No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Ways of thinking and practising: Highlighting the complexities of higher education curriculum
Innovations in Education and Teaching International
Abstract
There is often little opportunity to think deeply about educational practice, and curriculum in particular in universities today, yet this is a much-needed conversation as graduates encounter an increasingly complex world. We propose ways of thinking and practising (WTP) as an idea to help frame these complex conversations. In this conceptual paper, we suggest that WTP provides an opportunity to think about curriculum in four key ways. The first is WTP help foster an integrated and holistic view of curriculum. The second is WTP help to focus learning on multiple knowledge forms, as well as production, circulation and application. Third, WTP signal the importance of simultaneously developing student agency whilst inducting students into disciplinary communities. Finally, WTP help focus learning on real-world needs. The complexity of WTP transects the epistemological, ontological and axiological concerns facing today’s universities, providing academics with a framework to engage with curriculum from multiple perspectives.
... Ähnlich wie beim Studienerfolg gibt es keine einheitliche Definition eines universitären Curriculums (Barradell, Barrie, & Peseta, 2018;Fraser & Bosanquet, 2006;Genn, 2001a;Harden, 2001;D. F. Walker, 2002). ...
... F. Walker, 2002). Darüber hinaus sind alle Lehr-und Lernaktivitäten, alle Prüf-und Evaluierungsprozesse sowie alle am Lernprozess beteiligten Personen Teil des Curriculums (Barradell et al., 2018;Fraser & Bosanquet, 2006;Genn, 2001a;Prideaux, 2003;Stark & Lattuca, 1997). Zwischen den Bestandteilen eines Curriculums entwickelt sich ein dynamischer und interaktiver Prozess (Fraser & Bosanquet, 2006;Genn, 2001a). ...
... Die Studierenden nehmen ihre Lernumgebung und das übermittelte Curriculum entsprechend ihrer individuellen Ressourcen und Eigenschaften (Vorbedingungen) auf unterschiedliche Art und Weise wahr (Baumert et al., 2006;Billett, 2015;Entwistle, 2009;Hafferty, 1998;Lizzio, Wilson, & Simons, 2002;Prideaux, 2003). Diese Wahrnehmung bedingt die Motivation und das Handeln der Studierenden und beeinflusst dadurch ihr Engagement (Appleton, Christenson, & Furlong, 2008;Newmann, Wehlage, & Lamborn, 1992) und den Lernprozess (Barradell et al., 2018;Billett, 2004Billett, , 2015Genn, 2001a;Mattick & Knight, 2007;Schauber et al., 2015). ...
Study success in undergraduate medical curricula has been investigated in numerous curricular comparison studies. Those studies focused on the traditional scientific curriculum, which was internationally implemented since the 1910s, as well as on the problem-based curriculum, which was introduced since the 1970s (Frenk et al., 2010). However, they often lacked a common operationalisation of study success. Furthermore, a theoretical link be-tween study success and curriculum was mostly missing. Results of those curricular comparisons either showed comparable study success in both curricula or favored the problembased compared to the traditional curriculum.
The present study was the first to include a competency-based curriculum, whose paradigm was internationally introduced into medical education in the 1990s. In accordance with career success, the present definition assumes both objective and subjective criteria of study success (Judge, Cable, Boudreau, & Bretz Jr., 1995; Seibert & Kraimer, 2001). A model is proposed describing the relation of curriculum and study success based on interdisciplinary approaches.
Three studies were conducted at one German medical faculty, the Charité – University Medicine Berlin. They compared study success of a traditional curriculum, a problem-based curriculum and a competency-based curriculum. The first study investigated subjective criteria of study success (study satisfaction, experienced strain, self-rated health) in all three curricula at the beginning of the study course. The second study focused subjective criteria of study success concerning professional activities that were carried out during clerkships (workplace participation, preparedness), and contrasted students from the traditional and the competency-based curriculum. The third study compared criteria of objective study success in students from the traditional and the problem-based curriculum at the end of their study course (duration of study course, results in final exams).
There were three main findings. First, a replication of results concerning the comparison of traditional and problem-based curricula for a German sample (higher study satisfaction, lower work strain, shorter study duration, comparable results in final exams). Second, for the first time, it was shown that a competency-based curriculum leads to better (study satisfaction, experienced strain, preparedness) or comparable (self-rated health, workplace participation) subjective study success compared to a traditional curriculum. Third, a first attempt could be made to show that, besides the curriculum, characteristics of the students and the learning process play a role for study success.
The present findings are crucial empirical contributions to the understanding of undergraduate medical education and support the current development to broadly implement competency-based curricula. The proposed theoretical framework proved to be useful and can be transferred to further university subjects.
... A discussion on the implications for the role of the academics and students within 'communities of practice' comes later in my review of literature on 'curriculum as practice' (see section 3.6.1). Barradell et al. (2018) use WTP to highlight the complexities of the HE curriculum and claim that it supports an understanding of the curriculum in 'four key ways'. ...
... All are useful in considering the structural elements of the curriculum framework of 'knowing, acting, being' (Barnett and Coate, 2005). Barradell's et al. (2018) third point is of particular interest to my study as it represents an important structural challenge in the curriculum, which is, how to 'simultaneously inducting students whilst developing student agency'. This suggests structurally the curriculum may well have to balance student control and agency to effectively support all students. ...
... The knowledge of concern in 'curriculum as practice' is not just 'in' the curriculum but also 'of' the curriculum. This knowledge 'of' the curriculum is intimately connected to disciplinary 'ways of thinking and practising' (Barradell et al., 2018) and pedagogic practices. The curriculum, with its foundations, structures and the ways it is constructed (including co-constructed) is also a body of knowledge in its own right having relevance across all disciplinary and professional HE. ...
The higher education art and design curriculum is often discussed in terms of
change and development both in literature and university initiatives. However,
the different approaches to the art and design curriculum are often not evident
in these discussions. My study offers a model whereby the curriculum might
be presented and discussed.
My study integrated two stages of analysis to investigate the art and design
curriculum. The first considered the pivotal role of academic course leaders to
the curriculum, an under researched factor. Using phenomenography as a
research design I interviewed twenty academic course leaders to constitute
the variations in perceptions of, and approaches to the curriculum. The
second stage used literature on the higher education curriculum. Analysing
this literature I established five distinct curriculum perspectives, each offering
a different view of academics, knowledge and students in the curriculum.
Integrating these curriculum perspectives I developed a curriculum
perspectives framework that enabled me to analyse the variation in course
leaders’ approaches to the curriculum for their benefits, limitations and
implications for students.
I find course leaders’ perceptions of, and approaches to the curriculum
constitute five variations ranging from the curriculum as the control of content
and projects, to the curriculum as a complex conversation in which students
and staff as a community have agency. The latter suggests new opportunities
for co-construction of the curriculum. My analysis of this variation suggests
these variations should be seen as hierarchically inclusive. This means the
most advanced approach to the curriculum is inclusive of all the others,
primarily because in a mass higher education sector with a diverse student
body, to enable student agency it is critical to give access to knowledge.
Finally, I present a Curriculum Approaches Model that offers a view of the
curriculum for those seeking to develop or enhance curriculum practices.
... Staff background and prior experiences shape their individual preferences and intrinsic motivation to incorporate active learning pedagogies and the delivery of detailed and frequent feedback to their courses (Brown and Knight, 2014;Hora, 2016). Their individual preferences might also lead them to create their own data gathering techniques to reflect on how to improve their teaching practices at a course level (Barradell et al., 2017;Bouwma-Gearhart and Hora, 2016). In the cases that teaching staff have favourable beliefs regarding this type of strategies, students could benefit from knowing what and how they are developing the learning outcomes they are expected to develop, making sense of their curriculum experience (Matthews and Mercer-Mapstone, 2018). ...
... The emphasis that the leadership has placed on efficiency and accountability has also left teaching staff with less time and data to reflect on their curriculum and teaching practices (Barradell et al., 2017;Bouwma-Gearhart and Hora, 2016). On the one hand, leaders have increased faculty workload including administrative requirements to extend teaching periods, adopt new technologies, and teach a greater number of students (Kenny, 2017;Kezar and Holcombe, 2017;Shay, 2016). ...
... According to finding 2, this intrinsic motivation to improve their teaching based on evidence of student outcome attainment is particularly enhanced when they receive support for their teaching practices. Prior work has described extrinsic triggers (Bendermacher et al., 2017), such as grants to educational projects and teacher prizes, but providing staff with time and resources to reflect about their teaching can be even more powerful support to curriculum change (Barradell et al., 2017;Hora, 2016). ...
