Marina Harvey

• Ph.D, M.Ed, B.Ed
• Honorary Associate Professor at Macquarie University

The novel variable of competitiveness is explored to determine whether it has a role in differentiating high performing students from others. While the Big Five personality traits and motivation have been well-researched in relation to academic performance, the concept of competitiveness has yet to receive such attention. The competitiveness of bus...

Action research (AR) offers an ideological fit with the culture and the work of the academy - they share a culture of collegiality, evidence- and theory-based practice, and a focus on reflection and evaluation to inform change and innovation. An AR approach and methodology are also integral to the development of leadership capacity for learning and...

Want to know about different ways to reflect for learning in higher education? A new scholarly practice guide has been developed by Australian academics. Read more here: http://ow.ly/df9P50y9Unx

Reflective practice can support student learning by enabling praxis: the bridging of the theory of the classroom with the students’ learning experience. Students’ written reflections are the most common mode for practising and documenting reflection. Available typologies for coding the level of student written reflections focus on the cognitive dom...

A growing body of research supports the learning and teaching of reflective practice in higher education; however, the application of reflective skills beyond the classroom, and specifically in professional development, is underdeveloped. While the value of reflective practice may not be clearly apparent for academic and professional staff, univers...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to build on the foundational theories of personality and motivation to explore the role of competitiveness and of ethnicity in relation to student academic performance. Survey data from 328 students across four sites (Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong and Korea) provided self-rated responses to items measuring pers...

Distributed leadership is a leadership approach that aligns with, and supports, the creating and sustaining of Communities of Practice (CoP) in higher education. Agreeing with the editors’ proposition that CoP need to be positioned within the broader social learning literature, the proposition is expanded to consider the relationship between CoP an...

The Australian higher education sector depends on sessional staff to undertake the majority of teaching. Despite the fact that sessional staff are central to the university, sessional staff report feeling isolated and invisible. There are few opportunities for sessional staff to participate in professional development or to engage in teaching teams...

Reflective practice can support a mindful and focussed approach to deep learning, enabling the bridging between theory and the students’ learning experience. This practice can range from creative pursuits to heeding felt knowing, integrated into the curricula to support praxis. Indeed, the embedding of reflective mechanism(s) is a requirement of le...

The higher education sector operates in an increasingly complex global environment that is placing it under considerable stress and resulting in widespread change to the operating context and leadership of higher education institutions. The outcome has been the increased likelihood of conflict between academics and senior leaders, presaging the nee...

Higher education is under pressure to advance from a singular focus on assessment of outputs (measurements) to encompass the impact (influence) of initiatives across all aspects of academic endeavour (research, learning and teaching, and leadership). This paper focuses on the implications of this shift for leadership in higher education. Demonstrat...

The use of mentoring for staff development is well established within schools and the business sector, yet it has received limited consideration in the higher education literature as an approach to supporting learning for academics. In this study located at one metropolitan university in Australia, an online questionnaire and one-on-one semi-struct...

One response to the global trend of increasing rates of student participation in tertiary education has been for universities to increase the number of intensive mode of delivery subjects available. This phenomenon extends to science subjects. Embarking on offering an undergraduate science subject in intensive mode for the first time at the Austral...

Anecdotal and empirical evidence indicates that mentoring can be a successful strategy for supporting professional learning, yet limited literature exists on approaches to mentoring designed specifically for academics working in higher education. The aim of this study was to create an approach to mentoring tailored to the needs of academics and und...

Purpose – In the higher education sector, the evaluation of learning and teaching projects is assuming a role as a quality and accountability indicator. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how learning and teaching project evaluation is approached and critiques alignment between evaluation theory and practice. Design/methodology/approach...

Reflective practice is widely adopted across the field of experience-based learning subjects in higher education, including practicums, work-integrated learning, internships, service learning and community participation. This adoption of reflective practice implies that it supports student learning through experience. When reviewing the evidence fo...

As the number of students engaging in higher education increases, so too does their diversity. Additionally, there is growing pressure on universities to better prepare graduates for the varied paths they will pursue beyond study. In responding to these conditions it is important to develop pedagogical approaches that are both inclusive and engagin...

Dear Colleagues, I am delighted and proud to introduce this special issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice that focuses on Reflection for Learning in Higher Education. It is the outcome of six years of collaborative reflection, practice and research by many reflective practitioners who have undertaken systematic research...

This paper reports on the second phase of a wider study on evaluation of locally funded learning and teaching projects in higher education. A review of the extant literature in this area shows that there is little evidence of the extent to which the alignment between theory and practice, or praxis, of such evaluation is achieved. The first phase es...

A growing body of research supports the learning and teaching of reflective practice in higher education, however, the development of reflective skills beyond the classroom and specifically in organisational learning is underdeveloped. While the value of reflective practice may not be clearly apparent for academic and professional staff, the comple...

Sessional Staff provide the majority of the teaching in higher education in Australasia. This HERDSA Guide provides advice and practical strategies to assist institutions to work towards systematising good practice for learning and teaching with sessional staff across all institutional levels. Each chapter targets a specific audience, focusing on t...

Reflective practice can play a key role in the collaborative education curriculum as it supports learners with developing a capacity to build cognitive bridges between the theory of the classroom and their professional or community experience. The argument presented is that a whole of institution and aligned approach to reflective practice may buil...

