Undergraduate experiences of the research/teaching nexus across the whole student lifecycle

ABSTRACT

There is currently much interest in the interconnections between research and teaching in Higher Education. This relationship is usually termed ‘the research/teaching nexus’ (RTN). However, within this wide body of literature, there has been little attempt to explore the emergent experiences of students across the entire length of their degree programme. Drawing on the results of a three-year qualitative study that followed 40 students through their whole student lifecycle, this paper explores how undergraduates in an English university experienced the RTN, how those experiences developed over time, and how these changes can be variously enabled or constrained. Situating the findings in the context of the ‘post-truth’ society and the uncertainty of employment futures, the paper highlights how the nexus can also often serve to exclude students as much as it includes.     

Making space for democracy through assessment and feedback in higher education: thoughts from an action research project in education studies

This paper reports on an action research project into the development of a ‘democratic feedback model’ with students on an education studies programme at a post-1992 university in the UK. Building on work that has explored the dialogic dimensions of assessment and feedback, the research explored the potential for more democratic practice in this area. Although much learning and teaching on the programme in question took a collaborative and dialogic approach, assessment and feedback were modelled entirely differently, around the concept of an ‘expert’ marker and ‘novice’ marked. The findings of the research indicate the elements necessary for ‘democratic feedback’, and illustrate the emotional impact of moving from more transmission-based models, grounded in notions of expertise, towards democratic practice. They also highlight the ways in which such work can alert students to the imperfect, messy and human nature of the assessment process. Although the model has limited applicability in its extant form, its constitutive elements might be usefully incorporated within existing practice to promote democratic learning.     

Curriculum,teaching and powerful knowledge

This paper examines the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ and provides new perspectives on an important emergent theory for education. We claim that the key to attaining powerful knowledge is ‘epistemic access’ to the discipline, which is access of the generative principles of knowledge creation. We draw on 15 years teaching and researching a university science programme in which undergraduate ecology students are trained as researchers during the 3 years they attend university. Hence, there is close alignment between teaching students to do research and powerful knowledge. In addition, it has been suggested that the ‘power’ in powerful knowledge is realised in what is done with that knowledge, that its purpose is social since it allows the holder to make a better contribution to society. We argue that in addition to such an aspirational ‘outcome’, it can be part of the process of education and early acquisition of powerful knowledge can influence all subsequent formal and informal learning experiences as the student progresses though university. A model for powerful knowledge is presented in which there is the possibility of powerful action after graduation, but this remains in the theoretical realm while there is very little empirical evidence supporting such a hypothesis for ecology students. Powerful action also questions the limits of responsibility for a teacher.     

Co-research in Vietnam for the anthropology classroom

Abstract

In the university system today, co-research may be a decolonising strategy. We evaluate teaching a ‘Modernization and Social Change’ course in Vietnam as an experiment in co-research anthropology training. If for visitors, the idea of ‘Vietnam’ is nurtured by Hollywood action cinema, 1960s–1970s protest movements and documentary television, a process of collective research can rearrange orientations for students and teachers. The essay describes the making of a ‘model’ film as a teaching tool for international faculty, and as an evaluation of general teaching practice. A co-research approach to the classroom, assuming the students as researchers, engaging their own collaborative interests together, invites further discussion on teaching mapping as model for ethics-oriented co-research anthropology training; on teaching Capital in Vietnam using maps and counter-mapping as collaborative practice; and on using participatory methods for foreign faculty in a politically charged field.     

The digital university and the shifting time–space of the campus

This paper explores the concept of translocality, of being ‘simultaneously situated’ in more than one place, in the context of ‘distance’ education in the digital university. The author works with the concept of critical time to propose an additional term, transtemporality, to also recognise the multiple times and temporalities engaged and interwoven in digitally connected spaces of work and study. The paper draws on interview material from an institutional case study of expansion in digital education, paying particular attention to student locations in time and space, arguing that recognising the shifting time–space of the campus is essential to supporting and teaching growing numbers of distance and part-time students. The author proposes that, rather than digital connections being viewed as a form of ‘reaching out’ from the university campus to the wider world, the digital university might be considered, in its translocal and transtemporal form, as an opening up of the idea of the university; embodied and imagined through strong connections across multiple locations, times and temporalities.     

