Voice Mail and the telephone: A new student support strategy in the teaching of law by distance education

This article reports on an innovative use of a voice processing system – Voice Mail – to support students undertaking law subjects in the distance education mode. It is contended that the computer‐based voice processing system is a potent and cost‐effective means of minimising isolation, distance from other students and perceived disadvantages compared to internal students studying the same subject. These bulletins are seen as having a variety of possible uses including covering developments in dynamic disciplines after the cut‐off time, extending the ‘shelf‐life’ of print‐based materials, providing students with particular needs with a valued form of contact and being either a regular feature of subjects or used at peak times. They provide a means for spontaneity and for students to share in setting the agenda – features perhaps not often associated with teaching in the distance mode. This report arises out of a particular improvisation and it is anticipated more systematic developments and research will follow this particular initiative.     

A scientific approach in the assessment of the school-based part of the teacher education programme in Sweden

This article aims to highlight how a scientific and critical approach is used in assessment dialogues during the last period of a practical, school-based teacher education programme. The result is based on 13 assessment dialogues conducted in a course at a Swedish university, where one of the course objectives is to, ‘in a scientific way, analyse teaching situations based on learning theories’. The assessment dialogues were analysed drawing from Bernstein’s concepts of ‘classification’, ‘framing’, ‘horizontal knowledge’ and ‘vertical knowledge’. The result shows that only in a minority of the assessment dialogues are students expected to use theory as an analytical tool and to critically examine their teaching practice. The theory is used in a more instrumental way to legitimize what is considered the ‘right way’ to teach. One conclusion is that the critical tradition of academia is seldom observed despite being clearly stated in the learning goals. The link between general academic knowledge and more school-based contextual knowledge is often missing or not made visible by the students or the teacher educators, and normative content is still clearly prominent.     

‘I have no English friends’: some observations on the practice of action learning with international business students

This account reports on some experiences of facilitating action learning with international business students. Interest in international student learning and the international student experience is significant and increasing with a considerable range of literature on the subject. Some of this literature is concerned with the perceived ‘problems’ or ‘deficits’ which international learners are said to bring to the UK university experience. Elsewhere the benefits which international students bring to the learning process are more positively highlighted. This paper describes some of the experiences derived from implementing action learning with a number of sets of international postgraduate business and management students in an HE business school setting. Specifically, it considers how educational, learning and cultural differences, expectations and assumptions influence the student experience, and how collaborative learning can be developed.     

The politics of developing global human resources in Japan

Japan has made developing global human resources (gurobaru jinzai ikusei) a national priority. The government has invested billions of yen annually to double the number of Japanese students studying overseas, double the number of globally competitive Japanese universities, and improve Japanese students’ English test scores. A broad, conservative ‘globalist coalition’ supported these reforms, including the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Party Japan, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, and big business. Education specialists – government vice ministers and business association committee chairmen – created ‘contrived consensus’ through a series of advisory council deliberations. All globalist coalition members benefitted from reforms to develop global human resources, especially big business. Political progressives, including teachers’ unions and university professors, were not included in the policy-making process and benefitted little from the reforms.     

‘Feeling bad’ or ‘being bad?’ The trapping effect of effort in academic failure in a Confucian cultural context

A predicament faced by students who fail academically in East Asian Confucian societies, such as Taiwan, is being obscured by students’ outstanding performances in international academic assessments. This article proposes that there is a trapping effect of effort for these students. They are trapped in a dilemma between ‘feeling bad’ (emotional distress) for exerting too much effort and ‘being bad’ (negative image) for making little effort. Such a dilemma may be worse in the domain of academic achievement than in non-academic domains like the arts, with the former being more directly related to children’s dutiful fulfilment of parental expectations. Two consecutive studies – a scenario experiment with 700 subjects and a survey on past experiences of failure with a sample of 190 – were conducted. The results supported our hypothesis that effort becomes a double-edged sword for students who failed. They are more likely to either ‘feel bad’ or ‘be bad’ after failing academically compared to performing poorly on non-academic activities. Implications of the findings are further discussed.     

Governing teachers’ work and learning through data: Australian insights

This article reveals the multiple ways in which data are constituted as a vehicle for governing teachers’ work and learning. Drawing on the concept of governance, including in relation to the sociology of numbers, and data from one school in Queensland, Australia, the research reveals how teachers’ work and learning were constituted through practices of: establishing specific ‘targets’, including various ‘audacious goals’ for school and national testing; focusing upon ‘aligning’ all forms of school, regional and national data collected within the school; and participating in various ‘data conversations’ about specific students with senior members of staff. While the research reveals how teachers found such practices beneficial for improving their practice with students, it also shows how this learning was always and everywhere framed within a broader discourse of data, and how this data-centric focus came to constitute what was valued about their work and learning, and that of their students.     