Changes facing higher education from increased government, student and community demands are resulting in a greater focus on leadership within universities. Attempts to adapt to higher education theory that underpins leadership in other sectors have been criticised for failing to recognise its unique role in the development of creative and innovati...

Over the last 20 years, the tertiary education sector has adopted new administrative management approaches, with the aim of improving accountable and strategic focus. Over the same period, the question of how to build leadership capacity to improve learning and teaching and research outcomes has led to discussion on what constitutes academic leader...

The development of a standards-based assessment policy represented a significant cultural shift in assessment practice at one university. Concurrently, the implementation of a policy framework represented a significant procedural shift in policy development and review. The assessment policy was the first policy scheduled to be reviewed through the...

Most universities offer a program to prepare their academics for university teaching. One common focus of these programs across Australia is that of developing academics as reflective practitioners. A variety of approaches and strategies are adopted towards achieving this outcome. This chapter presents a rationale and case study for the pivotal rol...

Evaluation plays an increasingly important role in the quality-driven context of higher education. Projects that focus on learning and teaching often have evaluation expected of them, however, there is little evidence on the effectiveness of approaches nor the extent to which the praxis of evaluation is achieved. To illustrate this phenomenon, proj...

Most universities offer a program to prepare their academics for university teaching. One common focus of these programs across Australia is that of developing academics as reflective practitioners. A variety of approaches and strategies are adopted towards achieving this outcome. This chapter presents a rationale and case study for the pivotal rol...

Across the Australian Higher Education sector a focus on quality is driving a new paradigm for learning and teaching: quality standards. One challenge is to engage all academics with this progress towards systematic quality enhancement and assurance. Sessional staff, who provide most of the face-to-face teaching in Australian universities, remain a...

Benchmarking as a type of knowledge-sharing around good practice within and between institutions is increasingly common in the higher education sector. More recently, benchmarking as a process that can contribute to quality enhancement has been deployed across numerous institutions with a view to systematising frameworks to assure and enhance the q...

This marks my final issue as Senior Editor of JUTLP and I would like to congratulate the new senior editorial team: Romy Lawson, Alisa Percy and Dominique Parrish. I know I leave the journal in very good hands and the leadership team will ensure that JUTLP will continue to champion teaching and learning in higher education. I would like to also tha...

Reflection is widely posited as a professional practice and process that supports students to learn through experience. Effective reflection for learning through experience requires a high level of introspection and open-minded self-analysis, a capacity for abstract learning, and self-regulation and agency that few students in higher education inna...

Action Research is being adopted as a research and project method for the higher education learning and teaching sector. A researcher new to Action Research may need to be scaffolded through the process of validating their research as Action Research, asking the question ‘am I really doing Action Research?’ A multi-disciplinary team of Action Resea...

Reflective practice is widely considered for its contribution to learning through experience (Caldicott, 2010). Current learning and teaching design across WIL often relies on reflective journals or diaries as the dominant form for documenting and assessing reflection (e.g., Clarke and Burgess; Stupans and Owens; McNamara, 2009). However, there are...

The concept of curriculum alignment is held as a guiding principle of good curriculum design in higher education. Curriculum alignment can be mapped using a variety of strategies and tools. This paper reports on a project that expands the horizons of curriculum review by applying a novel methodology, word clouds, to investigate the use of student r...

University foundations programs are offered by the majority of universities across Australia. These programs provide professional learning to support academics with learning and teaching in higher education. A subsequent challenge is that of sustaining and expanding the professional learning opportunities by developing individual and organisational...

New models of leadership are needed for the higher education sector to continue to graduate students with leading edge capabilities. While multiple theories of leadership exist, the higher education sector requires a less hierarchical approach that takes account of its specialised and professional context. Over the last decade the sector has explor...

Within Higher Education there exists a body of work on the how and why of evaluation of educational programs. Academic teaching staff are also highly conversant in the processes and benefits of evaluation of their own teaching. However there is little evidence in the literature of the evaluation of learning and teaching projects in the Higher Educa...

Assessment of student learning in experience-based education is recognised as being a complex but important task. Practitioners are faced with a myriad of practical and pedagogical issues that influence what and how they assess, and can severely impact the effectiveness of assessment strategies. This paper presents a synthesised overview of the lit...

New models of leadership are required if the higher education sector is to continue to provide leading edge change. While multiple theories of leadership exist, the Higher Education sector requires a less hierarchical approach that takes account of its specialised and professional context. This paper explores how an action self enabling tool, devel...

Assessment is a critical endeavour with implications for students, universities, industry and the wider community. The measurement of student learning, however, presents many challenges, particularly in the context of cooperative education, work-integrated learning, work-based learning, service learning and other models of learning through particip...

Reflection is widely used in cooperative education to support learning and praxis; however, a review of the literature reveals limited empirical evidence for the correlation between reflection and positive student learning outcomes. As with any ‘wicked’ issue, there are multiple positions on reflection. A substantial body of anecdotal evidence, to...

Sessional staff make significant contributions as members of the teaching communities at Australian and international universities. These staff are diverse in their backgrounds, their career paths and their skills. New frameworks are needed to firstly acknowledge the diversity of sessional staff and then to determine the policies, processes and str...

Our conceptual paradigm of work and family has shifted in the past decade from one that viewed managing work and family as a challenge to a contemporary view that we are facing a 'collision' (Pocock, 2003) between work and family. This review of work and family research begins to explore the shifting conceptualisations, outlining demographic develo...