Category: Teaching Learning & Assessment

  • The urgent need to facilitate environmental justice learning in HE institutions

    The urgent need to facilitate environmental justice learning in HE institutions

    by Sally Beckenham

    The crises we are facing globally, from climate change and climate change dispossession to drought and food insecurity, are intersecting social and environmental issues, which need to be recognized and addressed accordingly through integrated and holistic measures. This can only be achieved by eschewing the tendency of existing governance and economic systems to silo social and environmental problems, as if they are separate concerns that can be managed – and prioritised – hierarchically. Much of this requires a better understanding of environmental injustice – the ways in which poor, racialised, indigenous and other marginalized communities are overlooked and/or othered in this power hierarchy, such that they must face a disproportionate burden of environmental harm.

    This is happening with disconcerting regularity around the world, often going under the radar but sometimes making headlines, as for example in May this year, when institutionalised environmental racism in the U.S. manifested in the placement of a copper mine on land inhabited by and sacred to the Apache indigenous group (Sherman, 2025). With limited political power to challenge it they are left to face dispossession, loss of livelihood and physical and mental health ill-effects (Morton-Ninomiya et al, 2023). We have seen this making headlines closer to home recently too, with evidence suggesting that toxic air in the UK is killing 500 people a week and most affecting those in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas (Gregory, 2025). An environmental problem (such as air pollution) cannot be disentangled from its social causes and effects. Or to put it another way, violence done to the environment is violence done to a particular group of people.

    A transformative response to our global challenges that re-centres environmental justice will require a paradigm shift in the ways that we govern, construct our societies, build our communities, run our economies, design our technologies and engage with the non-human world. The role of higher education will be critical to even a modest move in this direction. This is because, as they are probably tired of hearing, this generation of students will shape our collective futures, so it matters that they are literate in the deep entanglement of environmental and social justice challenges. Moreover, as Stickney and Skilbeck caution, “it is inconceivable that we will meet drastic carbon reduction targets without massive coordinated efforts, involving policymakers and educators working in concert at all levels of our governments and education systems (Stickney and Skilbeck, 2020).

    In Ruth Irwin’s article ‘Climate Change and Education’ she alerts us to Heidegger’s treatise in Being and Time (1962) that the effectiveness of a tool’s readiness is ‘hidden’ – only revealed when it ceases to function. Climate might be viewed as a heretofore ‘hidden’ tool, in that it affords opportunities for human action; it has “smoothly enabled our existence without conscious consideration” (Irwin, 2019). Yet its dynamic quality is now an overt, striking, looming spectre threatening the existence of all life on earth; the ‘environment’ writ large is revealing itself through ecological and social breakdown, surfacing our essential reliance upon it as natural beings. Thus unless higher education is competent in dealing with the issues of environmental crisis at all of its registers – social, environmental, political and ecological – the institution of education will be unable to fulfil its fundamental task of knowledge transfer for what is a clear public good (Irwin, 2019). Put another way, “HEIs have a responsibility to develop their educational provision in ways that will support the social transformation needed to mitigate the worst effects of the environmental crisis.” (Owens et al, 2023).

    Indeed, HE requires a paradigm shift in itself given that these realities are unfolding alongside widespread scrutiny of higher education institutions; including about decolonising the academy (Jivraj, 2020; Mintz, 2021), free speech on university campuses and how they are preparing students to meet these pressing issues (Woodgates, 2025). To keep pace with these changes and meet such challenges, educators from across disciplines will need to commit to embedding environmental justice education more widely across programme curricula, session design and teaching practices. It must be recognised as a vital – rather than token – component of environmental education. Doing so fully and effectively also requires us to recognise that environmental justice education encompasses not only subject matter but pedagogical practice. This is the case for all academic disciplines – including those that might seem peripheral to the teaching of environmental issues.

    EJE in HE is a developing area of scholarship and field of study that has gathered pace only over the last decade. Much of the research to date has been focused on the US, where studies have shown that environmental justice remains marginal to or excluded from the curricular offerings of most environmental studies programmes – let alone those not directly related to environmental education (Garibay et al, 2016). A report by the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), which studied the policies of 230 public U.S. HE institutions and 36 state boards of higher education, found that only 6% of institutions with climate change content in their policies referred to climate justice issues and indigenous knowledge practices (MECCE Project & NAAEE, 2023). Other work has shown that STEM education has tended to frame questions around exploitation of natural resources or technological development as disconnected from social and economic inequalities, though this is starting to be challenged (Greenberg et al, 2024).

    Emerging research into EJ in HE encompasses pedagogical approaches (Rabe, 2024; Moore, 2024); classroom and teaching practices (Walsh et al, 2022; Cachelin & Nicolosi, 2022; D’Arcangelis & Sarathy, 2015), the relationship between sustainability and climate justice education (Haluza-DeLay, 2013; Kinol et al, 2023) and curriculum development (Garibay et al, 2016). In identifying what EJE looks like these studies foreground the importance of community-engaged learning (CEL), providing students with the opportunity to learn about a socio-environmental problem from those with lived experience; critical thinking with regards to positionality, power structures and (especially indigenous) knowledge systems, and a deep concern with place. These critical components are crucial because tackling an act or acts of environmental injustice against marginalised populations often cannot be achieved without addressing systemic power imbalances.

    What also links these studies is an acknowledgement of the complexity of EJE. It is a difficult subject and practice to grapple with for several reasons. Firstly, it means exposing students (and educators) to “an onslaught of bad news,” (Cachelin & Nicolosi, 2022) which can elicit feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, so it is little wonder that expressions of anxiety and alarm are growing within these cohorts (Wallace, Greenburg & Clark, 2020) and that needs to be borne in mind. Secondly EJE requires us to find a way to meaningfully connect with philosophical, discursive, historical and practical questions about power, ethics and the relationship between human beings and the natural environment, within the disciplinary parameters of a specific curricula. This means doing difficult work not only to change current systems and processes (Forsythe et al, 2023) but also to make transformative rather than piecemeal efforts. For example, this might mean actively absorbing students into a community partner’s work in an engaged rather than service-learning model, or moving beyond a simple ‘guest lecture’ format to invite more in-depth input into modules or programmes from a community partner.

    This is a challenge that we shouldn’t understate for many academics and institutions already coping with high workloads (Smith, 2023), stress (Kinman et al, 2019) and job insecurity across a beleaguered sector (The Independent, 2024; The Guardian, 2025). Through this emerging EJE scholarship literature, we are starting to see that, “promoting opportunities for HE educators to develop and enact critical and transformative environmental pedagogy… is a complex business mediated by a variety of (personal, material and social) factors. It involves negotiating conflict, and understanding and confronting entrenched structures of power, from the local and institutional to the national and global.” (Owens et al, 2023). 

    A third (though by no means final) challenge in teaching and learning EJ in higher education is in finding and making space for it in a landscape that is strongly oriented towards sustainability education. Although there is certainly overlap – for example to the extent that the liberal logic underpinning the latter also informs distributive justice – sustainability education has different intellectual and ideological origins to EJ scholarship. Both are valuable, but we should be questioning whether we can justify a lack of explicit EJ practice and framing simply because we are already having sustainability conversations, and instead find space for both. It can be easy to (inadvertently) depoliticise environmental education by avoiding the perceived messiness and complexity of justice in favour of the more technocratic and measurable ‘sustainability’ (Haluza-DeLay, 2013).

    My research seeks to develop a better understanding of the state of environmental justice education in the HE landscape, beginning by mapping its development in the UK. This will reveal the extent and means by which EJE is being incorporated across programme curricula, session design and teaching practices in the UK HE context. In doing so we can identify the intersections of EJE with other dominant pedagogies, including sustainability education and solutions-focused approaches. To pursue a provincialising agenda and avoid the parochial perspective that EJE is the preserve of HEIs in the global North, there is also much value in exploring what EJE looks like in HEIs in the global South, and where cross-cultural lessons can be shared. The questions we need to be asking are:

    • How is environmental justice being taught and learnt and where do we go from here?
    • How are educators overcoming the challenges involved in engaging with EJE?
    • What best practices could we champion?

    Sharing methods, strategies and pedagogical approaches for EJE cross-institutionally and cross-culturally will be a step towards helping us build a better collective, collaborative response to the urgency of our intersecting socio-environmental crises.

