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Recognising the changing landscape and financial costs, changes in the higher education sector continue to challenge the purpose and operations of universities, notably the shift towards student consumerism. Given this, what it means to be a student in contemporary higher education can evolve and would arguably have implications about the expectations of university students and staff for learning and teaching practice. To promote greater transparency of expectations, this paper develops the concept of the ideal student further with closer look into the spheres of influence that shape university students' construction of the ideal student. We draw on 23 focus groups with 105 university students to explore the key factors that contribute to how the ideal student is developed and recognised. Our findings indicate that students' construction of the ideal student is closely shaped by and rooted in their prior educational experiences, interaction with their peers and the curriculum, and perceptions of lecturers, institution and employer expectations. All these influences lead to a fluid and complex negotiation process as students navigate the meanings of being a university student. We conclude with practical implications for learning, teaching and curriculum development in higher education. The paper therefore provides a platform for key stakeholders to discuss different influencing factors as we support student transition and progression and manage their expectations of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an undergraduate project, Making:Archives — Narrative Artefact, as an exemplar of collaborative good practice, expanding on its case study in the National Archives and History UK's Guide to Collaboration for Archive and Higher Education. The paper examines the expected and unexpected impacts of the Making:Archives collaborative project for the stakeholders involved: the Institution, the Archive Service, its depositors, and in particular the students. Students have both struggled and excelled in the project, with the most engaged developing a range of creative and transferrable skills that have been repurposed in the creation of work beyond Making:Archives. The paper also reflects on the challenges faced, and numerous opportunities presented, during the co-creation, delivery and evaluation of the project, drawing extensive data gathered from student participants. The project is presented in the context of relevant literature from both the textile education, industry, and archive sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can universities ensure that strategic aims to integrate research and teaching through engaging students in research-based experiences be effectively realised within institutions? This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative study exploring academics’ perceptions of the challenges and barriers to implementing undergraduate research. Academics were asked about perceived constraints and enablements, how they defined undergraduate research, the forms of undergraduate research used, and they were encouraged to provide examples. Perceived constraints included particular institutional policies and structures, academics’ mindsets and lack of skills and questions of time and money. It was found that different definitions of undergraduate research lead to different practices and varying opportunities for further development. This paper presents different forms of engagement in undergraduate research allied to these different definitions and it draws on interviewees’ ideas about what has been enabling in their context to suggest possible strategies for institutions to move forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing practices are seen to be essential for professional engineers, yet many engineering students and academics struggle with written communication, despite years of interventions to improve student writing. Much has been written about the importance of getting engineering students to write, but there has been a little investigation of engineering academics' perceptions of writing practices in the curriculum, and the extent to which these practices are visible to their students and to the academics. This paper draws on research from an ongoing study into the invisibility of writing practices in the engineering curriculum using a practice architectures lens. The paper uses examples from the sites of practice of two participants in the study to argue that prevailing practices in engineering education constrain more than enable the development and practice of writing in the engineering curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the commercialisation of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in Australian schools. Specifically, it focuses on understanding why teachers value commercial resources, and how they enact these in their classrooms. Theorising around teacher agency suggests teachers are now choosing to use a range of commercial resources and view these as important additions to their pedagogical toolbox. Teachers want high quality resources, and they prefer resources that are easy to import, scaffold and modify according to their specific needs. Teachers did not readily see the benefit of a prescriptive SEL program. Instead, they wanted multiple resources that they could pick and choose the best bits from. Our data suggests that teachers are not being seduced by commercialisation and the ‘easy fix’ it promises, but are in fact presenting as agentic professionals who care deeply about students’ social and emotional wellbeing and are working to tailor bespoke learning experiences to meet the needs of their students within their specific school contexts. We argue that it is worth nuancing the critique about commercialisation offered in the literature to date, and suggest that commercialisation is not inherently bad, rather it is the ‘intensity’ of commercialisation that needs to be regulated and further investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One approach to enhancing the pedagogy of science education is to employ academics who are not only science-trained but also engaged in education research. As some academics begin their Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research careers with a pure science background, shifting in disciplinary perspectives can be a source of professional tension. The pedagogic frailty model provides a framework that helps us to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching improvements by maintaining a simultaneous focus on critical areas that are thought to impede academic development. This paper draws attention to the importance of disciplinary crossover by uncovering and comparing academics' teaching perspectives, views and beliefs from three disciplines: natural science (chemistry), social science (education) and science education. Through a case study design using the pedagogic frailty model and concept map-mediated interviews as a tool, three academics engaged in a non-linear discourse in which their conceptions could be visualised and analysed. Analysis of the case study interviews indicated that the academics' conceptions of teaching