The impact of academic self‐concept,expectations and the choice of learning strategy on academic achievement: the case of business students

This study provides evidence of the impact of two critical self‐regulation components – academic self‐concept and outcome expectations – on the selection of learning strategies conducive to academic achievement in undergraduate business education. Self‐concept theory is the framework for the analysis of students’ motivations and learning behaviors. Path analysis suggests that high academic self‐concept favors engagement in complex cognitive effort, deep learning strategies and self‐reflection, as well as in the adoption of strategic learning approaches alone. However, the composite effect of deep learning through strategic approaches has the most impact on student’s academic performance. High academic expectations favor students’ selection of deep learning more than strategic approaches. Clearly, the use of surface approaches to learning is not conducive to academic achievement. Overall, these findings suggest that high students’ academic self‐concepts and unambiguous outcome expectations encourage critical thinking and reflective approaches to learning. Implications for the design of educational models and curriculum in business undergraduate education are discussed.     

University students’ perceptions of summative assessment: The role of context

We report on a mixed-method study that compared students’ perceptions of summative assessment across two distinct disciplines – education and mathematics, at two research-intensive institutions in the UK. The disciplines chosen represent opposing positions in Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines, as well as having very different assessment practices. Results suggest that these education students prefer to be assessed by methods they perceive to discriminate on the basis of academic abilities. Moreover, they perceive the traditional closed-book examination as inadequate to assess the capabilities which are key to being successful in their subject, which fits some but not all of the general findings in the literature. However, comparing these results with those of an identical study with mathematics students, we find that the perceptions of summative assessment are very different. We account for that difference by suggesting that students’ epistemic beliefs play a role in shaping these perceptions and conclude that, in designing summative assessment in higher education, generalised and centralised forces for change need to be tempered by contextual and disciplinary factors.     

Disaster preparedness,adaptive politics and lifelong learning: a case of Japan

Preparedness for disaster scenarios is progressively becoming an educational agenda for governments because of diversifying risks and threats worldwide. In disaster-prone Japan, disaster preparedness has been a prioritised national agenda, and preparedness education has been undertaken in both formal schooling and lifelong learning settings. This article examines the politics behind one prevailing policy discourse in the field of disaster preparedness referred to as ‘the four forms of aid’ – ‘kojo [public aid]’, ‘jijo [self-help]’, ‘gojo/kyojo [mutual aid]’. The study looks at the Japanese case, however, the significance is global, given that neo-liberal governments are increasingly having to deal with a range of disaster situations whether floods or terrorism, while implementing austerity measures. Drawing on the theory of the adaptiveness of neo-liberalism, the article sheds light on the hybridity of the current Abe government’s politics: a ‘dominant’ neo-liberal economic approach – public aid and self-help – and a ‘subordinate’ moral conservative agenda – mutual aid. It is argued that the four forms of aid are an effective ‘balancing act’, and that kyojo in particular is a powerful legitimator in the hybrid politics. The article concludes that a lifelong and life-wide preparedness model could be developed in Japan which has taken a social approach to lifelong learning.     

Mobile student to mobile worker: the role of universities in the ‘war for talent’

Universities, as part of the neoliberal regime imposed on them, are being co-opted into a ‘war for talent’, in which national economic success is heavily invested. We examine part of this ‘war’ that affects universities directly – the recruitment of ‘the brightest and the best’ internationally mobile students and their subsequent retention by the host country as high-skill workers. After an account of this war for talent and its implications for higher education, we review the literature on study-migration transitions by international students and identify gaps in both data and theorization. We propose a three-part model that uses the notion of ‘flows’ to organize a research agenda in this field and the possible roles of universities in implementing it. We conclude that only by resisting full recruitment into this global talent war can academic researchers continue to maintain the integrity and value of their professional and disciplinary calling.     

