Higher Education Research & Development

Higher Education Research & Development

Published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia

Online ISSN: 1469-8366

·

Print ISSN: 0729-4360

Disciplines: Higher Education

Journal websiteAuthor guidelines

Top-read articles

98 reads in the past 30 days

Groupwork and collaborative learning: Chinese university students’ struggles and strategies

May 2023

·

888 Reads

·

5 Citations

University students’ collaborative learning, particularly groupwork, has been more often investigated in Western settings than in countries that have borrowed this Western pedagogy. This qualitative study re-examines Chinese university students’ groupwork responses regarding their expectations, attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Their responses, the findings revealed, could be conceptualized as strategic navigation resulting from students, as rational and pragmatic learners, negotiating and navigating the interplay among multiple cultures of learning brought by policies, teachers, and the labor market. The study supplements the literature on collaborative learning and borrowed pedagogy and reflects university policymakers’ and teachers’ need to rethink making student groupwork truly collaborative.

Download

74 reads in the past 30 days

Teacher feedback literacy, feedback regimes and iterative change: towards enhanced value in feedback processes

April 2023

·

551 Reads

·

11 Citations

This paper discusses teacher capacities for implementing learning-focused feedback processes within the social contexts of feedback regimes. Data are derived from longitudinal interviews carried out with six recipients of an award for good feedback practice; supplemented by documentary analysis of feedback artefacts; and an interview with the key instigator of the feedback award. Key elements of teacher feedback literacy are highlighted: designing feedback processes for student uptake; reflecting upon students’ responses to feedback; and iterative refinement of practices over time on the basis of cumulative experience. Engaging reflectively with students’ struggles with feedback potentially encourages teachers to adjust practices in the direction of learning-focused feedback processes, indicative of reflective feedback literacy. Broader social contexts in which feedback processes are enacted, including disciplinary and workload-related factors, are influenced by the feedback regimes that hold practices in place. Feedback regimes underpin the social practice of feedback in highlighting routines and procedures facilitating or constraining learning-focused feedback processes. Change elements of salience, congruence and value cast light on prospects for structural refinements to feedback regimes. A value perspective on change envisages making feedback practices satisfying for teachers as well as useful for students.

Aims and scope


Higher Education Research & Development publishes scholarly articles on the theory and practice of higher education and educational development.

  • Higher Education Research & Development (HERD) is an international peer-reviewed journal, established in 1982 as the principal learned journal of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA).
  • Higher Education Research & Development informs and challenges researchers, teachers, administrators, policy-makers and others concerned with the past, present and future of higher education.
  • The journal publishes scholarly articles that make a significant and original contribution to the field of higher education.
  • Empirical, theoretical, philosophical and historical articles that address higher education in any of its dimensions will be considered.
  • We welcome research that interrogates, challenges and reflects upon pressing issues in higher education, drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological frameworks.
  • All articles must propose fresh critical insights into the area being addressed and be appropriately framed for an international audience.

For a full list of the subject areas this journal covers, please visit the journal website.

Recent articles


Towards conceptual clarity in pedagogical research: the case of the ‘imposter phenomenon’ jingle/jangle fallacy
  • Article

March 2025

·

8 Reads





Students’ experience of comparison-based learning in self-assessment: a phenomenographic study in higher education

March 2025

·

23 Reads

This paper explores, through a phenomenographic analysis, how higher education students experience comparison-based learning processes embedded in self-assessment activities. By combining observations and interviews, the paper offers a threefold contribution: (1) it provides two in-depth narratives of self-assessment activities; (2) it develops a typology that distinguishes between explicit versus implicit and analogical versus analytical comparisons; and (3) it proposes an outcome space to illustrate how students experience these contrasting assignments. The analysis detects a specific value of analogical comparisons for self-generated learning and of analytical comparisons for a better understanding of the course stakes. In both cases, making comparisons explicit is a way to foster cognitive and metacognitive benefits. Additionally, the findings indicate that comparisons with peer productions should receive special attention as students are less familiar with them than with traditional instructor feedback. Lastly, results suggest that consistency in self-marking should not always be interpreted as an indicator of powerful self-assessment. These insights hold implications for researchers and educators concerned with the ins and outs of self-assessment practice. https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/AZRCAEJH4WGMIC2BZX5K/full?target=10.1080/07294360.2025.2463521


