Quality and inequality in undergraduate courses: a guide for national and institutional policy makers

Summary of Main Findings ‘The Pedagogic Quality and Inequality in University First Degrees Project’ was a longitudinal investigation of sociology and related social science degree courses in four universities . Its main objectives were to investigate what social science students value about their university education and differences in curriculum and teaching in different universities. The main findings are summarised below and relate to defining, improving and measuring the quality of undergraduate courses. Defining good quality undergraduate courses • High quality undergraduate courses are those in which students engage with academic knowledge in transformative ways. Courses in different disciplines are likely to be transformative in different ways. • In sociology-related social sciences, academic engagement is transformative in three ways: students gain access to an understanding of academic knowledge that is interesting and relevant to their lives; it changes the way that they understand themselves and their place in the world; and they gain an enhanced understanding of society. Such outcomes emphasise the importance of maintaining sociology-related social science courses across the sector. • Good teaching is vital if students are to engage with academic knowledge in transformative ways. Improving the quality of undergraduate courses • Improving teaching is central to improving the quality of undergraduate courses. • Good teaching is multidimensional and improving it is timeconsuming and challenging. • A focus on quality enhancement that supports lecturers is in danger of being obscured by the emphasis in recent policy documents on improving quality through competition. Measuring the quality of undergraduate courses • Key measures of the quality of undergraduate courses are students’ engagement with academic knowledge and good teaching. • When quality is measured by engagement with academic knowledge, the ranking of the universities in the study is very different from that in national higher education league tables. • Without engaging meaningfully in academic knowledge, students are unlikely to gain much benefit from studying an undergraduate degree. So in order to be valid measures of the quality of undergraduate courses, national higher education league tables, Key Information Sets and the National Student Survey need to take account of students’ engagement with academic knowledge

‘Promising Spaces’: universities’ critical-moral mission and educative function

Attention has been drawn to reduction of universities’ purposes to serve economic interests only. This dissatisfaction has provoked thinking about how to reclaim a critical, moral role for universities in society. Inspired by contemporary utopian studies this paper brings together traditional ideas about how transmitting university knowledge connects to universities’ critical-moral functions, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach adapted for education, and Basil Bernstein’s theories about knowledge distribution. Focusing on the educative function, the aim is to develop a theoretically-informed and practical vision of a university education which is both personally transformative and able to produce critical citizens and workers. Research evidence from two projects on university education reveals ‘promising spaces’ (Cooper, 2014) in which to realise these aims. I conclude that there is reason to believe that the transmission and acquisition of knowledge and understanding in specific fields is key to preserving and recreating a critical-moral mission for universities wherever they are in the world, even though current conditions are inclement and unequal

Professionals and public-good capabilities

Martha Nussbaum (2011) reminds us that, all over the world people are struggling for a life that is fully human - a life worthy of human dignity. Purely income-based and preference based evaluations, as Sen (1999) argues, do not adequately capture what it means for each person to have quality of life. There are other things that make life good for a person, including access to publicly provided professional services. The question then is what version of education inflects more towards the intrinsic and transformational possibilities of professional work and contributions to decent societies? This paper suggests that we need a normative approach to professional education and professionalism; it is not the case that any old version will do. We also need normative criteria to move beyond social critique and to overcome a merely defensive attitude and to give a positive definition to the potential achievements of the professions. Moreover universities are connected to society, most especially through the professionals they educate; it is reasonable in our contemporary world to educate professional graduates to be in a position to alleviate inequalities, and to have the knowledge, skills and values to be able to do so. To make this case, we draw on the human capabilities approach of Sen (1999, 2009) and Nussbaum (2000, 2011) to conceptualise professional education for the public good as an ally of the struggles of people living in poverty and experiencing inequalities, expanding the well-being of people to be and to do in ways they have reason to value – to be mobile, cared for, respected, and so on. In particular we are interested in which human capabilities and functionings are most needed for a professional practice and professionalism that can contribute to transformative social change and how professional development is enabled via pedagogical arrangement

