainability education literature to support a clearer understanding of its meaning and how it orients educational practice. The term pedagogy is widely used in sustainability education (and related) literature, and yet rarely is the concept defined or explored in detail. This paper intends to fill this gap by presenting arguments for why explicit reflection on the meaning and role of pedagogy in sustainability education is important and highlight some resulting research implications and avenues for further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As algorithmic decision-making and data collection become pervasive in higher education, how can educators make sense of the systems that shape life and learning in the twenty-first century? This paper outlines a systematic literature review that investigated gaps in the current framing of data and faculty development, and explores how these gaps prevent the formulation of potential pathways and principles for fostering educators' data literacy. The analysis of 137 papers through classification by relevant categories and key word mapping shows that there is little attention on higher education teachers. It also makes clear that most approaches to educators' data literacy address management and technical abilities, with less emphasis on critical, ethical and personal approaches to datafication in education. The authors conceptualize this situation as a 'complicated' approach to data literacy in the academic profession, as opposed to a complex vision which would bundle management and technical skills together with a critical, systemic approach to professional learning and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In 2016, the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) marked a watershed moment for higher education (HE) in the United Kingdom. This paper views the TEF as an extension of the neoliberal policy narrative that has dominated policy thinking and decision making in HE in recent decades. It argues that the epistemology and methodology underpinning this narrative is flawed and ill-equipped to improve the quality of teaching. As a counter narrative, this paper discusses the creation of a cycle of collaborative observation (CoCO) between academic staff and students in an English university. Drawing on theoretical and empirical insights, the paper explores the conceptual and methodological framework behind CoCO, as well as the preparation of academic staff and students for engaging with this collaborative approach to observation. We argue that CoCO offers the potential to transform understanding of learning and teaching in HE and the reciprocal relationship between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical insight into the ubiquity of technology enhanced learning. The use of technology in higher education is underpinned by a promise that technology will enhance teaching and learning despite an apparent lack of systematic evidence. This raises questions of how this enhancement agenda persists, and of how technology has established a position of dominance within higher education. This orthodoxy is evident across a range of relevant actors, from commercial interests, universities, government, academics, and technologists. This paper utilises a critical logics approach, which problematises the competing interests of these different actors, exploring ways in which the social, political and fantasmatic practices between these actors contribute to the ubiquity and dominance of technology enhanced learning. This paper argues that the technology enhanced project resists in-depth critique, with the repeated failure of technology to transform education attributed towards academics, students and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents research on movements involved in the lives of international university students and their accompanying family members. Located in the framing of new empiricisms and new materialisms, a posthumanist approach is offered as a way to move beyond the limitations of a focus on the educational mobilities of individualised self-contained student subjects. The research this paper draws on engages a diffractive visual methodology involving interview encounters with women who each moved from Iran to Australia together with their partner and children. A materialist feminist approach enables the consideration of how a variety of entangled movements and animated affects shape the lives of international student families. The utility of this approach becomes the inspiration for thinking through the concept of 'intra-active becoming in movement'. This brings a refreshed set of practices for designing higher education experiences for international students that resists the divisiveness of binary oppositions in Western thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the rising calls for a 'decolonised curriculum', scholars and activists have outlined what needs to be done to 'decolonise the university'. Yet in practice, those involved in decolonising work often face considerable backlash and institutional resistance. Drawing on empirical research with students and staff across nine universities in England, this paper sets out to capture the contested terrain of 'decolonising the university'. We draw on qualitative accounts, collected through in-depth interviews with 24 individuals who are engaged in individual and/or group-based decolonial efforts, at discipline/departmental/institutional level to achieve change in their universities. We conceptualise and explore institutional responses to 'decolonising' through three strategies: rejection, reluctant acceptance, and strategic advancement. Presenting a snapshot of decolonising work in England over the period 2014–2021, our findings raise questions about what needs to be done to counter institutional co-option, incorporation, and the dilution of the radical message of decolonising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Universities Australia's Indigenous Strategy recommended a sector-wide approach to 'closing the gap' between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, universities have grappled with how to do this. Resisting mainstream approaches to curriculum development that eschew any kind of relational accountability (Wilson, Shawn. 