Student voice(s) on the enactment of the research-teaching nexus

This chapter offers a students’-eye view of the relationship between teaching and research through a meta-analysis of enquiries undertaken by student researchers in nine disciplinary areas in which students interviewed academics about their perceptions of the research-teaching nexus. Analysis of these investigations reveals a range of views held by academics (even within the same department) about the value of linking teaching and research. The analysis also demonstrates the value of partnering ‘students-as-researchers’ rather than simply conducting ‘research on students’. As a consequence of considering students as partners here, we offer a modification to the idea that the scholarship of teaching should necessarily be student-centred, but rather that students and staff should share a discipline-centred gaze

How do students’ accounts of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees?

In this article we examine how students’ accounts of the discipline of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees. Based on a phenomenographic analysis of 86 interviews with 32 sociology and criminology students over the course of their undergraduate degrees, we constituted five different ways of accounting for sociology. These ranged from describing sociology as a form of personal development focused on developing the students’ opinion to describing sociology as a partial way of studying the relations between people and society. The majority of students expressed more inclusive accounts of sociology over the course of their degrees. However, some students’ accounts suggested they had become disengaged with sociology. We argue that the differences in the ways that students were disengaged were not captured by our phenomenographic categories. In conclusion, we argue that our analysis illustrates the crucial role that students’ relations to knowledge play in understanding the transformative nature of higher education

The Epistemological Chain: Practical Applications in Sports

This article highlights the role of personal epistemology in decision-making and proposes the construct of an epistemological chain (EC) to support this process in the domain of sports coaching. First, the EC is outlined using examples from education and other parallel disciplines. What it looks like to sports coaches is then described, and its operation in a sporting context is explored. The article then discusses EC’s further sporting applications. For coach development, it offers practising sports coaches a useful framework by which to assess their own and others’ actions and behavior. EC also enables coaches to optimally apply new ideas to their own practice and can be used to direct the search for new coaching knowledge. Finally, implications are discussed with reference to how EC could/should be implemented to select, educate, and develop coaches, leaders, and players