Scholarship of teaching and learning at the highest level? Experiences from a study program for doctoral supervisors

The Swedish HE Ordinance requires all supervisors of doctoral students to undergo introductory training. The content, goals, learning outcomes and duration is not specified by the Ordinance and thus practices vary between institutions. In 2009/2010, a new study program for doctoral supervisors was launched at Lund University. The program was designed to:- provide research-based support for doctoral supervisors;- create a university wide arena for collegial collaboration between doctoral supervisors and serve as a platform and source for knowledge building and organizational learning on doctoral supervision and doctoral student learning;- contribute to cross disciplinary development of doctoral education – within the university as well as between universities, both nationally and internationally; - contribute to and support research and development projects on doctoral education; and- enhance the quality in doctoral education by focusing on student learning and experience, ethics, equal opportunities and widening participation. - be aligned with existing qualification frameworks for tenure and promotion In this paper we report on the experiences from the first module in this study program. Our data comes from three written assignments that > 100 participating supervisors have completed; reflective writing, a project on doctoral education and learning, and an assessment of the program module. At the conference we will present an analysis of: 1) what aspects of doctoral student learning and experience, doctoral education, or supervision the participants are focusing on; 2) instances of cross disciplinary learning between participants; 3) longitudinal knowledge building within the program, i.e. supervisors learning from and developing ideas from peers in previous rounds; 4) how supervisors perceive their own development, in retrospect and in the future. Our preliminary results indicate that there is fertile ground for the dawning of a scholarship of doctoral supervision and that our study program has an important role to fill in such a development

A Study Program for Doctoral Supervisors – a Vehicle for Development

A study program for doctoral supervisors is currently being implemented at two higher education institutions: One large and traditional research university and one university college. The overall aim of the program is to improve supervision as well as local practices for doctoral education and doctoral research in departments and research groups but also at the institutional level. In planning the program three important considerations were made. The program should:- be aligned with existing qualification frameworks for tenure and promotion; - serve as a platform and source for knowledge building and organisational learning on doctoral supervision and doctoral student learning; - serve as an arena for supervisors, educational developers, and educational researchers to collaborate on doctoral student learning and doctoral supervision.These considerations will be discussed in relation to enhancement of supervision and doctoral student learning, the scholarship of teaching and learning movement, and compulsory higher education teacher training. The study program of Lund and Kristianstad will be used as a case. The presentation will be made against a contextual backdrop in which doctoral education is claimed to be under increasing tensions. On one hand doctoral education has become increasingly important for research production and research funding. On the other hand there is a strong push for doctoral education to focus learning and employability and to serve a wider purpose than the re-growth of the academy. In Europe this is most visible through the Bologna process

Investigating the space for research and learning within doctoral education in medicine

Doctoral education in medicine, engineering, technology and science (METS) is in many ways different from doctoral education in the humanities or social sciences. In the METS disciplines, typically, students and supervisors work and publish together within the supervisors’ research projects. The projects are usually financed by the supervisors’ research grants and their success, in terms of high quality research publications, is of great importance not only for the students’ dissertations but also for the supervisors’ academic careers. In METS contexts, supervisors and students could therefore be said to have double roles: the supervisor being also a project leader and the student also a project worker. Research on this double relationship is scarce, particularly considering the large number of students within the METS disciplines. Doctoral education and research have increasingly attracted interest among politicians and policymakers world-wide, often resulting in new legislation and policy. In many countries, doctoral education has gradually become more formalised in order to improve students’ rights and study conditions. Research, on the other hand, has seen the introduction of productivity audits and increased competition for funding. Such changes converge at the level of doctoral education and could be expected to create tensions, particularly within the METS disciplines due to the close integration of doctoral education and research. Sweden provides an especially interesting case as changes to educational legislation and research policy, respectively, have been comparatively large. Swedish doctoral students today are guaranteed four years of fully financed studies and a monthly salary (normally between 2100 and 3000 €). At the same time, more than 50 per cent of funds for research and doctoral education today come from funding bodies (governmental and private) external to the universities and are mainly awarded in competition. In the METS disciplines the dependence on external funding can approach 100 per cent, since government base-funding to a large extent is used for infrastructure and administration in order to attract more external funds and researchers with large grants. Consequently, researchers increasingly have had to compete with research proposals, CVs and bibliometric scores, and institutions are now often described as “research hotels” were you can stay as long as you pay. We have interviewed doctoral supervisors within medicine, a discipline that in Sweden almost exclusively is financed through external funding. For our analysis, we have used cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and constructed two co-occurring and overlapping activity systems: one for doctoral education and one for research. We find synergies as well as tensions and contradictions between the two systems but also adaptations. Supervisors describe how increasing pressure from the (research) funding system has reduced the available space for students to influence the design of their projects, to exercise creativity and to fail. Accommodating doctoral students within large and prestigious research projects also means that students often begin their studies at very different stages in the process, and rarely at the design stage. Supervising involves putting projects, funding and future opportunities at high risk, which is reflected in a student recruitment process characterised by risk-management. At the same time supervisors remark that students to a higher degree today view their studies as work rather than a calling. Furthermore, the requirements of educational policy for full funding and formal qualifications necessitates that supervisors form alliances with more senior researchers. Such alliances typically extend also to research and provide senior and well-funded researchers opportunities to exercise power over junior and less funded researchers. We conclude that Swedish research policy, contrary to its intentions and in combination with educational policy, could have negative and far-reaching consequences for doctoral student research and learning but also for the STEM disciplines themselves

