Professor Ian Kinchin

This paper uses an autoethnographic case study to analyse the difficulties inherent in the professional journey from bioscience researcher to research-informed, reflective bioscience teacher. This is viewed through a philosophy of becoming. The major demand placed upon the academic to achieve this transition is seen as the conscious adoption of a perspective that embraces epistemological pluralism - also described as post-abyssal thinking. This recognises the value of alternative epistemological views and the way they can contribute to professional development. An explicit recognition of this challenge may provide a tool to support bioscience researchers to become integrated academics and relieve some of the tensions that exist, for example between teaching and research.

After spending a year working on the development of a new online Master's programme in higher education, members of the development team were interviewed to reveal their thoughts about the nature of the programme. The dialogue of each interview was summarised as a concept map. Analysis of the resulting maps included a modified Bernsteinian analysis of the focus of the concepts included in terms of their semantic gravity (i.e. closeness to context) and the degree of resonance with the underpinning regulative discourse of the programme. Data highlight a number of potential issues for programme delivery that centre around the use of appropriate language to manage student expectations in relation to the process of learning and the emotional responses this can stimulate, as well as the tensions that can be foregrounded between the demands of teaching and research within a university environment.

This paper investigates the underexplored area of othering of migrant academics within their teaching context. Nine personal narratives of migrant academics' teaching were analysed qualitatively for indications of pedagogical othering. Migrant academics indicated the need to align their own pedagogic values and practices with that of their host institutions they work in as they felt their own values and practices were considered less desirable. We argue, from a Gramsci's hegemonic perspective, that the pedagogic adaptation by migrant academics aimed at improving student learning is not problematic in itself, but more problematic is the inequality of opportunity for migrant academics to contribute to pedagogical decisions which can meaningfully influence the departmental culture. Lack of pedagogic democracy where the 'home' academic environment has a monopoly of knowledge and a hegemonic position regarding learning and teaching can compromise the student-learning experience by limiting articulation of alternative pedagogical perspectives by the migrant international academics.

Narratives of Academics' Personal Journeys in Contested Spaces provides theoretically-informed personal narratives of 11 emerging and established leaders in learning and teaching in Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the USA. The academics' narratives focus on how the individuals have navigated to their current leadership role in learning and teaching whilst negotiating contested identities, such as gender, and physical and social marginalised spaces, such as interstitial (middle) leadership positions. These international narratives provide unique perspectives on the sense-making of academics as they reflect on their learning and teaching leadership journey and how these journeys are shaped by their contested identities and the marginalised spaces they inhabit. Often such identities and spaces are not recognised in higher education which may lead to even more isolating and challenging leadership journeys. The book contributes to our understanding of the subjective experiences that academics encounter in their leadership journeys. Further, the personal narratives included in the book capture how the contested identities and marginalised spaces influence the learning and teaching leadership practices in various educational, cultural and national contexts.

'Academics' International Teaching Journeys' provides personal narratives of nine international social science academics in foreign countries as they adapt and develop their teaching. The team of international contributors provide an invaluable resource for other academics who may be exposed to similar situations and may find these narratives useful in negotiating their own conflicts and challenges that they may encounter in being an international academic. The narratives provide a fascinating reference point and a wide range of perspectives of teaching experiences from across the world, including Europe, Australia, North America and the Caribbean.

Recent research has suggested that Higher Education would benefit from the adoption of institutional models that relinquish ties to industrial thinking and associated metaphors. This long-established, market-led managerial perspective has been colonised by neoliberal values that work against education. A move towards models that have greater resonance with ecological thinking is considered to better align the institutional purpose with tackling the wicked problems of the current century and promoting social justice. This paper considers the role of root metaphors in promoting and maintaining an ecological perspective and asks if there is any evidence for the emergence of ecological thinking in institutional education strategies that might support the development of the imagined future of the ecological university. Qualitative document analysis suggests that the move towards the adoption of the ecological root metaphor will require a punctuated change that is not compatible with the typical incremental nature of change within universities. The incremental adoption of ecological terminology may trigger an increase in pedagogic frailty if the root metaphor remains linked to the neoliberal ideology of consumerism. The construction of strategy documents needs to consider how key concepts are related to each other and how they can portray a coherent image of the institution's ambitions.

