Reflexivity: The New Reflective Practice

This brief paper seeks to expose contemporary thinking behind the notion of researcher reflexivity in order to draw out its usefulness for practice-based learning research and for a renewed perspective on reflective practice. Discussion includes social constructionist perspectives, questions of positionality, experiential affinity, the place of scholarship, language and the provenance of our explanatory frameworks. I conclude with a series of questions that can support a reflexive approach to practice-based learning and related research

Consensus Oriented Research Approach: Reflexive co-inquiry with students

Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Higher Education Academ

Revisiting the E-quality in Networked Learning Manifesto

The purpose of this paper is to re-introduce the E-quality in Networked Learning Manifesto that was presented at the Networked Learning 2002 conference by the E-Quality Network and to reflect on its current applicability and meaning for networked learning. The paper will focus specifically on two of the five themes of the Manifesto; the working definition of networked (e)-learning and the need for a networked (e) - learning policy. In the paper we argue that the time is right to simply use the term networked learning and drop the ‘e’ in networked e-learning. This is because we think it is more important to foreground connectivity as a specific and important pedagogical feature of networked learning. We claim that an updated definition of networked learning should not only refer to being a pedagogy based on connectivity and the co-production of knowledge but also one that aspires to support e-quality of opportunity and include reference to the importance of relational dialogue and critical reflexivity in all of this. Following on from the definition of networked learning we reaffirm the point made in the original Manifesto that policy for networked learning should be based on explicit educational values and research. And further, that it should be reiterated by reference to research findings. We identify a number of policy areas that have been identified as important to consider at both the Government and Institutional level. We then argue for policy, when introducing Networked Learning into the curriculum and institutional educational practice, to be informed by the educational values and theory underpinning networked learning and not to be developed in isolation to these. The paper concludes by asking people to respond and draw on their research to comment on and hopefully develop the E-Quality Networked Learning manifesto and draw out issues for networked learning for the coming years

Theorising equality of opportunity

In this thesis I examine theoretical underpinnings to policies of equality of opportunity and in so doing, offer the case for: a) including classism within the realm of equality of opportunity policy; b) a re-evaluation of ethnic monitoring procedures to embrace contemporary concerns about the category construct of ethnic identity; c) the development of an ethics of sex relations to complement strategies to combat material sexism. In supporting my case I explore enlightenment conceptions of equality against contemporary late and postmodern debates about difference and otherness. This exploration includes an assessment of Italian and French theories of sex difference. I conclude with an assessment. of the tension between social and private determinants of disadvantage and inequality

Getting To The Bottom Of The Well: The Value Of Qualitative Research Into Teaching And Learning

Qualitative researchers are often compelled to defend their methods and associated underpinning philosophy to researchers from other cultures of inquiry. This is particularly so where academics from a variety of disciplines are undertaking research into teaching and learning from a non-social scientific background.  This article examines how we might best mount a defence of the qualitative tradition for teaching and learning research through the identification of:a) the commonalities between quantitative and qualitative research approaches; b) the relation between qualitative research and the humanities; and c) the distinctiveness of qualitative research. In discussing these issues I address reservations often expressed by those who are sceptical of the value of qualitative research, proposing  that a fruitful way of explicating this value is to draw attention to affinities across cultures of inquiry

Global citizenship: climbing out of the box

Central to many models of global citizenship as a graduate attribute is thenotion of competent cross-cultural exchange. These models often generatewhat might be termed a market view of culture in which cross-culturalexchange becomes a swop shop of apparently readable differences. Oftenthese differences will concern faith, nation, dress, cuisine, businessconventions and manners. There may be truth to the representations ofdifferences of this kind but the danger is in reifying them into a system ofclassification that cannot handle a more complex understanding of difference.This article offers a contribution to the debate about such complexity

The Affective Domain and Attainment

DiSA (Disparities in Student Attainment) Briefing Paper in book 'Achieving Equity and Academic Excellence in Higher Education: Perspectives in an Era of Widening Participation', Palgrave Macmillan; Australia. Eds. Shah, M and McKay, J (2018).Higher Education Academ

A common cause : reconnecting the study of racism and antisemitism

This paper explores connections and disconnections in the study of racism and antisemitism within sociological inquiry. It begins with an exposition of how certain prominent theorists of racism and antisemitism (e.g., Du Bois, Fanon, Arendt) have in the past identified important connections between these fields of exclusion and persecution in the making of European modernity. While their analysis of connections between racism and antisemitism may have been uneven and provisional, the more recent tendency to replace such connectivity with separatist or even oppositional readings has been a step backward. This tendency toward what we call ‘methodological separatism’ impoverishes our sociological imagination for a number of reasons. First, it neglects the extent to which prejudice and persecution in relation to Muslims, Jews and Black people are connected phenomena in the formation of European modernity. Second, it encourages divisive and competitive analytical approaches which lock their protagonists in rival camps and reproduce aspects of the language of racism they oppose. While affirming the distinctive characteristics of anti-Black and anti-Jewish racisms, we argue that the development of a more integrated approach is required to enable our understanding of how modernity continues to operate