Ruth L. Healey

The power of debate: Reflections on the potential of debates for engaging students in critical thinking about controversial geographical topics

Many controversial subjects characterize geography in the 21st century. Issues such as climate change, sustainability and social exclusion generate much discussion and often involve clear differences in opinion of how they might be addressed. Higher education is an important space for critical engagement with challenging issues. Preparing for and participating in debates enables students to develop critical thinking skills, alongside a variety of oral presentation and discussion skills. This paper reflects on the potential for teaching through debate in geography. The arguments are illustrated through a debate about whether asylum seekers should be allowed to work in the UK.

Inclusive partnership: enhancing student engagement in geography

Partnership is currently the focus of much work within higher education and advocated as an important process to address a range of higher education goals. In this paper, we propose the term inclusive partnership to conceptualise a non-selective staff–student relationship. While recognising the challenges of inclusive partnership working for institutions, staff and students, this paper outlines the opportunities it offers and provides detailed case studies of inclusive partnerships within the geography curriculum. We conclude with some guiding principles to inform the development of inclusive partnerships in a range of settings.

Professional development in teaching and learning for early career academic geographers: Contexts, practices and tensions

This paper provides a review of the practices and tensions informing approaches to professional development for early career academic geographers who are teaching in higher education. We offer examples from Britain, Canada, Nigeria and the USA. The tensions include: institutional and departmental cultures; models that offer generic and discipline-specific approaches; the credibility of alternative settings for professional development in teaching and learning; the valuing of professional development and of teaching in academic systems of reward and recognition; and the challenges of balancing professional and personal life. We summarize concepts of good practice and suggest opportunities for future research.

Performing Academic Practice: Using the Master Class to Build Postgraduate Discursive Competences.

How can we find ways of training PhD students in academic practices, while reflexively analysing how academic practices are performed? The papers answer to this question is based on evaluations from a British–Nordic master class. The paper discusses how master classes can be used to train the discursive skills required for academic discussion, commenting and reporting. Methods used in the master class are: performing and creative arts pedagogical exercises, the use of written provocations to elicit short papers, discussion group exercises, and training in reporting and in panel discussion facilitated by a meta-panel discussion. The authors argue that master classes have the potential to further develop advanced-level PhD training, especially through their emphasis on reflexive engagement in the performance of key academic skills.

Developing ethical geography students? The impact and effectiveness of a tutorial based approach

Abstract This paper explores the effectiveness of a tutorial-based approach in supporting the development of geography undergraduates’ ethical thinking. It was found that overall the intervention had a statistically significant impact on students’ ethical thinking scores as assessed using a Meta-Ethical Questionnaire. The initiative led to a convergence of scores, having a bigger impact on those who had a relatively low score prior to the intervention. Interestingly, the approach had the biggest impact on students who self-identified as physical geographers. Unlike some previous research, there was little evidence of difference between male and female students.

Hacking through the Gordian Knot: can facilitating operational mentoring untangle the gender research productivity puzzle in higher education?

ABSTRACT In spite of a number of drivers for change in the pursuit of gender equality in higher education in the UK and beyond, the gender gap in research activity is still widely recognised across most subject disciplines. Over recent years, mentoring strategies have often been seen as the Alexandrian sword capable of cutting the gender deficit ‘Gordian Knot’. However, analysis of current practice and dialogue points to a lack of a consistent approach in addressing and implementing HE policy in this area with many initiatives providing standardised non-evidence-based provision aimed at addressing an alleged confidence deficit and exhausting an already fatigued group of successful senior women. This paper seeks to triangulate existing literature with an analysis of data collected from a funded UK-based research project ultimately proposing a five-step institutional mentoring approach aimed at providing some inroads into alleviating the gender deficit in research productivity in the academy.

The Right to Healthcare: A Critical Examination of the Human Right of Irregular Migrants to Access State-Funded HIV/AIDS Treatment in the UK

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (‘NHS’) emerged in the post-war era as part of a joint European effort to consolidate key social rights such as the right to health. To this end, the NHS pledged to provide a ‘comprehensive health service’ imparting health services free of charge at the point of delivery. It is true that, for the most part, the NHS has fulfilled its intended role and has offered its valuable services free of charge irrespective of the patient’s background. On the other hand legislation has always permitted ‘the making and recovery of charges [for health services]’ where ‘expressly provided for’ in the Act in question. Irregular migrants are ‘foreign nationals who do not comply with immigration law requirements.’ They carry the more familiar label of ‘illegal immigrants’ in everyday parlance. That term is avoided here partly because of its (largely erroneous) associations with criminality, but primarily because of the stigmatising and dehumanising effects that such epithets bear on the individual concerned. For these reasons the more neutral term ‘irregular migrant’ is preferred by some authors and is used throughout this chapter. Irregular migrants include clandestine entrants into the country, those in possession of falsified travel documents such as passports, those who have overstayed their visas or who are in employment contrary to their conditions of residence, and refused asylum seekers.

Gratitude and Hospitality: Tamil Refugee Employment in London and the Conditional Nature of Integration

Refugees are often one of the most economically and socially excluded groups in host countries. The policy of integration attempts to address different elements of exclusion, yet relatively little research has considered what integration means to the refugees themselves. This paper explores one key area for supporting integration: Employment. Understandings of integration are advanced by exploring how a group of twenty-six Tamil refugees and nineteen people who worked with refugees in the UK perceived an underlying rhetoric of anticipated gratitude within the policies around refugees. These perspectives are theorised within a framework of hospitality. The participants believed that refugees were expected to be grateful to the host society, and subsequently felt a debt for what the host society had given them: safety and education. However, they also identified frustration towards the host society where they felt marginalised or discrimination. It is possible to analyse employment as both an opportunity to give back, and something for which to be grateful. However, gratitude may not necessarily be felt towards the host society. If employment is found through the ethnic community, gratitude is likely to be concentrated there, rather than in the wider society. For the refugee participants in this research, asylum is a debt which can rarely be fully repaid, leaving them to seek acceptance and respect beyond the tolerance they are offered.

Realism, reflection and responsibility: The challenge of writing effective scenarios to support the development of ethical thinking skills

Abstract Universities are paying increased attention to how they might support the ethical development of their students as one of a range of graduate attributes that will enable them to negotiate increasingly complex professional, civic and personal futures. Scenario-based learning is a long-standing strategy used in ethical teaching, and this paper describes and evaluates a version of this approach as applied to a second year undergraduate tutorials module. A quantitative assessment of the development of students’ ethical sensitivity over the course of two deliveries of the module shows an uneven impact but also some encouraging trends. A detailed qualitative analysis of how students responded to each scenario identifies five factors that appear to precipitate more in-depth reflection on ethical problems, and these are presented as useful points of guidance for teachers writing ethical scenarios for the first time or for those aiming to hone their existing practice. These factors include the challenge of devising circumstances which appear realistic and plausible to contemporary undergraduate students, constructing scenarios which encourage readers to reflect on and test their personal values, and portraying events which push students to intervene proactively and so take individual responsibility for their decisions and actions.

Aspiring academics: a resource book for graduate students and early career faculty

Taylor and Francis Ltd RIJA_A_324432. gm 10.1080/13601440802242655 International Journal for Academic Development 360-144X (print)/1470-1324 (online) Book Reviews 2 08 & Francis 30 00September 2 08 uthHealey ru h he l y@hotm il.com Aspiring academics: a resource book for graduate students and early career faculty, edited by Michael Solem, Kenneth Foote and Janice Monk, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Education, 2009, 212 pp., US