'Exploring the Policy-Practice Nexus in Higher Education'

Today was a fascinating, idea-provoking day participating in Lancaster University's conference 'Exploring the Policy-Practice Nexus in Higher Education'. Bob Lingard from the University of Queensland in Australia kicked off the day with remarks about the macro level of higher education policy and globalization. He highlighted education as the major human capital that nations can control, and also the habitus of the global policy maker elite who create the globalized discourses that are then localized in countries around the world. It was worrying to think of the private companies that are seeking not only to influence but to define and frame global education policy. It was helpful that Bob Lingard emphasized that how we define the purpose of higher education and its policy carries implications for how we frame educational practices worldwide.

Next Murray Saunders from Lancaster gave a really interesting presentation about theories of change in higher education and their potential for effecting policy development and implementation from different angles. I found it helpful to apply these concepts to the concepts of student engagement and, in particular, student/staff partnerships in higher education which I'd like to explore more fully later.

I particularly enjoyed the small-group discussion sessions for unpacking the keynote presentations, as well as the afternoon sessions by Jenni Case and Paul Ashwin. Jenni Case shared the context of the University of Cape Town and her work applying Margaret Archer's concept of reflexivity to longitudinal research about engineering students' learning and development ten years after graduation. Paul Ashwin also shared he research with colleagues about how university affects students and, in particular, the pedagogic quality and inequality project and research around the different meanings of student engagement. Paul Ashwin made some great remarks about the development of and the influence of league tables, which also promoted interesting discussions. He also ended with the excellent question 'Would a focus on enhancing quality rather than measuring quality offer an alternative way forward?'

Social Justice and Inclusive Pedagogy

I recently went to a talk by Dr Lani Florian on social justice and inclusive pedagogy. She spoke of how difference has been often positioned as a problem. However, with the increasing diversity of students and vulnerabilities, her research had focused on understanding differences to understand students' different outcomes.

Dr Florian made really interesting points about the assumptions that teachers make about school-aged students, their abilities and their potential. This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately since often teachers of higher education also make assumptions about their students' knowledge and prior learning experiences which can be quite different from the reality for many students.

Based on her research, Dr Florian argued for the need for teaching pedagogies that promote whole-class engagement and inclusivity rather than perpetuating differences in practice for presumed group differences. This doesn't hold other students back but, rather, acknowledges that differences are to be expected between students and accommodates differences inclusively. 

Dr Florian, speaking about school-aged students, argued that we need to reconceptualise differences between learners as opportunities for teaching. I would agree from the perspective of student/staff partnerships of co-creating the higher education curriculum. These dialogues and collaborations recognise students' wide variety of prior learning experiences, preferred learning pedagogies, and future goals to be more inclusive and (so it seems) help students achieve much more from their studies. I hope that my research can build on Dr Florian's work and look at higher education and how this may be possible.

Why Students Matter

Today, Huffington Post UK tweeted 'BREAKING NEWS: University listens to its students' and 'BREAKING NEWS: University gives students what they want'. Why is this surprising, and why is it a bad thing? It's not!

The King's College London £300K rebrand to 'King's London' has been in the news a lot lately since KCL said December that they would take part in the rebranding exercise so that prospective students overseas wouldn't be confused about the word 'college' in the name of this university. However, this would go against the tradition of the University since, when it was formed, it sat within the structures of the University of London and its name hails from those days.

What's in a name? It's everything, including identity, history, and tradition. That's why the name means so much to the KCL community. If prospective students are daft enough not to understand the name then they're not clever enough to go to this university which is ranked 16th in the QS World University Rankings.

Since the news of the rebrand in December, it's been fantastic to see the involvement of 12,000 students, alumni, and staff members who have signed a petition against this move. It is clear that KCL did not consult widely or adequately amongst its students, alumni, or staff since many were unaware of this plan until it hit the news and social media. The rebrand would have been a perfect issue to bring together the community to engage the entire student body, alumni, and staff in a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of a rebrand. Instead of uniting in discussion, it's obvious that the consultation about the name was not well run and that it has now resulted in community dissatisfaction with the university's administration. However, it's great news today that the rebrand won't be going forward because the university had listened to its community.
 

