Teaching Values: Ethical and Emotional Attunement through an Educational Humanities Approach

This short paper explores challenges of teaching values in an educational/faculty development setting. Drawing on the medical humanities, the paper proposes an educational humanities approach. This approach is illustrated through a poem, along with discussion prompts that educational developers can use to explore values in teaching

Thriving on challenges: how immigrant academics regulate emotional experiences during acculturation

Transnational academic mobility is of growing importance in higher education. Yet, the acculturation for individual academics is challenging. Taking a phenomenological approach, we interviewed twenty foreign-born academics, who had been living and working in the UK for at least one year, and analysed their emotional experiences of acculturation by chronological stages. Then, using Gross's (Gross, J. J. 1998. “Antecedent-and Response-Focused Emotion Regulation: Divergent Consequences for Experience, Expression, and Physiology.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74 (1): 224–237; Gross, J. J. 2014. “Emotion Regulation: Conceptual and Empirical Foundations.” In Handbook of Emotion Regulation, 2nd ed., edited by J. J. Gross, 3–20. New York: Guilford) model of emotion regulation, we analysed how participants used emotion regulation processes throughout their adaptation to their new environments. The study makes an original contribution firstly by applying a model of emotion regulation not previously used in researching academic life. Secondly, this study shows that, unlike stage theories, acculturation is not experienced primarily in linear stages, but as an ongoing process during which immigrant academics actively work on changing the things that challenge them. Thirdly, the findings emphasise the contributions rather than deficits of immigrant academics. Implications for supporting immigrant academics’ acculturation are discussed

The missing link in college student engagement research: What students want from their learning experience

The behavioral model underpinning national surveys of university students’ engagement (e.g., NSSE, AUSSE, UKES) considers students’ experiences but neglects their motivation. We surveyed undergraduates (N=1,772) about what they wanted from their university experience and how that has turned out. Using thematic analyses, the most common codes were explore subject (20% of students), apply learning (16%), nonspecific (12%), grow as person (11.5%), explore and apply (10%), interact with peers (8%) and interact with staff (4%). Findings showed significantly fewer black and minority ethnic (BME) students expressing explore subject and more BME students preferring apply learning experiences than white students. Students with explore subject, explore and apply hopes, or desire for grow as person tended to report their hopes fulfilled. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Strengthening Collegiality to Enhance Teaching, Research, and Scholarly Practice: An Untapped Resource for Faculty Development

Collegiality lies at the intersection of various aspects of academic practice, including teaching as well as research. As such, assisting junior faculty in learning to build their collegial networks becomes a powerful point of intervention for faculty developers, even for those who focus on teaching development. Data from interviews with faculty engaged in both teaching and research, plus our experiences in conducting a series of career building initiatives are analyzed to identify junior faculty perceptions of the role of collegiality and barriers to establishing collegial ties. Two main barriers are identified: 1) knowing that collegiality and networking is important, and 2) knowing how to go about establishing oneself as a colleague. Recommendations are then offered to faculty developers for working with junior faculty to help address each of those barriers, drawing on the authors’ experiments with various workshops and forums

Emotions in Learning

Encyclopedia entry summarising how emotions in learning in higher education are treated in psychological theories, sociological theories and student development theories

From pedagogic innovation to publication: resituating your pedagogic research

This essay explores the most common difficulties faced in translating classroom research on practical problems of teaching and learning into peer reviewed published outputs. Using examples from my own research, I will show how to use pedagogical literature and theories of learning, teaching, motivation or curriculum to frame local problems and questions to appeal to a wider audience. This essay is based on my invited talk at the University of Brighton’s Enhancing Higher Education through Research conference on 2 February 2018

Do Higher Education Students Really Seek ‘Value for Money’? Debunking the Myth

Although students are increasingly cast as consumers wanting ‘value for money’, this study empirically investigated whether students actively seek value for money. In Study 1, 1772 undergraduates at a mid-ranked English university were asked open-ended questions about what they had wanted from their university learning experience and how that had turned out. Hopes were coded as fulfilled or unfulfilled. Responses were searched for key words related to ‘value for money’. Less than 2% of students referenced ‘value for money’. Those students were significantly more likely to have unfulfilled hopes. In Study 2, 185 first year science students were asked open-ended questions about why they chose their subject and their programme and what they had wanted from their learning experience in that programme. None referenced value for money. Students’ reasons for choosing their subjects and programmes were analysed. ‘Value for money’ does not do justice to students’ hopes for university or their programme

Leading for learning: Building on values and teaching expertise to effect change

In her model of leading for holistic learning in higher education, the author presents three main dimensions of leadership to which educational leaders need to attend: personal characteristics; knowledge of teaching and learning; and organisational conditions. She illustrates and extends this model based on a project documenting the leadership experiences of newly recognised Senior Fellows of the Higher Education Academy. This tripartite model of leading for learning was initially developed based on a review of literature on the elements of leadership shown to create environments supportive of holistic student learning and development in higher education. In the primary and secondary school leadership literature, scholars have debated which leadership types produce enhanced student outcomes. A transformational model of leadership, emphasizing personal characteristics such as those, is assumed to work by creating positive relationships and environments. In contrast, instructional leadership focuses on instruction itself more than people and relationships

Emotion and moral purposes in higher education teaching: Poetic case examples of teacher experiences

Although teaching is emotionally and ethically demanding, higher education teachers’ emotions, values and sense of moral purpose are under-researched. This study examines 66 case examples of teachers’ emotional experiences to see whether and what kinds of moral concerns underpin those emotional moments. Analysis was based on Graham, Nosek, Hadit, Iyer, & Ditto’s (2011) moral foundations theory, which posits five main moral concerns: care/harm, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Care/harm and authority/respect were the most common single moral concerns underpinning these emotional experiences, though there were examples of all five moral concerns within the set. Approximately one third of the cases referenced multiple moral concerns, suggesting the complexity of both emotional and ethical demands in teaching. Implications for research, teaching and educational development are highlighted

Striking the Right Balance: An Evaluation of a Literature Database To Support Problem Based Learning.

Faculty at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, have developed a bibliographic database of articles to support problem based learning. The database, its role in the curriculum, and its effectiveness in guiding, without undermining, self-directed learning were studied, using the goals of problem based learning as a framework. Students' self-reports in the form of end-of-course student evaluations were used to learn how students use the database and perceive its impact on student learning. Responses of 3 cohorts of approximately 84 students each representing 2 courses were analyzed. Many students in both courses used the database and found it useful in addressing learning issues. The database did not eliminate the "search stress" students had described, but findings suggest that there are two types of search difficulty. One was related to the mechanics of obtaining and copying papers, and the other was centered on learning hot to cope with too much information and reading for new key concepts. On the whole, the goals of the database appear to have been met. A majority of students in both courses used the resource to access relevant primary literature, and the database helped students focus on a smaller collection of key articles rather than the huge results often found in a Medline search