    Dr Sally Beckenham is Lecturer in Human Geography and Programme Lead and Admissions Tutor for the BA Human Geography & Environment in the Department of Environment & Geography, University of York. She is also Chair of the Teaching Development Pool and member of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre (IGDC). She is an interdisciplinary political geographer with degrees in Modern History, International Politics and International Relations, and welcomes collaboration. Email: [email protected] Bluesky: @sallybeckenham.bsky.social.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • To ‘think like a lawyer’: some thoughts on the pedagogy of international law

    To ‘think like a lawyer’: some thoughts on the pedagogy of international law

    by Paolo Amorosa & Sebastián Machado

    Most law professors face a similar challenge when designing their courses: how to explain to students the enduring gap between what the law says and how it functions in reality. One of the foundational assumptions of legal education is that law is more than just the written rules found in statutes, bills, or constitutions. Without an understanding of how these rules influence a judge’s decision-making, they remain little more than pretty playthings: abstract ideas with no real-world impact. This realist approach in domestic legal education helps bridge the divide between legal theory and practice; the same arguments might apply in most disciplines and fields with a similar divide between theory and practice. If you can examine a rule and confidently predict how it will be applied, you are engaging in the most basic form of legal research. But consider a legal system without a centralised rule-making authority or a single, binding interpreter – no supreme legislature or final court to settle disputes definitively. This is the reality of international law. While there are many judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, there is no universal, mandatory forum for resolving disputes, and most conflicts never reach a formal judgment. Instead, states, international organizations, and individuals all contribute to shaping the rules by advocating for their preferred interpretations, hoping to sway the broader consensus. International lawyers refer to this evolving consensus as the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’, a term that captures the discipline’s informal, socially constructed boundaries. In essence, international law is what international lawyers do.

    Teaching international law, then, comes with an added layer of complexity: the lack of formal structures undermines legal certainty. Every international lawyer, to some degree, can influence the field. Through journal articles, blog posts, social media debates, or legal practice, they argue for their version of the correct interpretation of a rule. Academics may even challenge established meanings, making persuasive cases that defy the literal text of foundational documents like the UN Charter.

    This is why international lawyers often say that the law is made, not found. Unlike domestic legal systems, where rules are either codified (as in civil law) or derived from judicial precedent (as in common law), international law is fundamentally discursive. This creates a twofold problem. First, without an authoritative interpreter, there is no clear way to separate theory from practice. A legal advisor in a Foreign Ministry might frame a state’s actions as part of a new trend that modifies a rule (such as pre-emptive self-defense), while others denounce it as a violation (like Article 51 of the UN Charter). In this environment, the line between legal theory and practice dissolves. Second, with no objective boundaries to the discipline, the distinction between mainstream international law and critical approaches collapses. What remains is the professor’s choice: which version of the law to teach.

    Yet teaching international law does not require taking a stance on the theory-practice divide, because that divide is not inherent to the discipline. Law professors are not bound by the same rigid distinctions as, say, natural scientists, who must separate theoretical models from empirical observation. Instead, legal education can bypass this dichotomy entirely by focusing on the deeper conditions that shape how we understand both theory and practice. Rather than treating practice as a constraint on theory, students can learn to apply theoretical insights pragmatically. This approach allows law schools to teach practical skills without forcing an artificial separation between legal thought and legal action, following larger trends in pedagogical training outside legal academia.

    Still, many international law professors struggle with curriculum design because of these perceived divides. On one hand, students must master a baseline of doctrinal knowledge to enter legal practice. On the other, mere knowledge acquisition is not enough – students must also develop the ability to analyse, synthesise, and critically evaluate legal arguments. A well-rounded legal education should cultivate these higher-order skills, enabling students to engage in meta-cognitive reflection about the law they are learning.

    Moreover, there is no strong evidence that ‘thinking like a lawyer’ is a unique cognitive skill. Legal reasoning shares much with other forms of reasoning, meaning that better teaching methods alone will not necessarily produce better lawyers. Instead, what matters is equipping students with evaluative tools to interpret and refine legal arguments. By treating core legal knowledge as a foundation rather than a rigid boundary, and critical thinking as a method for engaging with that knowledge, the supposed divide between mainstream and critical approaches begins to fade.

    The same logic applies to the theory-practice debate. The tension between these approaches persists only if we assume they are mutually exclusive. Law schools often face criticism from practitioners who argue that graduates lack practical skills, while academics defend the importance of theoretical training. But must these roles be in conflict?

    Perhaps the real issue in international law is not the existence of these divides, but our insistence on treating them as inevitable. If there is little evidence that ‘thinking like a lawyer’ is a distinct cognitive skill, there is even less reason to impose it as a rigid framework for international legal education. Instead, we might focus on cultivating adaptable, reflective practitioners who can navigate both theory and practice – not as opposing forces, but as complementary dimensions of the same discipline. This is a lesson relevant for many if not all professional disciplines.

    Sebastian Machado Ramírez is Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki, where he works on the PRIVIGO project examining private governance and international law. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, where his dissertation analyzed interpretive approaches in the law governing the use of force.

    Paolo Amorosa is University Lecturer in International Law at the University of Helsinki. He holds a PhD from the same institution and specializes in the history and theory of international law and human rights. His monograph Rewriting the History of the Law of Nations (OUP 2019) critically re-examines the ideological foundations of international law’s canon.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • What the experience of neurodivergent PhD students teaches us, and why it makes me angry

    What the experience of neurodivergent PhD students teaches us, and why it makes me angry

    by Inger Mewburn

    Recently, some colleagues and I released a paper about the experiences of neurodivergent PhD students. It’s a systematic review of the literature to date, which is currently under review, but available via pre-print here.

    Doing this paper was an exercise in mixed feelings. It was an absolute joy to work with my colleagues, who knew far more about this topic than me and taught me (finally!) how to do a proper systematic review using Covidence. Thanks Dr Diana Tan, Dr Chris Edwards, Associate Professor Kate Simpson, Associate Professor Amanda A Webster and Professor Charlotte Brownlow (who got the band together in the first place).

    But reading each and every paper published about neurodivergent PhD students provoked strong feelings of rage and frustration. (These feelings only increased, with a tinge of fear added in, when I read of plans for the US health department to make a ‘list’ of autistic people?! Reading what is going on there is frankly terrifying – solidarity to all.) We all know what needs to be done to make research degrees more accessible. Make expectations explicit. Create flexible policies. Value diverse thinking styles. Implement Universal Design Principles… These suggestions appear in report after report, I’ve ranted on the blog here and here, yet real change remains frustratingly elusive. So why don’t these great ideas become reality? Here’s some thoughts on barriers that keep neurodivergent-friendly changes from taking hold.

    The myth of meritocracy

    Academia clings to the fiction that the current system rewards pure intellectual merit. Acknowledging the need for accessibility requires admitting that the playing field isn’t level. Many senior academics succeeded in the current system and genuinely believe “if I could do it, anyone can… if they work hard enough”. They are either 1) failing to recognise their neurotypical privilege, or 2) not acknowledging the cost of masking their own neurodivergence (I’ll get to this in a moment).

    I’ve talked to many academics about things we could do – like getting rid of the dissertation – but too many of us are secretly proud of our own trauma. The harshness of the PhD has been compared to a badge of honour that we wear proudly – and expect others to earn.

    Resource scarcity (real and perceived)

    Universities often respond to suggestions about increased accessibility measures with budget concerns. The vibe is often: “We’d love to offer more support, but who will pay for it?”. However, many accommodations (like flexible deadlines or allowing students to work remotely) cost little, or even nothing. Frequently, the real issue isn’t resources but priorities of the powerful. There’s no denying universities (in Australia, and elsewhere) are often cash strapped. The academic hunger games are real. However, in the fight for resources, power dynamics dictate who gets fed and who goes without.

    I wish we would just be honest about our choices – some people in universities still have huge travel budgets. The catering at some events is still pretty good. Some people seem to avoid every hiring freeze. There are consistent patterns in how resources are distributed. It’s the gaslighting that makes me angry. If we really want to, we can do most things. We have to want to do something about this.

    Administrative inertia

    Changing established processes in a university is like turning a battleship with a canoe paddle. Approval pathways are long and winding. For example, altering a single line in the research award rules at ANU requires approval from parliament (yes – the politicians actually have to get together and vote. Luckily we are not as dysfunctional in Australia as other places… yet). By the time a solution is implemented, the student who needed it has likely graduated – or dropped out. This creates a vicious cycle where the support staff, who see multiple generations of students suffer the same way, can get burned out and stop pushing for change.