The shift towards an ecological university may be the key to achieving greater levels of social justice within higher education. This assumes that we could change the root metaphor of higher education - away from the current industrial model that is infused with neoliberal ideology and towards a more sustainable ecological model. This change involves five key moves that require us to: construct an institutional natural history to understand the network of interactions within the university; to explore the nature of the dominant narratives and move away from a narrative monoculture; to value post-abyssal thinking that includes cultural knowledge as well as academic knowledge; to move away from dependence on heroic leaders towards ecological leadership, and to consider how we can develop sustainable pedagogies that can withstand disturbances to the ecosystem. This paper acknowledges that coordination of these moves presents a considerable challenge to university managers.

One approach to enhancing the pedagogy of science education is to employ academics who are not only science-trained but also engaged in education research. As some academics begin their Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research careers with a pure science background, shifting in disciplinary perspectives can be a source of professional tension. The pedagogic frailty model provides a framework that helps us to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching improvements by maintaining a simultaneous focus on critical areas that are thought to impede academic development. This paper draws attention to the importance of disciplinary crossover by uncovering and comparing academics' teaching perspectives, views and beliefs from three disciplines: natural science (chemistry), social science (education) and science education. Through a case study design using the pedagogic frailty model and concept map-mediated interviews as a tool, three academics engaged in a non-linear discourse in which their conceptions could be visualised and analysed. Analysis of the case study interviews indicated that the academics' conceptions of teaching were highly individualised. The discourse surrounding the curriculum, and the embeddedness of and connection between pedagogy and discipline, were both subject-sensitive and influenced by professional backgrounds and research areas. On the other hand, because they operated under the same institutional values and regulations, we found a considerable overlap in terms of how the academics perceived the tensions between research and teaching and academic leadership. By comparing three academics who were at a different stage in the journey from disciplinary experts (chemistry) to teaching expert (education), we were able to uncover and understand more about the ways that the teaching environment impacted upon their practices. The science educator shared aspects of the other two perspectives, which suggests that his profile was a transitory state in comparison with the chemist and the educationist. The findings provide a glimpse of the distinctive nature of the values that underpin teaching and offer insights that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement in science education.

The university-as-ecosystem concept provides a framework for the analysis of the dynamic maintenance of sustainable pedagogies within the university. Application of Holling’s adaptive cycle, used to describe the active constructive and destructive processes of stabilization and destabilization within an ecosystem, is explored here in the context of the ecological university. The cycle predicts that disruptions to the system initiate a period of reorganisation. The concept of nested cycles (a panarchy) is explored in the higher education teaching environment here for the first time. Crucially, this shows how adaptive cycles within ecosystems occur at different scales of time and space that might align with different levels within the university – the individual, the department/discipline, and the institution. These levels need to be in communication with each other in order to develop in ways that are complementary and mutually supportive. As decisions about teaching are made with a mixture of objective, evidence-based reasoning alongside more subjective and affective thinking, a degree of epistemological pluralism is required to support the development of post-abyssal thinking to promote consilience across the ecology of knowledges. The potential of an epistemologically plural ecological lens is discussed in the context of university teaching.

"This book examines the dominant discourses in higher education. From the moment academics enter higher education, they are met with binaries such as teaching vs. research, quantitative vs. qualitative research, and constructivists vs. positivists. When embarking upon a teaching career in a university there are further binaries that immediately present themselves, with deep vs. surface learning probably being the most pervasive. Kinchin and Gravett contend that this presents a distorted view and contributes to the disconnect between the aims and observable practice of higher education. Rather than celebrating difference, dominant discourses tend to seek similarities in an attempt to simplify and manage the environment, in what the authors perceive as a less than scholarly mode. In order to break down the barriers between 'structuralist' or 'traditional' academics and those who are more familiar with poststructuralist, critical perspectives, the authors explore the overlaps between these perspectives to offer a richer and more inclusive interrogation of the dominant discourses that pervade higher education. Offering methodological approaches to explore these perspectives, the authors bring together academics working in different parts of the university and examine the concept of a 'rich cartography', exploring how this can offer meaning within higher education research and practice"--

The evolution of concept mapping has benefitted from the robust theoretical basis provided by Ausubelian learning theory. However, for concept mapping to maintain its relevance and to keep pace with the evolutionary changes in the educational context, it is vital that educational researchers and classroom practitioners can augment this theoretical base with contemporary learning theories that will help to improve the application of concept mapping and increase the likelihood that the goal of meaningful learning will be achieved in practice. This involves shifting the focus of concept mapping from product to process and the role of the learner from 'being' to 'becoming.' The act of concept mapping needs to be viewed as a way of mastering learning rather than of mastering specific content. We propose the consideration of the explicit role of semantic waves as an improvement from simplistic knowledge representation towards the development of more complex knowledge modelling as a way of developing powerful knowledge structures.