Over the past two decades, external influences over continuous curriculum improvement have increased, so universities have implemented centralized approaches to respond to external accountability demands, such as national and international accreditations. These approaches have diminished teaching staff engagement with continuous curriculum improvement, without necessarily improving student outcome attainment. To illustrate mechanisms that engage and disengage teaching staff, we present a case study of a 3-year continuous improvement process implemented in a selective university in Chile. Throughout the process, 61 teaching staff members were involved in outcome assessment tasks and curriculum discussions. By triangulating three sources of evidence (97 assessment plans, 27 meeting minutes and 11 interviews), we identified engagement mechanisms that were related to staff members’ motivation to improve student outcomes, and disengagement mechanisms that were related to their reticence towards misaligned and externally imposed policies. Teaching staff’s perspectives on continuous improvement were discussed for further generalization of these mechanisms.
... The curriculum can be viewed narrowly 'as a set of purposeful, intended experiences' (Knight 2001, 369) or more expansively to include purpose, content, alignment, scale, learning activities, assessment, physical environments and learning collaborators, with ways of thinking and practising as a conceptual framework (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta 2018). Hounsell and Anderson (2009) also raise the importance of the socio-epistemic context in which the curriculum is taking place. ...
... This study takes disciplinary thinking and knowing (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta 2018) and their changing curricula framing of 'what counts as knowing' (Bernstein 1975(Bernstein , 2000 into account when conceptualising the curriculum. However, the methodological approach looks at a process that centres on a narrower definition of curriculum as an ordered set of purposeful intended consequences (Knight 2001). ...
Through an evaluation of an institution-wide curriculum change process, this paper analyses how strategic policy is variously enacted in departmental communities. Linguistic ethnography of public, institutional and internal policy documents illuminates departments’ engagement with the change process. With curriculum change positioned as a disorienting dilemma, transformational learning theory provides a lens to analyse the departments’ alignment with the intention of the curriculum change policy. The paper explores the extent to which departments transformed from a disciplinary content-based and high-stakes examination approach to the curriculum to incorporating broader institutional aims and active learning theories into disciplinary language, pedagogy and practices. Three stages of engagement are identified through an evaluation rubric, offering a framework to assess curriculum change initiatives. Implications for educational leaders include the need to integrate institutional strategy with disciplinary experts and expertise and the importance of language adoption as a precursor to implementation.
... In fact, Gudmundsdottir's (1991) curricular story, the development of curricular narratives, synergizes well with the conceptual framework of 'ways of thinking and practising' (WTP) (McCune & Hounsell, 2005), that is, the set of a discipline's knowledge, methods, and values: how the discipline organizes itself (Barradell, Barrie, & Peseta, 2018). Barradell et al. (2018) assert that WTP promotes an 'expansive sense of curriculum' (p. ...
... In fact, Gudmundsdottir's (1991) curricular story, the development of curricular narratives, synergizes well with the conceptual framework of 'ways of thinking and practising' (WTP) (McCune & Hounsell, 2005), that is, the set of a discipline's knowledge, methods, and values: how the discipline organizes itself (Barradell, Barrie, & Peseta, 2018). Barradell et al. (2018) assert that WTP promotes an 'expansive sense of curriculum' (p. 265), including multiple ways of knowing and engaging in contemporary disciplinary practices. ...
The framework of threshold concepts has been used across several disciplines in higher education. Although the literature surrounding the identification of threshold concepts and their nature has flourished, their conceptualization has seemingly diverged across disciplinary lines, which should be recognized by educational developers who work with multiple disciplines. Inspired by a failed implementation of one framing of threshold concepts in Engineering, this article compares the conceptualization of threshold concepts in Engineering with their framing in Writing Studies and Information Literacy by drawing on Bernstein’s notion of knowledge structures. Recommendations for educational developers are provided and situated within the framework of ‘ways of thinking and practising’ (WTP).
... This has resulted in a larger number of administrative requirements, so teaching staff are dealing with larger workload [6], [8]. Consequently, they spend less time reflecting about curriculum and teaching practices [9], [10], and they resist to fulfilling additional assessment requirements at a program level [4]. ...
... First, teaching staff need support from colleagues and institutional leadership, particularly from middle managers [4], [13]. Second, they need opportunities to reflect and engage with others [9], [10]. Third, these opportunities must leverage existing teaching practices, such as faculty luncheons and department committees, to avoid adding up extra workload. ...
External influences to schools of engineering have resulted in important curriculum changes. Over the two decades, the influence of the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) has driven the introduction of new and revised teaching and assessment methods to develop student outcomes stipulated by its criteria. In addition, the influence of industry has reinforced the importance of competency-based learning.
Embracing a competency-based curriculum posed the challenge of collecting evidence of outcome attainment. To this end, most institutions have implemented centralized assessment frameworks to demonstrate that future engineers have the abilities to succeed in the workplace. However, it is still unknown whether or not the collection of evidence for outcome attainment may trigger actions that result in improved teaching and learning. Concerning this issue, some researchers argue that students and teachers have not been adequately involved in outcome assessment. Students are commonly treated as consumers rather than active agents of their learning, while teachers are basically subject to unreliable feedback (mostly coming from rating scales). Consequently, evidence-based curriculums changes do not usually consider the perspectives of the most relevant curriculum stakeholders (i.e. teachers and students).
To understand how teachers and students engage with outcome assessment and curriculum decision-making, we are developing a case study about a continuous improvement process implemented between 2015 and 2017 at a large and selective school of engineering in Chile. To illustrate the mechanisms used to engage both stakeholders, to-date we have conducted 12 semi structured interviews and we have analyzed 124 documents to triangulate qualitative information collected from different data sources. This paper presents a work in progress by sharing the results obtained from the analysis of 97 outcome assessment plans developed by 57 teachers. Findings show different levels of engagement across time, as variations in the details and in the use of different type of assessment tools. Future work will analyze the perspectives of teachers and students on their involvement in the continuous improvement process. It will also focus on anticipating tensions between internal and external stakeholders concerning curriculum decision-making.
... Thus, educators should be equipped with teaching modules accompanied by suitable guidelines, obviating the need for multiple modules, which could introduce biases. Proactive adaptability among educators towards curriculum modifications is essential (Jenkins, 2020), necessitating educational institutions to be agile in adapting to such curricular transitions (Barradell et al., 2018;Rahmatunisa and Agustiana, 2018;Howson and Kingsbury, 2021). ...
This study aimed to conduct a need analysis to examine the non-EFL students’ needs of English subject in university. This needs analysis covers English in general and in particular needed by the students. A quantitative research method was followed in the present study. Data was collected by using questionnaires. The items in the questionnaires addressed various issues; in other words, the emphasis was determining students’ lacks, wants and necessity on English subject. All new non-EFL undergraduate students at Kuningan University in academic year 2021/2022 involved in this study. They are from five different faculties; Faculty of Economy, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Faculty of Computer, Faculty of Law and Faculty of Forestry. Based on the results of questionnaires filled out by 421 students, it is known that, first, in relation to students’ lack on English subject, this study focuses on the competence of language skills and students' difficulties in mastering the four English skills. Most students assessed their English language skills competence at moderate level. Listening and speaking skills are assessed as the first priority followed by writing and reading skills. However, the research findings also show that speaking skills seem to be the most difficult skills for them apart from weak grammar and low vocabulary mastery. Second, related to the students’ wants on English subject, the preferred language skills are reading followed by speaking, listening and writing. Third, related to necessity on English subject, learning activities that students need to function effectively is to combine English and Indonesian as a medium in delivering material. Most students also think that learning English is better in large groups under the supervision of lecturers. Furthermore, feedback, revision, and reflection are very important aspects for developing the ability to self-regulate learning. Therefore, students prefer to be corrected immediately by the lecturer when they make mistakes. To achieve learning effectiveness, students also expect the integration of a variety of activities and the development of learning materials.
... Kualitas kurikulum dapat dilihat dari dua komponen yaitu makna dan implementasi, dengan 'makna' dipecah menjadi dasar rasionil, tujuan dan konsep (Ofsted, 2018), dan untuk kualitas praktik pendidikan tinggi dapat diketahui dari unsur-unsur kurikulum dalam program studi dan desain mata kuliah (Prøitz, 2023). Kurikulum memuat tujuan, isi, keselarasan, skala, aktivitas pembelajaran, penilaian, lingkungan fisik dan kolaborator pembelajaran, dengan cara berpikir dan berlatih sebagai kerangka konseptual (Barradell, Barrie, & Peseta, 2018), dan struktur kurikulum mencakup ruang untuk inovasi, kreativitas, dan memastikan relevansi bagi peserta didik (Bovill, 2017). ...
