A reflective perspective on the challenges facing research-led teaching in the performing and creative arts

This article provides a reflective perspective on the role that research-led teaching plays in the development of future arts workers in higher education. It explores the challenges faced by lecturers developing curricula in the performing and creative arts and argues that the increasing focus on employability can conflict with universities’ traditional aim of developing conceptual and critical thinkers. The article charges that the UK’s higher education sector is rapidly transforming itself into a two-tier system, which is serving to dichotomise vocational and academic learning even further. It concludes with a call for universities, students and employers to reject the false dichotomy between vocational and academic learning and perceive education in a more holistic, longitudinal sense, which might in turn develop more balanced graduates who excel in networked knowledge, conceptual and theoretical imagination and critical, lateral thinking

The changing academic environment and diversity in students' study philosophy, beliefs and attitudes in higher education

Student populations in higher education in Australia and elsewhere in the developed world have experienced significant diversity over the past two decades. The existing literature has provided limited clarity about the effects of this diversity on the dimensions underpinning students' study philosophy domain. Based on a large data set from a leading Australian university, this paper analyses students' study philosophy, beliefs and attitudes towards teaching and learning. Factor analysis explored themes (or dimensions) within the survey. Multivariate analysis of variance used these dimensions as dependent variables with age, sex, ethnicity, study discipline, study level, academic performance and sex/ethnicity interaction as grouping variables to identify significant sources of variations. Deep learning, expediency and responsibility reflected the students' study philosophy domain. Deep learning and responsibility varied with ethnicity and academic performance. Expediency differed according to ethnicity, study discipline and academic performance. Students in business-related disciplines displayed greater expediency than peers elsewhere, treating education like any other commodity. The contribution of this study lies in its rigorous analysis of the impact of the diversity of the student population on the study philosophy domain, compared to the existing literature

Problematising Practice, Reconceptualising Learning and Imagining Change

© 2012, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Practice has become an increasingly crucial concept in the disciplines that deal with social life. Yet, it is evident that the term practice is typically employed in diverse and ambiguous ways. This is exacerbated by practice frequently being conjoined with a foregoing classifier, for example, legal practice, teaching practice, professional practice and literacy practice. In such cases, semantic attention typically centres on the classifier with the notion of practice being assumed to be unproblematic. This chapter seeks to problematise and defamiliarise taken-for-granted assumptions about practice and their relationship with learning. Five principles for theorising practice are proposed and discussed. These principles are deployed to suggest fresh understandings of learning and change in relation to practices. In turn, this illuminates issues around how practices are made and how they evolve and change

Can teachers know learners' minds? Teacher empathy and learner body language in English language teaching

Empathy has often been associated with how people come to know the minds of others. Theory of mind (ToM) proposes that through social cognition people make unique inferences about unobservable mental states such as intentions, goals and beliefs. This chapter explores the association between teacher empathy, ToM and interculturality, and the expression and interpretation of emotion in intercultural educational settings. The chapter raises questions about the universality of non-verbal emotional expression and interpretation of emotion across cultures, and suggests that teachers may not always be accurate in their interpretations of learners' emotional cues in intercultural encounters. The chapter concludes that reflexivity and empathy are essential elements of being in interculturally effective educator