In traditional representations of doctoral supervision, the relationship between supervisor and doctoral candidate is often conceptualised as hierarchical: master and apprentice; expert and novice; supervisor and student. Even in the case of more constructivist orientations which seek to position the process as more complex than the mere transmission of expertise, it is the doctoral candidate who is positioned as the one who evolves, as a result of a rite of passage (e.g., Petersen, Stud High Educ 32(4): 475–487. 10.1080/03075070701476167, 2007). In recent years, there have been calls for more fluid conceptualisations that question such hierarchical positionings of supervisor and doctoral candidate. For example, Fullagar et al. (Knowl Cult 1(4): 23–41, 2017) represent doctoral supervision as a ‘learning alliance’, where both supervisor and doctoral candidate develop and learn. In this chapter, we draw upon a collaborative autoethnography by three colleagues, one who occupied the role of Doctoral Candidate and two who occupied the role of Supervisor, in order to interrogate the notion of fixed identities within both roles. Drawing upon the Deleuzian concept of ‘becoming’, and Braidotti’s ideas of ‘process ontology’, we explore how the supervisory relationship for a Prospective PhD by Publication offers processes of becoming for both supervisors and doctoral candidates, and we also call into question the expert/novice dichotomy that conceptualises traditional models of supervision. We reflect upon what this rethinking might signify for both the Prospective PhD by Publication, as well as for other models of doctoral supervision, and the broader concepts of learning and change.

Framed by the current higher education agendas and debates, the introduction presents the rationale for this edited volume. It situates the student–staff partnership case studies that constitute the core of the book within the institutional context of the University of Surrey, UK, and provides an overview of the university-wide initiative to establish and support these research partnerships. The chapter also outlines how the project team provided ongoing developmental opportunities to the participants throughout the life of the project. It then introduces the four parts of the book: (1) Collaboration and Creativity: Exploring Innovative Partnership Approaches; (2) Evaluating Teaching and Learning Approaches; (3) Partnership Approaches to Assessment, Feedback, and Student–Staff Dialogue and (4) Student–Staff Partnerships: Reflections and Considerations, as well as each of the individual chapters within the parts.

In this paper, the authors break down the elements of what it means to be an analytical chemist to expose the underlying knowledge structures that contribute to this specialist contextual expertise. An appreciation of the structure of knowledge provides the first step in designing ways to scaffold student development of expertise. We have identified two critical gaps that need to be bridged for students to achieve this: the gaps between complementary networked knowledge structures that can impede high level understanding (the gap between intrinsic and shared fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry), and the gap between networks of understanding and chains of practice that can impede professional practice (the theory-practice gap). We hypothesize the l i n k between these two gaps and the ways in which they may be exploited within the curriculum to promote the development of expertise-where these gaps are no longer problematic. The role of threshold concepts in forming bridges across these gaps is explored here. This represents a key point in the pedagogical content knowledge of teachers of Analytical Chemistry.

This book explores student-staff partnerships through a breadth of co-authored research projects. There is a significant gap in current literature regarding student-staff partnerships, both in the sharing of examples as well as in the examination of partnership working and its impact. Organised into four thematic sections, the editors and contributors highlight the diversity of routes students and staff can take to work in partnership, as well as how research, learning and teaching can be co-created. Written by both university staff and student researchers, the chapters consider the benefits of student-staff partnerships as an antidote to consumerist visions of higher education, and a way of celebrating the potential of students and their voices. This book will be of interest and value to scholars of student-staff partnerships. 