2008. Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Manitoba: Fernwood Publishing) requires entering difficult relations of power and occupying space to transform the act of curriculum development itself. This paper is the second in a series understanding Jindaola, a programme led by a Local Aboriginal Knowledge Holder within one Australian university. It 'hacks' the curriculum development space with staff through Aboriginal way towards Curriculum Reconciliation, building knowledge-based relationships between disciplinary and relevant Aboriginal Knowledge. We deliberately and controversially enact this type of relationship, by temporarily bringing the Foucauldian lens of 'heterotopia', and interview data from 30 participants, to describe how Jindaola usurps the neocolonial remit to embed Indigenous Knowledge, and creates and holds a counter-hegemonic space to decolonise curriculum development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Pacific early career academics (PECA) in Aotearoa, there is a tension between the Indigenous knowledges inherited from our Pacific ancestors and those we have been taught within the western education system. As Pacific educators teaching an increasingly Pacific student-body, we have sought to define our own spaces within the lecture theatre where we can prioritize our knowledges and counter standard didactic western pedagogical practices. This paper is a collaboration from six PECA who use as a framework of analysis Andreotti et al.'s [Andreotti, Vanessa de Oliveira, Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew, and Hunt. Dallas. 2015. "Mapping Interpretations of Decolonization in the Context of Higher Education." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 4 (1): 21–40.] Cartography of Decolonization to discuss their decolonizing pedagogies. It will explore the successes and challenges faced in making this pedagogical shift, including stories from PECA who have struggled due to disciplinary concepts of what constitutes 'knowledge'. It involves critical reflection on pedagogical praxis, asking throughout what can be considered decolonizing and whether it is indeed possible within the system of higher education in Aotearoa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the currently diverse UK higher education environment, one important aspect of learning is the development of intercultural competence. The study that informs this paper investigated the ways intercultural competence was perceived as being enhanced or inhibited through current language and educational practices at a university that positions itself as internationally engaged and globally recognised. The project employed a multiple-case study design, examining eight academic programmes drawn from four different broad disciplinary groupings: social sciences, science, engineering, and management. Data were collected through individual, focus group and stimulated recall interviews, the latter using class observation recordings as a stimulus. The study revealed the ways in which language was exploited by both staff and students to convey particular meanings within an intercultural context. It was found that language choices, register and style were perceived as contributing to the pragmatic impact of either reinforcing barriers to or promoting intercultural competence development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical and theoretical exploration of the contemporary use of standards in assessment in higher education. It outlines three discourses of assessment standards. Each perspective foregrounds particular realities and backgrounds others, and so influences practice in particular taken-for-granted ways. The assumptions of these perspectives are identified, and the advantages and disadvantages of each of the existing discourses discussed. The dominant perspective prompts educators to make standards 'transparent' for students, inferring stability through a written explication. The sociocultural perspective highlights a tacit and more dynamic view of standards, suggesting that standards are built by expert consensus and students must learn to meet this community expectation. The sociomaterial perspective also infers a dynamic view, but one that is co-produced through social and material assemblages. Thinking about standards as performance, a dynamic and shifting human-material activity, encourages a focus on emergent activity in the design of standards, moderation and assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical examination of inclusion as a pedagogic principle through a practice-based interrogation of contemporary 'good practice' strategies for encouraging inclusion in small-group teaching. The analysis emerges from our experiences of delivering four classroom exercises that are frequently proposed as strategies for increasing inclusion, and borrows insight from critical intersectional feminist pedagogy to interrogate normative discourses of inclusion in HE. We argue that both the terms of inclusion, and the assumption that (verbal) participation is itself a straightforward sign of improving inclusion in classroom spaces, require interrogation. This article thus responds to the proliferation of inclusion discourses in contemporary UK HE, by identifying some of the potential pitfalls of viewing inclusion through the limited lens of participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on how ethical entrepreneurship can be taught in higher education institutions. During the past years, the concern for the ethics of entrepreneurship has become noteworthy, as unethical behaviours have expanded in the business world. The search for an ethically-driven entrepreneurship has turned the focus on universities and how lecturers address this teaching challenge. Without any consensus concerning the most appropriate means by which it can be