Kurikulum adalah salah satu komponen penting dari program studi perguruan tinggi. Tujuan dari pengabdian kepada masyarakat (PkM) ini adalah untuk mendampingi pengembangan dan pemutakhiran kurikulum program studi pendidikan guru pendidikan anak usia dini universitas mulawarman. Program PkM dilaksanakan di Program Studi Pendidikan Guru Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini, Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan, Universitas Mulawarman, dengan metode daring dan luring. Peserta PkM merupakan dosen program studi. Metode yang digunakan adalah Participatory Action Research (PAR) yang terdiri dari beberapa tahap yaitu tahap to know, tahap to understand, tahap to plan, tahap to act, tahap to change. Hasil PkM diantaranya pemutakhiran profil lulusan, pemutakhiran capaian pembelajaran lulusan, pemutakhiran bahan kajian, dan pemutakhiran struktur kurikulum, serta menambah pemahaman peserta pengabdian terkait konsep kurikulum berbasis outcome-based education.
... These frameworks are essential in organizing and encapsulating a discipline's core practices, values, philosophies and viewpoints. They emphasize the inseparable link between knowing and doing, that is, of "putting knowledge to work" (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta, 2018 p.2). Ways of thinking and practicing can also help to nurture a comprehensive and interconnected perspective, encouraging therapists to consider diverse knowledge forms and their application in authentic contexts (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta, 2018). Validation for the ICF as a WTP in physiotherapy was represented in the subthemes: Support for the ICF, Clinical reasoning and decision making, Provides structure, Making connections, Big picture perspective and Person centered. ...
Background:
It has been two decades since the World Health Organization's endorsement of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). It is timely to undertake a rigorous search that analyzes the discourses around the ICF's conceptual framework within physiotherapy, the kinds of enquiry to date and the professional areas where this is happening and how.
Purpose:
The aim of this research is to synthesize the literature related to how the physiotherapy profession (practice, research and education) thinks about and puts to use the WHO ICF.
Results:
A final sample of 37 papers was agreed. Five overarching third-order interpretations were derived: (i) A way of thinking and practicing, (ii) Endorsed but not embedded, (iii) Striking a balance, (iv) Power of participation and (v) Moving forward. Together, these themes illustrate the evolving role of the ICF in physiotherapy over the previous two decades. They highlight the ICF's potential for shaping the future of physiotherapy practice, education and research.
Conclusions:
Work is needed to connect existing literature about the ICF and related models and embed the ICF, its language and philosophy across physiotherapy education and practice. Re-representation of the model might help address misinterpretation of the ICF, but fundamentally, embedding the ICF in entry-level curriculum is likely to be the most significant driver of change in practice.
... Typically, there is a rare opportunity to think profoundly about educational practice and curriculum, particularly in universities today. However, this is a much-needed dialogue as graduates are exposed to a progressively complex world (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta 2018). According to Kridel (2010), curriculum studies is a field of investigation that deals with various sources offering a perspective on issues about what curriculum should be. ...
... These core academic competencies are complemented by acquiring supplementary knowledge, skills, and experiences (Wagiran et al., 2019; Lourie, 2020), collectively called generic graduate competencies. Collet et al. (2015) and Barradell et al. (2018) highlighted the broader scope of generic skills that exceeded traditional core courses centered on disciplinary knowledge and technical expertise. These skills encompass the qualities necessary for graduates to navigate an uncertain future with competence. ...
This study explored the demographic characteristics and assessed the attainment of expected graduate attributes (EGA) among prospective elementary teachers enrolled in a public higher education institution (HEI) in Leyte province that offers an elementary teacher education program. Employing a quantitative descriptive survey research design, the study involved 40 prospective elementary teachers selected through purposive sampling. A 5-point Likert-type scale questionnaire was administered to assess EGA attainment; the questionnaire incorporated items from relevant literature and the program's Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) syllabi. The results revealed that the prospective elementary teachers possessed the essential competencies of future primary school educators. Their well-developed problem-solving, analytical, and imaginative skills, honed throughout their academic journey, demonstrate their preparedness to excel in their chosen profession. Bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application is necessary for prospective elementary teachers to gain valuable experiential learning and exposure to diverse classroom scenarios.
... Some academics are reported as perceiving requirements to embrace new pedagogies, technologies, or delivery modes as threatening the integrity of their disciplinary practice (Abbas et al., 2016;Trowler, 2012). Others argue such views are outdated, citing the value of pedagogic change to prepare students for the challenges and uncertainty facing the modern world (Andrade, 2020;Barradell et al., 2018). Curriculum change can therefore be perceived as either an innovative process that enhances agency and promotes development, or a process that requires compliance, leading to the loss of autonomy, resulting in fear and resistance (Annala et al., 2022;Roberts, 2015). ...
This study examined how academic staff responded to a cross-institutional change initiative to integrate immersive scheduling into the first-year undergraduate curriculum. Immersive scheduling, also referred to as block or compressed delivery, sought to create a supportive first-year experience, to ease students’ transition to university. Adopting an immersive approach is associated with considerable change as academic staff adapt their practice to accommodate the compressed time frame of modules and embrace learning and assessment methods associated with this delivery format. In this study, we undertook semi-structured interviews with 17 academics who were leading the development and delivery of immersive modules or supporting the teaching and learning initiative. Our data indicated that academics played a significant role in the acceptance or rejection of the vision for immersive scheduling. Acceptance was reliant on academics recognising value in the vision, and this varied depending on the extent to which it resonated with local practice. In some cases, the move to immersive scheduling represented a valued opportunity to update pedagogic and assessment practices. However, in other contexts, academic resistance led to dilution of key elements of the vision, with compliance rather than innovation being the outcome. This study also highlights the value of using a combination of module delivery formats to mitigate recognised drawbacks associated with immersive delivery. We conclude this paper by proposing recommendations to support the future development of immersive scheduling in higher education institutions.
... The idea of WTP has been a useful addition to threshold concepts, helping to foster a more expansive view of curriculum (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta 2017). Ways of thinking and practising acknowledge the complex relationship between the domains of theory and practice, and that these are connected rather than separate components of being and becoming professional. ...
... However, authentic assessments are not without their critics. Accurate estimates have been argued to take longer to design and grade, which can be challenging as universities clamp down on the time or resources allotted to assessments (Barradell et al., 2018;Vu & Dall'Alba, 2014). This becomes a scalability challenge as higher education class sizes in emerging economies have increased due to rising middle-class households that perceive tertiary qualifications as a tool for upward social mobility (Marginson, 2018;Mok, 2016). ...
COVID-19 has significantly disrupted global landscapes and forced a quick adaptation towards new ways of conducting higher education, with almost all tertiary institutions compelled to embrace online teaching and learning quickly. In addition, this crisis presents an opportune moment to reflect on the why and how higher education assessments should be framed through a blue ocean strategy for disciplines such as tourism and hospitality. While the blue ocean strategy has emerged within tourism and hospitality practice, little is known as to how this is manifested in the context of educational settings, and especially academic voices as part of such radical transformations following COVID-19. To address this gap in knowledge, this research traces the journeys of 16 Chinese academics transitioning as educators before, during, and after the outbreak of COVID-19 through the theory's four actions framework of eliminate, reduce, create, and raise. The findings revealed how the pandemic challenged their philosophical stances of who we are as assessors, the dilemmas of technology-mediated learning and assessment, indicators of professional development, and assessing outside one's comfort zone. Derived from these outcomes is a conceptual framework around a blue ocean strategy to repurpose the role of assessments from a narrative of what and how, to what now and how else of tourism and hospitality education.
... In line with previous research on internationalisation in higher education (Barradell et al., 2018;Jones et al., 2021), this study is able to provide and contribute to some practical suggestions for instructors in the diverse classroom. Firstly, educators are encouraged to get to know their students and their diverse backgrounds before deciding Figure 1. ...
To understand under what conditions intercultural group work (IGW) leads to more intercultural interactions, a survey was conducted among local students (n = 80) and international students (n = 153) in Dutch universities. In this study, students were more inclined to engage in intercultural interactions when they perceived that working with culturally diverse others prepared them to work and live in a diverse setting. The positive association was strengthened when students perceived that diversity, in terms of nationality within their work group, was also beneficial for accomplishing their group task. The findings demonstrate the significance of students’ perceptions of IGW, including the perceived general value for personal development and intellectual benefits related to specific tasks. This implies that institutions and teachers could be made responsible for engaging with innovative educational methods to address and incorporate student diversity into curriculum.