Within the context of the ecological university, the professional development of teaching staff needs to be reconceptualized. Rather than accepting reductive linear models of development that suggest a simplistic transition from novice to expert, we need to embrace the inherent complexity of rhizomatic development and exploit the adoption of a number of ecological principles to illustrate a navigable pathway through the complexity. In this the teacher is seen to develop across adaptive cycles. These cycles represent developmental plateaus of increasing professional independence that are reactive to territorializing and deterritorializing factors in the environment. The tendency of neoliberal management systems to favour territorialization by accepting the status quo leads to the inhibition of development (described in the ecological literature as rigidity gaps) within the adaptive cycles. That in turn creates conditions that promote pedagogic frailty - a condition in which the elements that should enhance the teaching environment are seen to be repressive. To counter this negative image of inert university teaching, sections of the rhizome can be illustrated using concept mapping to illuminate the dynamic institutional natural history as a step towards the ecological resilience (i.e. embracing change and adaptability) that is required to support teaching in an ecological university.

To explore the affective domains embedded in academic development and teacher practice, a team of academic developers was invited to consider a poem and how it reflects the emotions and feelings underpinning experiences as teachers within Higher Education. We used a method of arts-informed, collective biography to evaluate a poem to draw upon and share memories to interrogate lived experiences. Our research is framed using the lens of pedagogic frailty model to see how affective and discursive encounters are produced and impact us. We contend that collective arts-based and biographical approaches can provide alternative ways for ourselves and teachers to examine their own pedagogic frailty.

This article focuses on ‘transition’ and how it is understood within higher education. Drawing on data from concept map-mediated interviews at two institutions, we examine the conceptions of transition held by academic and professional staff, who work to support students’ learning into and through higher education. We suggest that normative understandings of transition often draw upon a grand-narrative that orchestrates and reiterates a stereotypic understanding of students’ experiences. Often this narrative involves students’ interpellation into a field of discourse where the subject is constructed as both homogeneous and in deficit: ill-prepared, lacking in independence, as vulnerable and in need of support. However, this study suggests that beneath this discourse lies a more nuanced picture: one where students’ experiences can be conceptualised as diverse and fluid. Moreover, we employ the concept of pedagogic ‘frailty’ to expose the significance of the environments and wider contexts in which students ‘transition’, and to explore the impact of systemic tensions upon students’ experiences. This article further argues that future research should shift discussions away from the deficits of students, and examine how we can make underlying environmental and systemic challenges more explicit, in order to widen our understanding and discussions of these constraints.

Within this chapter, we conceptualize education for sustainability (EfS) as a wicked, socio-ecological problem that requires the implementation of a radical pedagogical perspective if it is to be addressed in a systemic and sustainable manner. The consideration of EfS through a complex, socio-ecological lens prompts a consideration from multiple perspectives that we articulate here as opposing sides of an epistemological abyss (or two-culture valley)-where rational, objective thinking (scientific reasoning) needs to interact with more personal, subjective knowledge structures. This allows us to approach key threshold concepts related to EfS that we identify as 'virtue ethics', 'wicked problems' and 'academic literacy'. Through the analogy of exploring unfamiliar terrain, we consider the importance of pedagogy as a foundational idea in the construction of interdisciplinary approaches to EfS in the classroom and the necessity of teachers acting as well-equipped guides who are familiar with both sides of the epistemological abyss.

Novakian concept mapping has been shown to offer great potential in the undergraduate science classroom as a tool to support student learning. However, a number of papers in the research literature have been less than rigorous in their application of concept mapping. This chapter highlights a number of key questions that researchers should ask themselves when embarking upon a concept mapping intervention in order to optimize the application of the tool. Firstly there needs to be clarity about the purpose of an intervention: Is it designed as a research protocol to obtain generalizable results, or is the intervention only of local interest in a unique context? This raises the question of whether the maps are research artifacts (data) or tools to support development. Secondly, we need to be clear about the type of knowledge being mapped. Is the map of agreed upon curricular knowledge for which there may be a correct response (where scoring of maps may have some utility), or is the map of “yet-to-be-known” knowledge (of personal reflections and values) where scoring would be inappropriate? Thirdly, will the initial maps provided by participants provide the data that is being sought, or will students need feedback and supportive dialogue to help increase the map quality? Finally, appreciating the ways in which the mapping relates to the philosophy of the curriculum is crucial. If the curriculum requires deep, cumulative learning as part of a collaborative learning community, then mapping is likely to be helpful. If the intention is only for individuals to memorize content, then mapping has no real part to play. By considering each of these issues before embarking upon a mapping intervention, the value of the research outputs is likely to be enhanced.

