Contesting discourses in higher education curriculum restructuring in South Africa

This article describes effortsfrom the mid-1990s in South Africa to reshapehigher education curricula, and the responsesof universities to a series of policyinitiatives concerned with higher educationcurriculum reform. Pressures of globalisationand the local challenges of reconstruction anddevelopment formed the context in which highereducation curriculum restructuring occurred.Two discourses, acredit-accumulation-and-transfer discourse anda disciplinary discourse, have shaped educationpolicy making in South Africa since themid-1990s, particularly in higher education.Policy initiatives to re-shape higher educationcurricula are discussed, as well as the ways inwhich science and humanities faculties atuniversities have responded to theseinitiatives. A typology of different curriculumforms is presented which suggests that in spiteof the influence of the credit exchangediscourse in policy documents, undergraduatecurricula continue to be presented on a largelydisciplinary basis.     

Civic learning outcomes: a step towards an inclusive higher education

An inclusive education goes beyond the acquisition of discipline knowledge or skills. Inclusion is concerned with the participation and integration of all students (regardless of their intrinsic characteristics), helping them to develop civic competences. Civic and democratic values, equality and social justice became critical dimensions in this broader concept of education. This paper argues that the incorporation of civic dimensions, such as civic knowledge, civic skills or civic values in academic curricula could be an effective step towards more inclusive education. Specifically, this work intends to explore what civic dimensions are emphasised as a learning outcome in Portuguese higher education programmes. Adopting a qualitative methodology, typologies and incidence of civic learning outcomes were analysed and compared across three academic levels (first, second and third study cycles). The results provide a better understanding of what civic dimensions are stressed by institutions. All types of civic learning outcomes have been reinforced, defining civic values, civic skills and civic knowledge as expectable learning results. Both civic values and skills are well represented while civic knowledge is the less mentioned category. The enforcement of such civic dimensions is a valuable approach to enhancing education as a collective societal endeavour and as a common good.     

Perspectives of lifelong education in Portuguese higher education: a critical analysis of learning outcomes

ABSTRACT

Nurturing students’ continuous learning is a current trend in the higher education agenda. Curricula and academic contents should enable students to take part in stimulating learning experiences, as well as promoting both developing and training opportunities in the course of their lives and careers. Despite the relevance given to lifelong learning in the educational system, there are still some open questions: how this concept is understood and put into practice by higher education institutions? The paper aims to analyse the conceptions of lifelong learning as reflected on the learning outcomes proposed in a sample of study programs. A qualitative methodology and a data-driven approach are adopted to explore the content of the learning outcomes proposed in 10% of total study programs submitted to quality accreditation, since 2009. Generally, results reveal that higher education institutions are committed to the lifelong learning paradigm, particularly in master and PhD degrees. Students are expected to ‘invest in personal and professional development through life’, to ‘develop learning competences through life’, as well as to ‘foster lifelong learning’. This study provides a better understanding of the range of perspectives and the relevance given to lifelong learning as a valuable learning outcome.     

Three in-course assessment reforms to improve higher education learning outcomes

A current international concern is that, for too large a proportion of graduates, their higher order cognitive and practical capabilities are below acceptable levels. The constituent courses of academic programmes are the most logical sites for developing these capabilities. Contributing to patchy attainment are deficiencies in three particular aspects of assessment practice: the design and specifications of many assessment tasks; the minimum requirements for awarding a passing grade in a course and granting credit towards the degree; and the accumulation of points derived from quizzes, assessments or activities completed during the teaching period. Rethinking and reforming these would lead to improvements for significant sub-populations of students. Pursuing such a goal would also have significant positive implications for academic teachers, but be contingent on favourable contextual settings including departmental and institutional priorities.     

The place of content and pedagogy in shaping sustainability learning outcomes in higher education

This research investigates the ways in which undergraduate courses dealing with the environment address sustainable development (SD), and contribute to the development of sustainability learning outcomes (SLO). The participants in the study were 13 instructors, and 360 students who were enrolled in 13 courses that addressed the environment in a technical university. Mixed methods were used for data collection and analysis. We found that courses that address the environment are varied in the way that they address sustainable development, and in the pedagogy they use. We also found links between teaching methods and the pattern of reported SLOs: skills development was promoted mainly in courses with a high degree of participatory learning; changes in awareness and attitudes were reported mainly in courses that addressed sustainable development, and motivation to promote sustainable development was reported mainly in courses that addressed sustainable development and also provided opportunities for active and participatory learning. The implications of our research are discussed.     

Curriculum change and climate change: Inside outside pressures in higher education

In higher education today, institutions are facing a number of challenges—including the challenge to create future-proof graduates. Higher education institutions have a particular mandate to develop future leaders and decision-makers capable of understanding and providing solutions to complex, global issues. Education programmes that focus on multi-disciplinary thinking are required to prepare future leaders to solve problems not yet known to be problems. Using a case study of a postgraduate climate change programme, this study illustrates the challenges addressed and resulting rewards when reforming the curriculum. Two theoretical curriculum models informed the re-imagination of the programme: objectives-based and action research following the process inquiry model. The reformation was undertaken by the programme teachers as researchers of their practice. To future-proof graduates, this study discusses how curricular intentions are aligned with the institution’s capacity for action towards change. Avoiding a business-as-usual scenario when faced with complex, politicized and global issues such as climate change requires both programme and course curricula continuous evaluation and revision. Alignment with internal (university and teacher-level) goals and external directives is required.     

