Editorial

This issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences includes authors from China, Canada, France and the United States. The first two articles analyse processes of developing international partnerships and networks promoting refugee access to higher education. The other three papers concern aspects of teaching and learning: online learning in accountancy; a flipped pedagogy in sociology; and the inclusion of national history in introductory international relations courses.

Bringing (inter)national history into ‘Introduction to International Relations’

Many introductory courses in International Relations (IR) dedicate some portion of the class to international history. Such class segments often focus on great-power politics of the twentieth century and related academic debates. In this essay, I argue that these international history segments can better engage students by broadening the histories instructors present and by drawing on especially salient histories such as those of the country in which the course is being taught. To elaborate on how one might do this, I discuss how US-based courses could productively examine the country’s rise to great-power status. I outline three reasons to bring this topic into US-based introductory IR courses, and I draw on personal experience to provide a detailed description of the ways one can do so.

The effectiveness of online teaching and learning tools

This study investigates how students in a distance-learning upperlevel accounting course perceive the effectiveness of different online teaching and learning (OTL) tools that are commonly used in business courses taught online. This topic is of critical importance, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed more courses to be OTL. A midsemester anonymous survey in an Accounting course at a public US university was conducted to measure students’ perceptions about different OTL course tools. Students were asked to provide their general assessment about how effective these tools were and how they believe these tools helped them learn. Analyses and discussions of the effectiveness of different tools and their link to earlier literature and how instructors can utilise the results of the OTL survey are presented.

Book Review

Dave Lochtie, Emily McIntosh, Andrew Stork and Ben W. Walker (2018), Effective Personal Tutoring in Higher Education St. Albans: Critical Publishing, 222 pp., ISBN 978-1-910391-98-3

Flipping the classroom

This article describes one approach to flipping an introductory sociology course. To encourage students to practice ‘doing’ sociology, we designed a flipped classroom that included a ‘pay to play’ model, small group work and an emphasis on active learning during class time. With this course design, we linked in-class active learning with outside prework so that students could engage with critical sociological concepts and apply those concepts in practice. With this flipped design, the instructors observed that students were deeply engaged with the course topics and expressed positive perceptions of their learning and growth over the semester. As the landscape of university instruction shifts, this course design model may assist instructors looking to foster active and engaged learning remotely.

Understanding networks of actors involved in refugee access to higher education in Canada, England and France

In times of intense migrations, securing a brighter future through education has become a growing concern in many societies. In particular, access to higher education for refugees has been the object of multiple initiatives among governments, civil society and non-government organisations. However, only 3 per cent of refugees access higher education, and there is a need to better understand, support and develop successful access for refugees among policymakers, educators and researchers. This research takes an original comparative digital approach to identifying those networks in three countries: Canada, England and France. Our findings suggest that the nature of issues for refugee access to higher education is constructed differently in each national context, as the social relations between government, civil society, non-government agencies and higher education institutions are uniquely configured.

The role of grassroots administrators in building international partnerships

This article explores how grassroots administrators interact with various other actors in the process of forming international partnerships. A top-down and a bottom-up case of building international partnerships for masters and PhD programmes were selected from my fieldwork in a Danish university. The cases were elaborated and analysed using Tatiana Fumasoli’s organisational approach to multi-level governance in higher education. This article concludes that with their personal networks and knowledge about the normative frameworks of certain powerful actors, grassroots administrators could help academic staff who might not know the regulations involved in the internationalisation process, to balance their own interests with their intention of complying with the normative frameworks, and thus enhance their capacities of forming and participating in a successful international partnership.

Experiences of first-generation scholars at a highly selective UK university

Targets set by the UK Office for Students require highly academically selective UK universities to enrol a greater percentage of students identified as least likely to participate in higher education. Such students are typically at a disadvantage in terms of levels of academic preparedness and economic, cultural and social capital. Drawing on eighteen interviews with first-generation students at Durham University, we identify five sites of pressure: developing a sense of belonging within the terms of an elite university culture, engagement in student social activities, financial worries, concerns about academic progress, and self-transformation. Based on these insights, we argue that support for first-generation scholars will require that universities recognise and redress elitist cultures that discourage applications from prospective first-generation scholars and prevent those who do enrol from having the best educational and all-round experience.

Encounters with borders

This article examines (im)obility in the global visa regime through the experiences of a Global South academic working in the Global North. Drawing on an autoethnographic account of a visa application, this article outlines the ways in which the global visa regime negatively affects a Global South academic’s life. Visa regulations constitute a particular Global South academic subject in the Global North, one whose academic career is characterised by uncertainty and anxiety, as visas can limit access to promotions and to fieldwork and research opportunities. Visa experiences can thus contribute to alienation and non-belonging of Global South scholars in academia, while impacting knowledge production and teaching.

It’s time to (climate) change the way we teach

This article outlines pedagogical practices and methodologies for increasing student engagement in the classroom and in the broader community on the topic of climate change. The emphases are placed on (1) preliminary assessments of student understanding and emotional responses to the topic of climate change, (2) assignments that enable student groups to assess and increase campus-wide awareness of various aspects of climate change, and (3) public engagement and service-learning opportunities that allow students to expand their impact beyond the local campus and into their broader community. These practices have proven effective, for large format lecture courses as well as smaller seminar-style courses, in encouraging student participation, overcoming apathy and motivating student effort and action far beyond what can be stimulated by traditional classroom assignments and assessments.