In order to successfully accommodate partnership as a new way of working, it is suggested that an institution should already exhibit characteristics of resilience that would accompany pedagogic health. Using the pedagogic frailty model as a theoretical frame, this chapter explores what pedagogic health might look like in a university, what the indicators of pedagogic resilience might be, and how explicit acknowledgement of these factors may enhance academics’ engagement with a student-staff partnership approach to working. The key concepts of recipience, exaptation and adaptive expertise are introduced as factors that may help academics to construct a sense of coherence about their practice, and help them to assimilate the partnership perspective within their professional activities.

Purpose Concept maps have been described as a valuable tool for exploring curriculum knowledge. However, less attention has been given to the use of them to visualise contested and tacit knowledge, i.e. the values and perceptions of teachers that underpin their practice. This paper aims to explore the use of concept mapping to uncover academics’ views and help them articulate their perspectives within the framework provided by the concepts of pedagogic frailty and resilience in a collaborative environment. Design/methodology/approach Participants were a group of five colleagues within a Biochemical Science Department, working on the development of a new undergraduate curriculum. A qualitative single-case study was conducted to get some insights on how concept mapping might scaffold each step of the collaborative process. They answered the online questionnaire; their answers were “translated” into an initial expert-constructed concept map, which was offered as a starting point to articulate their views during a group session, resulting in a consensus map. Findings Engaging with the questionnaire was useful for providing the participants with an example of an “excellent” map, sensitising them to the core concepts and the possible links between them, without imposing a high level of cognitive load. This fostered dialogue of complex ideas, introducing the potential benefits of consensus maps in team-based projects. Originality/value An online questionnaire may facilitate the application of the pedagogic frailty model for academic development by scaling up the mapping process. The map-mediated facilitation of dialogue within teams of academics may facilitate faculty development by making explicit the underpinning values held by team members.

This paper offers a perspective on 'care' as a component in the identity of successful university teachers. Three key lines of flight within this assemblage (care, pedagogic health, and salutogenesis) are examined here. In combination, they may offer a response to hegemonic neoliberal discourses that typically divert academics from enacting their professional values. A 'triple point' is hypothesised, at which the three lines would be found to co-exist, without border or barriers.

This study focuses on the spaces and places for learning and teaching connections in higher education. Using a photovoice research method, we ask: what role do spaces and places play in offering opportunities for learning and teaching connection, and what do they tell us about the evolving practices of teachers in contemporary higher education? Whilst considerable attention has been paid to the learning spaces of students, we argue that less attention has been devoted to the spaces in which educators learn. Our findings are considered against a backdrop of the ongoing disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning that opportunities for interaction have assumed even greater significance, and the ways in which we use and understand teaching spaces are in flux. As such, our data highlights how the move to digital and hybrid learning is blurring the boundaries of spaces and places, reorienting what it means to teach and to learn in a postdigital higher education landscape. We engage sociomaterial and spatial concepts to examine how spaces entangle with university teachers’ experiences, and we explore the shifting nature of interaction and space in post-pandemic times.

This article presents an ecological frame for reflection on teaching at university. It is suggested here that the process of professional reflection on practice can be better aligned with processes of institutional development by applying the adaptive cycle. This heuristic emerged from the scientific literature on ecosystem maintenance and has been repurposed to allow the consideration of complex social-ecological systems - such as a university. The nature of the adaptive cycle changes over time to accommodate changes in the exterior (the institution and wider society) and interior (e.g. personal experience and wellbeing) professional environments. These cycling changes offer a descriptive tool to support discussion of university teacher development.

This research used Novakian concept mapping and interview techniques to track changes in knowledge and understanding amongst students and their supervisors in the course of full-time research towards a laboratory science-based PhD. This detailed longitudinal case study analysis measures both cognitive change in the specific subjects that are the topic for research, and the understanding of the process of PhD level research and supervision. The data show the challenges for students and supervisors from different national, ethnic, cultural, and academic backgrounds and traditions with a focus on how this impacts the PhD research process and development. Working cross-culturally, and often in a setting different from either the student or the supervisor's background and training, can lead to a lack of common language and understanding for the development of a pedagogically oriented supervisory relationship. Documenting change in knowledge and understanding among PhD students and their supervisors is key to surfacing what the joint processes of mutual democratic research and of supervision may entail. This study explores how one of these key processes is a student's developing sense of belonging (or non-belonging). Specifically, this paper engages the concepts of belonging, and democratic education through mutual learning, to explore the practices of working across national, cultural, ethnic, and diverse academic backgrounds, for both supervisors and students. Doctoral study is understood as a situated context in which belonging also acts as a gateway for who can join the global scientific community.

