Search results

The historical study aims to trace moves towards professionalising university teaching in the era of post‐war expansion in higher education using the University of Auckland, New Zealand, as the specific case study.

The historical analysis draws from published papers and original documents chronicling the state of teaching abilities in New Zealand in the late 1950s and 1960s and also draws from the University of Auckland's own archives.

University teaching by the early 1970s was no longer a private matter. Facing greater accountability from the New Zealand government and university students over the quality of teaching, New Zealand universities responded by creating professional development units to enhance the teaching capabilities of their academic staff.

This case study adds to the emerging histories of higher education academic and staff development units in Australasia and the United Kingdom. It demonstrates the growing realisation amongst academics, students and policy makers in the 1960s that lecturers could not be entirely left to their own devices given the potential harm poor teaching could have on student performance.

In recent years, much energy and finance has been expended by successive governments in monitoring teaching and – separately – research quality. Although official conceptions of quality have been challenged, there has been little serious questioning in the UK of the supposed connections between teaching quality and staff research. This is surprising, since the weight of international evidence suggests a limited – and perhaps even negative – relationship between these activities in terms of the student experience. Drawing on the findings of a detailed case study, this paper argues that encouraging and enabling research among academic staff not only enhances their job satisfaction, it can also improve the educational experience of their students. The potential benefits to students, however, will be maximised only if the potentially negative impacts of staff research are managed carefully.

India is unique, having enshrined in law the teaching of sustainability education (SE) within all levels of formal education. This study aims to examine the integration and perceptions of SE within the higher education (HE) sector in India and identify any lessons that can be exported about the teaching of SE from the Indian HE environment.

Focusing on a science-based teaching and research institute at a private university in India, a quantitative, cross-sectional study examined the extent to which SE was integrated into the university and how it was perceived by students and staff. Data were collected through two online questionnaires administered to lecturers and undergraduate students during the 2017 academic year.

Most students reported that their university experiences had contributed significantly to their knowledge about sustainability. Results also showed there was a positive association between the teaching and learning about sustainability, although staff and students reported that this could be improved by including more active, student-centred teaching and learning approaches. However, students felt that they had learnt the most about sustainability from the informal “hidden” rather than the “formal” curriculum. This suggests that research is now required into ways to capitalise on this as a medium to further develop, not just Indian, but students’ worldwide sustainability literacy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to present a detailed study of the perceptions of the contribution of the “formal” and the informal “hidden” curriculum to SE by students and staff at an Indian university.

TQM in higher education, as in other professions, is a commitment to continuous improvement. Explores issues involved in enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. In 1992 the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education was introduced to accredit formally the work done by new lecturers. The course included survival teaching skills, assessment, course design, equal opportunities issues, information technology and multimedia. The course proved popular and more than half of the newly‐appointed staff continued into the second year. Supported by trained mentors, they became increasingly confident in sharing good practice with academic colleagues; staff development within schools was enhanced. Developments in information technology, resource‐based learning and student learning support have further improved the quality of teaching and learning.

Information literacy (IL) is increasingly becoming an explicit learning outcome for college graduates, and some libraries are playing a role in planning and teaching IL instruction to students. Amidst the overall trend of shrinking budgets that libraries are experiencing, what strategies can be employed by libraries that support large universities to plan IL instruction? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Inspired by curriculum mapping, staff in the library assessment department created teaching maps which match the curriculum from seven colleges with the library’s teaching efforts. To create them, they combined information about: first, courses that librarians have instructed over the last three years with; second, required courses for majors within the colleges; and third, typical enrollment for each course.

Easily accessible information was combined to create the teaching maps, which enable the library to realign efforts to maximize IL instruction and best utilize library staff resources.

Teaching maps serve as a portal to quickly understand majors, courses and course enrollment, and provide baseline information on past library instruction activity to inform future IL instruction strategy. Library directors and teaching staff are utilizing them to realign instruction efforts.

Assessment strategies, such as curriculum mapping, serve not only the institution’s teaching mission, but also help strategize for effective and efficient stewardship of staff resources. These methods will be useful for library directors, assessment and instruction librarians at large research universities.

In the early 1990s, a number of controversial and radical initiatives were introduced by the Australian Government that had a compounded impact on higher education in general, and for the teaching of accounting studies in particular. The impacts of these initiatives have now lasted well over a decade. The purpose of this paper is to address this situation.

This paper uses a case‐study approach to study the quality management objectives and strategies of an accounting department, to survive and prosper in this changing academic environment, initially as an independent entity in the period 1990‐1996, and thereafter from 1997 to 2006 as a merged entity with another accounting department in the same university that was an internal competitor in the earlier period.

