Towards quality teaching in higher education: pedagogy-focused academic development for enhancing practice [Scholarly Article - International Journal for Academic Development, 2022]

Title:

Towards quality teaching in higher education: pedagogy-focused academic development for enhancing practice

 

Authors:

Sally Patfield, Jennifer Gore, Elena Prieto, Leanne Fray & Kristina Sincock

From University of Newcastle, Australia

 

Published:

International Journal for Academic Development, 28 July 2022

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1360144X.2022.2103561

 

Abstract:

Academics are under increasing pressure to demonstrate effective teaching. However, teaching reforms are often more concerned with quality assurance than instructional improvement. This paper draws on qualitative data from academics at one Australian university to explore perceived impacts of an academic development program which used an evidence-based pedagogical framework, the Quality Teaching Model (QTM), to enhance conceptual understandings of quality teaching. Participants reported direct benefits to analysing practice, course planning, collegial collaboration, and improving the student experience. We argue that the QTM holds considerable potential for helping shift attention from managing quality to realising quality in higher education. 

 

Visualising tensions in undergraduate education: Clark’s triangle revisited [Scholarly Article - Teaching in Higher Education, 2022]

Title:

Visualising tensions in undergraduate education: Clark’s triangle revisited

 

Author:

Deanna Meth

Learning and Teaching Unit, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia

Published:

Teaching in Higher Education, 6 August 2022

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562517.2022.2107392

Abstract:

This paper presents a new visualisation of tensions in developing and delivering undergraduate higher education. It links qualitative research on academics’ perceptions of education in one English research-intensive university to known models of knowledge, curricula, pedagogies, student engagement and identities to propose a new conceptual framework. Reworking the 1980s Clark triangle, with its apices of academic oligarchy, state authority and market denoting system tensions, a common apex now merges state and market agendas, and societal pulls are introduced at the third. The paper acknowledges today’s complex higher education environment and responds to critiques about the original triangle’s static nature, recognising oscillation within the space and adding a fourth apex representing students’ identities. The adapted model, supported through academics’ lived experiences, makes explicit the spectrum of choices and desired educational outcomes. It offers an important aid to debates on the purpose of higher education and learning and teaching policy and practice.  

 

WERNER: A Card Game for Reinforcement Learning of Inorganic Chemistry Nomenclature [Scholarly article - J. Chem. Educ., April 2022]

Title:

WERNER: A Card Game for Reinforcement Learning of Inorganic Chemistry Nomenclature 

 

Authors:

Cristian Buendía-Atencio

Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Antonio Nariño, Bogotá D. C. 110231, Colombia

Gilles Paul Pieffet

Department of Chemistry, COBO-Computational Bio-Organic Chemistry, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá D. C. 111711, Colombia

& 

Vaneza Paola Lorett Velásquez

Facultad de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, Bogotá D. C. 110231, Colombia

 

Published:

J. Chem. Educ. 13 April 2022, 99, 5, 2198–2203 

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00166

 

Abstract:

Identifying and naming inorganic compounds is sometimes a challenge for many first-year chemistry and engineering students; however, these difficulties can be overcome after extensive practice using homework sets based on naming inorganic compounds or applying inorganic nomenclature rules. Werner is a card game in honor of Professor Alfred Werner for his great contributions to inorganic chemistry and is intended as a didactic tool for reinforcing the learning of inorganic chemistry nomenclature. By playing the game, students practice and apply inorganic nomenclature rules. During the game, they get to identify compounds such as acids, bases, and salts as well as practice the systematic rules of the new chemical elements’ symbols and names. In the classroom, the game was used immediately after explaining the basic nomenclature rules. Overall, the students found the game engaging and enjoyable, and they responded favorably to its use as an educational didactic tool.

Well-Being in Architectural Education: Theory-building, Reflexive Methodology, and the ‘Hidden Curriculum’ [Scholarly Article - Journal of Architectural Education, February 2022]

Title:

Well-Being in Architectural Education: Theory-building, Reflexive Methodology, and the ‘Hidden Curriculum’

 

Authors:

Naomi Stead, Maryam Gusheh & Julia Rodwell

Authors from Monash University

 

Published:

Journal of Architectural Education, 28 February 2022

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10464883.2022.2017699

 

From the article:

What has been less commonly addressed in the research literature is the well-being of architects themselves, especially in relation to their work, and the highly particular tensions and cultures which condition it. This paper looks to turn questions of health in architecture inward to the profession and its people, within architectural education.  