This article proposes a rethinking of the contested concept of teaching excellence within higher education. In order to do, so we engage posthumanist theory to reconsider teaching excellence from a new perspective that shifts the gaze beyond the measured individual to explore our intra-actions within a wider context. Taking Skelton's original conception of teaching excellence as a starting point, we explore what a values-based concept of excellence might look like, re-imagined for the present times we live in, and we ask whether there is room for a more expansive perspective of teaching excellence which reconsiders the relationality and fluidity of our practice.

The dominant narratives currently offering critique of the neoliberal university suggest a professional environment that is both uncaring and unhealthy. This paper adopts a Deleuzian gaze on the rhizomatic multiplicity of teaching to identify and reinterpret key lines of flight within this assemblage – identified as care, pedagogic health and salutogenesis. It is argued that the perspective described by the coexistence of these lines may develop a more positive ontology as a basis from which a university may be able to work towards a more productive state of healthy learning. The point at which the three lines of flight co-exist is hypothesised as a ‘triple point’.

This paper offers an approach to support the development of reflective teaching practice among university academics that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement and the student experience. Pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching within universities by helping to maintain a simultaneous focus on key areas that are thought to impede development of pedagogy. These areas and the links that have been proposed to connect them are interrogated here through the dialogic analysis of a framed autoethnographic narrative produced by a community ‘insider’ who has considerable experience of teaching within the arts and humanities. This person-centred methodology acknowledges the subjective nature of teaching and gives voice to important stories that otherwise might not be heard formally, and allows an academic to rehearse this voice individually before comparing it with others in the institution.

This article examines teachers’ perspectives on a neglected area of practice: academic referencing. Commonly considered a simple skill to learn, we suggest that instead a study of referencing practices enables us to glean valuable insight into the challenges experienced by students when developing a learner identity. Drawing on interviews with academic staff, this article depicts teachers’ experiences as they support students with referencing and academic literacy practices. However, the intentions of teachers to develop students are shown to be at variance with student outcomes, as students appear increasingly disengaged from an area of academic practice that they find mysterious and opaque, and as staff report an increase in the number of cases of plagiarism and academic misconduct. We conclude with a consideration of the need to widen understanding of the complex challenges experienced by students when grappling with citation practices. Moreover, we contend that the development of academic literacy practices can play a key role within students’ development of a learner identity, and can impact upon students’ sense of belonging and becoming into and through higher education.

Pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching within universities by helping to maintain a simultaneous focus on key areas that are thought to impede the development of pedagogy. These areas and the links that have been proposed to connect them are interrogated here through the analysis of an autoethnographic narrative produced by a community “insider” who has considerable experience of teaching and researching geography. This personcentred methodology acknowledges the subjective nature of teaching, gives voice to important stories that might not otherwise be heard formally and provides a case study that can been used as an exemplar to promote institutional dialogue about quality enhancement and the student experience. The findings from this case study suggest that colleagues may be able to repurpose disciplinary concepts to help make sense of the learning and teaching discourse.

The detailed analysis and scoring of concept maps may not be necessary in order for students to gain from their use in the classroom. A simplified recognition of different types (‘species’) of map may increase the likelihood of teachers employing maps in their classrooms so that more teachers and students might benefit from concept mapping on a regular basis. A greater familiarity and level of engagement with concept maps is likely to support an increase in the level of mapping expertise developed by both teachers and students, enabling maps to be used to support higher order thinking skills – as intended. The counter-intuitive conclusion to this prospect is that the adoption of a non-analytical consideration of maps may actually make them a more valuable classroom asset. However, this requires a greater level of expertise in the application of concept maps on the part of the teacher. A simplified typology of ‘map species’ is presented to support the development of this perspective.

The concept of recipience is emerging within the literature as a useful idea to inform our understanding of student engagement with feedback. In this paper the applicability of the concept of recipience is broadened from its origins in the literature on student feedback to consider its role in developing student knowledge structures that are more receptive to development. This will promote cumulative/meaningful learning that is required to construct professional knowledge. By drawing on Legitimation Code Theory, and visualising the morphology of target knowledge structures in relation to their position on the semantic plane (of semantic gravity vs. semantic density), a fresh perspective is offered to inform student learning that can suggest ways of enhancing the quality of student learning. This is achieved by explicitly enabling the construction of a more coherent perspective of the knowledge terrain generated by complex curricula.