... ESD is an educational approach that "empowers learners to take informed decisions and responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society, for present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity", and that also "addresses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment" (UNESCO, 2014, p. 12). In this vein, it is acknowledged as vital to adopt educational studentcentered methodologies derived from real-world needs and situations (Barradell et al., 2018). This is vital for students in economics, business and management, as it will assist them in developing key competencies and skills (Baird and Parayitam, 2019;Sierra, 2020;Teng et al., 2019). ...
Purpose
This research reveals how a virtual exchange (VE) can foster transnational collaboration in higher education, assist students acquire key learning outcomes and raise awareness regarding the complexities affecting development policy and sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Overall 50 students from two universities in Spain and the United Kingdom, enrolled on two different degree courses (Global Studies and Marketing), cooperated in multidisciplinary teams to analyze real development policies and initiatives. The authors collected quantitative and qualitative data to assess the students' perceptions of the methodology.
Findings
The students perceived the VE to be of great value, enriching their educational experience by having a positive effect on their overall learning and fostering internationalization. A high number of participants declared the teaching and learning methodology was useful to assist them in reaching crucial cognitive, skill-based and affective educational objectives, and to help them understand how development policy works while also raising awareness regarding real-world complexity.
Practical implications
This methodology proved valuable in helping students acquire the set of skills expected from today's graduates in economics, political science and marketing. This active learning and pedagogical innovation component provides some interesting conclusions contributing toward widening the adoption of VEs in higher education contexts.
Originality/value
The increasing complexity of the globalized world makes it challenging for higher education institutions to develop multidisciplinary approaches to education to foster sustainable development. The experience provided offered the students an online international experience at their home institutions. Consequently, the research elaborates on how VE can be applied in economics, business, management and political science courses to enrich learning experience by applying theory in a practical way.
... Emergent forms of assessments, especially portfolios and learning journals, provided opportunities to represent the way information is synthesized and applied in real life situations and encouraged an appropriate level of cognitive challenge and the development of evaluative judgment. Adoption of more authentic assessments also provided more opportunities for more explicit integration, assessment and development of the "ways of thinking and practice" (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta 2018) for specific disciplines, and more explicit induction of students into their professions by introduces a real-world aspect as well as assessing and teaching the concepts and skills that the graduate will need to function in this field outside the academy. These lifelong skills are appropriate for the labour market and highlight the importance of discussions on diversity, inclusion and equity. ...
It is widely recognized that assessment impacts on the process and behavior of learning. In this article, we, as academic staff development professionals in two faculties at a research intensive South African university, explore the assessment challenges, processes and behaviours that emerged in the context of Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning during the Covid 19 pandemic. We argue that an analysis of changes in assessment culture and behaviour point to possibilities for a shift from the pre-Covid-19 dominance of the “assessment of learning” paradigm, to an orientation of assessment where both “assessment of learning” and “assessment for learning” are more equitably balanced, with potentially profound implications for shaping the ways students construct their understandings and succeed academically.
... As for the evaporation connotation, Skinner once said, "Education is what survives when what has learned is forgotten" (Eder, 2000). The true object of education is not the transmission of facts but, rather, the inculcation of modes of thought and the cultivation of the mind (Barradell et al., 2018). ...
Looking beyond analytical philosophy which underlies most pedagogical thinking, this study presents a novel idea of fluid education. Fluid dialectic is not only a theory but a method of this study, which draws on the Hegelian dialectics supplemented by Taoism. It recognises the messiness of educational reality by exploring how pedagogic antinomies can help transpose, de-fix or reposition traditional roles in the classroom, and therefore allow a different type of teaching, learning or educational adventure to take place. In contrast to a reality of fixed roles in traditional education, it acknowledges the non-linearity and oppositions that an educational reality usually has. However, instead of arguing against it, we believe the tensions and antinomies presented are valuable in dialectic and interparadigmatic teaching and learning. A framework of fluid education that emphasises the dialectic movements between different antinomies is presented. How one is liberated from fixed time, space and position is discussed.
... To do so, it is essential to adopt pedagogical praxes based on a critical view regarding the effects of economic decisions from a global perspective, including different world views and narratives to capture diversity (Sund and Pashby, 2020). Moreover, the learning experience needs to be developed from a student-based perspective, and the learning process based on real-world needs and situations (Barradell et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
There is a growing trend in higher education institutions to develop multi-disciplinary approaches to education for sustainable development and to implement student-centered and problem-based methodologies to increase student engagement and satisfaction. This paper aims to present an innovative methodology to increase student awareness about the effects of economic decisions on sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
This method uses a videogame and two board games to simulate three spheres of economic interaction, namely, local, national and international. For every sphere, three key economic sectors and their relationships with fundamental sustainable development goals (SDGs) are addressed. This study uses pre- and post-simulation data to analyze the students’ perceptions regarding the usefulness of the simulations and their awareness about the effects of economic decisions on sustainability.
Findings
The implementation of this teaching and learning method demonstrated not only that active learning can effectively increase student awareness about the potential social and environmental consequences of economic decisions but also that students perceive games and simulations as useful teaching and learning tools.
Social implications
Students in these areas need to learn not only how to transform original ideas into successful projects but also to align financial results with social and environmental objectives. The methodology presented in this research allows to enhance learning from a multi-disciplinary perspective, helping the students to analyze different economic sectors and their connection with a number of SDGs through the lens of public economics.
Originality/value
The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has shown the effects of a global pandemic at the economic, social and environmental levels. This paper presents an innovative active learning framework to increase sustainability awareness among students of economics, business and management.
... According to Stark and Lattuca (1997), it is not only a subset of courses in a study plan, but also its content, the course sequence, the students, the teachinglearning processes, the evaluations, the resources, and the necessary adjustments to improve its results. Thus, curriculum design and evaluation should consider multiple factors, such as the learning environments and the interactions between teachers and students [18], [19]. ...
Engineering schools have created courses and concentrations to train students for entrepreneurship and innovation. Although studies have analyzed how students perceive this type of training, few of them have unveiled its influence on behaviors and career goals. The formative use of the assessment instruments employed is limited, so more efforts are needed to evaluate entrepreneurial training towards its continuous improvement. This article proposes a methodology to involve students in curriculum evaluation so they become partners in curriculum delivery and teaching practices. To explore its benefits, we applied it on a Major focused on engineering design, entrepreneurship and innovation. During classroom sessions of three Major courses, a form was used to generate individual reflections and collective discussions about course methods, learning outcomes and the curriculum path. Findings show that students were capable of formulating improvement actions to enhance curriculum and teaching practices as a group. Implications for other institutions are discussed to promote the application of this participatory approach in curriculum evaluation processes.
... The idea of WTP has been a useful addition to threshold concepts, helping to foster a more expansive view of curriculum (Barradell, Barrie, and Peseta 2017). Ways of thinking and practising acknowledge the complex relationship between the domains of theory and practice, and that these are connected rather than separate components of being and becoming professional. ...
The work practices of a health professional involve a complex weaving together of knowing what, knowing how, and knowing why. To help students engage with what is required for practice, educators need to have an expansive view of what it means to be a health professional in the rapidly changing real-world contexts that people inhabit today. Threshold concepts, and the complementary framework Ways of Thinking and Practising (WTP), are educational ideas that can help educators to think in those broad ways about health’s knowledge base, behaviours, and values, and how these appear in the curriculum. This article offers a case example from a pre-clinical entry-level physiotherapy subject to illustrate how threshold concepts and WTP informed what students came to understand about health professional practice. A curriculum that considers threshold concepts and WTP in combination helps both educators and students to engage with learning from multiple perspectives and to develop a connected understanding of their chosen profession. Helping students to articulate the connections between knowledge (e.g. threshold concepts) and how this knowledge is put to use (e.g. through the WTP of the profession) enables them to reconsider practice-related contexts in meaningful ways.
... Nonetheless, the findings provide a useful starting point for other contexts (including other health professions) to think about their disciplinary practices and appropriate ways to bring students into the practice community. We have found WTP to be a useful framework to consider student learning and the forms of curricula that may help graduates work in increasingly complex situations (Barradell, Barrie and Peseta 2017). Knowing more about the experiences of students can help both academics and the profession to make different decisions about curriculum design and to think more expansively about what students should learn for practice. ...