    The individualisation of disability

    Universities tend to treat neurodivergence as an individual problem requiring individual accommodations rather than recognising systemic barriers. This puts the burden on students to disclose, request support, and advocate for themselves – precisely the executive function and communication challenges many neurodivergent students struggle with.

    It’s akin to building a university with only stairs, then offering individual students a piggyback ride instead of installing ramps. I’ve met plenty of people who simply get so exhausted they don’t bother applying for the accommodations they desperately need, and then end up dropping out anyway.

    Fear of lowering ‘standards’

    Perhaps the most insidious barrier is the mistaken belief that accommodations somehow “lower standards.” I’ve heard academics worrying that flexible deadlines will “give some students an unfair advantage” or that making expectations explicit somehow “spoon-feeds” students.

    The fear of “lowering standards” becomes even more puzzling when you look at how PhD requirements have inflated over time. Anyone who’s spent time in university archives knows that doctoral standards aren’t fixed – they’re constantly evolving. Pull a dissertation from the 1950s or 60s off the shelf and you’ll likely find something remarkably slim compared to today’s tomes. Many were essentially extended literature reviews with modest empirical components. Today, we expect multiple studies, theoretical innovations, methodological sophistication, and immediate publishability – all while completing within strict time limits on ever-shrinking funding.

    The standards haven’t just increased; they’ve multiplied. So when universities resist accommodations that might “compromise standards,” we should ask: which era’s standards are we protecting? Certainly not the ones under which most people supervising today had to meet. The irony is that by making the PhD more accessible to neurodivergent thinkers, we might actually be raising standards – allowing truly innovative minds to contribute rather than filtering them out through irrelevant barriers like arbitrary deadlines or neurotypical communication expectations. The real threat to academic standards isn’t accommodation – it’s the loss of brilliant, unconventional thinkers who could push knowledge boundaries in ways we haven’t yet imagined.

    Unexamined neurodiversity among supervisors

    Perhaps one of the most overlooked barriers is that many supervisors are themselves neurodivergent but don’t recognise it or acknowledge what’s going on with them! In fact, since starting this research, I’ve formed a private view that you almost can’t succeed in this profession without at least a little neurospicey.

    Academia tends to attract deep thinkers with intense focus on specific topics – traits often associated with autism (‘special interests’ anyone?). The contemporary university is constantly in crisis, which some people with ADHD can find provides the stimulation they need to get things done! Yet many supervisors have succeeded through decades of masking and compensating, often at great personal cost.

    The problem is not the neurodivergence or the supervisor – it’s how the unexamined neurodivergence becomes embedded in practice, underpinned by an expectation that their students should function exactly as they do, complete with the same struggles they’ve internalised as “normal.”

    I want to hold on to this idea for a moment, because maybe you recognise some of these supervisors:

    • The Hyperfocuser: Expects students to match their pattern of intense, extended work sessions. This supervisor regularly works through weekends on research “when inspiration strikes,” sending emails at 2am and expecting quick responses. They struggle to understand when students need breaks or maintain strict work boundaries, viewing it as “lack of passion.” Conveniently, they have ignored those couple of episodes of burn out, never considering their own work pattern might reflect ADHD or autistic hyper-focus, rather than superior work ethic.
    • The Process Pedant: Requires students to submit written work in highly specific formats with rigid attachment to particular reference styles, document formatting, and organisational structures. Gets disproportionately distressed by minor variations from their preferred system, focusing on these details over content, such that their feedback primarily addresses structural issues rather than ideas. I get more complaints about this than almost any other kind of supervision style – it’s so demoralising to be constantly corrected and not have someone genuinely engage with your work.
    • The Talker: Excels in spontaneous verbal feedback but rarely provides written comments. Expects students to take notes during rapid-fire conversational feedback, remembering all key points. They tend to tell you to do the same thing over and over, or forget what they have said and recommend something completely different next time. Can get mad when questioned over inconsistencies – suggesting you have a problem with listening. This supervisor never considers that their preference for verbal communication might reflect their own neurodivergent processing style, which isn’t universal. Couple this with a poor memory and the frustration of students reaches critical. (I confess, being a Talker is definitely my weakness as a supervisor – I warn my students in advance and make an effort to be open to criticism about it!).
    • The Context-Switching Avoider: Schedules all student meetings on a single day of the week, keeping other days “sacred” for uninterrupted research. Becomes noticeably agitated when asked to accommodate a meeting outside this structure, even for urgent matters. Instead of recognising their own need for predictable routines and difficulty with transitions (common in many forms of neurodivergence), they frame this as “proper time management” that students should always emulate. Students who have caring responsibilities suffer the most with this kind of inflexible relationship.
    • The Novelty-Chaser: Constantly introduces new theories, methodologies, or research directions in supervision meetings. Gets visibly excited about fresh perspectives and encourages students to incorporate them into already-developed projects. May send students a stream of articles or ideas completely tangential to their core research, expecting them to pivot accordingly. Never recognises that their difficulty maintaining focus on a single pathway to completion might reflect ADHD-related novelty-seeking. Students learn either 1) to chase butterflies and make little progress or 2) to nod politely at new suggestions while quietly continuing on their original track. The first kind of reaction can lead to a dangerous lack of progress, the second reaction can lead to real friction because, from the supervisor’s point of view, the student ‘never listens’. NO one is happy in these set ups, believe me.
    • The Theoretical Purist: Has devoted their career to a particular theoretical framework or methodology and expects all their students to work strictly within these boundaries. Dismisses alternative approaches as “methodologically unsound” or “lacking theoretical rigour” without substantive engagement. Becomes noticeably uncomfortable when students bring in cross-disciplinary perspectives, responding with increasingly rigid defences of their preferred approach. Fails to recognise their intense attachment to specific knowledge systems and resistance to integrating new perspectives may reflect autistic patterns of specialised interests, or even difficulty with cognitive flexibility. Students learn to frame all their ideas within the supervisor’s preferred language, even when doing so limits their research potential.

    Now that I know what I am looking for, I see these supervisory dynamics ALL THE TIME. Add in whatever dash of neuro-spiciness is going on with you and all kinds of misunderstandings and hurt feelings result … Again – the problem is not the neurodivergence of any one person – it’s the lack of self reflection, coupled with the power dynamics that can make things toxic.

    These barriers aren’t insurmountable, but honestly, after decades in this profession, I’m not holding my breath for institutional enlightenment. Universities move at the pace of bureaucracy after all.

    So what do we do? If you’re neurodivergent, find your people – that informal network who “get it” will save your sanity more than any official university policy. If you’re a supervisor, maybe take a good hard look at your own quirky work habits before deciding your student is “difficult.” And if you’re in university management, please, for the love of research, let’s work on not making neurodivergent students jump through flaming bureaucratic hoops to get basic support.

    The PhD doesn’t need to be a traumatic hazing ritual we inflict because “that’s how it was in my day.” It’s 2025. Time to admit that diverse brains make for better research. And for goodness sake, don’t put anyone on a damn list, ok?

    AI disclaimer: This post was developed with Claude from Anthropic because I’m so busy with the burning trash fire that is 2025 it would not have happened otherwise. I provided the concept, core ideas, detailed content, and personal viewpoint while Claude helped organise and refine the text. We iteratively revised the content together to ensure it maintained my voice and perspective. The final post represents my authentic thoughts and experiences, with Claude serving as an editorial assistant and sounding board.

    This blog was first published on Inger Mewburn’s  legendary website The Thesis Whisperer on 1 May 2025. It is reproduced with permission here.

    Professor Inger Mewburn is the Director of Researcher Development at The Australian National University where she oversees professional development workshops and programs for all ANU researchers. Aside from creating new posts on the Thesis Whisperer blog (www.thesiswhisperer.com), she writes scholarly papers and books about research education, with a special interest in post PhD employability, research communications and neurodivergence.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • Thinking with affect theory in higher education: what can it help us to do?

    Thinking with affect theory in higher education: what can it help us to do?

    by Karen Gravett

    How does higher education feel, to work or to study in? How do affects circulate through the places, spaces, bodies and the structures and pedagogies of institutions? And why might thinking about feelings and affect be useful for educators? This blog draws on recent research that seeks to explore how affect theory can be helpful to understand and enhance our work in higher education. Attuning to affect, I suggest, has implications for both how we understand power relations in education, as well as for finding ways to foster more creative and meaningful pedagogies. 

    What is affect theory?