In this study, members of a higher education department explore their research activity and how it influences their practice as academic developers in a research-led institution. Whilst the research activities of the team members appear diverse, they are all underpinned by a shared set of professional values to provide an anchor for these activities. Research-as-pedagogy and the relationship between the discourses of research and teaching are explored using Bernstein’s knowledge structures. The authors conclude that differences in research focus (horizontal discourse) provide dynamism across a department and that stability is provided through the underpinning core values inherent in the vertical discourse.

Students as partners (SaP) practices are emerging in today’s universities as a means to offer a more participative agenda, and to transform institutional cultures within an increasingly economically driven higher education context. This study contributes to understandings of partnership approaches, which largely still remain under-theorised, through exploring the conceptualisation of SaP by institutional leaders, staff, and students. Drawing on data from concept map-mediated interviews, this article offers a counterview to recent studies that have depicted staff understandings of SaP to be firmly located within a neoliberal discourse. Rather, our interviews portray surprising overlaps within students’ and leaders’ conceptualisations of SaP, depicting recurrent themes of communication, dialogue, community, and enabling students to escape neoliberal constructions: to become ‘more than customers’. This article ends with a consideration of how investigating the ways in which students and staff conceptualise SaP can be valuable, as partnership approaches become further prioritised in institutional strategies.

This paper investigates the underexplored area of othering of migrant academics within their teaching context. Nine personal narratives of migrant academics’ teaching were analysed qualitatively for indications of pedagogical othering. Migrant academics indicated the need to align their own pedagogic values and practices with that of their host institutions they work in as they felt their own values and practices were considered less desirable. We argue, from a Gramsci’s hegemonic perspective that the pedagogic adaptation by migrant academics aimed at improving student learning is not problematic in itself, but more problematic is the inequality of opportunity for migrant academics to contribute to pedagogical decisions which can meaningfully influence the departmental culture. Lack of pedagogic democracy where the ‘home’ academic environment has a monopoly of knowledge and a hegemonic position regarding learning and teaching can compromise the student-learning experience by limiting articulation of alternative pedagogical perspectives by the migrant international academics.

Background: Concept maps have been used extensively for developing higher order thinking skills and are considered significant artefacts in constructing understanding in educational contexts. Increasingly, they are being used as a tool to chart a way towards ‘new understanding’ rather than recording ‘accepted knowledge’. This study is set in an academic development department in a UK higher education institution in which previous research projects have utilised concept map-mediated interviews as a tool in data collection. This paper reports on the relationship between the process of the concept map-mediated interview and the resulting concept map and focuses on the talk during the interview process. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore the co-constructed nature of the concept map which resulted from the concept map interview. The research question was: how is the concept map accomplished through and in the interview talk? Sample: The three researchers and authors of this paper are colleagues in an Academic Development department in a UK higher education institution. The focus of the interview was to probe the research perspective underpinning the practice of one of the authors. Design and methods: The study used a qualitative, unstructured concept map interview. The aim of the interview was to elicit an understanding of one of the authors’ research frame and how it influenced her work with staff. The interviewer noted labels on post-it notes during the interview which both participants then arranged on a sheet of paper. The interview lasted 36 minutes and was transcribed verbatim. Sociocultural discourse analysis was used to examine the trajectory of concepts in the interview talk. Results: The results highlight the collaborative nature of the interview and how the concept map is co-constructed through the interview talk. We demonstrate how the concept map is co-constructed through and in the dialogue between interviewer and interviewee, not as a result of the interview. Results also reveal how the context of acquaintance interviews impacts on the co-construction and thus the resulting concept map. Conclusions: A concept map which results from such an interview is co-constructed with the interviewer playing a pivotal role in the talk and the mapping. The implications are that the interview as research tool needs to be recognised as a site for the co-construction of ideas and perspectives. Concept maps resulting from interviews need to be recognised as co-constructed. A further implication for research methods is that the transcripts from the interview itself can be used as data to provide a richer understanding of the concept map.