 

Expanding Available Futures: Ideological Contestation in Angola’s Emerging Higher Education Sector [Comparative Education Review, 2022]

Title: 

Expanding Available Futures: Ideological Contestation in Angola’s Emerging Higher Education Sector  

 

Author:

Jess Auerbach  

 

Published: 

Comparative Education Review, Volume 66, Number 1, February 2022 

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/717552?journalCode=cer  

 

Abstract: 

This article explores the place of ideology and what I call analytic allegiances in the nascent higher education domain in Angola. Based on ethnographic research, it considers the post-War emergence of the sector and its implications for global higher education. Focusing primarily on two institutions, one state, one private, it probes how contesting cold war ideologies continue to manifest through the pedagogic, curricula, and campus-based decisions of higher education leaders in the country. It develops Jonathan Jansen’s notion of “political symbolism” to give attention to individual faculty member’s personal scholarly trajectories that result in analytic allegiances within domains of friendship and influence. It argues that exposure to political and social systems and symbols at formative times of individual faculty’s biographies radically inform the ways in which the emergent sector is being approached and molded today. It demonstrates how the existence of pluralistic knowledge traditions maintained through analytic allegiance and political symbolism have equipped Angola well for the transformative processes required in contemporary higher education. 

 

Learning progressions/trajectories in mathematics: Supporting reform at scale [Scholarly Article - Australian Journal of Education, 2021]

Title:

Learning progressions/trajectories in mathematics: Supporting reform at scale

 

Author:

Dianne Siemon

 

Published:

Australian Journal of Education, 10 November 2021

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00049441211045745

 

Abstract:

In recent years, attention has turned to the development of evidenced-based learning progressions/trajectories as a means of identifying the likely paths learners might take in developing a deep, well-connected understanding of key aspects of mathematics. However, the extent to which this work influences what happens in mathematics classrooms varies greatly depending on the prevailing relationship between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. This article will draw on current policy documents and the literature to challenge current assumptions at the national level about what constitutes a learning progression. It will draw briefly on the results of a recently completed, large-scale study on mathematical reasoning in the middle years of schooling to make a case for evidenced-based learning progressions/trajectories as boundary objects in reconnecting and rebalancing the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment relationship to support reform at scale.

 

Dialogue and subject positioning in pedagogical practice: the academic literacies classroom in a Ghanaian University [Teaching in Higher Education, June 201]

Title:

Dialogue and subject positioning in pedagogical practice: the academic literacies classroom in a Ghanaian University 

 

Authors:

Alimsiwen Elijah Ayaawan 

Language Centre, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana

&

Gordon S. K. Adika

Language Centre, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana 

 

Published:

Teaching in Higher Education, 20 June 2021

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562517.2021.1943653

 

Abstract:

The importance of academic literacy acquisition through enculturation in higher education is self-evident. Important within the processes of enculturation is how interactants are positioned. This study examines how interactants within the writing classroom of a higher education institution in Ghana are positioned through dialogue. Data for this study are recordings of lectures of a mandatory undergraduate programme. The study indicates that though there are attempts to position the student as an active and equal participant within the writing classroom, the instructor still emerges as dominant participant. It also establishes that the pedagogical practices of the classroom adopt strategies such as peer deliberations, and epistemic discovery to help foster personal agency development in the student. It concludes that the academic literacies model has not informed what goes on in the literacies classroom of the institution. The study recommends that the enculturation processes will have to adopt a more critical approach.

 

Virtual Event (10-11 November 2020) - Stellenbosch University Experiential Education Conference (SUEEC) 2020

Title:
Stellenbosch University Experiential Education Conference (SUEEC) 2020

Theme:
Experiential Education as Pedagogy for Social Justice: praxis and practice for shaping 21st century global citizen-leaders

Date:
10-11 November 2020

Click here for more information

Open University Innovation Report 8: Innovating Pedagogy 2020, published 2020, available online

From the Executive Summary of the Open University Innovation Report 8, titled Innovating Pedagogy 2020:
Annual Open University Innovation Reports "explores new forms of teaching, learning, and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This eighth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education."

Target group:
Teachers, policy makers, academics, and anyone interested in how education may change over the next ten years.

Collaboration:
This report is the result of collaboration between researchers from the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University (UK) and the National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University. 

To read this report:
https://iet.open.ac.uk/file/innovating-pedagogy-2020.pdf