Exploring strategies for developing doctorateness: a diagnostic theory-based tool for supervisors’ self-evaluation. In S. Leshem (ordf.), Developing Doctorateness. Symposium

We report here on a diagnostic tool for improving doctoral supervision that supervisors in training at Lund University use to develop strategies for supporting their student’s learning. The tool has been developed by combining two theoretical models, an empirically generated model of orientations to doctoral supervision (Lee, 2008) and a meta-perspective on professional learning (Dall'Alba & Sandberg, 2006), with supervision strategies that has emerged in our study of supervisors in training. In this session we will present the tool and how it has been developed in our workshops for supervisors. Such workshops are mandatory for doctoral supervisors at Lund University and are held across all eight faculties as well as within single faculties. The number of supervisors that has attended is exceeding 500. We will also demonstrate how we use the tool to help supervisors explore their supervision strategies and departmental practices for doctoral education. References Dall'Alba, G., & Sandberg, J. 2006. Unveiling Professional Development: A Critical Review of Stage Models. Review of Educational Research, 76.3. 383-412. Lee, A. 2008. How are doctoral students supervised? Concepts of doctoral research supervision. Studies in Higher Education, 33. 3. 267-281

Proceedings utvecklingskonferens 09

I år var andra gången som Lunds universitet genomförde en universitetsgemensam pedagogisk utvecklingskonferens, första gången var 2007. Konferensen, som är ett samarrangemang mellan samtliga fakulteter och CED, har nu alltså blivit en återkommande aktivitet! Samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten stod värd för årets konferens och dekanus Ann-Katrin Bäcklund sträckte vid invigningen fram en symbolisk stafettpinne inför nästa konferens. Medicinska fakulteten tog denna stafettpinne och därigenom värdskapet för 2011 års utvecklingskonferens. En konferens av detta slag skapar möjlighet för lärare och andra inom universitetet med intresse och engagemang i pedagogiska utvecklingsfrågor att dela kunskap och erfarenheter samt att föra en kritisk dialog kring lärande, undervisning och lärarskap. Resultatet blir ökad kunskap och kunskapsbildning kring lärande och undervisning men också inspiration och delaktighet i och runt lärarskapet. Totalt deltog 161 personer i årets konferens. För att hålla hög kvalitet på konferensen blev alla bidrag granskade av särskilt sakkunniga bedömargrupper. Av ett 60-tal inskickade bidrag – i form av papers, rundabordssamtal, workshops och posters – bedömdes 43 stycken hålla tillräckligt hög kvalitet. Inga teman var bestämda i för-väg utan kom till genom att analysera och kategorisera de godkända bidragen. Resultatet blev sex tematiska spår. De var: • Professionen i fokus • Generella färdigheter – som mål och medel • Att följa lärandet • Pedagogiska arbetsformer • Undervisningens ethos • Att utveckla(s) för lärande Konferensen inleddes med välkomsttal av rektor Per Eriksson, dekanus Ann-Katrin Bäcklund och pedagogiska utvecklare Gunilla Amnér och Anders Sonesson. Som inbjuden key-note talade Vernon Trafford om ”Writing is at the core of postgraduate student research”