    Interest in affect, and ideas from affect theory/studies, are gaining momentum across the evolving field of higher education studies. Within the social sciences, the ‘affective turn’ has been influenced by work from Clough (2007), Massumi (2015), Seigworth and Pedwell (2023), Ahmed (2010), and many others. No longer confined to binary ideas of emotion/reason, body/mind, scholars have begun to think about emotion and affect as interwoven with education in complex ways. What we mean by emotions and affect can be understood differently, but for many scholars, affect specifically refers to sensory experiences (Zembylas, 2021), forces that are felt bodily. Affects circulate and evolve within and in between ordinary encounters, and in mobile ways.

    Affect in the classroom

    Thinking with affect can help us understand the classroom as a space in which learning is not divorced from the body but viscerally experienced and felt. This helps us to see learning and teaching as always situated and informed by the moment in which it occurs and as we experience it. Feelings do not simply happen within individuals and then move outward (Ahmed, 2010). This shift in thought enables us to consider ourselves in relation to others (both human and non-human), to consider how learning and teaching feels, as well as the ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams, 1961) that circulate within institutions. Thinking with affect helps us to think about the micro-incidents of co-presence, its frictions, and the ‘inconvenient’ (Berlant, 2022) work being present requires of us to engage with others. Education requires affective work of us; it requires us to change, evolve, and adapt constantly to others. This work is exposing; discomforting. In engaging with one another, and being affected and receptive to one another, we are made aware of our own interdependence.

    Affective institutions

    Thinking about affect, then, enables us to understand how institutions are permeated by, and also create, ‘affective atmospheres’ (Anderson, 2009), or ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams, 1961). In his work, Williams uses the idea of ‘structures of feeling’ to study the affective quality of life, in order that we might understand ‘the most delicate and least tangible parts of our activity’ (Williams, 1961, 48). Affective atmospheres, including competition, collegiality, anxiety, inclusion and exclusion are created through pedagogies, policies and practices. For example, the affective atmospheres of self-improvement and self-promotion may permeate neoliberal higher education institutions. Cultures of neoliberalism and precarity require academics to adopt certain affective and embodied practices, such as being competitive, self-motivated or resilient. And yet, affect may be able to disrupt these conditions: affective experiences such as humility, collegiality and joy offer opportunities for resistance and can also be found flourishing within institutional cultures and practices.

    Affective craft

    In the classroom, there may also be ways in which teachers are able to reshape affective relations. This might mean that certain relations could be given space to flourish, and other hierarchies of difference might be, at least momentarily, constrained.Different pedagogical approaches contribute to different feelings in classroom spaces and to different connections. For example, Stewart describes the changing affective atmosphere of the classroom when she employs storytelling and uses questioning approaches to enable dialogue: ‘something subtle but powerful had shifted…The room had become a scene we were in together as bodies and actors’ (Stewart, 2020: 31). For Airton, these kind of affirmative pedagogic approaches work as ‘affective craft’ and might include providing open spaces for students to lead and shape the learning encounter. In my research with Simon Lygo-Baker, we examine different ways in which teachers can experiment with affective craft. These include through teaching in spaces beyond the classroom, using art and objects for generating discussion, engaging storying and the sharing of vulnerabilities, as well as through using Play-Doh modelling to disrupt hierarchies and foster collaboration. These are just some ordinary, everyday ideas, and are ideas we also explore further in our new book: Reconceptualising Teaching in Higher Education:  Connected Practice for Changing Times, to be published in 2026 by Routledge.

    We believe that teaching is about presence, connection, an ‘encounter’, and that affect theory can be a helpful way to understand and enhance the connections we make, as well as the institutions in which we work and learn. As Dernikos and colleagues explain: ‘scholars are now theorizing what these affective swells can do. And what is surprising is that this does not call for grand movements, nor for great reforms, but depends on the subversive power of the very small’ (Dernikos et al, 2020: 16).

    Dr Karen Gravett is Associate Professor of Higher Education, and Associate Head (Research) at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory-practice of higher education. She is a member of the Society for Research in Higher Education Governing Council, a member of the editorial boards for Teaching in Higher Education and Learning, Media and Technology, and Associate Editor for Sociology. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is also an Honorary Associate Professor for the Centre for Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University. Karen’s latest books are: Gravett, K (2025) Critical Practice in Higher Education, and Gravett, K (2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and Mattering in Higher Education.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • Talking the talk: language for learning in higher education

    Talking the talk: language for learning in higher education

    by Estefania Gamarra, Marion Heron, Lewis Baker and Harriet Tenenbaum

    Do you remember when you started university, and you were expected to use a whole new language? We don’t just mean new nomenclature such as ‘seminars’ or ‘tutorials’, but language that can help you make a clear argument or disagree politely with a classmate. This language, or educational dialogue, and in particular disagreeing politely, is critical to be an engaged citizen in a healthy democracy, without otherwise descending into unhealthy practices such as ‘cancel culture’ as recently highlighted in the media. In this blog post, we argue that universities have a responsibility not only to teach students how to talk in an academic context, but also for this teaching to be discipline-specific and embedded in the disciplinary study where possible.

    There is a long-held misperception that all students who start university are able to talk the talk of the university, that is, they have the language skills, the terminology, and the confidence to articulate their opinions from their first day. This is just simply not true for many undergraduate students. Having English as a first language is also not necessarily an advantage. Bourdieu et al (1994, p8) said, “academic language… is no one’s mother tongue, not even that of children of the cultivated classes”.

    What do we mean by language here? We have drawn on the pedagogy and research from compulsory school education, namely the work of scholars at Cambridge University. Their work on educational dialogue has been successfully incorporated into school teaching with impressive results. Educational dialogue here refers to communicative acts such as agreeing, disagreeing, reasoning and expressing ideas. Research in school settings has shown that encouraging such dialogue can boost academic attainment. One study highlighted the relationship between elaborating on ideas and attainment in reading, spelling, punctuation and grammar. Despite this compelling evidence, similar strategies have been underexplored in higher education.

    In our university classrooms, we hear students say things such as: ‘I know the answer, but don’t know how to phrase it’ and ‘I need to learn how to express my answer like that’. So, if students are themselves noticing a need for academic language, why are we so behind in the higher education context? And more importantly, what language do these students need? Do they all need the same academic language to confidently talk the talk? This is exemplified by the dialogue below between two engineering students working on answering multiple-choice questions together, an excerpt from our forthcoming research:

    Student A:  Yeah, listen, we need to be able when we say “force”, to say why.  

    Student B:  Yeah, to flip it.  

    Student A:  Because we were right, like, C is incorrect, but we don’t say why it is not incorrect.  

    Student B:  I don’t know how to word it, you know.

    In our current research project, supported by a Nuffield Foundation grant, we explore whether pairs of Foundation Year students across Engineering, Psychology and Bioscience, engaging in discipline-specific multiple-choice questions, can learn to develop these academic language skills and the extent to which they can do this in an academic year-long intervention programme.

    Our early findings indicate that while students are capable of using academic language, the forms they adopt vary by discipline. For example, consider one of the most basic interactions in academic discussions – giving and asking for reasons. Typically, the default marker for requesting justification is “why?”. The following extract from a psychology discussion illustrates this:

    Student A:  Why do you think that is?

    Student B:  Because, uh, if you got negative emotion, you know, so that is not called positive psychology. Yep, yeah, so I’m thinking about understanding like how to prevent negative emotions.

    In contrast, in science courses such as biology or engineering, it was more common to use “how?” rather than “why?” when asking for reasoning. Consider this extract from an engineering discussion:

    Student A:  Yes. Then the same as D.

    Student B:  D? How?

    Student A:  And then it’s…

    Student B:  Oh.

    Student A:  And this is…

    Student B:  So the arrow goes this way…

    Student A:  So then P goes this way…

    Here, Student B not only asks for the reasoning by using “how?”, but the response unfolds as a sequence of steps outlining the reasoning process. This example also highlights another subject-specific difference: while psychology students typically expand on each other’s arguments or examples, engineering students more frequently build on each other’s equations, often with the assistance of pen and paper.

    So, based on these snippets of authentic student dialogues, let’s return to the question posed at the beginning. Yes, all students can and do need to learn academic language to talk to each other and develop understanding, but the type of language depends on the discipline. Disciplinary differences can be seen in the way students build on each other’s ideas (eg long turns, short turns) as well as the words and phrases used. The evidence from our project shows this.

    We argue that learning to talk the language of higher education should not be considered a prerequisite but instead, should be an essential feature of the higher education curriculum embedded within disciplinary studies.