accomplished, the proposal of alternatives contributes to nurture the debate and broaden the possibilities of teaching approaches. The alternative proposed in the article is based on the use of religious approaches to ethics. Particularly, it is proposed that a literary use of religious narratives-parables can bring a fresh perspective to the teaching of ethical entrepreneurship and contribute to improving students' ethical sensibility in ethical business dilemmas through a narrative reasoning. A teaching example is included to illustrate the arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study engages with various challenges in contemporary higher education in South Africa. Firmly rooted in contextual challenges, this paper draws on a pedagogy of vulnerability to propose that engaging critically with vulnerability enables a decolonial disposition to epistemology and ontology. The study explores how a community of PGDip students and teacher embraced shifts by being authentic, inclusive, open and honest in their pedagogical interactions, to re-cast themselves as teachers who are human(e). Using a reflective narrative methodology to interpret their experiences, the authors assert that academics are unlikely to meet the challenges before them if they have not experienced some of the vulnerability their students experience. The aim is to also show links with how students perceive us, given their own vulnerabilities. We assert that vulnerability can be used as a productive tool and decolonial catalyst to invigorate teaching and learning engagements in local and global university contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postgraduate education has grown enormously worldwide, which has led to supervisors being expected to take on a supervisor's role immediately upon graduation. But crossing the border from being a doctoral candidate to becoming a doctoral supervisor entails significant shifts in identity and an understanding of postgraduate pedagogy and institutional expectations. This paper argues that supervision development opportunities are crucial, but they need to be contextualised and include critical key agents with some institutional authority if they are to be deemed worthwhile and effect change. An online survey completed by 186 participants from across institutional types and disciplines in South Africa is analysed using Archer's social realism to provide insights into how emerging supervisors are currently supported. The resultant recommendations on supervision development could contribute to more confident border crossing by emerging supervisors. [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]

Research-based learning in taught courses develops the skills needed to judge knowledge sources and think critically in a post-truth world. In viewing research skills as threshold concepts, the paper argues that transforming a student cannot be a one-off event. Research capacity must build over a programme and this requires coherent research skill development and assessment that is progressive (ipsative). A study of five programmes each with a different design of research 'throughline' showed that such integrated research-based learning generates three challenges. Firstly, conceptualising the research skills and progression is not easy. Secondly, the accumulation and enrichment of research skills is not readily visible to students. Finally, providing a clear support system across the programme is not straightforward. The paper concludes that these challenges need to be addressed if the potential of research-based education to enable future citizens to interrogate populist claims and reject misinformation is to be realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is currently much interest in the interconnections between research and teaching in Higher Education. This relationship is usually termed 'the research/teaching nexus' (RTN). However, within this wide body of literature, there has been little attempt to explore the emergent experiences of students across the entire length of their degree programme. Drawing on the results of a three-year qualitative study that followed 40 students through their whole student lifecycle, this paper explores how undergraduates in an English university experienced the RTN, how those experiences developed over time, and how these changes can be variously enabled or constrained. Situating the findings in the context of the 'post-truth' society and the uncertainty of employment futures, the paper highlights how the nexus can also often serve to exclude students as much as it includes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comprises findings from three parallel case studies within the broad framework of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). These provide results from classroom-based action research conducted over two years working with Semantics, Specialisation and axiological cosmologies from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). Each author shares how one or both of these LCT dimensions have guided their practice in the teaching of English for academic writing and specifically, the development of their students' critical dispositions by teaching them how to apply lenses to analyse texts so that they may make informed judgements. Data from classroom interventions and student writing are provided. It is hoped that this paper elicits further discussion in the growing field of applying LCT and may draw attention to the role of the EAP teacher as expert in linguistics and the need to focus more on knowledge in EAP writing courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peace and conflict studies (PACS) higher education is a blossoming field. Literature (both conceptual and conjectural) and research (theoretical and empirical) has proliferated in recent decades. This paper details case findings from an ethnographic study with university-based PACS educators completed at one University of The United Nations in 2015. The six-month ethnography involved document analysis, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with 25 peace scholars and 108 postgraduate students. Data was thematically coded and analyzed using concepts from critical race/critical Whiteness studies. This paper outlines the study and explores the theme of Whiteness that emerged from data. Findings point toward the cultural reproduction of Whiteness in the faculty, pedagogy, and institution. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications concerning global equity and 'post-structural violence' in PACS education, as well as a call for further research into the role of peacebuilding education in broader social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a tentative roadmap for ensuring that higher education policy makers and practitioners are apprised of what might be done to advance a concept of socially just assessment praxis. It extends current thinking around the notion of social justice approaches to assessment by further developing the conceptual framework proposed in McArthur's recent work (2016). It does so by extending understandings of how a socially just perspective might be realised. Drawing upon recent conceptual developments within both Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP), the paper proposes a typology for praxis and organisational change. Crucially, this typology focuses upon enhancing learning outcomes for all learners, but it is particularly concerned with enhancing educational experiences and learning outcomes for students that have been systematically marginalised by the normative procedural practices that have traditionally informed the nature of supposedly objective assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores questions of power arising from feminist facilitators running a doctoral writing group at a UK university. Butler's [2014. Re-thinking Vulnerability and Resistance. [Online]. Accessed September 12, 2017. http://www.institutofranklin.net/sites/default/files/files/Rethinking%20Vulnerability%20and%20Resistance%20Judith%20Butler.pdf] theorisation of precarity and vulnerability inspired us to re-think normative constructions of research writing and the academic identities and subjectivities this presupposed. Our doctoral writing group was imagined as a space to think collectively and reflexively about the thesis, the multi-faceted power-dynamics at work in its production, and our relations to the text as both writer and audience. This paper antagonises some of the pedagogic consequences of inviting seemingly 'personal' matters into the space of the writing space and, subsequently, the doctoral text itself. We speak back to discourses that position doctoral writing as always and only an individual, and individualising endeavour, that eschews encounters with the personal and relational. Indeed, we recognise that configurations and spaces for research writing are always 'political'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of recent papers, Nick Zepke has criticised those researching student engagement in higher education for uncritically supporting neoliberalism. The current highly politicised nature of higher education means that clarity about the political implications of engagement research is crucial. This conceptual paper argues that in focusing on literature on students’ engagement in learning, Zepke overlooks another substantial body of engagement literature, on students’ participation in decisions about learning and teaching. By exploring the political alignment of two of the key models used to conceptualise students’ engagement in decision-making, the paper argues that a central element of the research into student engagement is in fact directly opposed to neoliberal approaches to higher education. Student engagement has been deployed both for and against neoliberalism. Zepke has argued that the research on engagement sides with neoliberalism; I show that the research that focuses on student engagement in decision-making supports the opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education's policy demands and pedagogical practices often take as their ‘desirable’ subject an unspecified body, failing to interrogate who the student is (and is not) in relation to differentiated access to power, privilege, and opportunity structures. This paper offers a feminist critique of such decontextualised theorisations of students and their critical thinking. Observation, focus group and interview data were collected with undergraduate social-science students at a UK university. This data revealed how students experience critical thinking as embodied, contingent and specifically gendered - with 90% of students naming a male when asked to describe a critical thinker. Consequently, this paper argues that who occupies a desirable position as a student critical thinker is not neutral or given, but intersects with students’ embodied characteristics and the (increasingly divisive) socio-political context in which criticality is performed. Access to this key intellectual premium is therefore differentiated, raising questions around epistemic inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dissonance between teachers' substantial effort to provide feedback and students' under-engagement with feedback has been consistently reported in higher education. A contributing factor to this disparity students' lack of feedback literacy, however, has been under-researched. This case study of two Chinese undergraduate students therefore investigated: (a) what the focal students' profiles of feedback literacy were, and (b) whether and how their feedback literacy mediated their engagement with feedback. Data from multiple sources revealed that the students' feedback literacy was multifaceted, involving cognitive capacity, social-affective disposition, and social-affective capacity. Each of the three aspects varied across and within individual students, suggesting the emergent and situated nature of feedback literacy. Nonetheless, the unbalanced development of the three components often limited the students' engagement with written corrective feedback. The