Struggling and juggling: a comparison of student assessment loads across research and teaching-intensive universities

In spite of the rising tide of metrics in UK higher education, there has been scant attention paid to assessment loads, when evidence demonstrates that heavy demands lead to surface learning. Our study seeks to redress the situation by defining assessment loads and comparing them across research and teaching intensive universities. We clarify the concept of ‘assessment load’ in response to findings about high volumes of summative assessment on modular degrees. We define assessment load across whole undergraduate degrees, according to four measures: the volume of summative assessment; volume of formative assessment; proportion of examinations to coursework; number of different varieties of assessment. All four factors contribute to the weight of an assessment load, and influence students’ approaches to learning. Our research compares programme assessment data from 73 programmes in 14 UK universities, across two institutional categories. Research-intensives have higher summative assessment loads and a greater proportion of examinations; teaching-intensives have higher varieties of assessment. Formative assessment does not differ significantly across both university groups. These findings pose particular challenges for students in different parts of the sector. Our study questions the wisdom that ‘more’ is always better, proposing that lighter assessment loads may make room for ‘slow’ and deep learning.     

Making the hidden curriculum visible: sustainability literacy in higher education

Despite strong political support for the development of sustainability literacy amongst the UK graduates, embedding sustainability in the higher education curriculum has met with widespread indifference, and in some cases, active resistance. However, opportunities exist beyond the formal curriculum for engaging students in learning about sustainability. Previous research has highlighted the potential of the university campus for experiential, place-based learning about and for sustainability. This has been conceptualised as the ‘informal’ curriculum, consisting of extra-curricular activities and student projects linking estates and operations to formal study. However, the impact of the so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ (the implicit messages a university sends about sustainability through the institutional environment and values) has been overlooked as a potential influence on student learning and behaviour. This article reports on a small-scale research project which utilised a phenomenographic approach to explore students’ perceptions of the ‘hidden sustainability curriculum’ at a leading sustainability university. The findings suggest that helping students deconstruct the hidden campus curriculum may enhance aspects of sustainability literacy; developing students’ understanding about sustainability and creating solutions to sustainability issues, enabling evaluative dialogue around campus sustainability and also self-reflection, which could be transformative and translate into pro-environmental behaviour change. This research is transferable to other contexts.     

Tutors’ Forum: engaging distributed communities of practice

The need to engage students studying at a distance in order to reduce isolation, foster a sense of belonging and enhance learning has received significant attention over the past few years. Conversely, very little research has focused on teachers working in this type of environment. In fact, we argue, they appear to be the forgotten dimension in ‘communities’ of distance learning. In this paper we identify some of the problems generated by teaching university subjects simultaneously across a network of campuses: a practice known as multi‐location teaching. We examine strategies for engaging multi‐location teachers as key contributors to a quality learning experience for students, and provide an analysis of how identified teaching needs and professional development are addressed within one particular teaching team by a small but powerful micro‐practice called the ‘Tutors’ Forum’. Drawing on data collected through a survey and interviews conducted over 2006/07, we discuss the benefits and critical success factors of the Tutors’ Forum in facilitating engagement and professional development for teachers working at a distance from the subject coordinator and other members of the teaching team. These factors include a specific style of leadership that fosters an inclusive, dialogic space where the patterns of interaction are characterised by reciprocity, collegiality and professional care. We discuss the implications of this practice for the further engagement of university teachers in an increasingly casualised and fragmented higher education sector.     

The experience of introducing secure e-assessment in a South African university first-year foundational ICT networking course

This article illustrates the experience of introducing e-assessment to a foundational ICT networking course for a ‘large’ group of first-year students at a South African Higher Education Institution. The study employed a mix of participatory action research, systems design, and survey (quantitative and qualitative) analysis over an academic year across two semesters. Although much research has been conducted on teaching in ICT, the purposeful pedagogical use of electronic assessment is limited. The results provide insight into the need for ‘extending’ the scholarship of teaching and learning to the scholarship of teaching, learning and assessment. While the research has some limitations in longitudinal and comparison studies, it is useful to students, teaching instructors, lecturers and administrators as it provides key thoughts as guidelines for introducing and using e-assessments as platforms for active learning, and as a basis for future research into the use of e-assessment for high-stake summative assessment.     

Before studying in the humanities,what do students need?

What enables success for students studying in the humanities can be a contested space; dependent not only on the view taken on the content and purpose of specific subjects, but also on the nature of teaching and learning. This paper examines the process of redeveloping an elective unit in a Tertiary Enabling Programme to prepare students for study in undergraduate humanities areas. The research involved consulting with academics from different disciplines in a regional university and analysing their views on what enhances student success. These discussions are reviewed in light of literature on best practice in teaching and learning for foundation and first-year university students, particularly exploring Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of extending ‘cultural capital’ while expanding ‘habitus’ to emerge confidently into the field of academic life. We conclude that fostering students’ awareness of personal perspective on historical and contemporary events, alongside encouraging awareness of the constructed nature of meaning in particular events is central to developing the kind of thinking valued by lecturers in humanities subjects.     