    Why is this important? Integrating academic language training into the curriculum can enhance students’ academic confidence, foster a stronger sense of belonging, and ultimately improve retention rates. In a post‐COVID world, where student engagement is waning, this conversation‐based approach may also help rebuild the social and collaborative fabric of university life.

    Moreover, the skills developed through such training are highly transferable beyond academia. Students acquire essential discussion and teamwork abilities that prove invaluable in their future careers. It is important to emphasise that developing these skills requires deliberate training; we must not assume that students will acquire them without practice and guidance.

    Although students may already use discipline‐specific language, targeted training helps them become accustomed to engaging in – and, more importantly, listening to – disagreement. These conversational practices become part of their repertoires, enabling them to generalize these skills across various contexts. As noted earlier, we must all learn to engage in constructive disagreement to counteract cancel culture. While the manner of such discourse may vary by discipline, developing these skills is essential for active participation in a healthy, thriving democracy.

    Estefania Gamarra Burga is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Surrey. Her research interests include educational dialogue, discourse analysis, gender, and spatial cognition in STEM and higher education.

    Marion Heron is Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics in the Surrey Institute of Education, University of Surrey. She supervises doctoral students on topics in the field of applied linguistics and higher education. She researches in the areas of language and education, with a particular interest in classroom discourse, genre and doctoral education.

    Lewis Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences and a Chartered Science Teacher. His research interests include teaching pedagogy and science education, often within a foundation year context.

    Harriet Tenenbaum is Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology. Her research focuses on social justice in young people, everyday conversations, and teaching and learning across the lifespan.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • Rebelling together against the myth of the lone creative genius: how arts-based pedagogies enhanced community learning

    Rebelling together against the myth of the lone creative genius: how arts-based pedagogies enhanced community learning

    by Katherine Friend and Aisling Walters

    When we write about creativity, we often refer to the work of geniuses; [distancing] ordinary members of society from the act of creativity by reinforcing a perception that they could never be creative themselves (Dymoke, 2020: 80).

    Digital story by Kate Shpota

    The state of creativity

    The damage wrought by the stereotype of a creative as an isolated genius seems likely to increase within the current context of the UK school system, where an overloaded curriculum and assessment driven pedagogies dominate. The 2023 State of Creativity report notes that creativity has been ‘all but expunged from the school curriculum in England’.  Educators across schools and departments in HEIs are attempting to resist the current educational practice which promotes students as consumers and centres our students as active producers in their own learning. Yet, as education policy from primary through to higher education continues not only to cut its emphasis on the humanities and creativity,  but also eliminate arts and humanities departments altogether, higher education runs a profound risk of further alienating students from the benefits of creative thinking and artistic practice.

    Our undergraduates, being educationalists, use sociological and psychological lenses to understand the social and cultural landscape affecting both classroom learning and community education more broadly. Nevertheless, despite education being at the intersection of many academic disciplines (Sociology, English, Philosophy, History to name a few), students are often reluctant to incorporate alternative approaches into their learning and even less so into their assessments.

    Fear and discomfort

    As educators, we ask students to embrace discomfort when learning different theoretical approaches or understanding alternative viewpoints. But often, we do not ask them to embrace discomfort in operating outside of the neoliberal HE system, a ‘results driven quantification [which] directs learning’ (Kulz, 2017 p. 55). Within this context, learning focuses on the product (the assessable outcome), rather than the process (the learning journey). Thus, it is unsurprising that our undergraduates initially baulked at the idea of an assessment that incorporated a creative element, preferring essays and multiple-choice exams instead. Hunter & Frawley (2023) define arts-based pedagogy (ABP) as a process by which students can observe and reflect on an art form to link different disciplines, thus encouraging students to lean into uncomfortable subject matter and explore their place within in the wider world. To build more dynamic and critically analytical students, we had to simultaneously encourage an ABP approach so they would understand their academic and theoretical course content more fully while scaffolding their learning through a series of creative activities designed to engage students with different forms of learning and reflection. By incorporating cultural visits, mentorship, and creative assessments into the module, art enhanced subject teaching while encouraging students to think more deeply about their own practice (Fleming, 2012). Yet, incorporating practice was not enough, we were faced with the question: how do educationalists ask students to engage with their vulnerabilities around creative practice (the belief and the engrained fear that they cannot do art or are not good at art) and lead them to an understanding that vulnerability itself can be beneficial?

    Perhaps, the most basic answer came by asking ourselves, are we, as academics, scared of implementing creative pedagogies because we are scared of showing our own vulnerabilities? What if we as educators fail at a task and our students see? What would happen if we became vulnerable alongside our students? Jordan (2010) argues that when vulnerability is met with criticism, we disengage as a self-preservation tactic. For Brown, acknowledging our insecurities offers a means of understanding ourselves, developing shame resilience and acting authentically. In our session, our vulnerability as lecturers was tested when engaging with textile art, specifically a battle with crochet. Our students saw educators who were not secure or competent in a task. This resulted in a small amount of mockery, but also empathy and offers of support. By stepping out of our comfort zone and embracing a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler 1999), we encouraged our students to challenge themselves. Romney and Holland (2023) refer to this as a ‘paradox of vulnerability’: by overcoming our own reluctance to be vulnerable with our learners we create connections and a sense of trust. We should add that the session explored women’s textile art as activism and the outcome, a piece of textile art, symbolically woven together by students and staff—all female.

    Collective textile piece

    Importance of community and connection

    Once we examined theoretical and personal aspects of discomfort and vulnerability, to support and enhance our focus on creative practice, we drew on local cultural partnerships. The incorporation of cultural visits, mentorship from resident artists, and creative exercises enriched our subject teaching while simultaneously encouraging students to think more deeply about their own practice (Fleming, 2012). It also built an alliance between social scientists and colleagues in arts and humanities disciplines, capitalising on their expertise and years of honing ABP. Nottingham is a city where the legend of Robin Hood, outlaws, and rebellion intersect with vibrant cultural community. But many of our students do not engage with cultural spaces, leading to double disconnect, first from their own creative practice and second from the cultural sector altogether. Our students expressed their disconnect from the cultural heart of Nottingham was due to the spaces being ‘not for them’ or a worry that they would not ‘understand’ the art. By exploring the city centre as a group, walking from one site to another, we broke down barriers around these prohibited spaces.

    Engagement with Nottingham by Alisha Begum

    Once inside the Nottingham Contemporary, the resident artists told their own stories of fear, worries of judgement, and expressed anxieties of creative practice, thus setting our students free from the myth of the genius artist – untouchable by self-doubt. This realisation allowed our students to relax and engage worry-free into the creative tasks.

    Found poem by Alisha Begum
    ‘I object’ by Nicole Robinson

    By joining in with these activities, lecturers and students learned alongside each other, tackling our insecurities regarding our creative abilities together as a learning community. Perhaps community was the most important outcome in the project as connection was central. Exposure to the cultural sites created a feeling of connection with the cultural heart of the city. Students also, perhaps more importantly, reported that they became more connected to an understanding of themselves as creatives, becoming more autonomous and engaged in their own learning.

    Digital storytelling: Identity Crisis by Shahnaz Begum

    Perhaps it is most appropriate to end this post with the voice of one of our year-two students—the transcript from a podcast created as part of her larger portfolio. She asserts:

    Art in education is a goldmine of untouched opportunities [and can be] used to foster students’ holistic development, stimulate creative thinking and engagement with social justice. … and to my fellow Artivists, embrace creativity one canvas at a time.

    Katherine Friend is an Associate Professor of Higher Education at Nottingham Trent University. Her work focuses on three themes: the underrepresented student experience on university campuses, the importance of undergraduate engagement in the cultural sector, and reconciling international and academic identities. Threading all three themes together are discussions of one’s ‘place’ and/or ‘space’ in HE and how social and cultural hierarchies contribute to identity, representation, and belonging.

    Aisling Walters is a Senior Lecturer in Secondary Education at Nottingham Trent University whose research focuses on the development of writer identity in trainee English teachers, preservice teachers’ experiences of prescriptive schemes of learning, arts-based pedagogies, and students as writers. 

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • Perspectives on pedagogical innovation | SRHE Blog

    Perspectives on pedagogical innovation | SRHE Blog

    by Kamilya Suleymenova and Emma Thirkell

    The landscape of higher education (HE) in the UK (but also more widely, in Western countries and across the globe) has significantly changed, driven by the massification and the following marketisation of HE studies (Alves & Tomlinson, 2021; Molesworth et al, 2009). The predominance of particular governance structures and schools of thought shape the narrative further (as discussed by Marcia Devlin (2021) in her SRHE blog) and create a deceptively heterogeneous environment, where each prospective student can find their “place”, but all are conditioned to follow a similar narrative.

