At The Crossroads Of Pedagogical Change In Higher Education

This book explores pedagogical change and innovation in US colleges and universities, and how faculty are prepared to adapt to such changes. Drawing from interviews with faculty developers at Centers for Teaching and Learning at research and teaching-focused institutions across the United States, this book explores how traditional forms of pedagogy are shifting toward student-centered and student-directed forms of learning. The book unpacks the historical development of changes in teaching, drawing from research in teaching within particular domains such as diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education, community-based teaching and learning, online and hybrid teaching and learning, course design, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, assessment of teaching, and the scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This is an invaluable resource for faculty, graduate students, and scholars of Higher Education, and faculty developers looking to promote a culture of continual renewal and innovation at their institutions.

Universities face the prospect of becoming redundant unless the way teaching and learning takes place changes. This book explores the idea of transformation and pedagogy, In particular, it will highlight how universities are transformed through a set of pedagogical interventions and stances that integrate a sense of moral and ethical purpose to learning. Actively integrating cultural pluralism in developing knowledge and understanding aspires to liberate the learner from existing power structures by fostering a desire to challenge and change the social system in which we live and connects the reality around us and its many problems to the knowledge generation process.

This book presents a wide selection of issues currently of interest and concern in higher education institutions in Ireland. The chapters are snapshots of the intersection between theory, practice and research in particular settings; they are not meant to be comprehensive. Nevertheless, they present practice approaches, new theoretical considerations and informal conversations, and include signposts to important literature in the area. The authors contextualise current concerns, and discuss how they have responded strategically to national and international trends in higher education. They also highlight how new roles and identities for staff and students in higher education have emerged in response to changes in institutional, social and technological contexts, among others. This book contains the following: (1) Higher Education in Ireland: Introduction (Bettie Higgs and Marian McCarthy); (2) Writing Identity through the Educational Developers in Ireland Network (EDIN) (Ciara O'Farrell); (3) Mature Cynics and Fledgling Eclectics: Elaborating Instructional Design for the Net Generation (David Jennings and Diane Cashman); (4) Promoting Integrative Learning in First-year Science (Bettie Higgs); (5) The Journey to High Level Performance: Using Knowledge on the Novice-Expert Trajectory to Enhance Higher Education Teaching (Sarah Moore, Geraldine O'Neill and Terry Barrett); (6) Integrating Concepts of Integrative Learning (Bettie Higgs and Brendan Hall); (7) Strategies for Implementing Group Work in Large Classes: Lessons from Enquiry-Based Learning (Geraldine O'Neill and Ivan Moore); (8) Supporting Graduate Teaching Assistants at Trinity College Dublin (Jacqueline Potter and Orla Hanratty); (9) Teaching for Understanding for Lecturers: Towards a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Marian McCarthy); (10) Encouraging Student Creativity in Higher Education (Terry Barrett and Roisin Donnelly); (11) Reflections on Conversations as a Catalyst for Change 2003-2007 (Marion Palmer and Conor Heagney); (12) The Changing Role of the Academic Library in Learning and Teaching (Helen Fallon and Ellen Breen); and (13) The Role of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in the Teaching of an Accredited Module in Information Literacy Skills (Claire McAvinia, Helen Fallon and Mairead McQuaid). Librarians' Reflections are appended. Each section contains tables, figures, and references.

Presenting leadership of educational change in higher education as a dynamic, collaborative, and evolving area, Delivering Educational Change in Higher Education provides rich examples of how new ways of working are being adopted and adapted. It brings together leaders and practitioners, as authors and readers, to share their experiences of whole organisational change. Across the chapters, common threads highlight the importance of organisational context, of shared or distributed leadership, and the critical need for continuous learning in and on action by reflective readers. Linking case studies to a range of practical models and theories, this book: Explores established paradigms and models of change management and leadership. Offers examples from a diverse range of institutional contexts. Models critical reflective practice in the leadership of educational change. Addresses the future of educational developers working collaboratively with an increasingly diverse higher education workforce. Providing rare insights into ‘the what’ and ‘the how’ of change management and leadership, this book will be of interest to senior managers, educators, programme leaders, and educational developers who are all working in collaborative ways to enact positive change for student learning and experience.

Co-creation of learning and teaching, where students and staff collaborate to design curricula or elements of curricula, is an important pedagogical idea within higher education, key to meaningful learner engagement and building positive student-staff relationships. Drawing on literature from schools’ education, and using a range of examples from universities worldwide, this book highlights the benefits of classroom-level, relational, dialogic pedagogy and co-creation. It includes a focus on the classroom as the site of co-creation, examples of practice and practical guidance, and a unique perspective in bringing together the concept of co-creation with relational pedagogy within higher education learning and teaching. Critical Practice in Higher Education provides a scholarly and practical entry point for academics into key areas of higher education practice. Each book in the series explores an individual topic in depth, providing an overview in relation to current thinking and practice, informed by recent research. The series will be of interest to those engaged in the study of higher education, those involved in leading learning and teaching or working in academic development, and individuals seeking to explore particular topics of professional interest. Through critical engagement, this series aims to promote an expanded notion of being an academic – connecting research, teaching, scholarship, community engagement and leadership – while developing confidence and authority.

What are the aims of higher education? What are the strategies necessary for institutional improvement? How might the student experience be improved? The emergence of the discourse around learning and teaching is one of the more remarkable phenomena of the last decade in higher education. Increasingly, universities are being required to pay greater attention to improving teaching and enhancing student learning. This book will help universities and colleges achieve these goals through an approach to institutional change that is well founded on both research and practical experience. By placing learning at the centre of organizational change, this book challenges many of the current assumptions about management of teaching, supporting students, the separation of research and teaching, the use of information technology and quality systems. It demonstrates how trust can be restored within higher education while advancing the need for change based on principles of equity and academic values for students and teachers alike. Improving Teaching and Learning in Higher Education is key reading for anyone interested in the development of teaching and learning in higher education, as well as policy makers.

In this book leading researchers in the field analyse in-depth the many changes that have taken place in learning and teaching in higher education over the last thirty years, with a detailed look at likely and desirable scenarios in the future.

I highly recommend this edited collection. It is a timely intervention when universities around the world are facing changes akin to the newspaper industry a decade ago. The authors remind us of the potential power of the lecture and that there does not need to be a trade off between the size of the class and the quality of the delivery... Professor James Arvanitakis 2012 recipient of the Prime Minister?s Teaching and Learning Award, University of Western Sydney, Australia This is the first book of its kind that considers the complex issues of large classes. As such, it makes a very important contribution and provides a deep insight into large class pedagogy from a conceptual and practical perspective. Dr Mandia Menits Massey University, New Zealand If the thought of teaching large classes fills you with dread; if you think that pedagogic innovation is impossible in the face of burgeoning student numbers; or if you simply wish to understand more about the dynamics of this increasingly common environment in Higher Education, then this is the book for you. Written by highly experienced academics, it is a valuable (and long overdue!) resource for supporting good practice in the large class context. Dr Jenny Hadingham University of Rochester, New York