Background: The concept of pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching improvement within universities by helping to maintain a simultaneous focus on four key areas that are thought to impede development. Purpose: The variation in internal structure of the four dimensions of pedagogic frailty and the links that have been proposed to connect them are explored here through the analysis of interviews with academics working in a variety of disciplinary areas. Methods: The application of concept map-mediated interviews allows us to view the variable connections within and between these dimensions and the personal ways they are conceptualised by academics working across the heterogeneous university context. Results: The data show that academics conceptualise the discourse of teaching in various ways that have implications for the links that may be developed to integrate the elements within the model. Conclusions: Whilst the form and content of the maps representing dimensions of the pedagogic frailty model exhibit considerable variation, it is suggested that factors such as academic resilience and the explicit use of integrative concepts within disciplines may help to overcome some of the vulnerabilities that accompany pedagogic frailty. The data also raises questions about the links between factors that tend to be under individual control and those that tend towards institutional control.

This article examines the challenges experienced by students when developing referencing practices. There has been minimal research into students’ development of their referencing skills, with referencing often considered a mechanistic skill and not worthy of attention. This paper argues that, rather, referencing is an area of practice imbued with issues of power and identity and that the difficulties students experience in this area are leading them to exhibit a lack of agency – ultimately, a form of educational ‘frailty’. Worried about plagiarism and confused by feedback, rather than developing the independent research skills we would wish, students look for instruction, and report feelings of anxiety. These themes are explored using questionnaires and interviews with a small number of undergraduate students. Based on the findings, this article concludes by making recommendations for widening our understanding of the difficulties students encounter, the need for further discussion and potentially greater scaffolding and support.

The emerging literature related to feedback literacy has hitherto focused primarily on students’ engagement with feedback, and yet an analysis of academics’ feedback literacy is also of interest to those seeking to understand effective strategies to engage with feedback. Data from concept map-mediated interviews and reflections, with a team of six colleagues, surface academics’ responses to receiving critical feedback via scholarly peer review. Our findings reveal that feedback can be visceral and affecting, but that academics employ a number of strategies to engage with this process. This process can lead to actions that are both instrumental, enabling academics to more effectively ‘play the game’ of publication, as well as to learning that is more positively and holistically developmental. This study thus aims to open up a dialogue with colleagues internationally about the role of feedback literacy, for both academics and students. By openly sharing our own experiences we seek to normalise the difficulties academics routinely experience whilst engaging with critical feedback, to share the learning and strategies which can result from peer review feedback, and to explore how academics may occupy a comparable role to students who also receive evaluation of their work.

Many topics within the Psychology curriculum can be described as ‘sensitive’, with potential for students to experience distress and discomfort. Given the pressure experienced by academics in Higher Education, the potential for student distress or complaints might lead lecturers to adopt a risk-averse approach to teaching, which is well represented by the concept of Pedagogic Frailty (Kinchin et al., 2016). Through interviews with nine Psychology Lecturers, we uncover the common concerns that arise when teaching sensitive topics, and the strategies employed to overcome these concerns. We also suggest that where teaching is strongly influenced by the values underpinning Psychological Literacy, those teaching sensitive topics may be less vulnerable to the characteristics of Pedagogic Frailty, as the risks associated with the teaching of sensitive topics are offset by the perceived importance of exposing students to sensitive topics. The implications for the teaching of Psychology are discussed.

This book puts the structure and function of knowledge firmly in the driving seat of university curriculum development and teaching practice. Through the application of concept mapping, the structure of knowledge can be visualised to offer an explicit perspective on key issues such as curriculum design, student learning and assessment feedback. Structural visualisation allows a greater scrutiny of the qualitative characteristics of knowledge so that we can analyse students' patterns of learning and match them to expert practice. Based on nearly two decades of research and direct observations of university teaching by the author, this book aims to offer a scholarly account of teacher development. It focusses on elements that will be of immediate utility to academics who want to develop their teaching to a level of adaptive experts, offering them greater autonomy in their role and a powerful understanding of teaching to escape the repressive routines of the traditional classroom. Rather than providing a comprehensive review of educational research, this book provides a route through selected theories that can be explored in practice by university teachers on their own or in groups. The book will help academics to identify the nature of powerful knowledge within their disciplines and consider ways that this may be used by students to become active and engaged learners through the manipulation and transformation of knowledge, and so become expert students.