Health science courses aim to prepare students for the demands of their chosen profession by learning ways appropriate to that profession and the contexts they will work and live in. Expectations of what students should learn become re-contextualised and translated into entry-level curriculum, with students operating as a connection between what is intended and enacted in curriculum, and required in the real world. Drawing on phenomenology, this paper explores how students understand practice—the collective, purposeful knowing, doing and being of a community—in entry-level physiotherapy programs. Ways of thinking and practising (WTP)—a framework attentive to the distinctive nature of a discipline, its values, philosophies and world-view (McCune and Hounsell in High Educ 49(3):255–289, 2005)—provides the conceptual lens. Six themes describing how students see the WTP of physiotherapy practice emerged from the analysis: discovery of new knowledge; problem solving client related contexts; adopting a systems based approach to the body; contributing to a positive therapeutic alliance; developing a sense of self and the profession; and the organisation of the workforce. The study produces knowledge about practice by focusing on physiotherapy students’ experiences of disciplinary learning. Including students in educational research in this way is an approach that can help students realise their potential as part of a community of practice.
This chapter explores the imperative of curriculum transformation in engineering education in the Global South. It also considers the complexities arising from the demands of society and industry, technological advancements (including the 4th Industrial Revolution), sustainability integration, and calls for decolonization and internationalization. Employing content analysis, action learning processes and reflexive praxis, this study examines curriculum transformation in four universities in India, Ethiopia, and South Africa over the past four decades. The findings unveil an evolutionary trajectory aligning with industry and technological advancements, underscored by the pressing need for competency development among graduates. Sustainability integration, entwined with the United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs), has progressively gained significance. The challenges posed by the 4th Industrial Revolution have recently emerged as a focal point. While internationalization is widely accepted, debates still surround decolonization in African universities—reflecting differences in scope, context, and knowledge content. Reflexive praxis underscores that although curriculum transformation processes are similar, the premises, socioeconomic contexts, and priorities in the Global South differ from the Global North Higher Education institutions.
Inclusivity and accessibility are important concepts in higher education as all students are entitled to a learning experience that is free of barriers. The following chapter aims to act as a toolkit for early career anatomists and medical educators who aspire to make their teaching practice more inclusive and accessible. The chapter consists of simple tips that can be incorporated into an educator’s daily teaching practice. The chapter also signposts the readers to some freely available resources that can be used by early career anatomy and medical educators to create inclusive and accessible educational content. In terms of inclusivity, the chapter will discuss the importance and use of inclusive images that represent a diverse range of bodies and skin tones. Additionally, the use of inclusive language across the anatomy curriculum, inclusive assessment strategies as well as how anatomy educators can become more familiar with their students and different cultures and faiths will be discussed. In terms of accessibility, the chapter will focus on how educators can make their teaching content and material accessible to students with or without visible or hidden disabilities to ensure equitable learning without any significant barriers or challenges.
Current trends in engineering have been recording major changes in the mode of operation that require close alignment with academia to ensure the suitability and successful outcome of graduate student employment. In an everchanging environment traditional “hard” aspects of engineering knowledge are essential but do not, by themselves, ensure a graduate candidate’s suitability for a particular post. Increasingly, the industry is observing a “divergence” between academic teaching and industrial practice in terms of the necessary “soft” engineering skills. Results: This project identified the differences between the student and industry professional expectation of those elements of engineering practice that transcend the “hard” elements of the engineering curriculum by focusing on the opinion and desirability of a series of skills such as: Project Planning; Business Planning; Competitor Analysis; Market Analysis; Finance; Health and Safety; Stakeholder Analysis; Strategy; Innovation in Enterprise; Leadership; Risk Management and Ethics. To that effect a set questionnaire ranking those skills in terms of importance and difficulty has been disseminated to student and industry professionals along with two open ended questions that asked participants to identify graduate engineers’ needs and curriculum enhancements. Conclusions: This paper identified and quantified the difference of opinion between students and industry professionals and illustrated the differences in what each perceive as important and difficult leading to a better understanding of the changes in terms of curriculum delivery and expectation management to avoid integration issues of graduate engineers in the industry.
Background and purpose:
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on physiotherapy education meant that innovative responses were needed quickly. This paper describes a scholarly approach to changes within an entry-level physiotherapy program where one of its clinical placements was replaced with a fully online unit during 2020, as well as exploring the experiences of students who completed this newly developed online unit.
Methods:
A mixed methods approach was used. Sixteen of a possible 31 students responded to an online survey comprising quantitative and open-ended questions.
Results:
The majority of participants were satisfied with the unit and reported that: the unit helped them to learn valuable skills; feedback from educators was helpful; and that they were able to apply to future contexts. Small numbers of students were more ambivalent about the use of online media and tools including discussion boards, the workload and being part of a learning community.
Conclusion:
The online unit described in this research is evidence that non-traditional forms of clinical education might also address clinically important learning outcomes, provide sustainable options and alleviate some of the stresses that both tertiary providers and healthcare settings endure. However, these types of placement experiences require a paradigm shift from educators, the profession, accrediting bodies and even future students.
The curriculum has been far less discussed in higher education than in school education. Indeed, analyses of the literature suggest that the curriculum has only really become a matter for sustained discussion and research in higher education in the present century. This article synthesises the results of a review of the published research literature on the curriculum in higher education, outlining an agenda for future research.
According to Penuel et al. (2014), “curriculum materials and knowledge about curriculum purposes and structures are valuable tools that teachers often draw upon to organize instruction and facilitate student learning […]” (p. 751). Despite the emphasis of the post-apartheid government of South Africa on the significance of science and mathematics education as key areas of knowledge competence and human development (Reddy et al., 2012, p. 620); poor performance of South African learners in the sciences has been reported (TIMSS, 2016; Reddy et al., 2016) The South African Department of Education (DoE, 2009; DBE, 2011) and the South African Department of Basic Education (DBE, 2018) has partly linked the underachievement of South African learners in the sciences to/with issues bordering on the curriculum. The issue of challenges pertaining to curriculum is not peculiar to South Africa. Erstad and Voogt (2018) examined global issues and challenges with respect to the twenty-first century curriculum. In like manner, the Levine Institute (2016) reported about difficulties implementing a Global Ed K12 Curriculum in the United States of America (USA).
Higher education institutions need to play a leading role as drivers of change. In this context, there is a growing trend to develop multidisciplinary approaches to education for sustainable development, and to implement student-centered and problem-based teaching and learning methods to increase student satisfaction and engagement. The method presented here uses an online role-play simulation in which the students represent several stakeholders from the microfinance sector in Uganda, for the overall purpose of increasing financial and social inclusion levels in the country. Several Sustainable Development Goals are addressed from the perspective of interactions between different actors and their specific characteristics, objectives, and interests. This study uses post-simulation data to explore the students’ perceptions about the usefulness of this methodology to foster key cognitive, skill-based, and affective learning outcomes. The implementation of this teaching and learning methodology demonstrated that this active learning method helps students acquire the set of skills and abilities that are expected of graduate students in economics, business, and management, with a special focus on sustainability criteria. Thanks to the methodology in this study, students are able to understand the complexities of the microfinance sector and its potential to tackle poverty and inequality.
This article presents an innovative teaching and learning method based on collaborative and inquiry-based learning implemented in a Middle East Politics course. It consists of a series of online workshops in which students work in teams to analyze three different current conflicts in the region: Libya, Syria, and the Israeli-Palestinian. The aim of this method was twofold: on the one hand, to create a reflexive setting to help students acquire the most comprehensive possible knowledge about the conflict's causes and dynamics, the concerns and priorities of the main actors involved or affected by the conflict, and major obstacles to its resolution; on the other hand, to enhance a set of key cognitive, skill-based, and affective learning outcomes, which are essential skills in Political Science and other related areas such as International Studies. This study shows that teaching and learning methodologies based on collaborative and inquiry-based learning are suitable tools to facilitate the understanding of multifaceted, complex realities and to generate new perspectives and views on unfamiliar contexts. This research also suggests that facilitating the active involvement of students in their self-learning can contribute to successful online teaching and to foster the acquisition of key cognitive, skill-based, and affective learning outcomes.
This paper reports on teachers’ perspectives on preparing students for working with ‘wicked’ problems (Rittel and Webber [1973]. ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.’ Policy Sciences 4 (2): 155–169.). These problems are complex, lack clear boundaries, and attempts to solve them – generally by bringing together multiple stakeholders with contrasting viewpoints – have unforeseen consequences. Examples include many of the most significant current global challenges. We conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty teachers who focused on wicked problems, and a comparison group of 15 . We used the theoretical lenses ‘ways of thinking and practising in the subject area’ (Anderson and Hounsell [2007]. ‘Knowledge Practices: ‘Doing the Subject’ in Undergraduate Courses.’ The Curriculum Journal 18 (4): 463–478. ) and ‘figured worlds’ (Holland et al. [1998]. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) to frame our analysis. Our findings elaborate four key aspects of learning for wicked problems.