were highly individualised. The discourse surrounding the curriculum, and the embeddedness of and connection between pedagogy and discipline, were both subject-sensitive and influenced by professional backgrounds and research areas. On the other hand, because they operated under the same institutional values and regulations, we found a considerable overlap in terms of how the academics perceived the tensions between research and teaching and academic leadership. By comparing three academics who were at a different stage in the journey from disciplinary experts (chemistry) to teaching expert (education), we were able to uncover and understand more about the ways that the teaching environment impacted upon their practices. The science educator shared aspects of the other two perspectives, which suggests that his profile was a transitory state in comparison with the chemist and the educationist. The findings provide a glimpse of the distinctive nature of the values that underpin teaching and offer insights that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement in science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twenty-first century higher education sector has come a long way after undergoing continuous metamorphosis from pedagogy to andragogy. Most of the educational approaches adopted in medical schools are directed towards developing more of competencies and less of capability, which is the ability to use competencies in novel contexts. Competencies alone are not sufficient to thrive in the present day work place as medical profession subsumes complex contexts; it is in this scenario that, medical educators are entrusted with the challenging task of developing “capable learners”. In the heutagogical approach, learners are required to decide upon what to learn and how to learn and therefore the control of the learning process is on the learner and the role of the teacher becomes that of a navigator. This paper highlights the current higher educational practices based on heutagogy, considers its application in the context of Problem-based learning and also discusses a few challenges in incorporating this approach in the existing undergraduate medical curriculum. The article proposes the use of social media in order to support learner autonomy, which in turn improves learners’ cognitive engagement with content and tasks, thereby assisting the development of attributes associated with capability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Work-integrated learning (WIL) courses can be more time consuming and resource intensive to design, teach, administer and support than classroom-based courses, as they generally require different curricula and pedagogical approaches as well as additional administrative and pastoral responsibilities. Workload and resourcing issues are reported as key challenges to the implementation of WIL, but most of the evidence to date is anecdotal. Accurately quantifying workload associated with WIL is difficult, because teaching and administrative roles can be so interconnected. To address this gap in the literature and inform institutional practice, a study was initiated at an Australian university to collect empirical data on the type and amount of work involved in delivering WIL courses. This paper describes the process of survey development, including literature review, extensive consultation phase and pilot study, all of which had to take account of the inherent power dynamics, politics and sensitivities around measuring staff workload. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pedagogy should be understood as transformative practice, and yet in many cases the neoliberalization and patriarchal structure of higher education institutions can stifle teachers and students. Tourism has been promoted as a vehicle for female empowerment, yet here it is suggested that in order for this to happen, gender must not only be taught in tourism classrooms, but it must be taught adopting a feminist approach. The motivation for this paper is to explore how power dynamics intersect and relate to teaching gender in the tourism classroom in order to highlight potential barriers to gendering the curriculum. Reflexively engaging with my own practice I highlight potential future strategies for academicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the praxis of public administration in India is documented in the literature, its pedagogy, and the formal dissemination of its knowledge, is relatively unexamined. This study determines the status of public administration pedagogy in India through a review of the academic programs in public administration at accredited state, central, and deemed universities. After reviewing a sample of the syllabi of public administration programs, the academic context of the field, and the areas of key emphasis, this paper explores the conceptualization of public administration as an independent academic discipline in India. This study makes a significant contribution to global comparative public administration, and also contributes to developing the nascent literature on public administration pedagogy in present day India and South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduates of apparel programmes are entering a workforce that requires the use of emerging technologies that are relevant to performing job requirements. Among apparel companies, virtual technologies are increasingly being used in the product development process. Virtual technologies are also becoming important in higher education, as programmes seek to incorporate them into the teaching and learning environment. The two-fold purpose of this study was to develop an approach to teaching virtual technology that is apparel industry-specific, and to evaluate outcomes using a framework of learner-centered curriculum design combined with Kirkpatrick's [(1994). Evaluating training programs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler] training evaluation model. A mixed-methods research design was employed, beginning with a presentation to students followed by two weeks of in-class training. Assessment of outcomes was conducted via pre- and post-test comparisons and in-depth interviews. Results indicated improvement in students' attitudes toward the technology and skills important to using it. Findings contribute to the growing literature on teaching virtual technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the current state and new roles of physical education as liberal education (PELE) in higher education. Recently, there has been growing discontent with PELE due to program redundancy and lack of educational power in higher education. However, little attention has been given to how to reconstruct PELE in higher education. To investigate this matter, this article examines (a) the origins and rationale of liberal education; (b) similarities and differences between liberal education, general education, and liberal arts; and (c) connections between liberal education and physical education. To conclude, two challenges of PELE in higher education are presented. These issues need to be overcome to bring PELE authentically into the world of colleges and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, different