paper concludes by highlighting the centrality of alignment between cognitive capacity, social-affective capacity, and social-affective disposition in fostering student engagement with feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to analyse lecturers' views on how they understand academic development in order to elucidate current arguments around how knowledge is codified in higher education, and to what end. Whilst work of this nature has been carried out in a number of national and institutional contexts, much attention has been given to research embedded in particular subject areas or within academic development departments. By utilising Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, a series of super- and sub- ordinate themes that represent the ways in which each lecturer describes academic development have been mapped across the existing literature in a form that has not been done to date. The results of this analysis highlight the need to think beyond the binaries subsumed within learner-/discipline-focussed or institutionally-/epistemologically- constrained barriers to academic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how academics in the current global higher education system – which often prioritises metrics of research activity and income generation over rich conceptualisation of transformative teaching – can sustain identities that encompass deep care for teaching. This is a significant area that has been little researched, particularly with experienced academics in mainstream roles in research-intensive universities. A thematic narrative analysis of interviews with experienced academics illustrated important ways in which it can be possible to maintain identities that encompassed deep care for teaching. The ways in which narrative processes are significant for identity development are drawn out. The tensions and synergies between different facets of participants' identities were shown to be important. Implications for policy makers and institutions, as to how identities focused on transformative teaching can be prioritised, are explored in relation to the policies and reflexive processes which would be required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that the periodical "Teaching in Higher Education" welcomes contributions concerning knowledge, identities, and teaching in relation to higher education purposes for its special issue on "Purposes, knowledge and identities." Information on the suggested questions and topics to be discussed which include economic, political, and social contexts of teaching, and others are included. Information on the abstract and article length, email address to whom the contribution will be submitted, and submission date are also included.

This paper explores barriers to realising the social purposes of higher education within a context of dominant hierarchical socio-cultural norms. Those norms are examined to reveal how they hinder students and teachers from engaging with critical thought and social justice issues in Malaysian higher education. The impact of these norms is examined from the perspective of students. Interviews with students found that such norms manifested themselves as barriers through (a) teacher authority, and (b) 'sensitive' content, which prevented students from expressing critical, dissenting views, and from having open discussions in the classroom. Additionally, fear resulted in self-censorship and the withholding of personal opinions on controversial topics. Socio-cultural norms that perpetuate an unequal balance of power need to be subverted if higher education aims to play a role in achieving greater social justice. Limits on freedom of speech and critical thought must be reduced so students feel safe when engaging with provocative ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Te Tiriti o Waitangi [te Tiriti] articulates the relationship between the government and Māori [Indigenous New Zealanders]. Universities have a responsibility to prepare graduates to work with te Tiriti. The literature on teaching te Tiriti is sparse. In this conceptual paper, we propose he hokinga ki te mauri [a return to vibrancy] as a framework for teaching te Tiriti. First, te upoko involves using intellectual rationale and covering core te Tiriti curriculum related to issues such as He Whakaputanga [the Declaration of Independence] and the texts of te Tiriti. Second, it offers strategies for te ngākau – involving heart and wairua [spirit]. Finally, ngā ringa – involves practical application. The authors maintain this novel approach supports teachers to depart from the weighty requirements of advanced technical expertise, providing flexibility to scaffold curriculum. Across the world, working with the ongoing impacts of colonisation gives rise to a range of politically and emotionally charged topics, we hope that our method might strengthen the teaching and learning associated with decolonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate around what constitutes teaching excellence and how to measure it remains a contentious issue in higher education, with little consensus reached. Despite this, measures of teaching excellence influence university ranking league tables throughout the world. This paper explores the thinking and practice of five academics, recognised through student nominations as exhibiting teaching that students considered excellent and which promoted their learning. Through adopting the unusual methodology of 'rambling', talking whilst walking, the values, attributes and behaviours of these academics were captured. Themes emerged, which identified markers of teaching excellence and challenged current student satisfaction outcomes as a poor proxy for measuring teaching excellence. By examining the values, attributes and behaviours (practice) of these academics, we were able to identify guidance for; curriculum design that inspires, assessment that allows risk-taking, and values that need to either be challenged by/or embedded into academic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]