The other side of a magic mirror: Exploring collegiality in student and staff partnership work

This article adds to the corpus of writing that examines collegiality's idealistic yet elusive nature in Higher Education by focusingspecifically on how collegiality can be enacted in student–staff partnership work. An innovative initiative, ‘Students as Colleaguesin the Review of Teaching Practices’, provides a case to qualitatively explore the collegial characteristics. Here, students revieweda paired staff member's teaching practice over one semester, as a peer review exercise. This shift in social roles troubles theunderstanding of ‘peer’ and asks if authentic collegiality is possible. The study is conceptually framed by Fielding's notion of‘radical collegiality’ and draws on standpoint theory and dialogic education to raise issues of power, mutual support andproductive tensions. The findings have implications for how Higher Education institutions can support student and staff to activelyengage in authentic collegial partnerships by developing relational and dialogic spaces, rather than just abstract institutionalinfrastructures

Good teaching practices:Re-examining curricula, materials, activities, assessments

10.36615/sotls.v4i2.152SOTL in the South421-

No longer exempt from good practice: using exemplars to close the feedback gap for exams

In this paper, we discuss the anomaly between the increasing interest in feedback in current education research, the continued role of time-limited, unseen examinations as a form of assessment and the dearth of literature on feedback related to such exams. We argue that while exams have long been regarded as different from other forms of assessment, it is not justifiable to exempt them from the good practice that can, and does, inform these other types of assessment. We suggest a solution to providing timely, effective feedback for end of course examinations is to move the feedback emphasis to ‘feedforward’ by implementing exemplars (examples of real students’ work, generally of different qualities). This study adopts a mixed-methods approach to investigate whether there was a relationship between student use of exemplars before the exam and the final exam grade achieved (n = 520), and to explore students’ and lecturers’ perspectives about the effectiveness of and engagement with exemplars. Quantitative findings suggested that those students who accessed exemplars did score better in their exams than those that did not. Qualitative data revealed that exemplars were received positively by students and lecturers, and we use this to provide practical suggestions on exemplar good practic

Teaching wicked problems in higher education : ways of thinking and practising

This paper reports on teachers’ perspectives on preparing students for working with ‘wicked’ problems (Rittel and Webber [1973]. ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.’ Policy Sciences 4 (2): 155–169.). These problems are complex, lack clear boundaries, and attempts to solve them–generally by bringing together multiple stakeholders with contrasting viewpoints–have unforeseen consequences. Examples include many of the most significant current global challenges. We conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty teachers who focused on wicked problems, and a comparison group of 15. We used the theoretical lenses ‘ways of thinking and practising in the subject area’ (Anderson and Hounsell [2007]. ‘Knowledge Practices: ‘Doing the Subject’ in Undergraduate Courses.’ The Curriculum Journal 18 (4): 463–478.) and ‘figured worlds’ (Holland et al. [1998]. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) to frame our analysis. Our findings elaborate four key aspects of learning for wicked problems.</p

‘Observation has set in’: comparing students and peers as reviewers of teaching

Peer review is a powerful method to enhance teaching in higher education. Peers, however, may not be the most relevant people in evaluating teaching success; as the most important stakeholders in learning, students’ evaluations need to be heard. Whilst some efforts to capture ‘the student voice’ are simplistic and may foster consumerist approaches, adopting ‘radical collegiality’ towards students may provide the benefits of peer review whilst avoiding some of its disadvantages. Here we describe the Students as Colleagues project, which trained student volunteers as evaluators of teaching. To assess the ability of students to provide useful reviews, we compared their evaluative feedback with that from academic peers, using a paired design and qualitative and quantitative data. Students gave significantly more positive comments, and just as many negative and directive comments, as academic peers. Student colleagues emphasised the positive personal (rather than professional) capacities of their reviewees, encouraged expressed vulnerability and drew on their broad experiences as students rather than from professional perspectives. Participation changed how students saw their abilities and helped ‘humanise’ both the reviewees and the university as a whole. Our results and standpoint theory suggest that students’ evaluative feedback is the most valuable perspective to inform teaching enhancement