This project explores empirically student and staff conceptualisations of Japanese Studies with the aim of helping us understand better the tacit assumptions that structure our approach to learning and teaching about Japan in Higher Education. Drawing on constructivist theories from education studies and employing grounded theory methods, we conducted and analysed interviews and focus groups with academics and students across the UK, asking questions about attributes, values, norms and distinct concepts that make Japanese Studies a distinct field of academic practice. Our findings show that a cluster of concepts including proximity, culture, nuance, legitimacy, and identity are all imbricated in the study of Japan, and that these concepts may provide a basis for constructive dialogue on not only Japanese Studies as a degree, but Japanese Studies as a negotiated and evolving set of worldviews.
The World Health Organization International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health has the power to shape professional behaviour and positively influence all aspects of health and social care practice. The visual depiction of the ICF framework belies the complexity of this multifaceted classification and coding system which students and practitioners can find challenging to grasp. This guide offers twelve integrated practical tips to help health and social care educators embed the ICF throughout the curriculum with a view to supporting student learning and ultimately interprofessional and inclusive practice.
Teachers spend much of their time on assessment, yet many higher education teachers have received minimal guidance on assessment design and marking. This means assessment can often be a source of stress and frustration. Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education aims to solve these problems. Offering a concise overview of assessment theory and practice, this guide provides teachers with the help they need. In education, theory and practice are often poorly linked. In this guide, Teresa McConlogue presents theoretical ideas and research findings and links them to practice. She considers recent theoretical work on feedback and suggests ways of developing evaluative judgement. Throughout the book, teachers are encouraged to examine their practice critically, and there are ideas for small-scale educational investigations, involving teachers, their colleagues and students, such as using the Assessment Review Questionnaire to adapt assessments. A key principle of Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education is that an understanding of academic standards is fundamental to good assessment design and more reliable marking. The guide explores the concept of academic standards and proposes methods of co-constructing shared standards within a teaching team and with students through calibration activities.
Curriculum development at universities of technology (UoTs) in South Africa has become a matter of urgency given the revised Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework (HEQSF). The HEQSF required large-scale curriculum revision of existing qualifications and curriculum development of new qualifications such as the Postgraduate Diploma (PGDips). This paper focuses on challenges encountered in developing PGDips in business studies, for future implementation regarding knowledge, pedagogy and professional practice. Four PGDip qualifications were purposively selected for this study based on having completed certain curriculum development processes. Data generation by means of interviews with lecturers tasked with curriculum development provided insights into their perceptions of the process and its challenges. The data were subjected to content analysis from which the main themes were extrapolated. These themes served as the backdrop for the literature review, and theoretical perspectives on the production and recontextualisation of curriculum content provided a lens for analysis and discussion. The findings show that curriculum development for professional qualifications requires collaborative efforts between faculty and industry to present a qualification that meets all stakeholders’ expectations. The significance of this study relates to the challenges faced by universities to develop qualifications for an unknown future of fluid business environments.
Available on: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SZGNRSRJ3MEGC9QIQACP/full?target=10.1080/00220272.2019.1689430
The threshold concepts framework provides educators with a useful way of thinking about the struggles students have in coming to know essential, hard to grasp knowledge. A threshold concept is often best understood through reference to eight characteristics that together describe what is critical to effective knowledge acquisition. This conceptual paper hones in on just one of these characteristics – the bounded quality – that we propose is the most overlooked, but important, of the characteristics. The bounded characteristic frames the unique knowledge of a discipline and reflects its particular world-view. In this critical review, we analyse examples from threshold concepts scholarship: first, to explore the limitations of overlooking what the bounded characteristic has to offer, and second, to show how attention to ways of thinking and practising (WTP), may help to bring the bounded characteristic into focus, and reveal it as another non-negotiable threshold concept characteristic.
This article presents an innovative teaching and learning method based on three different simulations of multi-level governance settings. Public management at the local level is recreated using the SimCity computer game; the decision-making process at the national level is simulated through a national parliament simulation; and the intervention of the public sector at the international level is based on a simulation of the Council of the European Union. The main objective of this study is to assess students’ perceptions regarding how useful simulations may be for teaching and learning economics. The implementation of this teaching method demonstrated that the students perceived problem-based and role-play methods as useful learning tools. They also declared that their perception about the complexity of real-world problems has changed and that their political engagement may have increased thanks to their participation.
Abbreviations: SDGs - Sustainable Development Goals
This research explores the idea of ‘integration’, which incorporates IL into the HE curriculum. This significance has been emphasized, but lacks of substantial theorization in relation to information literacy (IL), curriculum, and discipline. To address these, I will conduct semi-structured narrative interviews of academic staff, seeking for information on how they implement IL aspects in their module design. As this research suggests, the notion of integration has sought to be conceptualized mainly from academic libraries, which has not accepted from academic staff. Building on and collecting practical knowledge will provide insightful theoretical reconsideration of IL and its relevant concepts, and lead to effective integration.
This paper introduces work on a major ongoing research project being carried out
collaboratively between Edinburgh, Durham and Coventry Universities in Britain. The main
concepts and conceptual frameworks being used in the project are introduced, along with a
brief summary of a literature review used to define the most salient aspects of teachinglearning
environments in higher education. The remainder of the paper describes the
development and initial analyses of two questionnaires completed by students. The first of
these – the Learning and Studying Questionnaire – given towards the beginning of a course unit,
covers students’ learning orientations and their reasons for studying that unit, and also
contains an inventory assessing typical approaches to learning and studying. The second
questionnaire, the Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire, completed towards the end
of the unit, contains a short version of the inventory but focused specifically on the unit being
studied. The main section of this questionnaire concerns students’ perceptions of the teachinglearning
environment. It also asks about the demands made by the unit, and what students
believe they have learned from it. Finally, students are asked to rate their academic progress;
assessment grades are being subsequently collected from the institutions involved. Analyses of
the initial data sets obtained have identified the main factors within the items concerned with
students’ perceptions of teaching-learning environments and indicate the relationships that
exist between these and their reported approaches to studying.
Meyer and Land (2003, 2005) proposed the notion of 'threshold concepts', which are central to the mastery of a specific discipline due to their transformative, irreversible and integrative nature. Using the methodology of Davies and Mangan (2007) we interviewed novice students (58) and expert academic staff (11) from three Australian universities and conducted an international survey of academics (55) to identify differences in novice and expert conceptions. We matched these data with understandings from the 'misconceptions' literature to create the 'biology thresholds matrix'. The matrix demonstrates that threshold concepts in biology are not necessarily the troublesome content, but rather the tacit understandings of the discipline (Taylor, 2006, 2008; Ross & Tronson, 2007, Ross, Taylor, Hughes, Kofod, Whitaker, Lutze-Mann & Tzioumis, 2010). These are often not explicitly taught (Perkins, 2006) yet underpin difficult content areas including: energy and energy transformation, variation, probability and randomness, proportionality and surface area to volume ratio, dynamic equilibrium, linking the subcellular (submicroscopic) with the macroscopic, temporal and spatial scales (Ross et al., 2010), and the formulation and testing of hypotheses (Taylor & Meyer, 2010). These threshold concepts are not hierarchical in nature, but form a web of epistemes which has commonalities with tacit understandings in other science disciplines.
Threshold concepts are those transformative concepts in a discipline that are often difficult to understand when first encountered, but when mastered they transform students, both epistemologically and ontologically in relation to the discipline. Using the characteristics of threshold concepts, existing curricula and summative content analysis of the text in published seminal geographical information systems (GIS) research papers, this study identifies three key GIS concepts as threshold concepts which are map-scale, data model and interoperability. This study further links these concepts with other key GIS concepts with the aim of providing a means for laying conceptual foundation among novice GIS learners.
This article addresses the themes of this special issue by examining the disciplinary dimensions of learning and teaching within undergraduate courses in the areas of biology and history. Key ways of thinking and practising that biology and history lecturers wished to foster in their students are identified. It presents a relational view of the role of these disciplinary ways of thinking and practising in undergraduate learning, and considers how domain knowledge exists in dynamic relationship with the practices that are implicated in its creation, interpretation and use. The epistemological challenges that students may face in grappling with a discipline are explored, and the intricate connection between the form and content of knowledge is highlighted. The article also points up the pedagogic actions that enabled students' affective and intellectual engagement with history.
The term curriculum is familiar in school education, but more ambiguous in its usage in a higher education context. Although it is frequently used in academic staff discussions, policy and planning documents, and to describe advisory bodies, its usage is inconsistent and multifarious. This article reports a phenomenographic study of the ways in which academics conceive of the curriculum in higher education. It examines the variation in perceptions of curriculum, which is critiqued through the work of school curriculum theorists, who utilise Habermas’s theory of knowledge‐constitutive interests. The intention of this article is to explore the epistemologies and assumptions that underpin these conceptions, in order to promote an inclusive and shared vocabulary as a basis for curriculum development.
