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Rapid developments in ideas of knowledge, the role of educational technologies and the needs of students suggest that innovation is important in higher education. However, many factors can affect how and whether innovation occurs. In a study of identified innovative teachers, five thematic dimensions were identified that served to support or constrain pedagogical innovation: the teacher, the institution, colleagues, students and the teaching environment. In this paper we discuss the ways in which innovative teachers experienced each theme within their practice. We also consider how individuals and institutions might better support pedagogical innovation.

Academic transcripts record students' learning, providing a grade which indicates the student has achieved a certified level of disciplinary knowledge and skill. However, recognising what a graduate has accomplished during a course, or over a programme is much more involved: it includes not only disciplinary awareness but students' learning processes (e.g., autonomous learning), social aptitude (e.g., diversity awareness and collaborative skills), and even their professional readiness (e.g., time-management and resilience). Such learning is often invisible on university academic rubrics and transcripts, and may be difficult for students to articulate and evidence to others. In this article, we introduce the concept of 'invisible' graduate attributes at the tertiary level, distinguishing such unassessed/unassessable attributes from more visible graduate attributes. We then introduce our conceptual framework, SEEN, for articulating, evidencing and actively developing 'invisible' attributes. We argue that the SEEN framework provides the basis for a toolkit for students, lecturers and employers.

The ability to reflect and self-assess are essential attributes for graduates to develop during their education. At many tertiary institutions, peer and lecturer-assessment contribute to summative assessment, but self-assessment, whilst recommended for development, does not. In order to make a case for the inclusion of self-assessment as a summative assessment task its reliability needs to be analysed, tested and established. This paper reports a study comparing the alignment of self, peer and lecturer-assessment of 34 pre-service teacher-education students and their lecturer. Students annotated a teaching artefact evidencing their attainment of an Aotearoa New Zealand Graduating Teacher Standard. Peer groups of students and their lecturer also assessed the annotated artefacts using the same collaboratively constructed assessment rubric and feedback sheet. While 59% of self, peer and lecturer-assessments fully aligned, in the remaining 41% many of the participants awarded lower grades to their achievement, indicating less confidence concerning their attainment than their peers and lecturer did. Emerging themes from the annotations of those students whose self-ratings were lower than those of their peers and/or the lecturer indicate a need for further research focussed on the potential influence of self-efficacy and cultural responsiveness on the reliability of self-assessment.

Numerous higher education researchers have studied the ways in which students' or academics' beliefs and conceptions affect their educational experiences and outcomes. However, studying the learning-teaching relationship has proved challenging, requiring researchers to simultaneously address both the invisible internal world(s) of the student and teacher, and the observable communicative world they inhabit. This paper describes the development of a methodological approach for exploring the learning-teaching relationship based on an interdisciplinary conceptual model -- The Learning-Teaching Nexus (LTN). We describe the ways in which disciplinary perspectives within the model were translated into methodological processes, enabling us to study teaching and learning as both individual experiences and a shared communicative relationship. The paper aims to provide researchers with a staged approach for studying learning and teaching together, and to illustrate how interdisciplinary perspectives can be translated into staged but integrated methodological processes in order to address complex educational questions.

The teaching-learning relationship is often described as a conversation. However, many models of teaching and learning depict the worlds of teacher and learner as enclosed and inaccessible, linked by apparently transferred communicative meanings. A new interdisciplinary learning-teaching nexus (LTN) model combines perspectives from higher education, linguistic pragmatics and Gadamerian hermeneutics to conceptualise the learning-teaching nexus as a communicative relationship. The LTN model depicts teaching and learning as simultaneously individual experiences, affected by personal epistemological, contextual and situational assumptions, and a shared communicative space, in which communicators and their addressees work to reach mutual understandings. This paper outlines the LTN model, explaining how it extends earlier frameworks, and discusses implications for educational practice and future research.

Academics implementing graduate attributes, and the educational developers who support those academics, may experience graduate attributes and disciplinary knowledge and skills as unrelated dimensions of curriculum. Gestalt conceptions of curriculum, together with a figure-ground understanding of the relationship between disciplinary understanding and university-determined graduate attributes may help support a more integrated view. We reflect on the ways in which, by adopting these concepts in curriculum conversations, educational developers and university academics might together define, identify, and develop graduate attributes in disciplinary contexts in integrated ways.