Learning outcomes in professional contexts in higher education

With the policy of developing a, transparent and competitive European higher education sector, learning outcomes (LOs) are attributed a foundation stone role in policy and curriculum development. A premise for their implementation is that they bear fundamental similarities across national, institutional or professional/disciplinary contexts. In contrast, detractors suggest that LOs cannot communicate precisely across programmes or national boundaries. With this as a backdrop, this article analyses how LOs are used to communicate what students are to learn and the extent to which their use drives standardisation. The analysis is based on a case study of how LOs are formulated in study programme documents in two professional education programmes in Norway and the UK. The findings indicate that LOs can be considered to drive standardisation through the same presentation using bullet points. The study also finds that LOs are framed in different ways in the two countries and within the different study programmes and in a web of interconnected documents. This ‘local’ structural use of LOs disrupts their ‘foundation stone’ role as a vehicle for standardisation and weakens the establishment of sameness across institutions and nations.     

Learning outcomes across disciplinary divides and contrasting national higher education traditions

In many quarters, attempts are underway to identify learning outcomes in higher education which are context-neutral or ‘generic’; such measures could provide new ways to assess and compare outputs from higher education. This paper considers potential challenges in using such broad learning outcomes across contrasting disciplinary and national settings. An empirical contribution is provided by an analysis of data from the international REFLEX survey for Norwegian and English bachelor’s degree graduates. This sheds some light on the relationships between graduates’ broad learning outcomes (general competencies), their national contexts and their disciplinary area. It finds variations in competencies across subjects and countries, suggesting that general competencies of the type often suggested as generic learning outcomes may be unstable and problematic to compare across contrasting settings. It highlights the need for comparative research into variations in learning outcomes and graduate competencies considering disciplinary and national factors.     

无边界高等教育及其资格认证

在全球化背景下 ,特别是世贸组织的发展 ,高等教育已越来越被视为一种国际商品和服务贸易中的出口产业。各国积极谋求开拓高等教育的国际市场 ,吸引海外学生 ,在别国开办和接管高校 ,运用信息与传播技术实施远程高等教育 ,从而出现了无边界高等教育。无边界高等教育的发展 ,在较大程度上依赖于教育质量的保障和受教育者的资格认证 ,因而有效发展国际认可的资格认证制度 ,将是无边界高等教育发展的一个重要方面     

地方高校发展与高等教育政策调整

近年来,我国地方高校在规模迅猛扩张的同时,普遍陷入了多重发展困境之中。从制度变迁的类型和路径依赖两个角度来看,这种困境产生的制度根源有两个:一是以中央政府为主体的激进式强制性制度变迁的局限性,二是对传统高等教育管理模式的路径依赖。今后高等教育政策调整必须遵循两个基本的指导思想:一是弥补激进式强制性制度变迁的局限,二是摆脱对传统高等教育管理方式的路径依赖。     

Measuring learning outcomes

The growing interest for measurement of learning outcomes relates to long lines of development in higher education, the request for accountability, intensified through international reforms and movements such as the development and implementation of qualifications frameworks. In this article, we discuss relevant literature on different approaches to measurement and how learning outcomes are measured, what kinds of learning outcomes are measured, and why learning outcomes are measured. Three dimensions are used to structure the literature: Whether the approaches emphasise generic or disciplinary skills and competence, self‐assessment or more objective test based measures (including grades), and how the issue of the contribution from the education program or institution (the value‐added) are discussed. It is pointed out that large scales initiatives that compare institutions and even nations seem to fall short because of the implicit and explicit differences in context, whilst small‐scale approaches suffer from a lack of relevance outside local contexts. In addition, competence (actual level of performance) is often confused with learning (gain and development) in many approaches, laying the ground for false assumptions about institutional process‐quality in higher education.     

Resisting innovation talk in higher education teaching and learning

The exhortation to innovate is a pervasive one that occupies a central position across university mission statements, strategic plans, marketing literature and job titles. This article locates a discourse of innovation within a history of Australian federal higher education policy, a history that may bear similarity with other national contexts. The article names this discourse as an innovation talk that influences our teaching and learning practices, a discourse that can be reconfigured in a way that opens up the possibility for change. As such, the article presents an analytical process used to resist taken-for-granted views of what constitutes valuable teaching practices. Suggestions for re-conceptualising how universities govern and support teaching and learning innovation are drawn from analysis of key federal policies that have influenced university practices in recent years.     

