Reflections on learning: widening capability and the student experience

This paper argues for a more nuanced perspective on learning that takes account of the real and situated contexts of student experience. It is presented against a backdrop of the agenda to widen participation in higher education (HE) in the UK, which has led to a rise in students from non-traditional backgrounds entering into HE. Responding to this, an argument is made in favour of widening ‘capability’ in learning, to produce a more socially just pedagogy. Drawing on examples of the student learning experience a series of reflections is produced from an undergraduate programme of education studies. Such reflections, linking personal knowledge with wider social and cultural practices, are used to produce notions of ‘cultural wealth’ across informal and formal learning contexts. It is argued that by creating choice and freedoms in student learning the exclusivity of university education may be challenged and a more socially just pedagogy usefully considered.     

Mainstream university pedagogy in feminist perspective

This article analyses university pedagogy by contrasting mainstream pedagogy and feminist pedagogical thought. The data consist of two textbooks, and we investigate what kinds of teaching, learning and knowledge the textbooks construct and what kinds of student and teacher positions they suggest. The inquiry shows that learning in the textbooks is seen as a strictly defined, hierarchical process and that ideal teaching stresses methods over content. The power of knowledge is not discussed, nor are gender, sexuality and other differences. Academics are seen as professional teachers who master teaching methods, and students are framed as customers. An assumed human sameness, marketisation of education, emphasis on vocational benefit and ‘pathos of the new’ were found to be themes guiding mainstream pedagogy. We suggest that feminist pedagogy can offer an alternative approach, one enabling a critical analysis of the power of knowledge and an awareness of differences among students.     

Leadership Values,Trust and Negative Capability: Managing the Uncertainties of Future English Higher Education

The complex leadership attribute of ‘negative capability’ in managing uncertainty and engendering trust may be amongst the qualities enabling institutions to cope with multiple recent government policy challenges affecting English higher education, including significant increases in student fees. Research findings are reported on changes in leadership values, trust and organisational cultures in higher education during the current ‘age of austerity’. Data from university experts, managers and academics in semi‐structured interviews were informed by questionnaires (n = 16), online surveys (n = 121) and a focus group (n = 6). Findings indicated that values‐based leadership characterised by skilful ‘negative capability’ is now needed in English higher education. ‘Negative capability’ is defined as the ability to resist the ‘false necessity’ of deterministic solutions in building staff trust to cope proactively with ambiguity and change. This capability is needed for academic leaders to maintain their role in shaping the enduring purposes of higher education during a recession, both in England and in the wider international environment.     

Crossing the boundaries of imagination: The role of a public library exhibition in global learning for student teachers and teacher educators

In this paper, we utilise the theoretical concept of ‘boundary crossing’ to explore how, as Australian university teacher educators, we worked with library curators and a class of student teachers to mount a public exhibition of their group work. We consider how the students crossed ‘boundaries of imagination’ in symbolic representation and critical analysis by creating artistic installations to express global education themes. We reflect on what we, the university educators, learned about crossing institutional and pedagogical boundaries to mutually facilitate new learning. We argue for the importance of shared public pedagogy as offering new avenues for teacher education and of connecting with local communities.     

A Balancing act: ethical dilemmas of democratic teaching within critical pedagogy

This article discusses practitioner research that focused on student resistance to teaching about the apartheid past and issues of ‘race’ in a first year English studies course at a predominantly Afrikaans and ‘white’ university in South Africa. The study aimed to explore the way in which students and the teacher engaged with a form of critical pedagogy moment–by–moment in the classroom. In this article, I turn the analytical spotlight onto myself, analysing the way in which my own multiple and sometimes contradictory identity positions as an educator play themselves out. In particular, I explore the tensions between my preferred ‘democratic’ teaching style, and my moral or ethical views. I argue that this tension creates a dilemma for teaching within critical pedagogy, which is not easily resolved. I also reflect on the experience of researching my own teaching practice, and attempt to understand how my research insights were developed, linking this to the distinction between reflective practice and action research.     

