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This paper presents an analysis of the ways in which UK higher education (HE) has become increasingly commercialised and commodified in the post-1980s. It critiques the strategies adopted by successive UK governments to reinvigorate the relationship between educational and economic life, and to facilitate a more corporate and entrepreneurial spirit within the academy in line with the pressures of a 'knowledge-based economy'. Arguing for a more critical exploration of teaching and learning within HE, the paper presents evidence from work carried out by the Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching in Learning (CETL) which adopts a research-based learning approach to teaching and learning at undergraduate level.1 Within the context of ongoing debates surrounding the relationship between teaching, learning and research in UK HE, the paper advocates a reinvention of curriculum design through an engagement with the broader principles of critical pedagogy, and in so doing, presents a critical engagement with the commercialisation of HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning outcomes have become widely used in higher education, but also misused to the point of being controversial and a bureaucratic burden. This paper distinguishes three kinds of learning outcome found in current literature: (1) those used in individual teaching events; (2) those specified for modules or short courses; and (3) those specified for whole degree programmes. The nature of each is explored and their use in assessment and auditing is discussed, together with related notions such as the 'corridor of tolerance', emergent outcomes, etc. It is concluded that learning outcomes used in individual teaching events (1) are the most useful kind if employed flexibly, but that they cannot be specified exactly or used for auditing performance, and their relationship with assessment is complex. Learning outcomes specified for modules or short courses (2) state little more than a list of contents; they cannot be stated precisely and have limitations in guiding assessment. Learning outcomes specified for whole degree programmes (3) is a misuse of the term 'learning outcome'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by reviewing some of the different models of third-party observation of university teaching that can be found in the literature. Having analysed these, it argues that - if 'peer' is taken to indicate equality of status - only one is genuinely a model of peer-observation. It proposes an alternative categorisation of third-party observations of teaching dependant on who controls the information generated by the process. A preferred six-dimensional model based on control by the person being observed of the data-flow, and other procedural aspects, is presented and explored. Evaluative comments, by university teachers who have undertaken the process, are presented to illustrate the benefits of adopting this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that learning outcomes need to be reclaimed from their current use as devices for monitoring and audit, and returned to their proper use in aiding good teaching and learning. We require a broader, flexible and more realistic understanding of learning outcomes, better suited to the realities of the classroom and of practical use to those teachers who wish to respond to the enthusiasm of their students. To this end, a new model is produced that starts from the idea of an articulated curriculum, and embraces both intended and emergent learning outcomes. The model employs the distinction between predicted and unpredicted learning outcomes, together with the distinction between those that are desirable and those that are undesirable. The resulting account is intended to aid understanding of the nature and proper use of learning outcomes in teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This self-study was designed to explore problem-based learning (PBL) as an instructional approach in the contest of a pee-service science education methods course. Through the development and implementation of PBL curriculum, the author's goals were to improve her classroom practice and her understanding of that practice, to contribute to the knowledge base of teaching and learning, and to immerse students in authentic learning experiences that would encourage them to adopt an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning. In studying her own practice, the author adopted classroom-based action research as a strategy to explore PBL. Data collection methods and sources included field notes, interviews, and student-generated documents. The author describes how many aspects of her pedagogical content knowledge (conceptions of the purposes for teaching subject matter, knowledge of students' understanding, curricular knowledge, and knowledge of instruction and assessment) and classroom practice were transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research looks at student experiences of learning in a clinical teaching situation. At the end of a course, students took part in a class that was led by a user of the health system, rather than their usual lecturer. We chose to study this class because we knew that it provided a very different learning experience for the students and therefore gave us an opportunity to contrast this with their normal science teaching experiences. The study highlighted how embedded learning and teaching had become in a science curriculum that supported the transmission of authorized factual knowledge. It was shown that students could recognize alternative forms of knowledge and that these were valued in different ways. Furthermore, they acknowledged that they could learn in new ways although both these ideas were poorly understood. The study allowed us to reflect on our own learning and expose an important paradox in the choices we made in course design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]