scholarly journals Teaching Grenfell: The Role of Emotions in Teaching and Learning for Social Change

Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 1026-1042
Author(s):  
Laura Connelly ◽  
Remi Joseph-Salisbury

Although literature on the role of emotions in teaching and learning is growing, little consideration has been given to the university context, particularly from a sociological perspective. This article draws upon the online survey responses of 24 students who attended sociological classes on the Grenfell Tower fire, to explore the role emotions play in teaching that seeks to politicise learners and agitate for social change. Contributing to understandings of pedagogies of ‘discomfort’ and ‘hope’, we argue that discomforting emotions, when channelled in directions that challenge inequality, have socially transformative potential. Introducing the concept of bounded social change, however, we demonstrate how the neoliberalisation of Higher Education threatens to limit capacity for social change. In so doing, we cast teaching as central to the discipline of sociology and suggest that the creation of positive social change should be the fundamental task of sociological teaching.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-214
Author(s):  
Ron Corso

Institutions of higher education in the twenty-first century are undergoing a transformation locally and globally from traditional pillars of learning to being more entrepreneurial in their core business. There is increasing pressure on universities to becoming more flexible and adaptable as organizations and in the graduate attributes, they imbed in their students. There is a need to build deeper links with business, to both maximize innovation and promote growth, to ensure students are equipped to excel in the workforce. This change is having a disruptive effect on the role of universities, from classical research institutions to entrepreneurial universities mimicking more of the modern workplace working environment, requiring autonomy in their decision-making and in the way new research is developed, implemented and transferred in the relationships formed within their respective regions. This article outlines work in progress on the University of South Australia’s attempts to rebrand itself as a University of Innovation and Enterprise (Australia’s University of Enterprise) in both its end-user inspired research outcomes and industry-informed teaching and learning.


Author(s):  
Laurie Craig Phipps ◽  
Alyssa Wise ◽  
Cheryl Amundsen

Discussion of changing notions of faculty expertise and the role of technology within the educational enterprise is nothing new. However, the current demand for change in teaching and learning practices is particularly strong, in part due to the pressures arising from emerging technologies and the shifting nature of faculty expertise. Web 2.0 technologies enable social connectivity, academic interactivity, and content co-creation. Thus, they change the ways of interacting with information and can support collaborative and constructivist approaches in higher education. This both inspires and requires a corresponding expansion in faculty’s role: from imparter of knowledge to orchestrator of learning experiences. Within the general metaphor of orchestration, other specific roles and functions will also be required; for example, scripting, translating, introducing, and co-exploring. As educators attempt to reimagine an educational paradigm in this context, the integration of new technologies must be grounded in how they can support educational experiences and outcomes that are focused on learning.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (22) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Beatriz Elena Osorio-Vélez ◽  
Jaime Alberto Osorio-Velez ◽  
Luz Stella Mejía-Aristizabal ◽  
Gloria Eugenia Campillo-Figueroa ◽  
Rodrigo Covaleda

Se presentan los resultados del proyecto de investigación: “El papel de la actividad experimental en la enseñanza del electromagnetismo en la educación superior”. Su  objetivo fue diseñar una propuesta de enseñanza del electromagnetismo, basada en la actividad experimental que contribuya con el proceso enseñanza y aprendizaje a nivel universitario.  Para ello se trabajó con un grupo de estudiantes de ingeniería de dos  instituciones de Educación Superior: Institución Universitaria Pascual Bravo y la Universidad de Antioquia. Los estudiantes que hicieron parte de la propuesta, respondieron un cuestionario de cuatro preguntas sobre electromagnetismo.  Las preguntas fueron seleccionadas de acuerdo a investigaciones previas que sobre el mismo tema se realizaron en estudiantes que solamente habían realizado el curso teórico.  Los resultados de este último grupo, evidenció dificultades para explicar fenómenos relacionados con el electromagnetismo, mientras que el grupo de estudiantes que realizó el trabajo experimental, mostró una mejor comprensión del fenómeno, logrando estructurar y organizar sus explicaciones.ABSTRACT The results of the research are presented: "The role of experimental activity in teaching electromagnetics in higher education." Their goal was to design a proposal for teaching electromagnetism, based on the experimental activity that contributes to the teaching and learning process at the university level. To do this, we worked with a group of engineering students from two institutions of higher education: University Pascual Bravo Institute and the University of Antioquia. Students who were part of the proposal, a questionnaire of four questions on electromagnetism. The questions were selected based on previous research on the same topic were conducted in students who had just completed the theoretical course. The results of the latter group showed difficulty explaining phenomena related to electromagnetism, while the group of students who performed the experimental work, showed a better understanding of the phenomenon, managing to structure and organize their explanations.


Author(s):  
Hanlie Liebenberg ◽  
Dion Hendrik Van Zyl

A long-standing focus of research in higher education has been on monitoring the degree of student access to information and communications technology (ICT). Recent debates have moved towards a more nuanced understanding of students’ technological experiences and behaviour. As the world changes, so does higher education and expectations regarding the role of technology within this environment. Universities, which continuously strive to improve teaching and learning, need to accommodate students’ increased use of technology and enhance their proficiency and fluency in accessing and using ICT as these skills are required to succeed in education and in life after graduation. This paper proposes that access to ICT constitutes only one dimension of a more complex and elaborate construct, namely that of ICT sophistication, which concerns students’ level of ICT use, and their experience of and engagement and fluency in ICT. As a basis to evaluate the ICT sophistication of students at the University of South Africa, the researchers drew on the findings of the said university’s surveys conducted in 2011 and 2014. This evaluation also served as a method for segmenting the student body to inform interventions. The results obtained supported findings in the literature that “access” could not be fully understood by drawing a one-dimensional distinction between access and non-access.