Student engagement: rhetoric and reality

Recently, there has been much interest in higher education literature and policy on the concepts of student engagement and disengagement. While most academic writings recognise the significance of student engagement, they have tended to concentrate on it in relation to academic activities. Increasingly, universities are ‘cascading’ down the need to improve student engagement to schools and ultimately to individual academics. This article asserts that ideas about student engagement in the university context are often fragmented, contradictory and confused. Even the meaning of the term ‘student engagement’ is uncertain. Further, while government and universities urge attention to student engagement, many of their actions, it may be argued, have contributed to greater student disengagement. Relying on the available literature, we argue that the student experience as a whole is the key to engagement and, thus, efforts to re-engage students cannot be successful until a ‘whole-of-university’ approach is adopted.     

‘Non-traditional’ and ‘traditional’ students at a regional Finnish University: demanding customers and school pupils in need of support

ABSTRACT

This article explores university students’ constructions of the ideal student at present-day university, that emphasises student-as-consumer culture and employability rather than education as a virtue in itself. The research is based on thematic narrative accounts (n = 67) generated in a generalist field in one regional Finnish university. We apply a narrative-discursive approach to analyse how ‘traditional’ young students (n = 34) and ‘non-traditional’ mature students (n = 33) position themselves in relation to the ideal good student in a present-day university and in relation to their university studies. Moreover, we examine some of the consequences of such positionings for the students themselves. Our analysis indicates that the present-day university student is constructed in line with the ideal student of the neoliberal order and student-as-consumer culture. However, whereas mature students positioned themselves as customers and were comfortable with the demands of today’s university for self-directedness and self-responsibility, younger students positioned themselves as ‘school pupils’ and were critical about being left on their own without adequate support. The study suggests that the terms ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ make differences related to age and different kinds of student positionings visible and, thus, also possible to reconstruct the ideals and normalities of the present-day neoliberal university.     

Towards a framework for critical citizenship education

Increasingly, countries around the world are promoting forms of ‘critical’ citizenship in the planned curricula of schools. However, the intended meaning behind this term varies markedly and can range from a set of abstract and technical skills under the label ‘critical thinking’ to a desire to encourage engagement, action and political emancipation, often labelled ‘critical pedagogy’. This article distinguishes these manifestations of the ‘critical’ and, based on an analysis of the prevailing models of critical pedagogy and citizenship education, develops a conceptual framework for analysing and comparing the nature of critical citizenship.     

Critical Pedagogy’s Problem with Changing Teachers’ Dispositions Towards Critical Teaching

Increasing teachers’ dispositions towards critical teaching is a fundamental goal for critical pedagogy. Because critical educational change cannot occur without teachers’ “buy-in,” developing teachers’ inclination to implement critical teaching into their classrooms is a prerequisite for any successful critical pedagogy focused on change in K-12 schools. However, critical educators too often approach K-12 teachers’ dispositions in ways that are at best unproductive and at worst harmful to critical change efforts. Some critical pedagogy exists that approaches teachers’ knowledge and beliefs in “teacher friendly” ways, but most critical pedagogy suffers from the problem of totality and speaks merely to educators who already hold critical dispositions. In response to this problem, this paper identifies and examines three areas in which critical education scholars can work to better connect with a crucial, yet essentially unaddressed constituency: teachers in neighborhood schools. These three areas are critical pedagogy’s audience, teachers’ professional knowledge, and teachers’ beliefs about what constitutes ‘real schools’ and ‘real teachers.’ The paper ends by suggesting approaches to teachers’ dispositions that do not sacrifice the possible to the ideal, that value practical and eclectic change efforts, and that appreciate teachers’ already existing knowledge and beliefs as a foundational medium for developing critical education.     

Transformations in learning and teaching through Initial Teacher Education

In England, little research has been carried out into how pre‐service secondary English teachers transform what they know as they learn to teach. They are seldom asked to reflect explicitly on the connections between the pedagogy of their undergraduate studies and their pedagogical experiences as student teachers. The initial teacher education committee of the National Association for the Teaching of English decided to explore these connections by asking student teachers on English Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses in five different university departments of education to respond to a series of questions at the start and end of the academic year 2004–2005. The questions fall into four broad areas: student teachers' experiences as learners at undergraduate level and developing ideas about teaching; the nature of the subject English; tensions encountered during the PGCE course; new learning about teaching. The purpose of this article is to discuss some patterns emerging from the research. The most prominent of these is student teachers' realisation that good teaching comes from teachers seeing themselves as learners. We argue that ‘reflexivity’ ( Moore, 2004 ) is a valuable way to help student teachers begin to understand this transformation from learner into learning teacher.     

Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover

This article reports an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of 2 years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects.     

Widening the educational capabilities of socio‐economically disadvantaged students through a model of social and cultural capital development

Widening participation programmes aim to increase the progression of students from low socio‐economic status (SES) groups to higher education. This research proposes that the human capabilities approach is a good justice‐based framework within which to consider the social and cultural capital processes that impact upon the educational capabilities of young people from low SES groups. It presents a case study which examines the developing capability set of Irish students from a representative sample of schools participating in a university‐based widening participation outreach programme aimed at increasing social and cultural capital constructs. Qualitative analysis is presented from four schools; four student focus groups with 22 student participants, and 15 individual student interviews. Findings focus on the developing capabilities of autonomy, hope, voice and identity, as well as on the relationship between specific widening participation activities and the developing capability set. The findings highlight the development of college‐focused knowledge and how this impacts upon students’ aspiration to participate in higher education. The idea of ‘widening capability’ is discussed in relation to the potential of the capability approach to contribute an additional dimension to a mainly neoliberal policy rhetoric, which emphasises the market value of higher‐education participation. In doing so, it explores how widening participation activities can influence the widening capability set of low SES students, and its relationship with what the students deem to be ‘a life of value’.     

Students and Universities in Italy in an Age of Reform

Recent developments of the Italian student body are marked by an increasing diversification of prevailing student profiles. The presence of ‘new’ student groups is surveyed next to the groups which are the ‘traditional’ target of national policies for higher education and student welfare. Examples of such traditional target groups are, amongst others: males or females; students from well‐off and well‐educated families or from lower social backgrounds; resident or non‐resident students; undergraduate, graduate or postgraduate students (first, second or third cycle of university studies); students from different fields of study. Working students are to be quoted in ‘new’ profiles. They may either work regularly or take occasional jobs during terms; in both cases they no longer seem to be full‐time students and should be considered as de facto part‐time students. Although student work is not a novelty, what has changed in recent times is its development: working students are reported to be a majority in the university student body. Their emerging needs and expectations as university customers point to inadequacies and delays in the prevailing academic attitudes and in higher education policy‐making. The Italian Euro Student Survey is a monitoring of students’ living and study conditions in Italian universities. It is carried out in the framework of the Euro Student Report project, which involves many EU countries. Euro Student attaches great importance to the analysis of the impact of the diversification issue on the students’ living and study conditions, on their personal experiences and on their relations with academic institutions. Some of the most relevant emerging trends will be dealt with in this article, e.g. the demand for support and interaction with teachers and students (the ‘solitude’ issue), the increasing demand for better conditions in the study environment (the ‘quality’ issue), the differences in average academic achievements of different student groups (the ‘performance’ issue). Based on the updated available data, some ideas and theories will be explained as a conclusion about the possible impacts of the most recent reforms in the higher education sector in Italy, i.e. the design of new courses according to the ‘Bologna process’ and the planning of a new student welfare system.     

A critical pedagogy of place: from gridlock to parallax 1

Differences of perspective, standpoint and subjectivity can help to enlarge the conceptual landscape of environmental education theory. Rejections of difference, on the other hand, can become an intolerance that narrows the scope of inquiry. This rejoinder argues that Bowers’ repeated rejections of critical pedagogy are based on a partial reading of the critical tradition, and that these critiques, including his current call to ‘avoid embracing’ a critical pedagogy of place, are unnecessarily dismissive and therefore counterproductive. Environmental education has benefited and will continue to benefit from the critical tradition of which critical pedagogy is a part. Relationships and/or antagonisms are constructed through human responses and interactions. Sameshima’s pedagogical theory of parallax is introduced as a way of seeing relationships between ideas that have been thought to be opposed. Moving toward relationship rather than rivalry, the rejoinder concludes by suggesting that Bowers’ and Freire’s criticality is actually more alike than different.     