Graduate capabilities are an essential aspect of undergraduate development in higher education. Accordingly, La Trobe University's "Design for learning" has identified particular university-wide graduate capabilities and required all faculties to explicitly embed these in their curricula. The Faculty of Law and Management developed an approach to map the teaching and assessment of eight graduate capabilities across the first year of the faculty's degree programmes, allowing staff to evaluate the embedding of graduate capabilities and identifying where they might further develop their curricula. This article describes a process designed to collect, analyse and present data on current teaching and assessment of graduate capabilities. The discursive approach supports reflective practice in curriculum design while the resulting heat maps provide diagrammatic accounts of current practices and indicators of where redesign of curriculum should centre. (Contains 4 figures.)

Despite considerable research on teaching and learning in higher education, the relationship between university teachers' and students' understandings of the same teaching-learning events has not been a focus. This exploratory qualitative study used individual interviews to investigate the role of conceptions of teaching, learning and knowledge in a lecturer's and three first-year students' understandings of a lecture on "Hamlet" and to compare the meaning intended by the lecturer with that perceived by his students. A video-taped lecture was used as a focus for discussion in interviews and individual case studies were developed. Case studies were compared to explore whether lecturer and student conceptions could explain their relative lecture descriptions. The concept of "communicative alignment" was adopted to describe this teaching-learning relationship. (Contains 2 tables.)

Rapid developments in ideas of knowledge, the role of educational technologies and the needs of students suggest that innovation is important in higher education. However, many factors can affect how and whether innovation occurs. In a study of identified innovative teachers, five thematic dimensions were identified that served to support or constrain pedagogical innovation: the teacher, the institution, colleagues, students and the teaching environment. In this paper we discuss the ways in which innovative teachers experienced each theme within their practice. We also consider how individuals and institutions might better support pedagogical innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to reflect and self-assess are essential attributes for graduates to develop during their education. At many tertiary institutions, peer and lecturer-assessment contribute to summative assessment, but selfassessment, whilst recommended for development, does not. In order to make a case for the inclusion of self-assessment as a summative assessment task its reliability needs to be analysed, tested and established. This paper reports a study comparing the alignment of self, peer and lecturer-assessment of 34 pre-service teacher-education students and their lecturer. Students annotated a teaching artefact evidencing their attainment of an Aotearoa New Zealand Graduating Teacher Standard. Peer groups of students and their lecturer also assessed the annotated artefacts using the same collaboratively constructed assessment rubric and feedback sheet. While 59% of self, peer and lecturer-assessments fully aligned, in the remaining 41% many of the participants awarded lower grades to their achievement, indicating less confidence concerning their attainment than their peers and lecturer did. Emerging themes from the annotations of those students whose self-ratings were lower than those of their peers and/or the lecturer indicate a need for further research focussed on the potential influence of self-efficacy and cultural responsiveness on the reliability of self-assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching–learning relationship is often described as a conversation. However, many models of teaching and learning depict the worlds of teacher and learner as enclosed and inaccessible, linked by apparently transferred communicative meanings. A new interdisciplinary learning–teaching nexus (LTN) model combines perspectives from higher education, linguistic pragmatics and Gadamerian hermeneutics to conceptualise the learning–teaching nexus as a communicative relationship. The LTN model depicts teaching and learning as simultaneously individual experiences, affected by personal epistemological, contextual and situational assumptions, and a shared communicative space, in which communicators and their addressees work to reach mutual understandings. This paper outlines the LTN model, explaining how it extends earlier frameworks, and discusses implications for educational practice and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the five issues that need to be addressed by academic developers in academic development in New Zealand universities, which include research/teaching tension, the postgraduate qualifications and professionalism, and support and development of casual teaching staff.

Academics implementing graduate attributes, and the educational developers who support those academics, may experience graduate attributes and disciplinary knowledge and skills as unrelated dimensions of curriculum. Gestalt conceptions of curriculum, together with a figure-ground understanding of the relationship between disciplinary understanding and university-determined graduate attributes may help support a more integrated view. We reflect on the ways in which, by adopting these concepts in curriculum conversations, educational developers and university academics might together define, identify, and develop graduate attributes in disciplinary contexts in integrated ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]