Master's thesis supervision in Hong Kong: a narrative inquiry

March 2025

·

69 Reads

This paper reports on a study of master's thesis supervision in taught postgraduate programs. The study employed qualitative narrative inquiry, drawing on interviews with 15 supervisors in applied linguistics at UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong. From the supervisors' accounts of their supervisory experiences, four core narratives have been constructed: scholarly partnership, directional partnership, affiliative partnership, and non-directive involvement. In each type of story, the meaning of thesis supervision, the supervision process, and the outcome are viewed and experienced differently. Supervisors engaged in scholarly partnership aimed to cultivate scholarly attitudes and identities in students. The narrative of affiliative partnership emphasized the significance of compassion and understanding in the supervisory process. While supervisors in directional partnership focused on helping students produce a high-quality thesis, supervisors favoring non-directive involvement expected students to plan and carry out their research projects independently. The idea of partnership and a positive supervisory experience were present in all narratives except the non-directive one. The findings underscore the need to reflect critically on the prevalent narratives of supervision with a view to enhancing students' thesis-writing experiences and outcomes. ARTICLE HISTORY



Awareness, understandings, and teaching practices surrounding academic oracy in university preparation pathways
  • Article
  • Full-text available

February 2025

·

15 Reads

University preparation pathways are an important equity mechanism for opening access to higher education to under-represented students. A vital focus of pathways education is on the academic literacy practices needed for successful undergraduate study, and this appears to mainly focus on academic writing development. Therefore, despite academic speaking and listening – known as academic oracy – also holding a crucial role in supporting students’ engagement with content, critical thinking, groupwork, teaching and learning, and in enhancing their success, the extent to which academic oracy forms part of pathways courses alongside other academic literacy practices remains unclear. Drawing on semi-structured interview data from pathways educators working in university-based pathways in six universities, we argue that consensus about the importance of academic oracy in pathways education is in contrast to awareness or expertise about how to use talk to better support student engagement and success. We make the case for a professional development agenda to upskill educators, and students, to better use academic oracy for equitable participation in undergraduate classrooms. We also propose using the more accessible term, ‘academic talk’, as part of this development to emphasise the intentional use of speaking and listening to engage students in learning across disciplinary contexts.



Assessment of class participation in online and offline learning environments: a qualitative investigation of teachers' best practices and challenges Assessment of class participation in online and offline learning environments: a qualitative investigation of teachers' best practices and challenges

February 2025

·

71 Reads

Class participation is an important indicator of student engagement. As research on assessing class participation is relatively scarce, questions of how to achieve reliability in assessing class participation and how to minimize subjectivity in the process remain to be addressed. As assessment approaches get updated in the era of Generative AI, there is a need to revisit the topic to uncover the various ways educators assess class participation in both physical and virtual classrooms. This study aimed to gather the best practices and challenges of higher education teachers in assessing class participation in online and offline (physical/face-to-face) learning. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 teachers from all 10 faculties in a university in Hong Kong. We found that strategies employed in assessing participation are associated with the type of learner, type of course, technology available, teachers' training, support, and resources, the learning context, and intended learning outcomes. Findings also point to the potential of technology-enabled assessment in helping students achieve intended learning outcomes, with teachers playing a huge role in terms of ensuring constructive alignment among intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessments. Recommendations to maximize the use of digital technologies in higher education are discussed. ARTICLE HISTORY




Stereotypes and biases in recruiting PhD holders: a professional profile experiment