places in the world have witnessed demands for the decolonization of education. Nevertheless, it is not completely clear how this ought to be carried out. There are various factors that influence what such decolonization may entail, including the geographical place for decolonization and the discipline being decolonized. This requires a specific analysis of each context. In this article, I wish to make a proposal for how to carry out the decolonization of philosophy teaching at the university level in the African context, with a special focus on South Africa. I propose that more African philosophy be included in the curricula, as well as the integration of teaching and assessing methods that reflect African culture. Further, I argue that those seeking for decolonization ought to try to pursue it incrementally, given that it is the best strategy to achieve decolonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on background of social work and social work education as it began in India. It provides details on the curriculum of the discipline and discussions regarding its diversity and specialisations. It, further, highlights the process of indigenization, indigenous knowledge, Indianisation and the various debates related to it. The article also traces, in brief, the developmental history of the social work curricula in India, the University Grants Commission (UGC) review committees and the Model Curriculum. There is a brief description of the Self Learning Material (SLM) developed by the School of Social Work, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi. Towards the end, we have discussed the major findings related to the gaps in social work education in India. This article will be very useful for social work teachers, researchers and practitioners as it will help in building a theoretical understanding of social work education, in general and in context of India, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, gender mainstreaming has increasingly been positioned as a central policy imperative in many countries. At the same time, gender as a focus of academic study has come under attack in the USA and Europe, and some suggest there to be a crisis in feminist teaching. This renders it vital to explore in the context of contemporary higher education where gender and feminist content and approaches are present and absent. This research set out to develop insight through a cross-disciplinary, qualitative case study including documentary analysis alongside staff and student interviews. Findings highlighted contradictions, including that people often claim to champion gender and diversity generally whilst simultaneously rejecting responsibility for the same issues in their own teaching. These insights identify challenges, including attribution of responsibility for inequalities around the representation of gender as belonging elsewhere, with others, in terms of both teaching spaces and temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do performance studies scholars communicate the field to and for students, scholars, and stakeholders? Through an analysis of online data gathered from institutions of higher education in the United States, we investigated how educators narrate performance studies in curricular descriptions. We detail the stated characteristics of performance studies and its object of study; the theories and sources referenced by scholars; and the methodologies, approaches, and techniques educators use and teach (to which ends). These findings and the collective picture they paint provide a guide for current and future scholars and students interested in performance studies praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of college instructors often centers on course ratings; however, there is little evidence that these ratings only reflect teaching. The purpose of this study was to assess the relative importance of three facets of course ratings: instructor, course and occasion. We sampled 2,459 fully-crossed dyads from a large university where two instructors taught the same two courses at least twice in a 3-year period. Generalizability theory was used to estimate unconfounded variance components for instructor, course and occasion, as well as their interactions. Meta-analysis was used to summarize those estimates. Results indicated that a three-way interaction between instructor, course and occasion that includes measurement error accounted for the most variance in student ratings (24%), with instructor accounting for the second largest amount (22%). While instructor - and presumably teaching - accounted for substantial variance in student course ratings, factors other than instructor quality had a larger influence on student ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although numerous universities offer graduate students opportunities to develop their teaching, few studies probe the credit-bearing graduate course in college teaching. A survey of 105 instructors of graduate pedagogy courses in the US and Canada explored their preparation, professional appointments, students, and assignments. Results showed diverse institutional units offer college pedagogy courses, which are taught by instructors with substantial preparation, most frequently to multidisciplinary groups from diverse majors. Many instructors assign teaching statements, though specifics differ. Comparison to the authors' earlier case study reveals an emerging, recognizable, and international course type that coheres in structure, timing, and at least one key assignment. The ubiquity of college pedagogy courses recommends substantial institutional investment, scholarly analysis, and professorial discussion to align them with the contemporary goals and standards of graduate education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinarity has become part of contemporary university discourses on knowledge in both research and curriculum. The move to break down traditional disciplinary boundaries reflects emerging forms of enquiry into knowledge that are less hegemonic and more distributed, and more tuned to its production, practices and the needs of its practitioners. A focus on complex problems that draws on multiple knowledge domains and an emphasis on professional knowledge have engendered a loosening of discipline boundaries in the development of curriculum and degree programmes. In this case study, we investigated teaching practices across discipline boundaries: how interdisciplinary curriculum and teaching are understood, practiced and supported within an Australian university that typifies a discipline-based organisational structure. Through interviews with relevant academics, managers and professionals, we explored the challenges and strategies in sustaining interdisciplinary curricula that were managed between several disciplinary Schools. Our findings were two-fold: engagement with interdisciplinary knowledge had profound effects on academic culture and identities among participating students and teaching staff; and significant challenges arose in the coordination and administration of interdisciplinary education, with institutional structures highlighted as a contributing factor. While the literature on interdisciplinary