The pedagogy of saneness: a schizoaffective storying of resisting sane pedagogy

This article is an autoethnographic account of a ‘schizoaffective’ sufferer learning about and navigating the environs of saneness as a graduate student resisting traditional sane pedagogic structures. Culling from theories found in adult education, Whiteness Studies, and Mad Studies to show that saneness can be conceptualized as a site of critical pedagogy, the author narrates numerous ways in which saneness is embedded in schools and society. In addition, he describes how sane performativity is taught and made educational by inducting a new notion into educational studies: the pedagogy of saneness.     

Turning in or tuning out? Listening to silences in education for critical political consciousness

What happens when a team of university education researchers initiates a social justice learning project in a local high school, and – despite the overall project’s considerable successes in cultivating students’ critical political ‘voice’ – is confounded by the periodic, apparent ‘silences’ of some of its young female students? Drawing on eight years of fieldwork in a groundbreaking high school social justice education classroom, this article examines the presumptions inherent in certain forms of social justice pedagogy, and the ways in which ensuing classroom disjunctures may, in fact, lead to deeper insights about education for youth critical social consciousness. The article focuses on two, interrelated issues: the unsettling and sometimes confounding ‘silences’ of female students and the correlation between such silences and social justice educators’ attenuated ability to recognize and support the myriad ways in which minority female students may encounter, negotiate, and articulate their own particular forms of Freirian conscientización.     

Pedagogy,empowerment and discipline: comparative perspectives of novice teachers in England and Turkey reflecting on ‘the other’

This article discusses the views of Turkish and British novice teachers on pedagogy and pedagogical relationships with school students when confronted with the pedagogical practices of the ‘Other’ in particular policy contexts. Experiences of those practices were gained by novice teachers during an exchange visit for British and Turkish university students in the period 2008–2009. Data was collected through questionnaires and focus group interviews. Findings suggest that Turkish and British novice teachers initially constructed the ‘Other’ as very different from themselves. The views of members of both groups were heavily influenced by the cultural contexts in which they trained and worked. British novice teachers tended to take as axiomatic constructivist and inclusive approaches to pedagogy and the relevance to successful pedagogy of listening to students’ voices. Turkish novice teachers questioned both, many seeing control and dissemination of knowledge as central to pedagogy and student teacher relationships.     

A posthuman pedagogy with Rancière and Bateson

In recent years, conversations about posthumanism have been gradually moving into the field of education. This article contributes to the growing efforts to develop a posthumanist theory of education. The theoretical inspiration for the article comes from the writings of Jacques Rancière and Gregory Bateson. In both thinkers, the figure of the liberal humanist subject gives way to a deeper and more provocative sense of inter-subjectivity, indeed, intra-subjectivity. Taken together, Rancière’s and Bateson’s ideas hit a blind spot in contemporary educational discourse, particularly in relation to the rise of personalisation as a popular concept in practice and policy. This article juxtaposes the personalised learning movement with the increasingly common image of the vulnerable self/student to highlight the complexity of defining and locating the source of subjectivity, or one’s ‘will to learn’. Rancière’s and Bateson’s ideas are put into conversation to generate alternative approaches to the current conceptions of student-centred pedagogy.     

‘Powerful knowledge’ curriculum theories and the case of physics

A stream of debate (including a previous special issue of this journal (25(1) 2014)) has made claims not just for ‘bringing knowledge back in’ as the framing underpinning of the school curriculum, but that subjects associated with disciplinary and disciplined knowledge forms have a particular power and that these characteristics are important to preserve in curriculum frameworks. This paper draws on a major Australian research project studying school and university physics in the context of these arguments to revisit the issue of the ‘discipline’ of physics and the curriculum logics for physics. Given that disciplines are social in origin and changing and expanding over time, can school curriculum be logically derived from the discipline to which they relate? Are questions about student engagement only questions about pedagogy and not curriculum? Does a focus on disciplinary knowledge mean that the role of school in forming identities and values is avoidable as a significant feature of what the curriculum does? The findings from the project are used both to illustrate and test these questions, and to challenge some over-simple assumptions about the verticality of this form of knowledge for education purposes.