Having it all? Transferring community-oriented research principles to teaching and learning to develop better university engagement

There are increasing demands on universities to develop more meaningful linkages with local communities – from government, from citizens and taxpayers, and from students. But the incorporation of community-oriented praxis into the university mission is not straightforward and requires a significant re-orientation away from ‘traditional’ organizational norms regarding teaching and research. Where community practice involves students, there is a burgeoning literature on situated learning, service learning and problem-based learning; but where community practice relates to research, the literature tends to be very much more disciplinary oriented and the sources are commensurately disparate. Discussions about community perspectives, however, are typically located in another set of literatures altogether. In order to address this deficit, this article reviews the literature on community-oriented research with the intention of providing a more holistic view of the common concerns and issues that arise when universities move their work into communities. This article reveals that – despite different disciplinary origins – the varied literature on community-oriented research illustrates the evolution of consistent principles for good practice. Moreover, it argues that community-oriented research principles provide praxis guidelines for university engagement in communities that are often absent in the literature on teaching and learning or civic engagement. The article then presents a case study of the evolution an integrated institutional response, which combines community-oriented research approaches to teaching and learning and civic engagement, being developed at the University of Limerick, Ireland.     

A logic of appropriation: enacting national testing (NAPLAN) in Australia

This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students’ results on national literacy and numeracy tests – the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) – in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers’ learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores on NAPLAN within schools was the result of sustained policy pressure for increased attention to such foci at national and state levels, and a broader political context in which rapid improvement in test results was considered imperative. However, implementation, (or what this paper describes more accurately as ‘enactment’) of the policy also revealed NAPLAN as providing evidence of students’ learning, as useful for grouping students to help improve their literacy and numeracy capabilities, and as a stimulus for teacher professional development. Drawing upon the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the paper argues that even as more political concerns about comparing NAPLAN results with other states were recognised by educators, the field of schooling practices was characterised by a logic of active appropriation of political concerns about improved test scores by teachers, for more educative purposes. In this way, policy enactment in schools is characterised by competing interests, and involving not just interpretation, translation and critique but active appropriation of political concerns by teachers.     

The role of students’ emotions in formal feedback situations

A growing, but still relatively small body of research underscores the importance of attending to students’ experiences and emotions in higher education. One specific context in which emotions have a focal role is formal feedback situations. The aim of this paper is to provide a literature overview on the role of emotions, in sociology in general and learning in particular, and to draw on this literature in order to tentatively suggest how the role of students’ emotions can increasingly be accounted for in the context of feedback situations. The claim of the paper is that emotions should not be considered as hindering learning. Rather, it underlines the focal role of emotions in learning as being a natural part of it. The paper suggests that learning activities such as ‘feedback preparation activities’ and ‘feedback-on-the-feedback’ can be helpful in order to acknowledge students’ emotions in formal feedback situations.     

Teaching social work students against the grain: negotiating the constraints and possibilities

Students who have followed routes to Western universities other than the ‘traditional’ one – that is, an uninterrupted path from school to university – face greater challenges to their democratic participation in higher education than their ‘traditional’ counterparts. Until recently, universities have predominantly expected students with diverse entry points to assimilate into existing curricula and academic modes of operating. Such expectation, when combined with reductionist managerial accountability, has largely marginalised non-traditional students. This paper reports on a project which aimed to reverse this marginalisation in an Australian Bachelor of Social Work degree. It is argued that students from diverse linguistic, cultural and educational backgrounds, having greater challenges in negotiating privileged academic and discipline literacies, are better served pedagogically by curriculum design that resonates with their lifeworlds and makes tacit assumptions in university literacies explicit. Using practitioner action research in a partnership between a social work and an academic language and learning academic, pedagogies that utilised students’ literacy practices as assets for learning were enacted over two research cycles. The possibilities and constraints that emerged to support student learning and more equitable participation were examined. The findings suggest that it is possible, even under current preoccupations with measurements and budget constraints, to signal key points of negotiation for pedagogic change to respond more inclusively and equitably to contemporary university students.     

Re-imagining active learning: Delving into darkness

Ample attention is being paid in the higher education literature to promoting active learning among students. However, critical examination of educational purposes and ends is largely lacking in this literature on active learning. In expanding this debate, we consider it important to ask: About what substantive matters are students to be active? To what end is this activity directed, especially beyond gaining skills and competences within a unit of work or course? In this article, we critique and extend the conceptualisation of active learning. In particular, we discuss dimensions that are neither readily visible nor instrumental, which are overlooked in much of this literature. In doing so, we explore features and potential consequences of such an expanded conceptualisation. Drawing from educational philosophy and, in particular, existential philosophies, we show that active learning may also be partly invisible, unfocused, unsettling, and not at all instrumental—sometimes even leaving the learner more confused and (temporarily) incompetent. However, such forms of undisclosed or ‘dark’ learning, we conclude, are necessary and even vital counterparts for the forms of active learning that flood higher education curricula today.     

