Monica McLean

Becoming Sociologists: Professional identity for part-time teachers of university sociology

This article is based on research undertaken as part of a project designed to promote support for part-time teachers in sociology. Contemporary changes in higher education are the backdrop for suggesting that a reflexive sociology should scrutinise itself, including the conditions and experiences of part-time teachers in their own department. Empirical data raises issues about the implications of the working conditions of part-time teachers for the formation of sociology as a discipline in the current higher education system, and for the formation of an individuals professional identity.

Students making progress and the ‘research‐teaching nexus’ debate

The paper draws on an extensive literature search about the ‘research‐teaching nexus’, insights from interviewing twelve university history lecturers about student progress in undergraduate degrees, and ideas about the role of disciplines in student learning to argue (i) that the educational goal for students of ‘becoming a practising historian’ is more desirable than ‘acquiring transferable skills’; and (ii) that research activity is a ‘strong condition’ for teachers of university history to pursue the former.

Self, others and society: a case study of university integrative learning

There is currently an over‐emphasis on the economic aims of higher education at the expense of the aims of personal and social transformation. This article proposes a specific approach to integrating educational aims. It draws on the works of Jürgen Habermas and Martha Nussbaum to conceptualise integrative learning as a simultaneous focus on self, others and society. A small‐scale case study of five lecturers from different disciplines is employed to explore the value of the conceptual framework by illustrating variation in how integrative learning is understood and practised in contemporary pedagogical conditions.

Validation of MSAT : an instrument to measure medical students' self-assessed confidence in musculoskeletal examination skills

Context  Self‐assessment promotes reflective practice, helps students identify gaps in their learning and is used in curricular evaluations. Currently, there is a dearth of validated self‐assessment tools in rheumatology. We present a new musculoskeletal self‐assessment tool (MSAT) that allows students to assess their confidence in their skills in and knowledge of knee and shoulder examination.

The 'biographical turn' in university sociology teaching: a Bernsteinian analysis

Little is known about what happens to disciplinary knowledge when it is taught in contemporary UK universities of different status. Here, Basil Bernsteins theories are applied to what sociology lecturers say about teaching, demonstrating that in conditions in which students are less likely to engage with sociological theory, lecturers, particularly in universities of lower status, employ ‘biographical methods’ to ensure that a ‘core’ of sociology remains intact and sociology is reproduced in students. Students’ lives are used as subject matter to teach the relevance and value of sociology. Attention is drawn to how, while this pedagogic strategy might result in a powerless form of ‘pop sociology’, in this case, lecturers bring theory, student research and application into a dynamic relationship which unexpectedly suggests that, at present, sociology might be more easily preserved in the less prestigious universities.

Making First-Year Tutorials Count. Operationalizing the Assessment-Learning Connection.

This article reports the design and effects of a practical, pedagogic experiment motivated by the wish to encourage greater ‘active learning’ in first-year tutorials along with a range of other learning skills, in particular the practice of ‘good’ argumentation. The project has its roots in a formal accredited programme in teaching and learning that provided frameworks for thinking about how to change the assessment regime and in a measure of dissatisfaction with the existing, ‘conventional’ organization of the tutorial as a site of learning. The aim was to create an environment in which the students prepared thoroughly for each tutorial, engaged in challenging discussion, and reflected on what and how they were learning. The method employed was to centre the assessment regime on the tutorial itself in conjunction with frequent and rapid feedback on student work.

The possibilities for university-based public-good professional education: a case-study from South Africa based on the ‘capability approach’

The education of professionals oriented to poverty reduction and the public good is the focus of the article. Sen’s ‘capability approach’ is used to conceptualise university-based professional education as a process of developing public-good professional capabilities. The main output of a research project on professional education in South Africa is an innovative ‘Public-Good Professional Education Index’ generated by using three knowledge sources: theory; empirical data from five university-based professional education departments in three universities in South Africa; and deliberations with stakeholders. Here the case of a Department of Engineering is selected to exemplify how the Index assists an evaluation of the development of public-good professional capabilities in universities, which allows some optimism in the spaces between realism and idealism. Attention is drawn to the relevance of the approach and arguments to contemporary university-based professional education worldwide.

Qualitative research as a method for making just comparisons of pedagogic quality in higher education: a pilot study

Systems designed to ensure that teaching and student learning are of a suitable quality are a feature of universities globally. Quality assurance systems are central to attempts to internationalise higher education, motivated in part by a concern for greater global equality. Yet, if such systems incorporate comparisons, the tendency is to reflect and reproduce inequalities in higher education. Highlighting the European context, we argue that, if higher education is to play a part in tackling social inequalities, we must seek alternative methods to explore pedagogic quality in institutional settings. The sociologist Basil Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing provide an illustration of the potential of sociologically informed, qualitative approaches for exploring and improving higher education pedagogy and also for addressing social justice issues: these two concepts are used to analyse documentation about undergraduate sociology in two universities that have quite different reputations within the English and Northern Irish higher education system.

Not everybody walks around and thinks “That’s an example of othering or stigmatisation" : identity, pedagogic rights and the acquisition of undergraduate sociology-based social science knowledge.

This article places itself in conversation with literature about how the experience and outcomes of university education are structured by intersections between social class, ethnicity, gender, age and type of university attended. It addresses undergraduate students’ acquisition of sociological knowledge in four diverse university settings. Basil Bernstein’s concepts of pedagogic identity, pedagogic rights, classification and framing are employed to analyse curriculum and interviews with 31 students over the period of their undergraduate degree. The nature of a sociology-based disciplinary identity is described and illustrated, and it is shown how the formation of this identity gives access to pedagogic rights and the acquisition of valuable capabilities. Addressing the question of whether pedagogic rights are distributed unequally in a stratified university system, it was found that they were not distributed, as might be expected, according to institutional hierarchy. It is argued that the acquisition of university sociological knowledge can disrupt social inequality.

Communicative competence and the improvement of university teaching:Insights from the field

The arguments in this article have been generated from involvement in a government-funded project designed to improve teaching. The authors reflect on their experience and use Jurgen Habermass theory of communicative competence to argue that initiatives designed to improve university teaching often work against their own intentions by closing down opportunities for open dialogue. They argue that improvement of teaching requires undistorted communication and demonstrate that this is made difficult: by the pressure to be seen to succeed; by over-specifying what constitutes good teaching; and, by divorcing research from development. At the same time, they suggest that academics could seize opportunities to open up dialogue about teaching.