Kelly Coate

Conceptualising Curriculum Change

Recent developments in UK higher education are turning attention to the undergraduate curriculum. Drawing on Lyotards concept of performativity, this paper explores broad patterns of curriculum change in five subject areas. The curriculum is understood as an educational project forming identities founded in three domains: knowledge, action and self. Curriculum models are proposed that identify these components and their relationships with each other. The evidence suggests that the weightings and levels of integration of these components vary between the sciences and technology subjects, the arts and humanities, and professional courses. Attempts to develop curriculum strategies should take account of the patterns of curriculum components as they vary between the subject areas.

Relationships Between Teaching and Research in Higher Education in England

Although there is a popular conception that research enhances teaching, evidence of such synergistic relationships is inconclusive. Recent research, undertaken as part of the Higher Education Funding Council for Englands (HEFCE) fundamental review of research policy and funding, indicated that there are a range of relationships – both positive and negative – between teaching and research. While the ideal relationship might be perceived by many academics to be a positive one, there are a number of factors that shape the ways in which teaching and research can have a negative influence on each other, or even be driven apart. These factors include pressures to compartmentalize teaching and research through accountability and funding mechanisms, management strategies of academic staff time that treat teaching and research separately, and the competition for scarce resources. If teaching and research are to complement each other, new ways of managing the teaching and research relationship need to be considered.

To prove myself at the highest level: The benefits of doctoral study

It is a major commitment to undertake doctoral study but relatively little is known about what motivates students to enrol or what they subsequently see as the benefits they have gained and they costs accrued. This report on a study of alumni who completed theses in Education in 1992, 1997 and 2002 in the UK argues that although the doctorate plays a key role in continuing professional development in this field, the benefits of the doctorate are perceived post facto as equally, and for some more, in terms of intrinsic interest and personal development. This runs counter to the rational/effectiveness thrust of current policy directives and could result in students being less eager to meet the costs of their studies in future.

Indicators of esteem: gender and prestige in academic work

The continued gender imbalance in senior positions in higher education is a problem that persists despite decades of feminist research and publications in the area, as well as interventions in many countries to promote the advancement of women. In this article we view the issue of gender inequality through the lens of the prestige economy, which suggests that academics are motivated by prestige factors accrued through advancement in their careers. Prestige, authority and status, we suggest, may be more easily acquired by male academics. We draw on a case study of one institution in the Republic of Ireland, including data from a survey on academic careers (n = 269), to explore how the concept of prestige is gendered. We explore the cumulative effect of four themes: homosociability; non-transparency of criteria; academic workload balance; and self-promotion.

Exploring the unknown: Levinas and international students in English higher education

This article will start with a description of a small, pedagogic event: a snippet of conversation recorded in a classroom as part of a research project on working in groups with postgraduate students. I will use these few minutes of data to illustrate several of the arguments I wish to make about the policy of increased international student recruitment in English higher education. More specifically, the recorded conversation will act as a springboard into some reflections on the ways in which international students are positioned within the higher education system in England, in terms of policies, pedagogic practices and the research literature on international students. The argument will centre on the idea that English higher education institutions are on ethically dubious grounds in terms of their relations with international students, and that these flawed relations are reflected in pedagogical practices in the classroom. These reflections will draw from the writings of Levinas to explore the current failure of staff and students in sharing responsibility towards the experiences of the ‘other’.

Imagining women in the curriculum: the transgressive impossibility of women's studies

To study the curriculum, as Bernstein argues, is to begin to understand what it is possible to think and who can think it. This powerful notion will underpin an exploration of the impossibility of womens studies courses in the context of the UK higher education system. Whereas womens studies has become a recognized subject area in other countries such as the USA, it has struggled for legitimacy in the UK since it began to be developed in feminist courses, largely within sociology degrees, from the 1970s. Based on archival research and interviews with academics and students in several case study universities, this article will examine how the boundaries around legitimate academic knowledge are maintained when certain curricular innovations are proposed. The social construction of academic knowledge involves a complex interplay between politics, knowledge, power relations, and the structure of the higher education system.