    New disruptions

    On this backdrop new disruptions appear, of which we want to focus on two specifically for the UK HE. First, the legacy of lockdowns, bringing more flexible working environment and an astonishing pervasiveness of digital tools together with disrupted earlier education and legacy of health, including mental health, concerns, unsettles further already brittle UK HE sector (as illustrated by SRHE blog by Steven Jones (2022). Second, the advent of Generative AI and its implications for teaching, learning, and assessment. Much has been said about these (Lee et al, 2024; O’Dea, 2024) – our learning points from this rapidly growing literature are that i) significant disruption has occurred and ii) something needs to be done to react to this change in context. In other words, while there are many tried and tested theories and methods in teaching and assessment, they need to be reviewed and very likely adapted to keep up with the changing context.

    The change did not occur only in the tools: we argue here that it is not merely a quantitative technical change (eg speed of communication), but a qualitative change, which affected or at least has the potential to affect, the mindset and the behaviour of students (and staff). Together, these factors produce more stressed, more demanding, potentially differently engaged students (sometimes perceived as less engaged), focused on the “added value” of their degrees and their “university experience”, anxious to acquire competences and skills through experiential learning to be in the best position for securing the employment of their choice.

    In this rapidly changing context, the need for pedagogical innovations (PI), or at least the desire and the ability to engage with disruptions in the education process, seems almost inevitable. But how do the staff working in the UK HE, respond to this demand? Are the challenges viewed as opportunities or rather as additional pressures, adding to an evolving workload and requirements to navigate a complex bureaucracy?

    Research focus: understanding the lived experiences of educators

    Our research explores the lived experiences of educators across 13 UK universities, investigating their engagement with PI in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. By examining how institutional dynamics, personal motivations, and perceived barriers shape decisions surrounding PI, we have developed the initial stages of a conceptual framework, presented at the SRHE International Conference, to guide policies that better support educators and foster sustained PI in teaching. Through 30 interviews with educators, senior staff, and technology-enabled learning (TEL) specialists, we reveal the complex decision-making processes that influence whether and how educators embrace or resist innovation in their teaching practices.

    What drives educators to innovate?

    Our research highlights a multifaceted landscape where educators’ motivations for engaging with PI are shaped by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. For many, intrinsic motivations, such as a deep-rooted desire to enhance student learning and a personal commitment to pedagogical excellence, act as powerful drivers for innovation. As one educator noted, “I’m always looking for new ideas. Innovation gives me a sense of purpose and connection with my students, making teaching more fulfilling.” This indicates that where academics feel a strong personal commitment to education, and it is rewarded, they are more likely to embrace innovative practices.

    The tension between rhetoric and reality

    However, these motivations are often counterbalanced by extrinsic pressures from the institutional environment, whether perceived or real. Many educators reported feeling that institutional strategies, while rhetorically supportive of PI, were undercut by bureaucratic barriers, a lack of adequate resources, and managerial cultures focused on short-term, measurable outcomes. One academic explained, “Innovation is a buzzword here, but when it comes to implementing anything new, we’re stuck in a system that values research output over teaching innovation. There’s little incentive to invest time in something that doesn’t directly contribute to my publication record.” This highlights the tension between institutional narrative and individual motivations, with many educators perceiving a disconnect between institutional rhetoric purporting to encourage PI and the reality of its implementation.

    Autonomy and trust

    Another key finding concerns the role of autonomy and trust in fostering a culture of innovation. Educators who felt empowered within their departments – where trust was placed in their judgment – were more likely to experiment with new teaching methods. As one TEL specialist remarked, “When leadership trusts us, we feel freer to try new approaches. But when we are micromanaged, the innovation just stops. You’re constantly battling to prove that your idea is worth the time it takes.” This sense of autonomy, closely linked to professional identity, is crucial in determining whether educators feel motivated to innovate or revert to traditional methods.

    The cost of innovation

    However, these ‘empowering’ environments were not universally experienced. Many educators, particularly those in large departments or with heavy teaching loads, reported feeling that the cost of innovation – both in terms of time and energy – was too high. “It’s hard to innovate when you’re overwhelmed with marking, preparation, and administration. It feels like there’s no room to breathe, let alone experiment,” shared an academic. This sense of burnout, compounded by a perception of growing academic bureaucracy, led some to feel that the costs of engaging in PI outweighed the benefits, making it more difficult to justify the time and effort required for innovation.

    A balancing act

    Perhaps not surprisingly, some educators justified their lack of engagement with PI by citing these perceived institutional constraints. As one educator put it, “We’re told to innovate, but the structure just isn’t there to support it. It’s easier to stick with what we know works than to risk failure with something new.” This reflects the cognitive flexibility educators employ when balancing personal motivations with institutional limitations. As per Goffman’s (1959) ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage theory, educators sometimes present a compliant, innovative persona on the ‘front’ stage in order to ‘fit in’ (Nästesjö, 2023), while in the ‘back’ stage, they rationalize their lack of engagement by attributing it to costs and benefits, reconciling their professional image with their lived experiences.

    Reflections

    We are certain that some, if not all, of these quotes will resonate with many of the readers: these trends have been discussed in, for example, Lašáková et al (2017) and Findlow (2008). Our aim is not only to systematise and categorise the individual aspects shared with us by both frustrated and aspiring colleagues, but to focus on an in-depth analysis of their motivations. Based on previous literature and our data, we aim to generalise and develop a theoretical framework through the lens of an interdisciplinary management and economics analysis. The preliminary version of this theoretical framework, presented at the 2024 SRHE Conference, should provide a foundation for shaping institutional policies to develop a sustainable pipeline of innovations, in the full respect of both academic freedom and students’ interests. In other words, we hope that our work will facilitate structural changes to unlock the innovation potential and help institutions to help us to innovate.

    Kamilya Suleymenova is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham with interests in assessment and feedback particularly for large cohorts, Generative AI in HE, as well as institutional and behavioural and experimental economics. Now twice a presenter at SRHE International Conference, Kamilya appreciates the constructive feedback of the community.

    Emma Thirkell is an Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University with interests in pedagogical innovation, experiential learning, and the integration of technology in education. A four-time teaching award winner, she is passionate about bridging academia and practice through innovative curriculum design and leadership in higher education.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • Invisible labour: visible activism | SRHE Blog

    Invisible labour: visible activism | SRHE Blog

    by Sarah Montano, Inci Toral and Sarah Percy

    Behind many academic success stories lies an untold narrative of invisible labour – a hidden force driving progress but often overlooked or undervalued. From providing emotional support to sitting on committees, the silent effort sustains institutions yet leaves many working tirelessly in the background on non-promotable tasks. Only when invisible labour is met with visible activism, can change begin.

    As a group of academics over the years we became conscious of a phenomenon that affected not only ourselves but many of our colleagues. We particularly noticed that women* were increasingly being asked to take on emotional labour and tasks that, when it came to promotions were classified as “Non-Promotable Tasks” yet were essential to institutional practices. We concluded that this form of emotional labour was a form of wife work, work that is essential to the running of the home (aka Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)) yet often undervalued and the person carries the mental load. We use the term wife work due to the pejorative nature of wife work in the media and the value placed on such work in wider society. Using a feminist collaborative autoethnographic approach we explored invisible and emotional labour among female academics. Therefore, at the 2024 SRHE conference we delivered our paper on ‘Invisible Labour: Visible Activism’ and argued that it is only such activism that will help to end the inequities in HEIs.

    *we acknowledge that invisible and emotional labour can affect any academic of any gender, particularly those on education/ teaching focussed contracts.

    Shining a light on invisible labour

    Despite the increase in women’s participation in the workforce and in academia, there is still a significant gender pay gap and to compound the issue, this gap widened in 2021 and 2022 in 20/33 OECD countries. As noted by Stephenson (2023), in HE only 28% of professors are female despite women making up 43% of the academic workforce leading to a pay gap of 11.9%. We acknowledge that the reason for such pay gaps and gender biases are complex and multi-factorial (Westoby 2021), thus we focus specifically on the issue of the “gender unequal distribution” of academic labour (Järvinen and Mik-Mayer 2024:1).