It is demonstrated that the department was largely successful in climbing from a position of significant under‐achievement amongst its peers in 1990, to one of strength in terms of both research performance and entrepreneurship by 1994. However, continual re‐structuring of the department by the university has resulted in a loss of synergy and a decline in the latter periods of the study.

This case is of particular interest to educators who are coping with the issues of “balance” between teaching and research, and to those interested in seeing how a department implemented a comprehensive quality management programme largely in keeping with the framework provided by the Higher Education Council.

The value of the paper is that it provides many useful insights on many diverse issues to those universities and their departments which wish to operate in a globalised environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the types of adjustments appropriate to university teaching practices for students with emotional and behavioural difficulties in the UK higher education (HE) sector.

A case study in a UK university was undertaken over a two‐year period.

A variety of types of adjustments may be necessary for UK university students with emotional and behavioural difficulties including adjustments to pastoral care, teaching and assessment.

The case study focussed on only three students with emotional and behavioural difficulties. However, given that the number of students entering UK universities with such difficulties is increasing, the results of this research can hopefully inform the teaching of future students.

This paper addresses what UK university teaching staff may need to do to support students with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Although research has been conducted into the teaching of individuals with emotional and behavioural difficulties in schools, little if any research has been undertaken regarding teaching such students at university level.

This chapter attempts to capture what teaching excellence looks and feels like for students. Our research reports on research conducted by two student authors at separate institutions. It suggests that the most crucial aspect of the student experience of ‘teaching excellence’ is a teacher's ability to build rapport and create meaningful interpersonal relationships with their students. Leanne Hunt's research was conducted with her fellow students at the University of Bradford. She outlines how, for her participants, the student–teacher rapport informed a positive learning experience which translated into a mutual understanding of excellent teaching. Widening participation, college-based HE student Hollie Shaw, now at Sheffield Hallam University, defines teaching excellence as flexible enough to respond to student learning needs, but strong enough to inspire interest in the discipline. In this chapter, we consider their separate testimonies carefully: we argue that exploring unconscious bias furthers understanding of how differences between student and teacher may compromise interpersonal relations and so student recognition of a tutor's positive and crucial role in the student experience and the implications of how one might measure this given the emphasis on proxies for teaching excellence in the TEF. We suggest breaking down unconscious bias calls for embracing differences, reflection and recognising the complexities of contemporary staff and student university lives. This chapter's exploration of staff–student partnership opens up potential for the creation of more equitable and honest learning dynamics in higher education – where a nuanced understanding of ‘teaching excellence’ can be defined, understood and evidenced within a HEI, with external bodies such as the Office for Students, and included in the Teaching Excellence Framework.

The contemporary life of an Australian academic has changed in almost every way imaginable in response to the challenges and opportunities emerging from global and national policy agendas. In this context, the subject coordinator11A subject coordinator may also be referred to as a Unit Chair, Unit Coordinator or Course Coordinator at different universities. represents the frontline of a move towards increasingly distributed forms of leading and learning. The knowledge that managing teaching responsibilities does not provide a clear route to promotion (with active research status providing a more well established path) means that academics may proactively minimise the time they spend on the discretionary tasks of leading and managing teaching well. Tasks that include adopting a proactive longer term of curriculum development, team building and teaching innovation, in addition to the more immediate needs for compliance and measurable outcomes. Research from an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project provides evidence that despite lack of formal recognition for many of the discretionary responsibilities of subject coordination, coordinators believe they are executing their job well. This chapter discusses factors that impede discretionary academic leadership behaviours in Australian higher education and suggests strategies to empower leadership and thus improve engagement with discretionary teaching and learning responsibilities.

E‐learning offers many exciting opportunities for supporting a wide range of students to learn more effectively, but it has also created significant challenges for academic staff who feel increasingly strained to rethink teaching methodologies. This article seeks to explore the main barriers faced by academics in incorporating technology into their teaching and goes on to offer guidance and practical tips for a more successful and learner‐centred approach informed by the authors’ own e‐learning research, relevant publications and reflective analysis of their own practice. Awareness is also raised regarding survey findings and discussions with academics that confirm that successful implementation of an e‐learning strategy across an institution depends primarily on senior management’s recognition of the wide range of pedagogical, managerial and technological support needs of teaching staff and the workload implications if new student needs are to be met effectively. It is argued, furthermore, that institutions will only be in the position to draw on established benefits of teaching technologies if staff development programmes are redesigned to incorporate emerging technologies and electronic resources and show how these may be mapped on to pedagogical approaches. The paper aims to demonstrate how the lessons learnt have been applied to date and describes the ongoing activities in making the e‐learning vision a reality at Napier University. As such, the work has a predominately UK focus, rather than attempting to cover a wide range of international practice.