Prioritizing the education of marginalized young people in Brazil: a collaborative approach

This paper explores constructions of the ‘new’ university student in the context of UK government policy to widen participation in higher education. New Labour discourse stresses the benefits of widening participation for both individuals and society, although increasing the levels of participation of students from groups who have not traditionally entered university has been accompanied by a discourse of ‘dumbing down’ and lowering standards. The paper draws on an ongoing longitudinal study of undergraduate students in a post–1992 inner‐city university in the UK to examine students' constructions of their experiences and identities in the context of public discourses of the ‘new’ higher education student. Many of the participants in this study would be regarded as ‘non‐traditional’ students, i.e. those students who are the focus of widening participation policy initiatives. As Reay et al. (2002) discovered, for many ‘non‐traditional’ students studying in higher education is characterized by ‘struggle’, something that also emerged as an important theme in this research. The paper examines the ways in which these new student identities both echo the New Labour dream of widening participation and yet continue to reflect and re‐construct classed and other identities and inequalities.     

Curricula and pedagogic potentials when educating diverse students in higher education: students’ Funds of Knowledge as a bridge to disciplinary learning

With the massification of higher education in a knowledge-driven economy, Western universities have struggled to keep pace with the cultural, linguistic, educational and economic diversity of university students and the complex realities of their lifeworlds. This has generated systemic inequities for diverse or ‘non-traditional’ students, and left academics with pedagogic uncertainty. This paper reports on action research that examined curricular and pedagogic practices that made elite academic codes explicit, and utilised students’ Funds of Knowledge as assets for disciplinary learning, in an Australian university. The action research confirmed the potential of creating bridges between the cultural practices and literacies of diverse students and the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge, facilitating their negotiation of multiple literacies and the successful participation of all students. Institutional arrangements – governed by economic, cultural and socio-political conditions – that enabled and constrained these potentials were highlighted, suggesting areas for negotiation for the pedagogies’ ongoing and wider use.     

Learning to Be: The Modelling of Art and Design Practice in University Art and Design Teaching

Learning to be an artist or designer is a complex process of becoming. Much of the early phase of ‘learning to be’ occurs during the time emerging artists and designers are students in university art/design programmes, both undergraduate and postgraduate. Recent research reveals that a critical role in assisting students in their maturing identities as artists and designers is played by artist/designer‐academics teaching in university art and design programmes. By maintaining active art/design practices and drawing from these in their teaching, artist/designer‐academics model professional practice to students. Witnessing and interacting with such modelling is part of the process of students learning the shared discourses, views and practices of the art or design worlds to which they aspire to belong. The modelling of professional practice is critical to an artist or designer's ‘learning to be’ experience because it enables students to access the tacit and nuanced behaviours, languages and cultures that constitute contemporary art or design practice. This article outlines findings from a recent Australian study revealing the role of professional practice modelling in university art/design teaching. It highlights the centrality of professional practice modelling to artist/designer‐academics in their beliefs and approaches to teaching their academic disciplines. In critically exploring the research data and findings this article describes the role that modelling of practice plays and how it comprises a core part of the value that artist/designer‐academic participants contribute to the teaching of art/design education.     

Building reading resilience: re-thinking reading for the literary studies classroom

This paper introduces the concept of ‘reading resilience’: students’ ability to read and interpret complex and demanding literary texts by drawing on advanced, engaged, critical reading skills. Reading resilience is a means for rethinking the place and pedagogies of close reading in the contemporary literary studies classroom. Our research was across four Australian universities and the first study of its kind in the Australian context. We trialled three working strategies to support students to become consistent and skilled readers, and to equip teachers with methods for coaching reading: ‘setting the scene’ for reading, surveying students on their reading experiences and habits, and rewarding reading within assessment. We argue that the nature and pedagogy of close reading has not been interrogated as much as it should be and that the building of reading resilience is less about modelling or outlining best practice for close reading (as has traditionally been thought) and more about deploying contextual, student-centred teaching and learning strategies around reading. The goal is to encourage students to develop a broad suite of skills and knowledge around reading that will equip them long term (for the university and beyond). We measured the effectiveness of our strategies through seeking formal and informal student feedback, and through students’ demonstration of skills and knowledge within assessment.     

