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There has been considerable interest in generic attributes in higher education for over a decade and yet while generic skills or attributes are an important aspect of policy, there is often a lack of consistency between beliefs about the importance of these skills and attributes and the degree to which exist in teaching practice. There has been an assumption that these attributes exist outside of the disciplinary context, yet the findings of this study suggest that they are strongly influenced by the disciplinary culture in which they are taught. The study reported in this paper examines the apparent gap between ideal notions of generic attributes and their enactment in teaching practice. This qualitative study examined the teaching of generic attributes in five disciplines (physics, history, economics, medicine and law) in two Australian universities. It found that the notion of generic attributes is highly complex and while attributes such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication are valued by teaching staff they are often implicit in teaching. This gap between what is valued and what is actually taught is a result of variation in interpretation of generic attributes, the difficulties of reducing complex attributes to definable learning outcomes and practical constraints on teaching caused by factors such as large classes. Furthermore, it can be explained by the finding that generic attributes are part of the epistemic culture of the disciplines and often remain tacit. The findings of this study have significant implications for scholarship, policy and pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way in which universities have sought to articulate the outcomes of a university education is through a description of the attributes of their graduates. Recent calls for universities to demonstrate the quality of their outcomes and processes have prompted a re-examination of the generic graduate attribute outcomes many Australian universities have espoused for the past decade. As university communities struggle to identify what combination of skills, attributes and knowledge to include in these statements of graduate outcomes, and begin to come to terms with how to develop curricula to effectively achieve such outcomes, the fundamental nature of these is a vital preliminary question to address. What are these things that universities call generic graduate attributes? This is a more fundamental question than what combination of skills, attributes and knowledge should be included on the graduate ‘shopping-list’, it is about the nature of the things on the list, and the nature of the list itself. In seeking to further our understanding of the meaning of generic graduate attributes, the research described in this paper used phenomenographic analysis to explore academics’ conceptions of generic graduate attributes in the context of contemporary teaching and learning practices at one Australian university. A way of describing the key aspects of the variation in academics’ understandings of the concept of graduate attributes is presented. The contribution of discipline background to conceptions of generic attributes is considered and the implications of the observed variation for universities’ current curriculum reform initiatives discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe a study of learning outcomes at a research-intensive Australian university. Three graduate outcome variables (discipline knowledge and skills, communication and problem solving, and ethical and social sensitivity) are analysed separately using OLS regression and comparisons are made of the patterns of unique contributions from four independent variables (the CEQ Good Teaching and Learning Communities Scales, and two new, independent, scales for measuring Teaching and Program Quality). Further comparisons of these patterns are made across the Schools of the university. Results support the view that teaching and program quality are not the only important determinants of students’ learning outcomes. It is concluded that, whilst it continues to be appropriate for universities to be concerned with the quality of their teaching and programs, the interactive, social and collaborative aspects of students’ learning experiences, captured in the notion of the Learning Community, are also very important determinants of graduate outcomes, and so should be included in the focus of attempts at enhancing the quality of student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]