Seeking support: researching first‐year students’ experiences of coping with academic life

Students’ transition to academia comes with a number of challenges which, if inadequately addressed, may negatively affect their academic performance and psychological well‐being. Hence, the question of support becomes critical and has been reflected in the variety of practical measures to provide support with learning and facilitate newcomers’ integration into higher education. However, while forms of institutional aid have increased and diversified in recent years, the kind of support the students actually need and prefer to use – from the pool of available resources – remains insufficiently understood in current research. To address this gap, this paper advocates a social network approach to first‐year students’ experiences of coping with academic life and suggests an agenda for further investigation, which would contrast support ‘from above’ and support ‘from below.’     

The nineteen eightees: Prelude to curricular reform

Abstract

The massification of higher education in Australia since the early 1990s has foregrounded issues of access and participation for a range of ‘non‐traditional’ students. Such issues can unsettle academics’ normative assumptions of the learning behaviours of the traditional, ‘ideal’, university student and highlight normative beliefs and practices about teaching and learning. This can be seen most acutely in regard to the increasing numbers of students with disabilities, especially students with ‘hidden’ disabilities such as psychiatric disabilities and learning disabilities. The impacts of these disabilities go to the very core of the business of the academy: cognition, intellectual ability and academic success. Using Smith's (1999) notion of ‘cultural cartography’, this article takes a sociocultural approach to investigate and give voice to the responses of a small number of students with a ‘learning difficulty’ at a regional university about problematic aspects of their teaching and learning experiences. This demonstrated that the after‐effects of access and equity admission polices can play out in deeply personal ways for individual students when normative, behaviourist notions of ability and achievement continue to prevail within higher education environments. Although non‐traditional students are now permitted to enter the academy, this occurs at some personal cost to their feelings of belonging and self‐esteem, and can result in students taking on deficit or helpless positions within the academy.     

Enacting entrepreneurship education: The interaction of personal and professional interests in mini-enterprises

This article argues that participative approaches, such as those found in enterprise or entrepreneurship education, allow several factors to influence learning activity. The ‘Mini-enterprise’ (Young Enterprise) approach is one where students set up and run their own business during a school year. This article is based on the analysis of interactional processes in four mini-enterprises in post-16 education. Given the emphasis on progressive ideas in entrepreneurship education in general, it is important to understand how students themselves form the learning activity. The analysis shows how ideas about friendship, school and business all contribute to students’ interaction and to forming the learning process. In order to explore how students’ agency is informed by different sets of ideas, the article applies Joas’ theory of creative action. This allows a discussion of how students’ personal and professional interests interact in productive and less productive ways in the learning activity.     

Assessing learning in a sociology department: what do students say that they learn?

Assessment plays a central role in evaluating and strengthening student learning in higher education, and sociology departments, in particular, have increasingly become interested in engaging in assessment activities to better understand students’ learning. This qualitative study builds on previous research on assessment by asking what students in one American university department see themselves learning in the sociology major. Rather than asking students to reflect on what we think they are learning, we asked open-ended questions about skills, topics and modes of education they considered most significant to their learning. The 25 sociology majors in our study included second-year students, graduating fourth-year students and alumni who had graduated five years prior, enabling us to compare what students have learned or are learning across cohorts. Our findings demonstrate that students emphasise a common collection of skills, topics and – especially – modes of learning in the major, despite their various course selections and interests within the discipline, and also that majors’ orientations to sociology vary as they move through, and beyond, the undergraduate curriculum.     

A cross-curricular approach to ‘learning to learn’ languages: government policy and school practice

This article connects two fields of research: ‘learning to learn’ and school-based teacher development. The context is a cross-curricular project between English and modern languages teachers. Carried out in two London schools, the study aimed to encourage students to transfer common language learning strategies across the two subjects. Findings from interviews with teachers and students highlight the gap between the government's ‘learning to learn’ agenda and the realities of implementing it. A distinction is drawn between providing school-based opportunities for teachers to share generic ‘good practice’ in relation to initiatives such as Assessment for Learning and those where the actual content of lessons crosses subject boundaries. Recent government guidelines appear to mask inherent tensions in the aims and pedagogical approaches of the two languages – tensions exacerbated by the current preoccupation with performance measures. It is suggested that the differences are unlikely to be resolved without a supportive school culture that provides adequate release time for teachers to engage in extensive cross-curricular dialogue.