Problem-Based Learning in a Virtual Environment

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted teaching and learning in higher education institutions, presenting novel challenges for both staff and students alike. These challenges have had an immense impact in the way postgraduate research (PGR) teachers perform their dual responsibilities as both students and teachers. Achieving a seamless transition from in-person to virtual learning was an arduous task. To this end, pedagogies evolved to accommodate the use of remote conferencing, video capture and other real time communication tools that facilitate virtual collaboration between staff and students. In this paper, I highlight the challenges of integrating online learning with a problem-based learning (PBL), a signature pedagogy employed by law and business schools. I draw on my personal experiences as a student and PGR teacher during the pandemic, and suggest proactive mitigation responses.

Reinterpreting a signature pedagogy for entrepreneurship education

PurposeThe importance of contextualizing theory development in entrepreneurship education has recently been raised. Nevertheless, efforts often lead to rather decontextualized concepts and generic theories that are unable to bring together the complexities of applying entrepreneurship education to particular institutional logics and local pedagogical understandings. Based on a narrow and selective literature review, this study aims to identify and reconstruct how entrepreneurship education can adjust to the disciplines in which it unfolds. To contribute to transcending this dilemma, this article raises the following question: How can entrepreneurship education be understood in a differentiated manner and contextually reconstructed to the many disciplines and professions in which it unfolds?Design/methodology/approachThe study follows the general idea of an integrative literature review, meaning that a few references, in particular Jones' work on a signature pedagogy for entrepreneurship education, led to a deeper search of the older background literature from Shulman on the idea of a signature pedagogy for professions.FindingsThe authors identify three existing notions (MK-0, MK-1 and MK-2) of signature pedagogy within entrepreneurship education and propose a fourth notion that combines the established understandings into a signature pedagogy, MK-3, in which entrepreneurship education should be adjusted to the disciplines in which it unfolds, by integrating and balancing general, disciplinary/professional and entrepreneurial purposes of education.Originality/valueAccepting that context matters to entrepreneurship education creates a need for understanding the contextual influence on pedagogies. The paper contributes by establishing a theory-based framework that can help educators formulate and balance general, professional and entrepreneurial purposes of education, depending on the particular context of their educational activities. Furthermore, the paper is a call to action for additional scholarship that identifies avenues for future research.

Pedagogies of Creativity in Music

This chapter explores the notion of pedagogies of creativity and creative pedagogies in music composition. Drawing on Amabile’s categorization of “domain-relevant” and “creativity-relevant” skills, the chapter uses historical and contemporary examples to indicate the interrelated nature of these skill sets, specifically through a historical case study of the pedagogy of Nadia Boulanger. The chapter presents the notion of composition pedagogy as a “signature pedagogy” that operates as a series of collaborative apprenticeships undertaken in spaces and places of professional practice that promote the cognitive, practical, and moral aspects of composition as a professional practice. In a world where the notion of music creativities is ever expanding, the interdialogic relationship of pedagogies of creativity and creative pedagogies provides a way forward for composition learning and teaching.

Towards a signature pedagogy for design and technology education: a literature review

Drawing on the work of Lee Shulman, this article reviews literature exploring the concept of signature pedagogies, which are described as having have surface, deep and implicit structures. These structures are complex and changing; concerned with habits of head, hand and heart. Emerging from professional education and now being explored in STEM and Humanities education, they are characteristic forms of teaching and learning that are common across a sector. Common themes emerge from within a range of disciplines including art, built environment, design, music, religious, social work and teacher education. These include the roles of the curriculum, the teacher, the learning environment, as well as capability, uncertainty and the challenges associated with signature pedagogies. Focusing on literature from design education, the paper explores the nature of signature pedagogy in design and technology, as a tool for professional discourse. The conclusions propose a discursive framework for design and technology education in which the structures are tied together by the three fundamental activities of ideating, realising and critiquing; more commonly thought of as designing, making and evaluating. The deep structure being project-based learning, undergirded by the implicit values and attitudes associated with design thinking; including collaboration, creativity, empathy, iteration and problem solving. Design and technology education has something unique to offer the broad and balanced curriculum through its signature pedagogies and the way that knowledge is experienced by learners.

Interprofessional teamwork: the role of professional identity and signature pedagogy – a mixed methods study

PurposeOne overlooked determinant of interprofessional teamwork is the mobilisation of professional identity. Taking a health or social care practitioner out of their professional silo and placing them in an interprofessional team setting will challenge their professional identity. The theory of signature pedagogy was used to investigate the challenges and what is needed to support practitioners to mobilise their professional identity to maximise teamwork.Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional mixed methods study was undertaken in the form of three focus groups, with members of health and social care teams in Wales, UK. Using nominal group technique, participants explored and ranked the challenges and benefits of mobilising their professional identity within an interprofessional setting.FindingsFindings on mobilising professional identity were found to be aligned closely with the three signature pedagogy apprenticeships of learning to think and to perform like others in their profession and to act with moral integrity. The biggest challenge facing practitioners was thinking like others in their profession while in an interprofessional team.Research limitations/implicationsThe focus of this study is health and social care teams within Wales, UK, which may limit the results to teams that have a similar representation of professionals.Practical implicationsHealthcare leaders should be aware of the opportunities to promote mobilisation of professional identity to maximise teamwork. For example, at induction, by introducing the different roles and shared responsibilities. Such practical implications do have consequences for policy as regards interprofessional team development and organisational commitments to adult learning and evaluation.Originality/valueThis is the first study of professional identity of interprofessional healthcare and social professionals using signature pedagogy to gain a better understanding of teamwork.

The Scholarship of Critique and Power

Critique can be defined as disciplinary feedback, analysis, or assessment provided to an individual or within a group, be it a classroom or a team. At a fundamental level, it is an exchange of ideas, impressions, evaluations, opinions, reflections, judgments, speculations, or suggestions to oneself or between two or more participants in a defined context. Scholars describe critique as a signature pedagogy in many disciplines, a cornerstone of the educational experience. There has been scant critical analysis of how critique also represents a performance of power with roots in positions of authority, expertise, or assigned roles. Such power dynamics have been explored in some areas within SoTL, for example in scholarship on assessment, epistemic disobedience, social justice, feminist pedagogies, and critical race theory. However, this has generally not been the case within the scholarship on critique. To better understand the dimensions of power in the context of critique we developed a conceptual framework that can be applied at the individual level (teacher to student, student to student) as well as the systemic level (critique as a construct of cultural hegemony in a specific episteme). Drawing from theoretical and pedagogical literature in areas such as cultural studies, whiteness studies, design education, and assessment, the conceptual framework defines power in three main expressions: power as inequity, power as authority, and power as cultural hegemony. The framework can be used to identify and define power within the critique context and to also inform reflection and shift perspectives at various academic levels.