In this paper, we have explored how students in a cross-disciplinary course on engineering and social justice approached the idea of using social justice as a lens for looking at engineering. We have used an adapted phenomenographic approach [Marton, F., and Booth, S., 1997. Learning and awareness. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum], together with Meyer and Land's [Meyer, J.H.F., and Land, R., 2003. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. ETL Project Occasional Report 4 [online]. Available from: http://www.tla.ed.ac.uk/etl/docs/ETLreport4.pdf [Accessed 1 January 2009]] threshold concept framework, to study the variation present among the students in the class as they attempt to pass through the threshold of this lens. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with students. We examine the liminal space that students hover in for several weeks, not knowing whether or if they will eventually pass through the portal into new territories. We found nine conceptions of increasing complexity present among the students in the class. We suggest that the students’ collective experiences illustrate potential journeys along a spectrum of liminality and through the threshold. We conclude with some implications for what can be done to facilitate the students’ transition through the threshold, thereby contributing to the development of this aspect of engineering education.
Findings are presented from an ongoing study of three final-year, honours-level course units in the biosciences with a combined intake of 85 students. The data on which the analysis draws comprise semi-structured interviews with students together with findings from an Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire. The investigation forms part of a wider project concerned with the enhancement of teaching–learning environments in undergraduate courses in contrasting subject areas. The findings presented in the paper focus on two interrelated aspects of the students experiences within the teaching–learning environments represented by the three course settings. First, salient aspects of high-quality undergraduate-level learning are identified in the form of the students evolving grasp of characteristic ways of thinking and practising in the subject. These ways of thinking and practising in the biosciences were evident in the students engagement with the research literature and with experimental data, and in their efforts to master the requirements and conventions of the subject for written and oral discourse. The second part of the analyses focuses on the teaching–learning environments represented by the three course settings. It was found that, despite taking markedly different forms in the three settings, the teaching–learning and assessment strategies pursued appeared to be broadly congruent with the promotion of ways of thinking and practising in the subject. The quality of feedback to students also seemed pivotal, but needed to be understood in terms of the interplay of various factors, including opportunities for intrinsic as well as extrinsic feedback. Finally, the later years of undergraduate studies had called for a significant process of adjustment on the students part to a step-change in study demands.
For various reasons, it is becoming felt that the knowledge function of the university is being undermined. Some, indeed, have come to suggest that we are witnessing 'the end of knowledge' in higher education. The 'end of knowledge' thesis takes three forms. Substantively, it is felt that the knowledge sustained by the university has no particular status: it simply takes its place and its chances amid the proliferating knowledges that society has now to offer. Ideologically, it is felt that the knowledge for which the university stands lacks legitimacy: it can simply be understood as a set of language games of a rather privileged set of occupational groups ('academics') that reflects their interests and marginal standing to the rest of society. Procedurally, it is implied that the university can now only secure its future by becoming entrepreneurial and by marketing its knowledge wares in forms of academic capitalism; in the process, its knowledge becomes performative in character and loses its power to enlighten. Much of this analysis is correct – even as the theses cut across each other – butthe conclusion is wrong. The modern world is supercomplex in character: it can be understood as a milieu for the proliferation of frameworks by which we might understand the world, frameworks that are often competing with each other. In such an age of supercomplexity, the university has new knowledge functions: to add to supercomplexity by offering completely new frames of understanding (so compounding supercomplexity); to help us comprehend and make sense of the resulting knowledge mayhem; and to enable us to live purposefully amid supercomplexity. Knowledge, as a pure, objective reading of the world does have to be adandoned. But the university is not, thereby, delegitimised. In an age of supercomplexity, a new epistemology for the university awaits, one that is open, bold, engaging, accessible, and conscious of its own insecurity. It is an epistemology for living amid uncertainty.
By the time they graduate from college, most students still have not achieved the kind of self-authorship that would allow them to think independently, make choices, and pursue their dreams. What can we do to help them develop this capacity before they graduate so they can make the most of their college experience? One way, says the author, is to be better company.
As research in higher education continues to provide new perspectives on student learning, the aim of the present article is to take stock of some of the ideas that have been developed and explore how these might contribute to the field of translation didactics. Two pedagogical concepts will be in focus: threshold concepts and ways of thinking and practising (WTP). In an attempt to visualise how these can be related to the discipline of translation studies, four potential threshold concepts are suggested and a WTP model of translation presented. This model is then used to explore knowledge conceptions and epistemological development in the discipline, the issue of academic and vocational approaches in translation programmes and the gap between theory and practice in translation classrooms. The pedagogical framework introduced here suggests a didactic approach that encourages students to develop a deep understanding of the ways of thinking and practising in the subject, but it also provides an analytical frame for teachers to identify barriers to learning and a way to negotiate these difficulties. It is found to constitute an interesting area for future research as it has the potential to empower students as well as teachers.
By drawing on an approach that focuses on differing public-good professional capabilities in five professions, this book produces a crucial new framework for the preparation of professionals relevant to the global study of higher education policy. It expands higher education’s contribution to global social justice beyond a concern with human capital, administering a challenge to higher education internationally to address human development in the 21st century.
The 'tribes and territories' metaphor for the cultures of academic disciplines and their roots in different knowledge characteristics has been used by those interested in university life and work since the early 1990s. This book draws together research, data and theory to show how higher education has gone through major change since then and how social theory has evolved in parallel. Together these changes mean there is a need to re-theorise academic life in a way which reflects changed contexts in universities in the twenty-first century, and so a need for new metaphors.
Introduction
This article describes the development of a first year occupational therapy module, ‘Participation in Occupations’, and the design and development of a mediating tool, Contexts of Participation: the Critical Thinking Tool, in a British university.
Method
Using an action research process, the module content, learning and teaching strategy and new conceptual tools were designed to promote an enhanced understanding of the central importance of occupation to occupational therapy and, in particular, the role of participation in occupations in forming and reforming an individual within unique contextual situations. The inclusion of theory from disability studies and the use of a transformative approach to higher education were also investigated.
Findings and discussion
The study spans 16 cohorts of students and reflects on the findings, which include increased client-centredness and greater appreciation of the complex nature of participation and its role in health and wellbeing.
The paper explores a conceptual approach to the question of what it means to provide a university education that addresses equity, and encourages the formation of STEM graduates oriented to public-good values and with commitments to making professional contributions to society which will advance human well-being. It considers and rejects resource-based and utilitarian approaches to well-being and opts for Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach which involves developing graduates’ capabilities and functionings to be and do in ways which they have reason to value. The capabilities approach argues for educational and social development as the expansion of such freedoms. The approach is sensitive also to diversity through the focus on the choice of a plurality of functionings and a wide informational basis for policy, practice and social justice evaluations. It allows an analysis of how different individuals can convert available resources into functionings through attending to conversion factors: personal (internal) conversion factors, social conversion factors and environmental (external) conversion factors. All make a difference to how an individual converts her resources into functionings and makes advantage and disadvantage visible. There is a further education-specific issue, that of selecting core valuable capabilities because not any form of science and engineering education will do. Educators need to deliberate and agree which capabilities and corresponding functionings are valuable and so should be supported in policy and practice. In a capabilities-friendly education, education would aim to secure and distribute valuable education capabilities to diverse students (women and men, black and white, rural and urban and so on) paying attention to the social arrangements in education (pedagogies, institutional culture and education policy) and to conversion factors and barriers that might impede the development of opportunities and valued outcomes.
Background/aim:
We introduce the educational framework of 'threshold concepts' and discuss its utility in understanding the fundamental difficulties learners have in understanding ways of thinking and practising as occupational therapists. We propose that the relationship between occupation and health is a threshold concept for occupational therapy because of students' trouble in achieving lasting conceptual change in relation to their understanding of it.
Methods:
The authors present and discuss key ideas drawn from educational writings on threshold concepts, review the emerging literature on threshold concepts in occupational therapy, and pose a series of questions in order to prompt consideration of the pedagogical issues requiring action by academic and fieldwork educators.
Results:
Threshold concepts in occupational therapy have been considered in a primarily cross-disciplinary sense, that is, the understandings that occupational therapy learners grapple with are relevant to learners in other disciplines. In contrast, we present a more narrowly defined conception that emphasises the 'bounded-ness' of the concept to the discipline.