2021 ◽  

Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa, calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Understanding Higher Education: Alternative Perspectives responds to these calls by arguing for a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant understandings of students as ‘decontextualised learners’ premised on the idea that the university is a meritocracy. This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly democratic South Africa, and how national qualification frameworks and other processes brought the country more closely into conversation with the global order. The effects of this on staffing and curriculum structures are considered alongside a proposition for alternative ways of understanding the role of higher education in society.


2021 ◽  
pp. 245-248
Author(s):  
Datuk Abdul Rahim Hashim

AbstractOver the past few decades, the Malaysian higher education sector has experienced important reform, particularly guided by the Malaysia Education Blueprint for Higher Education 2015–2025 to stimulate continued excellence in the system. However, the dawn of 2020 has unfolded many challenges as COVID-19 rages across the globe bringing sudden paralysis to the whole world. Indeed, the pandemic has affected the world and greatly impacted our lives not only from a health perspective, but also from the political, economic, and social aspects. To date, universities in Malaysia have been closed for more than four months, although the Ministry of Higher Education has recently permitted postgraduate students undertaking full-time research programmes to return to the university should their research necessitate their physical presence in laboratories, workshops, design studios or to use specific equipment available only on campus. For other university students, online or virtual teaching and learning is set to continue until the end of this year, although identified groups of students will be allowed to return to the campus in stages.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-208
Author(s):  
Nic Lightfoot

The role of the academic in interpreting the complex and confused concept of widening participation is central to the practice of widening participation within higher education. These interpretations are bound up within the context of what it means to be an academic, and external constraints on that role. Government policy has insufficiently challenged perceptions of that role to bring about a transformation to academic practice. This research, through the use of semi-structured interviews, illuminates the perspectives of academics, in a range of roles, to the widening participation agenda and outlines the alternative priorities of those academics. Ultimately, the impetus for transformation is not one which will occur internally to the university and it is argued that stakeholders, in the absence of realistic government pressure, must play a part in bringing about a university culture which places teaching and learning and not subject disciplines at the centre of its practice.


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elenice Maria Cammarosano Onofre

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar reflexões sobre os processos de ensino e aprendizagem no ensino de graduação, tendo em vista o significado que coordenadores de curso e docentes conferem ao papel de autores e atores da atividade docente em seu cotidiano, buscando substituir formas individualistas e solitárias de trabalho por processos compartilhados, construindo vínculos, expondo-se e deixando-se conhecer, posturas essas nem sempre presentes no contexto do Ensino Superior. Pensar a universidade como instituição educativa, colocando o ensino ao lado da pesquisa e da extensão, constitui-se um desafio para a docência — considerada atividade menos nobre na academia —, uma vez que se propõe ir além do domínio restrito de uma área do conhecimento, buscando desenvolver um saber pedagógico igualmente necessário ao fazer docente.   Palavras-chave: Docência universitária. Processos compartilhados de formação. Ensino de graduação.   This article aims to present reflections on the processes of teaching and learning in the graduate education, focusing on the meaning that course coordinators and teachers give to the role of authors and actors of the teaching activity in their daily routines, trying to substitute individual and solitary forms of work for shared processes, building bonds, exposing themselves and letting themselves known, postures which have not always been present in the higher education context. Considering the university as an educational institution, placing education next to research and extension, consists of a challenge for the teaching activity – considered the least noble activity in the university –, once it aims to go beyond the restricted domain of an area of knowledge, searching for the development of pedagogical knowledge equally necessary to the teaching activity.   Keywords: University teaching. Shared processes of formation. Graduate education.


CCIT Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-354
Author(s):  
Untung Rahardja ◽  
Muhamad Yusup ◽  
Ana Nurmaliana

The accuracy and reliability is the quality of the information. The more accurate and reliable, the more information it’s good quality. Similarly, a survey, the better the survey, the more accurate the information provided. Implementation of student satisfaction measurement to the process of teaching and learning activities on the quality of the implementation of important lectures in order to get feedback on the assessed variables and for future repair. Likewise in Higher Education Prog has undertaken the process of measuring student satisfaction through a distributed questioner finally disemester each class lecture. However, the deployment process questioner is identified there are 7 (seven) problems. However, the problem can be resolved by the 3 (three) ways of solving problems one of which is a system of iLearning Survey (Isur), that is by providing an online survey to students that can be accessed anywhere and anytime. In the implementation shown a prototype of Isur itself. It can be concluded that the contribution Isur system can maximize the decision taken by the Higher Education Prog. By using this Isur system with questions and evaluation forms are submitted and given to the students and the other colleges. To assess the extent to which the campus has grown and how faculty performance in teaching students class, and can be used as a media Isur valid information for an assessment of activities throughout college.


2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Heather Herman

Online education is no longer a peripheral phenomenon in higher education: over one-third of faculty have taught or developed an online course. As institutions of higher education expand their online education offerings, administrators need to recognize that supporting faculty through the use of incentives and through effective faculty development programs for online instruction is important to the improvement of the quality of educational programs. This quantitative study used an online survey to investigate the types and frequency of faculty development programs for online instruction at institutions with an established teaching and learning development unit (TLDU). The average TLDU offered about fifteen different types of faculty development programs, the most common being websites, technical services, printed materials, and consultation with instructional design experts.


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