    There is much discussion on the mental load outside the workplace; therefore, our focus is on the unpaid or unrewarded workload inside the workplace. As universities have new developed pathways to promotion (e.g. education or impact), citizenship has become less important, yet it is critical work that still needs to be done. However, the result of shifting paths to tenure/promotion means that women are carrying out “Non-Promotable Tasks” (Babcock et al, 2022: 15), which are institutionally important yet will not help career success.

    Wife work defined

    Wife work tasks include: writing references for students; mentoring; assisting students with emotional problems or recruitment; careers advice; taking on someone’s admin work whilst they gain awards; and committee work, effectively comprising what is known as service work. Importantly, a significant component of wife work is emotional labour. Emotional labour involves managing emotions and interactions in the academic setting without formal recognition or workload compensation. These emotional labour tasks may include student emotional support, listening, supporting colleagues, helping people or just always being nice. Such wife work occurs due to societal and institutional expectations that prompt women to take on such wife work, yet this labour whilst maintaining the organisation’s reputation and can lead to emotional dissonance and burnout (Grandey, 2013).

    Making the invisible visible

    Drawing on institutional theory​, feminist theory and theory of gendered organizations we explore how universities, embedded in social norms and values, perpetuate traditional gender roles and expectations. Our research specifically focuses on the “Non-Promotable Tasks,” which are essential for institutional functioning but do not contribute to career success and are undervalued and unrecognised. We highlight patterns about gender distinctions that lead to advantages or exploitations of academics and how these create differing identities and expectations within academia.​

    How we uncovered the invisible

    Our research has two stages. In the first stage, we used a feminist collaborative autoethnographic approach to explore invisible and emotional labour among female academics (Rutter et al, 2021)​. This method allowed for an in-depth examination of personal and shared experiences within our academic community (Akehurst and Scott, 2021)​. As the research subjects, we are comprised of female academics from the same department across international campuses, reflecting on our experiences with non-promotable tasks, emotional dissonance, mental load, and burnout (Grandey, 2013; Lapadat, 2017; Babcock et al, 2022)​. We go beyond individual experiences to co-construct the meaning of invisible and emotional labour collectively​.

    Findings that shape our understanding of invisible labour

    We identified the following categories of “wife-work”:​

    • Mentoring support (outside normal expectations or workload) ​
    • Administrative and Logistical Tasks/ Roles​
    • Recruitment and Outreach ​
    • Committee Work
    • Supporting Career Development
    • Academic and Professional Development​
    • Volunteering and Institutional Presence​
    • Helping people​
    • Taking on someone else’s role while they work on “important stuff”​
    • Listening​
    • Being kind ​

    Using the institutional framework, in which the institutional norms shape the undervaluation of service work (Palthe, 2014), we argue that the regulative, normative, and cognitive-cultural elements of institutional theory contribute to the gendered division of labour.  Through the application of these key dimensions, our findings can be categorised under three dimensions:

    1. Institutional Dimension, underpinned by the explicit rules, laws, and regulations that constrain and guide behaviour such as academic quality assurance and behavioural expectations within HEIs.

    2. Social Dimension, encompassing implicit values, norms, and expectations that define acceptable behaviour within a society or organization such as social expectations around punctuality, dress codes, and academic etiquettes in HEIs.

    3. Individual Dimension, which involves implicit but shared beliefs and mental models shaping how individuals perceive and interpret their environments. These are often taken for granted and operate at a subconscious level.

    Using this framework our findings are categorised accordingly to these elements outlined in Figure 1 below.  

    Figure 1:  Invisible Labour: Visible Activism Findings. Source: Developed by the authors

    It’s time for change

    We recognise that the critical issue is, as Domingo et al (2022) highlighted, the significance of recognising and valuing women’s work within institutions, and stress that the real issue lies within organisational practices rather than women themselves. Addressing emotional labour is vital for a supportive and equitable work environment. The burden of responsibility is deeply embedded into the societal norms and often acts as a catalyser for such responses by female academics (Andersen et al, 2022). ​As organisations shift their focus towards formal progress procedures that undervalue volunteerism and emotional labour (Albia and Cheng, 2023), there is a pressing need for activism to ensure equitable recognition and valuation of women’s contributions within academia.

    A path forward – from silence to solidarity

    Invisible labour has long been an unseen and unrecognised necessity in academia, but we argue that it need not, and should not be this way. Acknowledging and recognising the existence and value of invisible and emotional labour will ensure these ‘non-promotable’ tasks become more visible.  Therefore, there is a pressing need for activism to ensure equitable recognition and valuation of women’s contributions within academia. We emphasise the necessity of addressing these systemic issues to foster a more inclusive and supportive academic environment for all individuals involved. Change starts with awareness, so we hope this is a step in the right direction.

    Professor Sarah Montano is a Professor of Retail Marketing at Birmingham Business School. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2023. Her research interests are primarily authentic assessments, digital education and retail as a place of community. She is an engaging and skilled communicator and regularly appears in the media on the subject of retail industry change.

    Dr Inci Toral is an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham, Business School and she is the Business Education Research and Scholarship (BERS) Convenor at Birmingham Business School. Her work revolves around digital marketing, retailing, creativity and innovation in retail education and authentic assessments. 

    Dr Sarah Percy is an Assistant Professor in Marketing at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, with a special interest in authentic assessments.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • Psychological Safety in the Doctoral Context

    Psychological Safety in the Doctoral Context

    by Jayne Carruthers

    The doctorate is a subjective experience demanding the re-evaluation of ways of thinking, the navigation of intense emotions, and the adaptation of behaviours by the candidate to achieve new learning goals, transforming the candidate from a consumer to a creator of knowledge. Candidates often face uncertainty and enter a state of liminality during this process, feeling caught between old beliefs and new insights, which can lead to discomfort and feeling ‘stuck’. To navigate this liminal space, candidates benefit from a change in perspective supported by transformative learning. While much of the focus in doctoral support is on the candidate avoiding negative experiences during this process, there is limited attention given to the candidate’s role of self-awareness and self-management. Reflexivity provides one such option to consider.

    Reflexivity is a cognitive, or thinking, process that enables individuals to move beyond simple reflection, fostering self-awareness and exploring different options for progress. While candidates have demonstrated its usefulness in understanding their doctoral journeys, further research is needed on initiating and sustaining this process independently. This ability to learn and develop autonomously is essential, as doctoral programs require candidates to show evidence of becoming independent researchers. In organisational literature, reflexivity has been demonstrated to enhance information processing, helping employees understand what, why, and how of learning and change. It enables adjustments in both task execution and personal approach. Moreover, team psychological safety has been demonstrated to be crucial for effective team reflexivity. However, variations in terminology and definitions related to psychological safety limit the extension of this construct beyond the organisational context.

    A body of conceptual research adopting a Theoretical Integrated Review (TIR) approach was conducted, with findings highlighting historical use, providing theoretical insights, and clarifying a generalised definition of psychological safety with relevance beyond the organisational setting. Psychological safety is an internal process that helps individuals manage distress, influencing their thoughts, feelings, and actions. It plays a crucial role in growth and development by connecting motivation and goal-directed behaviour, providing the opportunity for a generalised definition:

    Psychological safety is a dynamic intrapsychic construct drawn on by individuals to mitigate actual or foreseen distress. The presence or absence of psychological safety is influenced by context, the individual’s existing psychological frames of reference, and current and future motives relating to an endeavour.

    This understanding allows the absence or presence of psychological safety to be considered in broader contexts, including independent learning settings like doctoral programs. To explore this potential, a body of qualitative research was conducted with six volunteer PhD candidates enrolled at a regional Australian university awaiting feedback on their theses.

    Using the vignette methodology technique to present short fictional scenarios regarding experiences of doctoral knowledge uncertainty, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews to understand how doctoral candidates deal with knowledge uncertainty. This approach encouraged interviewees to discuss their experiences without the pressure of direct questions, facilitating open discussions about managing uncertainty. At the end of the interviews, findings from the conceptual research were shared, and feedback was gathered on their benefit as a basis for candidate support. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed.

    All six interviewees described experiences with knowledge uncertainty and agreed that the conceptual research findings on psychological safety could improve opportunities for candidate support and warranted further investigation. The analysis of the interviews revealed that the interviewees’ experiences of uncertainty stemmed from intrapersonal, interpersonal, and university governance-level interactions. While similarities existed based on stages in the doctoral program, no strong recurring theme of uncertainty emerged. Notably, the differences lay in how the interviewees discussed their experiences of uncertainty.