Pedagogisk utbildning i ett utvecklingsperspektiv

Behörighetsgivande högskolepedagogisk utbildning har nu blivit verklighet runt om i landet. Det finns från flera håll en stark förhoppning om att sådan utbildning ska bidra till att undervisningen utvecklas. Samtidigt kostar dessa kurser både pengar och tid, något som kanske går ut över andra utvecklingsinitiativ. Det är därför extra viktigt att ha ett utvecklingsperspektiv vid planering och genomförande av dessa kurser. Hur kan ett sådant perspektiv se ut? Det finns idag en ökande medvetenhet om hur det sociala sammanhang lärare befinner sig i kan begränsa alternativt möjliggöra utveckling av undervisningen. Trowler & Cooper (2002) definierar det sociala sammanhanget med en beskrivning av teaching and learning regimes (TLR) bestående av ett antal kulturella komponenter vilka påverkar lärares upplevelser och agerande i och runt undervisningen. Ett utvecklingsperspektiv på högskolepedagogisk utbildning bör därför innebära tankar inte bara om hur individer ska utvecklas utan också om hur kurserna ska bidra till att det sociala sammanhanget och dess TLR kan utvecklas. Vi menar att detta perspektiv lätt förbises. Själva begreppet behörighetsgivande är i detta sammanhang problematiskt. Det signalerar att utbildningen gör någon behörig till ett sammanhang – inte att sammanhanget bör utvecklas! Detta rundabordsamtal syftar till att fördjupa diskussionen kring utmaningen att utveckla både individer och det sammanhang de ingår i. Vi hävdar att högskolepedagogisk utbildning måste ses som en del i en strategi som syftar till utveckling av undervisningen inom den högre utbildningen

Utvärdering av sjuksköterskeprogrammet vid Lunds universitet : Höstterminen 2012 - vårterminen 2014

2012 beslutade MedCUL (Medicinska fakultetens centrum för undervisning och lärande) och sjuksköterskeprogrammets ledning att påbörja en större utvärdering av sjuksköterskeutbildningen. Projektet består av två delar med delvis olika syften. Den första delen, som här redovisas för perioden höstterminen 2012 till och med vårterminen 2014, syftar till att ta fram underlag för förbättring av programmet. Den andra delen är ett forskningsprojekt där olika utvärderingsmetoder utprovas och jämförs. Tillvägagångssätten har varit fokusgrupper med studenter på termin tre respektive sex, enkäterna DREEM och CLES+T, intervjuer med enskilda studenter och lärare, samt analys av kursplaner och andra kursrelaterade dokument. Projektet påbörjades i samband med att programmet sjösatte en ny utbildningsplan höstterminen 2012 och de studenter som ingått i projektet representerar sex olika kohorter, fyra inom den tidigare utbildningsplanen och två inom den nuvarande. Denna rapport inleds med en sammanfattning av de olika tillvägagångssätt vi använt samt huvuddragen i resultaten (i rapportens appendix återfinns samtliga enkäter och frågemallar samt resterande resultat). I den avslutande diskussionen, där vi också ger förslag för utveckling, har vi begränsat oss till ett antal problemområden som vi menar framstått särskilt tydligt och är särskilt viktiga att göra något åt. Rapportens resultatdel rymmer dock mer än så och kan vara användbart för vidare analys och utvecklingsarbete

Changes in the relative thickness of individual subcutaneous adipose tissue layers in growing pigs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The thickness of the subcutaneous fat layer is an important parameter at all stages of pig production. It is used to inform decisions on dietary requirements to optimize growth, in gilts to promote longevity and finally to assist in the calculation of payments to producers that allow for general adiposity. Currently for reasons of tradition and ease, total adipose thickness measurements are made at one or multiple sites although it has been long recognized that up to three well defined layers (outer (L1), middle (L2), and inner (L3)) may be present to make up the total. Various features and properties of these layers have been described. This paper examines the contribution of each layer to total adipose thickness at three time points and describes the change in thickness of each layer per unit change in body weight in normal growing pigs.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A group of nine pigs was examined using 14 MHz linear array transducer on three separate occasions. The average weight was 51, 94 and 124 kg for each successive scan. The time between scanning was approximately 4 weeks. The proportion of each layer to total thickness was modeled statistically with scan session as a variable and the change in absolute thickness of each layer per unit change in body weight was modeled in a random regression model.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was a significant change in ratios between scans for the middle and inner layers (<it>P </it>< 0.001). The significant changes were seen between the first and second, and between the first and final, scan sessions. The change in thickness per unit change in body weight was greatest for L2, followed by L1 and L3.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results demonstrate that subcutaneous adipose layers grow at different rates relative to each other and to change in body weight and indicate that ultrasound can be used to track these differences.</p