Making first-year tutorials count

This article reports the design and effects of a practical, pedagogic experiment motivated by the wish to encourage greater ‘active learning’ in first-year tutorials along with a range of other learning skills, in particular the practice of ‘good’ argumentation. The project has its roots in a formal accredited programme in teaching and learning that provided frameworks for thinking about how to change the assessment regime and in a measure of dissatisfaction with the existing, ‘conventional’ organization of the tutorial as a site of learning. The aim was to create an environment in which the students prepared thoroughly for each tutorial, engaged in challenging discussion, and reflected on what and how they were learning. The method employed was to centre the assessment regime on the tutorial itself in conjunction with frequent and rapid feedback on student work

Representations of a high-quality system of undergraduate education in English higher education policy documents

This article examines the ways in which a high-quality system of undergraduate education is represented in recent policy documents from a range of actors interested in higher education. Drawing on Basil Bernstein's ideas, the authors conceptualise the policy documents as reflecting a struggle over competing views of quality that are expressed through pedagogic discourses. They identify two pedagogic discourses: a dominant market-oriented generic discourse and an alternative discourse that focuses on transformation. They argue that the market-oriented generic discourse is dominant because it is more coherent and more consistently presented than the alternative discourse, which is much more fractured. In conclusion, they argue that refocusing the alternative discourse of quality around students' relations to academic knowledge may offer a way in which to bring the different actors from the higher education field together in order to form a stronger, more cohesive voice

How does completing a dissertation transform undergraduate students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge?

Dissertations are positioned as the capstone of an undergraduate degree, bringing together what students have previously learned from their programmes through a piece of independent research. However, there is limited research into the ways in which engaging in a dissertation impacts on students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge. In this article, we explore the relations between students’ accounts of sociological knowledge in their second and third year and how they engage with sociological knowledge in their dissertations. We argue that for the work of the dissertation to impact on students’ understanding of sociological knowledge, students need to see their discipline as providing a way of answering their research questions. We explore the implications of this argument for both our understanding of the role of dissertations and research-based learning in universities more generally

The influence of curricula content on English sociology students' transformations:the case of feminist knowledge

Previous research identifies the importance of feminist knowledgefor improving gender equity, economic prosperity and socialjustice for all. However, there are difficulties in embeddingfeminist knowledge in higher education curricula. Across England,undergraduate sociology is a key site for acquiring feministknowledge. In a study of four English sociology departments, BasilBernstein’s theoretical concepts and Madeleine Arnot’s notion ofgender codes frame an analysis indicating that sociology curriculain which feminist knowledge is strongly classified in separatemodules is associated with more women being personallytransformed. Men’s engagement with feminist knowledge is lowand it does not become more transformative when knowledge isstrongly classified. Curriculum, pedagogy and gender codes are allpossible contributors to these different relationships with feministknowledge across the sample of 98 students

The future of the research and teaching nexus in a post-pandemic world

Vaccines and treatments produced during the global coronavirus crisis demonstrated the importance of university research and teaching. There was widespread celebration of university–industry partnerships and collaborations across disciplines and geographical locations. However, simultaneously, higher education institutions in England faced serious financial and organisational challenges throughout the pandemic, which has implications for the relationship between teaching and research, for who undertakes each, and for the students’ experience of teaching and learning (some of whom become the next generation of researchers). The rapid movement to online learning created further tensions within an already demoralised, precarious and divided workforce. This paper considers the potential social good of universities’ two core missions, research and teaching in a post-pandemic world, exploring the inherently political nature of the link, as well as its encoded inequalities and dysfunctions. Drawing on documentary and secondary data analysis, this paper explores, first, the long-standing sectoral and institutional discrepancies through analysing trends in student recruitment rates and research funding. Second, it investigates how student and staff experiences of the link between research and teaching were changing in the pandemic, pointing to substantive equity issues in how the pandemic response affected access to research opportunities and to research-led teaching. The paper argues that a more equitable and inclusive university that appreciates the research-teaching nexus and is flexible and collaborative in nature is key to contribute to tackling global and local challenges, such as environmental destruction, climate change, conflict and socio-economic inequities