    Some interviewees emphasised the importance of interpersonal support to help them progress:

    … the Confirmation panel Chairperson insisted that I rework my research question … I found it confusing. I felt that I must have grossly mistaken something …. my supervisor just said, okay, well, rebuild methodology … I felt uncertain. But she was very encouraging and supportive … I got through the second time, no questions asked …                                                                                                                                                                                                 Interviewee Steve

    … my methodology was underdeveloped … I was asked to resubmit this section to the confirmation panel … I was stressed about it having to be perfect because I thought failing would be the worst thing in the world.  … I remember that being a big thing … I was embarrassed, … an extra hurdle because no one else I knew needed to resubmit … my supervisors were empowering … they both said, redo what you need to … You’ll get through. You’re going to be okay.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Interviewee Amy

    Other interviewees’ narratives shifted from reflection to reflexivity, demonstrating self-awareness and developing metacognitive strategies to navigate their uncertainties.

    So yeah, it was an unhappy period. It was a couple of months of really hating what I was, what I’d done to myself in choosing this particular topic…I just had to ride that wave, you know, think it through, think, really think about what I was doing and why I was doing it, what the product was, what the process was and what the result needed to be in the end. 

                                                                                                                                     Interviewee Julie

    … a big part of my uncertainty was about paradigms … I couldn’t write my methodology. … I was just not convinced … if I can’t believe in these views about knowledge and reality, I can’t write about this stuff. So that was a hurdle …  I was sometimes reading without knowing what would come of it. … then it felt like, oh, this is it … what had been a major period of uncertainty had also been a cognitively shifting one that changed my perception of the world.                                                                                                                Interviewee Jack

    The extracts illustrate how interviewees navigated uncertainties and liminal spaces, utilising various strategies to move forward. Some narratives show less use of self-awareness, relying on interpersonal support, while others reflect and use reflexivity as a proactive, independent approach to managing uncertainty.

    Understanding psychological safety as a multi-dimensional construct and appreciating its demonstrated moderating effect on reflexivity in the workplace provides an opportunity for further investigation. The differences in interviewees’ narratives offer valuable insights regarding reflexivity and the doctoral experience of uncertainty, collectively establishing a basis for exploring psychological safety in the doctoral context.

    Jayne Carruthers is a PhD candidate in SORTI, a research centre based in the School of Education at The University of Newcastle, Australia, where she works as a Research Assistant. With a background in Adult Education and Positive Psychology, she has a well-developed interest in fostering autonomous learners. Her PhD research explores psychological safety within doctoral learning and development. Her recent publications include “Conveying the learning self to others: doctoral candidates conceptualising and communicating the complexion of development”

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link

  • How online learning can help tackle global injustices

    How online learning can help tackle global injustices

    by Sam Spiegel

    How can online learning programmes help tackle systemic global injustices with creative pedagogies? How can universities build effective educational environments and pedagogies to support critical thinking and vigorously challenge contemporary forms of racism, colonialism and inequity?

    These are some of the questions I have reflected on over the past almost 14 years of teaching at the University of Edinburgh. In 2011, I embarked with colleagues at the School of Social and Political Science to develop our school’s first fully online distance learning MSc postgraduate programmes, partnering with an interdisciplinary team spanning the three Colleges  of the University to co-create and co-teach the MSc in Global Challenges. Addressing global development, health and environmental inequalities, with case studies spanning an array of countries, this programme had students from all over the world. The insights and trajectories of our students have been deeply inspirational – many of our students have gone on to do PhDs, work with United Nations organisations, embassies, non-governmental and humanitarian organisations and work in other kinds of practitioner and research careers. In this blog I reflect on the philosophy of the teaching and learning approach we have nurtured – and associated critical conversations about pedagogy.

    We had support from a Principal’s Teaching Award (PTAS) to explore student learning experiences and reflect on our teaching practices, and in 2016 we published an article: ‘Decolonising online development studies? Emancipatory aspirations and critical reflections–a case study’. At the time, it was one of the few critical pedagogy studies to think through ‘international development’ teaching and the risks of replicating colonial logics in online learning modalities (and how to try to counter these). It proposed a critical framework for analysis that took into account barriers to social inclusivity – including the politics of language – that shaped participation dynamics in the programme. It also considered debates regarding critical development course content, rethinking possibilities for bridging counter-hegemonic development scholarship with practice-oriented approaches in a range of social contexts. Our analysis unpacked tensions in tackling intertwined institutional and pedagogic dilemmas for an agenda towards decolonising online development studies, positioning decolonisation as a necessarily unsettling and contested process that calls for greater self-reflexivity.

    Some years ago online learning initiatives were treated with suspicion as a technology craze that could not truly build effective communities of critical learners. This is no longer the case, generally speaking. Our online students have carved out sophisticated learning paths while interacting with ambitious courses – sometimes in live discussions and sometimes in asynchronous discussions that built incredible communities of practice. But there are important online learning-specific pedagogic points to keep in mind, as course instructors craft and adapt approaches to support individual and group learning.

    One is the risk of re-entrenching problematic dynamics of imperial knowledge production, even when intentions are to do exactly the opposite. There is a need to ensure that online learning platforms grapple with colonial legacies and tendencies – including biases that are easily replicable in virtual technology platforms. It is increasingly recognised that ‘decolonising’ is not simply a matter of ‘bringing in’ authors from Global South countries in reading lists. It is also a matter of ensuring that the underpinning pedagogies, assignments, and learning strategies themselves tackle systemic biases that have often shaped the field of ‘international development’ – and doing so from the outset. This may mean inviting students into at-times uncomfortable conversations about ways of understanding histories of dispossession, or ways of thinking about and governing societies; and ensuring that early course activities trouble assumptions – including about what ‘development’ is/means to different people and whose values are prioritised or overlooked. Some students might not normally read the writings of those who fought during liberation wars against colonialism, for example, but might find such readings different and transformative. There are a range of other possibilities, too, from changing the way that case studies are framed – for example, starting with stories of heavily oppressed peoples instead of starting with the technocratic logics of United Nations and government reports.

    Despite global talk of ‘decolonisation,’ there has been a tendency for globally renowned development academics from wealthy countries to dominate reading lists. We have tried in our courses to challenge this – and ensure that activity-focused coursework and online case studies challenge hegemonic assumptions in mainstream policy literature and development discourse. Some of the reflections on our pedagogy were also discussed in a wider influential review article by Shahjahan et al (2022) entitled ‘”Decolonizing” curriculum and pedagogy: A comparative review across disciplines and global higher education contexts’, which notes that ‘decolonization’ has been very differently treated by different educators. Our pedagogy work has also been part of a wider conversation in the scholarly literature on how “precautions need to be taken when incorporating non-Western knowledges into Western universities to avoid mishearing, misrepresenting, exploiting, and decontextualizing them” (Lau and Mendes, 2024; see also Spiegel et al, 2024).

    Relatedly, there is a need to be cautious of ideas about “transfer of knowledge” and instead to embrace values built on reciprocal sharing of knowledge in educational practices (see also Parmentier, 2023). Furthermore, attempts at decolonising development education requires attention to the link between learning strategy and wider institutional practices, including heeding inequities in admissions processes and language barriers in higher education. Our work in developing new online learning pedagogies is just part of the story; we have also been interacting closely with university admissions offices on strengthening approaches to make admissions more inclusive. This has included greater recognition of practitioner qualifications and also, significantly, some modifications in how English language testing requirements were addressed in some of the countries affected. This was especially important in contexts where applicants had demonstrable English language proof, from institutional and/or university experiences, but lived far from test centres and could not afford testing.

    Our article ‘Decolonising Online Development Studies?’ had a question mark in the title, alluding to the ambiguity of interpretation and the uncertainties that may play out over time. It was cited in other PTAS-awarded studies led by other staff members at UoE, supporting further analysis of specific techniques for building online learning communities (see Wood et al, 2021) How these ideas are to be taken forward is an ethically important conversation that relates to the very core of what education seeks to do, requiring ongoing attention to the interplay of values, philosophies, curricula and teaching techniques.

    Dr Sam Spiegel is the director of the Global Challenges MSc programme at the University of Edinburgh, where he serves as the Deputy Director of Research for Knowledge Exchange and Impact at the School of Social and Political Science. He is also a senior lecturer at the Centre of African Studies and has published extensively with colleagues in Zimbabwe and in other regions of the world on migration, displacement, borders, critical pedagogy and social change.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

    Source link