Institutions,Individuals and Talk: The Construction of Identity in Fine Art

This paper is based on research in a university department of Fine Art. It is an exploration of the ways in which learning takes place - or fails to - in the spoken interchanges between tutors and students known as ‘cross-section crits’. The discussion draws on Harre's model of social and personal development and on a notion of argument to understand the place of shared knowledge and discourse, as well as conflict, in the construction of distinctive personal identity. Three examples of ‘crits’ are examined. These suggest insights into the culture of the fine art institution and offer implications for the role and conduct of talk and language in the teaching and learning process.     

Students’ use of personal technologies in the university classroom: analysing the perceptions of the digital generation

Faculty frequently express concerns about students’ personal use of information and communication technologies in today’s university classrooms. As a requirement of a graduate research methodology course in a university in Ontario, Canada, the authors conducted qualitative research to gain an in-depth understanding of students’ perceptions of this issue. Their findings reveal students’ complex considerations about the acceptability of technology use. Their analysis of the broader contexts of students’ use reveals that despite a technological revolution, university teaching practices have remained largely the same, resulting in ‘cultural lag’ within the classroom. While faculty are technically ‘in charge’, students wield power through course evaluations, surveillance technologies and Internet postings. Neoliberalism and the corporatisation of the university have engendered an ‘entrepreneurial student’ customer who sees education as a means to a career. Understanding students’ perceptions and their technological, social and political contexts offers insights into the tensions within today’s classrooms.     

Dissenting academies and the education of the laity, 1750-1850

In 1898, students at the University of Toronto founded Torontonensis, the university’s first yearbook. Fashioned as a remembrance of university, from its inception the yearbook was fraught with conflict and contestation particularly around how male students were represented and how their college experiences were made, and not made, meaningful. The vociferous debates that ensued in campus newspapers, particularly among the graduating classes, fractured the ostensibly smooth recounting of this ‘souvenir remembrance’, bringing into question who is allowed to ‘speak’ on behalf of whom and what it is acceptable to ‘say’. The authors enquire into the way university yearbooks served to construct normative definitions of what constituted ‘students’, ‘student cultures’ and forms of gendering within the educational landscapes in which they were enmeshed. Through an examination of Torontonensis, they highlight the multiple and often contradictory meanings and constructions of the student yearbook from the perspectives of their producers, subjects and audiences.     

Identities of research-active academics in new universities: towards a complete academic profession cross-cutting different worlds of practice

This study explores how academics who expanded their teaching-only positions to include research view their (re)constructed academic identity. Participants worked in a higher professional education institution of applied research and teaching, comparable with so-called new universities. The aim is to increase our understanding of variations in academic identity and to be better able to support academics’ ‘role making’ within and across different worlds of practice. Data from semi-structured interviews with 18 academics at a Dutch new university were analysed using a grounded theory approach. This revealed six well-rounded academic identities reflecting participants’ personal scholarly objectives: the ‘continuous learner’, ‘disciplinary expert’, ‘skilled researcher’, ‘evidence-based teacher’, ‘guardian of the research work process’ and ‘liaison officer’. The researcher role served to promote the overall development of participants’ identities. The ‘disciplinary expert’ matured through participation in the academic world and research activities. Participants discovered what ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a researcher in the new university might entail, and contributed to the professions’ knowledge base. Participants learned to apply various research-based teaching approaches. As brokers, they linked research projects to practices in meaningful ways. The six identities embodied an emergent power in creating and preserving a complete academic profession. Participants’ accounts showed tensions inherent in an extended role portfolio and constraints in ‘role making’ given inconsistencies between the university’s espoused research mission and the one in use. These imply challenges for university managers in aligning policies and practices, and scaffolding academics’ attempts to integrate their academic roles in different worlds of practice.     

Relationships Between Teaching and Research

Abstract

This paper reports a study conducted amongst heads of department at a British university into their perspectives of teaching and research. It explores the reasons why research is given higher status, even though academics believe that, in principle, both aspects of the lecturer's role are equally valuable and mutually supportive. The links between teaching and research are investigated, and the categories of ‘teaching’ and ‘research’ are found to be somewhat inadequate concepts for distinguishing between different aspects of the academic role. The article concludes that closer relationships between the two can provide the basis for a programme to improve the quality of university teaching. Such an approach is underpinned by the view that students’ understandings should be taken seriously. They can make a significant contribution to the lecturer's research, as well as to student learning.