February 2025

·

10 Reads

PhD holders often report facing negative stereotypes in recruitment, though the extent and impact remain unclear. We investigated the content and consequences of these stereotypes in recruitment contexts. Specifically, we examined how 220 recruiters perceived PhD holders’ professional profiles and their job suitability for a specific role, comparing typical PhDs, industrial PhDs, PhDEngineers, and Engineers. Results showed that while PhD holders were generally viewed positively, they were stereotyped as less competent than engineers. Despite this, perceived job suitability was similar across profiles. Gender stereotypes also emerged, with women’s profiles rated more positively but not preferred for job offers. These findings shed new light on how PhD holders are stereotyped and the potential impact of these stereotypes. They also suggest that recruiters and job seekers should be mindful of these biases in recruitment.



Supervising sensitive Masters dissertation research: challenges and mitigation strategies

February 2025

·

3 Reads

An understanding of who is affected by involvement in sensitive research has recently undergone closer examination. While the emotional risk to participants is widely acknowledged, scholars argue that emotional care should be extended to everyone in a research team. Yet work in this area presupposes that those who explore sensitive topics are already familiar with the field, and are to some extent prepared for the material they encounter. In the contemporary UK university, however, academics are required to supervise Masters level student projects in areas where they are not specialised, including sensitive themes. This paper provides a unique perspective in reflecting on the experience of a supervisor working with a Masters student on a dissertation exploring narratives of sexual violence, a field outside the supervisor’s academic specialism. Drawing on the theory of emotional labour, as applied to academic supervisory work, we discuss the project’s challenges, how it was approached, and what can be learned from this. Thus we make a significant contribution to literature on Masters supervision, highlighting the need for greater attention to be paid when allocating dissertation supervisors, and calling for more robust support for those working with students on sensitive research.




In the cleft of a rock: Experiences in the in-between space of learning among undergraduate arts and design students

January 2025

·

11 Reads

·

2 Citations

The in-between space ignites learning as individuals journey from dependence on the institution to independence from the institution. This space has hitherto been holistically undefined in the context of higher arts education. The study aims to explore such experiences within the lifeworld of student scholars in the fields of arts and design. Through interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study unravels emotional and mental states of being in-between at a higher education arts institution in Singapore. The findings highlight freedom, courage, disillusionment, discomfort, imposter syndrome, and feeling burn-out. Multiple engagements in the space in-between show a purposeful letting go of uncertainties for the sake of embracing ambiguities. This state fosters playful learning, exploration, creativity and innovation. Caught between one state and another, individuals experience different states of being at each stage of learning, which can be disempowering. Yet, individuals embrace the in-between space as a natural part of the journey in transformative learning. The results evince that being in-between was accepted as a necessary part of learning towards professionalism in the arts. The paper concludes with practical implications on how expanding a locus of learning experiences beyond the university can inform curriculum futures in higher education.



The Homeification of Learning in Higher Education

January 2025

·

7 Reads

Homeification refers to the intensification of the home environment through the accelerated lifestyle changes triggered by the COVID- 19 pandemic. These changes resulted in blurred and altered boundaries between places and new relations with spaces, things, and technologies. Drawing on multi-modal creative research with UK undergraduate students, this paper interrogates what ‘home’ represents, produces, and excludes for learners and learning in higher education, drawing on Braidotti to explore the entangled and subtle nature of these differences. We then recommend considering the possibilities and closures that ‘home’ produces for diverse learners and for universities working towards more inclusive and authentic practices, relations and pedagogies.


Figure 1. A conceptual framework of Third Space COIL exchange (Wimpenny et al., 2022, p. 289).
Collaborative online international learning as a postdigital connected, embodied, relational & (socio)material Third Space: female voices

January 2025

·

19 Reads






Journal metrics


2.6 (2023)

Journal Impact Factor™


13%

Acceptance rate


7.3 (2023)

CiteScore™


25 days

Acceptance to publication


2.174 (2023)

SNIP


1.428 (2023)

SJR

Editors