education emphasises academic collaborations and leadership, there has been less attention to the role of institutional processes - mediated by procedures, artefacts and routines - in supporting and sustaining interdisciplinary education. Aspects of the case study are used to analyse the conflicting practices arising with interdisciplinary education, and to develop the potential for boundary crossing modes of interdisciplinary governance to counter the legacy of discipline-based structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes a critique of using Post-Development as a tool in teaching an introductory course in development studies. Such a debate was initiated by Harcourt in a previous issue of Third World Quarterly as she reflected on her teaching experience in a European Institution. Harcourt concludes that the lack of engagement of some of the students in the course reflects the unwillingness of privileged middle-class pupils to challenge western lifestyles. I draw on a critical realist meta-theory about the process of learning in higher education to challenge the ontological support of that conclusion and invite her to reconsider her teaching strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curricula do not fall onto the page fully formed, but are built around a series of choices made by educators. The curriculum establishes which knowledge is considered valid and which is not; the works of women and people of colour are typically underrepresented within curricula, and the issues affecting these groups are frequently neglected. This article examines three groups seeking to change this within higher education (Rhodes Must Fall, Why is My Curriculum White?, and Women Also Know Stuff) asking three questions: how can they be characterised? How do they operate? Why are they important? Drawing upon, and expanding, the work of Paolo Freire, this article argues that these groups utilise feminist principles and methods to demand a Pedagogy of the Oppressed. A feminist reading of the theory of representation, borrowed from analyses of legislative politics, helps us understand why higher education curricula should be more representative of society, allowing practitioners to advocate for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student evaluations of teaching are widely adopted across academic institutions, but there are many underlying trends and biases that can influence their interpretation. Publicly accessible web-based student evaluations of teaching are of particular relevance, due to their widespread use by students in the course selection process and the quantity of data available for analysis. In this study, data from the most popular of these websites, RateMyProfessors.com, is analysed for correlations between measures of instruction quality, easiness, physical attractiveness, discipline and gender. This study of 7,882,980 RateMyProfessors ratings (from 190,006 US professors with at least 20 student ratings) provides further insight into student perceptions of academic instruction and possible variables in student evaluations. Positive correlations were observed between ratings of instruction quality and easiness, as well as between instruction quality and attractiveness. On average, professors in science and engineering disciplines have lower ratings than in the humanities and arts. When looking at RateMyProfessors as a whole, the effect of a professor’s gender on rating criteria is small but statistically significant. When analysing the data as a function of discipline, however, the effects of gender are significantly more pronounced, albeit more complex. The potential implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As English-medium instruction (EMI) spreads around the world, university teachers and students who are non-native speakers of English (NNS) need to put much effort into the delivery or reception of content. Construction of scientific meaning in the process of learning is already complex when instruction is delivered in the first language of the teachers and students, and may become even more challenging in a second language, because science education depends greatly on language. In order to identify important pedagogical functions that teachers use to deliver content and to present different ways to realise each function, a corpus of lectures related to science and engineering courses was created and analysed. NNS teachers and students in science and engineering involved in EMI higher education can obtain insights for delivering and listening to lectures from the Online Corpus of Academic Lectures (OnCAL). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using Dewey’s method of resolution for resolving a dualism exemplified inThe Child and the Curriculum,this article reconciles and brings together two rival schools of thought – curriculum theory and didactics – in China. The central thesis is that the rapprochement requires a reconceptualisation of curriculum theory and didactics in light of the Practical and the GermanDidaktiktradition, respectively, together with an understanding of their complementary relationship within the societal, institutional and instructional contexts of schooling. The article concludes by drawing implications for reconstructing curriculum theory and didactics within the context of China’s recent curriculum reform and for the international dialogue of curriculum vs.Didaktik. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mature students’ experiences of learning and teaching on Access to Higher Education course are coloured by their socio-economic backgrounds, their prior experiences of learning and their relationships with their tutors. After giving informed consent, 60 students and 20 tutors across seven colleges in a region of England in 2012–2013 took part in interviews on these topics, the former group on three occasions during the academic year. A further 500 students across the colleges completed two questionnaires during the year. Qualitative data were analysed inductively. Quantitative data were analysed with simple descriptive statistics. Findings suggest that students preferred tutors who treated them respectfully, modelled effective learning practices clearly and empowered them to be independent learners. They also welcomed working collaboratively with their fellow students and being supported by the institutions they attended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Traditionally in Canada, attention to political or civic education has been at the primary- or secondary-school level. This study focuses on the place of civic engagement in introductory Canadian politics and government university courses in Canada by surveying instructors on their attitudes and approaches to civic engagement in the classroom. Surveying 28 instructors from across the country from large and small, English and French institutions, we compared survey results to collected course syllabi from the participants. In our study, we found that there is a clear disconnect between what instructors believe is the most effective way to foster civic engagement and what they are assigning their students to complete for course requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]