In her Huffington Post UK article, Lucy Sheriff writes 'KCL, meanwhile, has been left to weight up the delights of having an extra £300k to play with against the humiliation of caving in to its own students.' Why does she characterise listening to students or engaging students (and the entire university community) as 'caving in to its own students'? The Huffington Post UK seems to be stuck in the previous century thinking that listening to students a bad thing. In 21st Century, 'student engagement' is the buzzword heard around all UK universities since they are cottoning on that student engagement benefits not only the students but also academic staff and the university community more widely. Furthermore, the more progressive universities have student engagement statements (such as Edinburgh University) and are starting to value students as partners with university staff both in the classroom and at all levels of university governance (see my previous blog post).  

It is essential to listen to students' views if UK universities want to be world-class, cosmopolitan, globalised higher education institutions. Lucy, it's actually a great thing when universities listen to their students, and they should embrace every opportunity to do so.

Students as Partners - Durham Blackboard User Group Conference

Yesterday I was at the 15th annual Durham Blackboard User Group Conference. This year's theme of 'students as partners' was fantastic because it brought together educators and learning technologists from higher education institutions around the UK. One of the highlights for me yesterday was hearing Dr Abbi Flint from the Higher Education Academy (HEA) giving her keynote presentation 'Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education'.

Abbi introduced 'students as partners' as buzzwords that are a bit fuzzy around the edges, since they are used in different ways and the sector has not attached a single definition to the phrase. As she pointed out, as long as researchers are clear about how they're using the phrase, the openness of the term can be used to our advantage.

I agree with Abbi that engaging students in their learning is one of the most prevalent issues in higher education today, and that student/staff partnerships can be a solution. It was helpful reflecting on the various rationales behind partnership, including pedagogic, political, and philosophical rationales.

Abbi showed how partnership brings together behavioural, psychological and socio-cultural perspectives of engagement. I agree, since in my PhD research I want to look at both students' and staff members' attitudes of engagement (seeing each other as partners) and their behavioural engagement as partners to see how they affect their sense of identity and belonging within the university community, and how this fits into broader discourses of power and culture in the context of the wider society.

Abbi presented the HEA's model of partnership learning communities (Healey, Flint, and Harrington, 2014) showing the four spheres of partnership in 1) learning, teaching, and assessment; 2) subject-based research and enquiry; 3) scholarship of teaching and learning; and 4) curriculum design and pedagogic consultancy. It is always nice to hear again that, like Abbi said, this last area of partnership in curriculum design and pedagogic consultancy is the least researched -- I look forward to contributing a lot to this particular area. In addition, areas of further research about partnerships include their impact, which I also look forward to exploring.

Abbi's keynote was an excellent start to the conference, setting the scene of the central debates and also critiques of student/staff partnership. Abbi gave a flavour of existing case studies that are inspiring. She highlighted that the pedagogic ideas of student engagement not new, but this area of research into student/staff partnerships is bringing together perspectives of engagement in new ways. I agree with Abbi that this is a really interesting area of research, and since it is little-researched it was brilliant to hear her speak since she is one of the specialists in research of student engagement and partnership.

Inclusive Course Design

I am slightly distressed as to why inclusive design of course curricula is such a novel concept in the UK. In many universities in the US and Australia, it's natural when designing a new course to bring many individuals besides academics to the table to include them in the discussion. This includes librarians, IT specialists, curriculum development specialists, career advisers, and (importantly!) students. This is such a logical, straight-forward idea! Why, then, is it so novel and why are academics in the UK often left on their own to design new courses and even entire programmes without support from students and university services? Academics should not be operating in a  vacuum, with the assumption that their research expertise can magically be transferred  into strong teaching pedagogy that engages students.

Traditionally there has been very little training for academics on curriculum design and educational pedagogy (as seen in work by Barnett and Coate), and assessment has too often been designed to asses knowledge rather than been used as a tool to promote learning in new ways. How has this come to happen, especially when primary and secondary school teachers must engage in rigorous training? Why do British universities tend to rely on specialists primarily when dealing with courses after they are set up, or with problems as they arise? 

The intuitive answer is to involve specialists from the start to provide different important perspectives to course design so that higher education curricula can improve students' dispositions of knowing, acting, and being (Barnett) at university and beyond. It is exciting that in Scotland this discussion is starting to emerge, and I am really looking forward to taking part in an inclusive design pilot this year.