The Galway symposium on design for learning: curriculum and assessment in higher education

The higher education (HE) system in Ireland, in common with many systems around the world, is facing a period of uncertainty. In the current economic climate, the seven universities in Ireland plus the approximately 20 other HE institutions are coming under much scrutiny. Echoing some of the attacks that Margaret Thatcher’s government made on UK HE in the 1980s, the Irish government is raising questions around efficiency and accountability while at the same time cutting budgets. The pared down system that will emerge after this economic downturn may precipitate a somewhat gloomy period for academic staff. Before that happens, we would like to use this occasion to review some of the developments in teaching and learning in Ireland which we think call for some recognition. In June 2009, the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at NUI Galway hosted a two-day Symposium entitled ‘Design for Learning: Curriculum and Assessment in Higher Education’. This event continued a seven-year tradition of providing an annual event on teaching and learning mainly for academic staff in Ireland. The 2009 Symposium attracted nearly 200 participants, most of whom are not actively engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) but who are teaching across a range of subject areas in the universities and Institutes of Technology (IoTs) in Ireland. These events aim to bring academic staff from a range of disciplines together to listen, think about and discuss topics of relevance to teaching in HE and the wider policy context. This is not a ‘staff development’ event as such. Indeed, although the format often resembles what we encounter at conferences focused on the SoTL, the key difference here is that we are appealing to an academic audience who may have never heard of SoTL, and some may primarily identify themselves as researchers (or even administrators) rather than teachers. Why do these academics take the time to come? Given that both of us are relatively new to CELT (Kelly joined as a lecturer in February 2007 and Michelle as an educational developer in October 2008), we feel we are in a position to blow a few trumpets about its success because it is not of our own making. Firstly, and possibly foremost, the event is strongly supported by the university, and has become widely viewed to be an important event in the academic calendar. This commitment from the university management to funding CELT and supporting its activities is notable.

Impeccable advice: supporting women academics through supervision and mentoring

At the time when Diana was writing A womans guide to doctoral studies (2001), she was supervising a number of female doctoral students. She drew on some of their experiences in the writing of the book, and they in return benefited from the extensive insights she had about the politics of academic life that she portrays in her book. In this article, two of those students will reflect on the experience of working with Diana during this period of time, particularly in relation to her role as a mentor to younger academics. This article will engage with some of the issues from the perspective of those who were experiencing them at the time. The type of role model that she was able to be is unfortunately rarely found in higher education, now more than ever, given the changing context of higher education. The legacy that she left is therefore important to preserve. In doing so, the authors reflect on how her approach has influenced their own approach to supervision and on the importance of her legacy.

Forum Critical Thinking: Symposium on the Future of Universities: Introduction

Th e art i c le s i n th i s Special Forum of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education originated as keynote presentations at a Symposium held in June 2008. The event was organized by the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at the National University of Ireland, Galway.1 The idea for the Symposium was that we would make a break with tradition from the previous, and successful, five years of annual CELT conferences which focused on issues to do with learning and teaching in higher education. Rather, the Galway Symposium was intended to encourage debate not just about pedagogic issues, but about the very nature of higher education itself. The aim was to be provocative and to stimulate discussions around the purposes of universities in the twenty-first century. We called the event ‘Critical Thinking: The Galway Symposium on the Future of Universities’. Critical thinking, of course, has a double meaning. It alludes not only to the type of critical thinking encouraged within universities but also about universities. Both types of critical thinking could be considered to be core values within higher education. Alison Phipps, in her piece in this issue, says simply but powerfully that, in universities, critical thinking ‘is what we do’. And indeed, we had many wide-ranging discussions over the course of the two days which raised some fundamentally critical questions about universities in contemporary society. In developing the Symposium we were motivated in part by the literature on the demise of – if not the university itself – certain characteristics of

Rethinking Feedback: Asymmetry in Disguise

On many postgraduate courses in the humanities and social sciences in the UK, the traditional three-hour examination has been largely replaced by ‘coursework’ in the form of written assignments. The feedback that subject tutors give students on the drafts of their assignments thus has an important pedagogic role to play. It is against this background that we describe the initial stages of an ongoing research project into feedback within our own institution, a postgraduate college within the Federal University of London. While we concentrate on feedback to postgraduate students, we would argue that our focus is relevant at the undergraduate level, too.