Conclusion:
A threshold concept that captures the essential nature of occupational therapy is likely to be (highly) troublesome in terms of a learner's acquisition of it. Rather than simplifying these learning 'jewels' educators are encouraged to sit with the discomfort that they and the learner may experience as the learner struggles to grasp them. Moreover, they should reshape their curricula to provoke such struggles if transformative learning is to be the outcome.
Although primary source work is a major component of undergraduate history degrees in many countries, the topic of how best to support this work has been relatively unexplored. This article addresses the pedagogical support of primary source work by reviewing relevant literature to identify the challenges undergraduates face in interpreting sources, and examining how in two courses carefully articulated course design and supportive teaching activities assisted students to meet these challenges. This fine-grained examination of the courses is framed within a socio-cultural account of learning. The findings show how a skilful drawing of students into the interpretive/discursive practices of source analysis was associated with an epistemological reframing of historical knowledge and dialogical forms of teaching that helped the students to take forward a dialectical engagement with sources. The benefits of an ‘integrated’ approach to source work that fosters students’ affective and intellectual engagement with historical interpretive practices are highlighted.
Recent developments in UK higher education are turning attention to the undergraduate curriculum. Drawing on Lyotard's concept of performativity, this paper explores broad patterns of curriculum change in five subject areas. The curriculum is understood as an educational project forming identities founded in three domains: knowledge, action and self. Curriculum models are proposed that identify these components and their relationships with each other. The evidence suggests that the weightings and levels of integration of these components vary between the sciences and technology subjects, the arts and humanities, and professional courses. Attempts to develop curriculum strategies should take account of the patterns of curriculum components as they vary between the subject areas.
For some time (around 100 years), the dominant influence in the shaping of curricula has been that of the academics in their separate knowledge fields. In the contemporary world, that academic hegemony is dissolving as curricula become subject to two contending patterns of change. Firstly, in a mass higher education system, there will be tendencies towards increased diversity in the components of curricula, the positioning of the providing institution being just one influence to which are added manifold 'external' influences, such as a growing student market and the interests of employers. Secondly, and in contradistinction to such diversity, as the state looks to see a greater responsiveness towards the world of work, it is possible that a universal shift in the direction of performativity is emerging: what counts is less what individuals know and more what individuals can do (as represented in their demonstrable 'skills'). Hitherto, systematic attention to curricula as such in higher education has been barely evident. Accordingly, curricula are taking on ad hoc patterns that are the unwitting outfall of this complex of forces at work, diversifying and universalising as—at the same time—these forces are. In consequence, curricula will be unlikely to yield the human qualities of being that the current age of supercomplexity requires.
Although it is evident that disciplines have their distinctive cultural characteristics, this consideration tends to be largely overlooked in research into, as well as policy-making within, higher education. The paper aims to draw attention to some of the resulting inadequacies in analysis and to explore their consequences. After offering an overview of the various disciplinary cultures, it examines different facets of academic activity at the macro, meso and micro levels and suggests that in each case the differences between disciplines are important enough to merit general recognition. The author concludes with a brief speculation on why the issue is so widely neglected.
If a curriculum in higher education is understood to be an educational vehicle to promote a student's development, and if a curriculum in higher education is also understood to be built in large part around a project of knowledge, then the issue arises as to the links between knowledge and student being and becoming. A distinction is made here between knowing as such and coming to know, with the focus on the latter. It is argued that the process of coming to know can be edifying: through the challenges of engaging over time with disciplines and their embedded standards, worthwhile dispositions and qualities may develop, the worthwhileness arising through the formation of 'epistemic virtues'. Examples of such dispositions and qualities are identified, with differences between dispositions, on the one hand, and qualities, on the other hand, being observed. Educational implications of understanding the nurturing of student being in this way are sketched, with a set of 10 principles offered for curricula and pedagogy. It is suggested, finally, that the clarifying of the relationship between knowing and being is not only a value-laden but also a pressing matter.
This article uses an argument based on Gee's (1990) constructs of Discourse and literacy to argue for a conceptualisation of teaching as not about the dissemination of knowledge but rather about teaching students how to make knowledge
Occupation, and its relationship with health and well-being, is very complex. It can be described in many different ways by the profession within which it is so central that it provides its name. A simple way to talk about occupation that appears to appeal to a wide range of people is as a synthesis of doing, being and becoming. In the present paper I reflect on how a dynamic balance between doing and being is central to healthy living and wellness, and how becoming whatever a person, or a community, is best fitted to become is dependent on both. Doing is often used as a synonym for occupation within our profession and is so important that it is impossible to envisage the world of humans without it. Being encapsulates such notions as nature and essence, about being true to ourselves, to our individual capacities and in all that we do. Becoming adds to the idea of being a sense of future and holds the notions of transformation and self actualization. It is a concept that sits well with enabling occupation and with ideas about human development, growth and potential. Occupational therapists are in the business of helping people to transform their lives through enabling them to do and to be and through the process of becoming. In combination doing, being and becoming are integral to occupational therapy philosophy, process and outcomes, and some attention is given as to how we may best utilize these in self growth, professional practice, student teaching and learning, or towards social and global change for healthier lifestyles.
In an age of uncertainty, one of the aims of higher education is to establish lifelong learning abilities in students. However,
different authors remain divided on the question of what constitutes ‘lifelong learning ability’. This article proposes the
hypothesis that the cultivation of lifelong learning abilities in higher education needs to be conceptualised and sustained
through a focus on the constitution and operation of agency. The cultivation of lifelong learning as a set of agent abilities
needs to be grounded within the mode of being, a concept inspired by Heidegger, rather than within having or doing. While the importance of developing epistemology by focusing on learning as delivery (having) and interacting (doing) is
not denied, this article suggests that higher education also concerns ontological learning. The Heideggerian perspective on
being provides a more person-focused approach that is useful for providing balance and congruence between feeling and thought
and between mind and body, supplementing the having and doing approaches by inviting students to reflect on their own growth
and leading not only to knowledge construction for problem-solving but also to the construction of subjectivity as a means
of finding meaning in the learner’s existence in times of uncertainty.
KeywordsAgency–Being–Lifelong learning–Heidegger–Higher education
Recent research on student learning has given close attention to how students experiences and actions are mediated by the whole university learning–teaching environment in which they find themselves. The current article pursues this focus on learning–teaching environments in two stages. Guided by socio-cultural perspectives on learning, the first part:
•
examines issues surrounding how best to conceptualise university learning–teaching environments,•
highlights the need to take account of central disciplinary purposes and•
presents a framework for representing disciplinary practices within higher education.The second part of the article then engages with the task of illustrating how this general framework (which foregrounds disciplinary concerns) can be applied within a specific subject. The framework is employed to structure an account of the insights gained from an ongoing research study concerning:
•
the ways in which the values and central practices that characterise the disciplinary community of history relate to teaching and learning practices,•
how, taking account of local constraints and affordances, students active engagement with these disciplinary purposes can be fostered.
Teachers in higher education commonly aim to develop their students' ways of thinking, acting and approaching a field of study and practice. Hence, this should also be the focus of our teaching practice. This view of teaching involves providing students with experiences that enable them to enter the field as practitioners. Those experiences must be directed to developing students' understanding of the perspective that is relevant to the field and what the content of a course means within that perspective.In exploring how teaching can enable students to enter a field of study and practice, some alternative ways in which teachers see the content of their courses are described. These ways of seeing course content were drawn from a study of experiences of teaching in higher education in a range of fields. Some limitations of focusing on skills, knowledge, procedures, concepts, and principles are outlined, particularly in relation to teaching aims. It is argued that a focus on enriching students' experience of the field of study and practice is more closely and directly related to the aims of teaching in higher education.
This article inveighs against the prevalent commodified discourse in Higher Education especially as it impacts on curriculum planning, quality assurance and learner typologies. It expresses a concern that educational research, in offering models drawn, but now divorced from, practice, may contribute to this negative impact. As an example, a polarised model distinguishing features of 'traditional' from 'emerging' curricula is criticised as contributing to this commodification; as diminishing the status of university teachers, as offering an instrument to reductive quality assurance systems and as militating against the disciplines operating as communities of practice. In contradistinction to this dichotomizing model, but extrapolating from the same article, a 'both/and' model outlining elements of process- and discipline community-based 'transformational curricula' is offered. It is perhaps impossible to write about the evils of externalised models and reductively abstract discourse without contribut ing to that very effect. The article therefore ends with two voices which are not those of educational researchers.
Beyond tribes and territories: New metaphors for new times
- C Manuthunga
- A Brew
Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge
- D Perkins
Concepts and conceptual frameworks underpinning the ETL project. In Enhancing teaching-learning environments (ETL) environments in undergraduate courses project
- N Entwistle