高等教育的结构变化

本文从高等教育系统和大学这两个层次分别论述了20世纪90年代以来日本高等教育的重大的结构变化,并着重分析了产生这些变化的原因,包括大众化,市场化和全球化这三个国际大趋势及日本国内的人口、经济和政策方面的变化等,最后指出这次结构改革成功的关键是要建立一个崭新的健全的高等教育评价系统。     

新世纪高等教育人才培养的目标:——基于英、德、加三国国家资格框架的分析

对英国、德国、加拿大三国在新世纪出台或更新的国家资格框架的分析表明,高等教育人才培养的目标在三个国家表现出一定的共性:除了创新能力、独立思考与工作的能力、批判思维能力、团队合作能力等关键能力之外,新世纪的人才还应该能够认识到并善于应对知识的不确定性、模糊性和局限性,能够在复杂的和信息不完备的情况下作出合理的判断,能够和专业内外的人士进行有效的沟通,善于进行跨学科的思考和合作,掌握终身学习的能力。这些能力在一定程度上反映出21世纪知识经济社会对高等教育人才培养所提出的特定要求和期待。     

Representing 30 years of higher education change: UK universities and the Times Higher

This paper argues that the Times Higher provides a powerful tool for understanding the changing character of UK higher education (HE) and can usefully be seen as representative, and in some ways constitutive, of that changing character. Drawing on an analysis of a sample of stories from the Times Higher, it documents the changing policy climate of UK HE from 1979 to 2010. It offers a broadly chronological account of themes that have emerged as prominent at different times during this period, pointing, inter alia, to fears about threats to the humanities, the rise of various forms of instrumentalism and the incorporation of HE institutions and agencies into a common mindset characterised by a preoccupation with marketing and corporate success. The last of these is embodied in the changing format of the newspaper itself and in its own activities as a key player in the HE sector, notably as a sponsor of university rankings and awards. Whilst being sensitive to countervailing tendencies, the authors suggest that the growing instrumentalisation of HE and related cultural shifts represent a changed ‘structure of feeling’ in UK HE. They conclude that the university rankings, awards and other image commodities that are a key part of this changed structure of feeling now play such a substantial role in the cultural life of universities that the norms of both rationality and professional ethics which tended to prevail in deliberations about university strategy 30 years ago may no longer be taken for granted.     

Academic Institutions,Ambiguity and Learning Outcomes as Management Tools

Specifying learning outcomes (LOs) in higher education as part of the European Qualification Framework (EQF) has resulted in a variety of experiences in the national contexts of England and Norway, as well as in different institutional and disciplinary settings. This article contributes to a contextualised understanding of the kind of management tools that higher education learning outcomes (HELOs) are, based on a conceptually‐informed comparative empirical analysis. The comparison is based on two types of disciplines (the humanities and STEM) in two national contexts (Norway and England) at two research‐intensive universities in each country. These settings offer an opportunity to look for evidence – inspired by public administration literature – as to whether HELOs have some specific characteristics as management tools. HELOs share the characteristics that afflict most reform policies – that of ambiguity and the potential of being shaped by a number of circumstantial factors. Higher education institutions are highly dependent on, and embedded in, multiple relationships to the environment. Hence, as decision making structures, they are ‘penetrated’ and influenced in ways that are likely to vary across countries, types of institutions and academic disciplines. Because institutions and disciplinary groups are embedded in different policy (varying degrees and forms of state steering and policy implementation) and organisational environments (different degrees and forms of hierarchical leadership, managerial control, and autonomy) and different disciplines (different perceptions of scientific‐, professional‐, educational mission, and relationships to external stakeholders) they also constitute different organisational spaces for participation and engagement in shaping and using HELOs.     

Higher education and social change

An agenda for future higher education research is proposed which incorporates four interconnected elements: changing social contexts; their implications for higher education; mechanisms of interaction between higher education and society; higher education’s impact on society. The role of comparative research in investigating these topics is discussed and a set of priorities for future research questions is proposed. This final article draws heavily on the HELF final report published by the European Science Foundation entitled Higher Education Looking Forward: an agenda for future research and written by the author together with Jurgen Enders, Christine Musselin, Ulrich Teichler and Jussi Valimaa. The author acknowledges the contributions of his co-authors of the HELF report to the ideas and words contained in the present article.     

Evaluating engagement with graduate outcomes across higher education institutions in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Our research addressed two aims: to develop a systematic way to evaluate institutional engagement with graduate outcomes and to explore such engagement in higher education institutions in Aotearoa/New Zealand. An online survey was completed by 14/29 institutions with nine follow-up interviews to gather information on institutional engagement with graduate outcomes. Using a Maturity Modelling approach with indicators of planning, systems, delivery, assessment, evaluation and professional development support for graduate outcomes, we assessed the level of engagement in each institution. Results revealed patchy engagement across the polytechnic and university sectors. There was strong engagement with the planning, systems and delivery of graduate outcomes, particularly in the polytechnic sector, but much lower engagement with their assessment and evaluation, and overall, weak engagement with professional development support for graduate outcomes. Some mechanisms for promoting engagement with graduate outcomes were external drivers, a teaching-focused culture, strong leadership from the top and enabling structures. Our findings can inform institutional policies and practices in order to support not only compliance, but more importantly engagement with the graduate outcome agenda to improve the student learning experience.