Vicky Gunn

What do graduate teaching assistants’ perceptions of pedagogy suggest about current approaches to their vocational development?

This paper explores the current assumptions behind vocational training for graduate teaching assistants at a large, urban, research‐led UK university. Through qualitative evaluation it reflects on the perceptions of participants on a graduate teaching assistant ‘learning and teaching module’ in terms of an interpretation of their views on pedagogic practice. These reflections suggest that three of the assumptions upon which GTA training has been, and still is, predicated view the process in a relatively simplistic manner. The paper suggests that the pedagogic socialization process has been inaccurately homogenized as a postgraduate issue, ignoring the possibility that relatively sophisticated perceptions of good teaching practice are already firmly in place when a graduate enters a doctoral programme.

Teaching Medieval Towns:: Group Exercises, Individual Presentations and Self-Assessment.

This paper examines the use of innovative collaborative small group activities within a Medieval History Honours course. Drawing on student evaluations and feedback from a focus group, it reflects upon the use of group exercises in history (as opposed to the more traditional individual ones) that involve the construction of three-dimensional models of medieval towns, the reconstruction of town history from visual as well as text based sources, and the use of self-assessment within a subject where tutor-assessment tends to be the norm. We conclude that such methods are clearly of benefit to the students, but recommend that to ensure the effectiveness of such a programme, methodological issues are addressed directly with them.

Methods on the margins? Queer theory as 'method' in higher education

Abstract Queer theory is a form of critical analysis that aims to destabilize hegemonic discourses around sex, sexuality and gender, particularly in relation to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. This discursive chapter focuses on how queer theory, when transformed into method, or queering, provides a more embodied and holistic understanding of student learning in higher education. It notes that, whilst queering has become an applied method in some areas of higher education research, it has yet to address the phenomena behind university students’ sexual orientation and a more general orientation towards or away from study and learning. Core to such a method is: a four-dimensional paradigm for understanding the power of dominant discourses related to the body and orientations to learning – performance, performativity, materiality, and incorporeality; explorations of orientations towards or away from learning in which sexually influenced pleasure/shame amplifies those orientations; and longitudinal narrative enquiry.

Doing SoTL in Medieval History a Cross-Atlantic Dialogue.

This article, presented as a dialogue between the authors, explores what they perceive as critical areas of teaching and learning in the discipline of Medieval Studies. Within the discussion, notions of relevance and usefulness, widening access, and epistemological assumptions about the discipline are discussed and related to the practice of teaching the subject. The authors reflect on these notions in terms of the maintenance of traditional methods at undergraduate level despite an apparently changing student body. The question of whether changing the methods of research as well as teaching would alter both the nature of learning and the nature of the discipline is also raised. The authors conclude that the SoTL (scholarship of teaching and learning) of an established subject area such as Medieval Studies needs to reflect on the epistemology of the subject in all its practices, not just teaching but also research methods.

Arts & Humanities’ Undergraduate Dissertations: Regenerating Early Researcher Socialization for Diverse Futures (UK Perspectives)

In this discursive chapter, an argument is established for revisiting how the undergraduate dissertation in the Arts & Humanities is placed within the whole of a program in the light of changes to the nature of being an early career researcher. Directed at academics, graduate teaching assistants and students, it provides the starting point for a discussion about how to redesign dissertation processes in such a way that students are enabled to play to their strongest researcher orientations. It does this by reviewing the situation of the dissertation in the light of the research-teaching nexus, changes to early career researcher discourses and experiences, and employability. It establishes as a key concept the importance of researcher orientations (towards: the theoretical, civic engagement, problem-solving policy, or anticipatory action and innovation) in student learning within a research intensive environment, and reviews the efficacy of the dissertation as an assessment type that materializes research-teaching linkages. The chapter suggests ways for reconsidering the dissertation within a set of pathways through the degree which plays to the researcher strengths of undergraduate students.

Inspiring Desire: A new materialist bent to doctoral education in Arts and Humanities

Doctoral learning entails transition from experienced student to stance-defending researcher, exposed to international critique: a disorientation and reorientation into a new identity. Arts and Humanities candidates typically navigate these moves without much of a map, choosing their own topics, avoiding the more externally defined approach available to STEM students, and mapping out their own research routes. They are often driven by desire and passion for their topic. Much of each candidate’s core identity will be inflected by this transition of emergence, a transition that involves their embodiment, emotion and social persona. With intense and sometimes uncomfortable transition in mind, and desire as driver, new materialism, namely nomadic feminism and queer theory, can inform doctoral pedagogy in Arts and Humanities. The destabilization of normativity opens the potentials and challenges of inhabited and performed identity. Queer theory’s longstanding negotiation of social and personal tensions gives a heuristic model for understanding doctoral identity transition.

Supervising and Writing a Good Undergraduate Dissertation

The considerable increase in numbers of students required to complete undergraduate dissertations as part of their curricula demonstrates a clear need for supporting academic staff from a wide variety of disciplines in this area. There has been limited research published in the realm of undergraduate supervision. Therefore, supervision of academic dissertations in an undergraduate setting still remains to be addressed in a comprehensive manner. The overarching theme of this reference work is the convergence of shared understandings, strategies and reflections of undergraduate supervisors from around the world, from many different subject disciplines. There is also a need today for a mapping of the current landscape of undergraduate supervision. This text is presented through a series of case studies from a wide variety of subject disciplines in the sciences and arts and is enlightened by research perspectives; it comprises of a focus on development needs for supervisors of undergraduate students, using updated information, modeling exercises and interaction in the form of a series of individual activities, along with a selection geared at programme team development in preparing supervisors for their role, choice key readings, and exploration of online resources. This eBook is intended as a guide for academic staff across various disciplines who are involved with dissertation supervision. It is valuable to those in the early stages of their career who may be supervising for the first time; equally, it provides support, guidance and affirmation to those who have supervised over a number of years.

Enhancing the quality of workplace interaction through reflective engagement with clinical audit

In this discussion paper, it is suggested that uni‐professional clinical audits could be used for reflective dialogue centred inter‐professional education opportunities. Using an analysis of two medical audits that illustrate how uni‐professional audit might reinforce mistaken assumptions about inter‐professional situations, it is argued that there is a need to challenge the current audit culture, emphasizing enhancement of practice rather than compliance‐based assurance. To realize the refocusing of the audit process from one of quality assurance to one of quality enhancement, this paper suggests that there needs to be a shift in the balance of audit process outcomes which are essentially pragmatic and compliance oriented to more dialogic formative outcomes that require the auditors to have an interactive relationship with both trainee healthcare providers (i.e. pre‐registration medics, nurses and allied healthcare providers) as well as a discursive one with other post‐registration professionals.

Teaching history at university

Alan Booth draws on a wide range of international research as well as the reflections and experiences of university historians, linking theory and practice. Teaching History at University examines how high-quality history teaching and learning can be achieved in todays universities worldwide. This is an essential resource for university teachers and all those who are responsible for ensuring the quality of teaching and learning policies and practices within their institutions.