Not there yet: knowledge building in educational development ten years on
- Authors: Boughey, Chrissie
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/426954 , vital:72403 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2022.2121158"
- Description: This paper responds to a question posed by [Shay, Suellen. 2012. “Educational Development as a Field: Are We There Yet?” Higher Education Research and Development 31 (3): 311–323. doii:10.1080/07294360.2011.631520] about the status of knowledge building in the field of Educational Development. In her paper, Shay critiques knowledge produced in the field arguing that it is ‘codified practice’ [Gamble, Jeanne. 2001. “Modelling the Invisible: The Pedagogy of Craft Apprenticeship.” Studies in Continuing Education 23 (2): 185–200. doii:10.1080/01580370120101957; Gamble, Jeanne. 2004. “Retrieving the General from the Particular: The Structure of Craft Knowledge.” In Reading Bernstein, Researching Bernstein, edited by J. Muller, B. Davies, and A. Morais, 189–203. Abingdon: Routledge; Gamble, Jeanne. 2006. “Theory and Practice in the Vocational Curriculum.” In Knowledge, Curriculum and Qualifications in South African Further Education, edited by M. Young and J. Gamble, 87–103. Pretoria: HSRC Press] rather than applied theory which could succeed in reconceptualising problems rather than simply trying to address them. This paper draws on a review of research produced in the field in recent years in South Africa to argue that, although some work does result in the reconceptualision of problems the higher education, it is limited in that (i) it has been produced by a relatively small group of practitioners located at a few universities and (ii) draws on theory developed in the Global North. The paper then proceeds to offer some tentative suggestions for the way future work aimed at knowledge building could proceed.
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- Date Issued: 2022
Analysing an audit cycle: a critical realist account
- Authors: Boughey, Chrissie , McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66741 , vital:28988 , ISSN 1470-3300 , https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1072148
- Description: Pre-print , This paper reports on the use of a framework developed from Bhaskar's critical realism and Archer's social realism to analyse teaching- and learning-related data produced as a result of the first cycle of institutional audits in the South African higher education system. The use of the framework allows us to see what this cycle of audits did achieve, namely some change in structural systems related to teaching and learning alongside the appointment of key agents. It also allows us to see how the stagnation of sets of ideas about teaching and learning in the domain of culture may mean that an assurance of the quality of learning experiences for all students remained elusive.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Academic literacy and the decontextualised learner
- Authors: Boughey, Chrissie , McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/64651 , vital:28585 , http://www.DOI:10.14426/cristal.v4i2.80
- Description: The literacy practices that are valued in the university emerge from specific disciplinary histories yet students are often expected to master these as if they were common sense and natural. This article argues that the autonomous model of literacy, which sees language use as the application of a set of neutral skills, continues to dominate in South African universities. This model denies the extent to which taking on disciplinary literacy practices can be difficult and have implications for identity. It also allows disciplinary norms to remain largely opaque and beyond critique. Furthermore, the autonomous model of literacy is often coupled with a discourse of the ‘decontextualised learner’ who is divorced from her social context, with higher education success seen to be resting largely upon attributes inherent in, or lacking from, the individual. Sadly, alternative critical social understandings have not been widely taken up despite their being well researched. Indeed, such understandings have often been misappropriated in ways that draw on critical social terminology to offer autonomous, decontextualised, remedial student interventions. We argue that these issues are implicated in students’ accusations that universities are alienating spaces.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Argumentative and trustworthy scholars
- Authors: McKenna, Sioux , Boughey, Chrissie
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/187216 , vital:44580 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2014.934351"
- Description: Research-intensive universities, such as the Russell Group in the UK, the Ivy League Colleges in the USA and the Sandstone Universities in Australia, enjoy particular status in the higher education landscape. They are, however, also often associated with social elitism and selectivity, and this has led to critique as higher education systems seek to widen access. This article looks at how academic staff are discursively constructed in five such institutions in South Africa through an analysis of documentation submitted as part of a national review. Three interrelated discourses are identified: a discourse of ‘staff as scholars’ whereby research is privileged over teaching, a discourse of ‘academic argumentation’ whereby a critical disposition is valued and is called upon by academics to resist development initiatives and a discourse of ‘trust’ whereby it is assumed that academics share a value system and should thus be trusted to undertake quality teaching without interference.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Understanding student performance in a large class
- Authors: Snowball, Jeanette D , Boughey, Chrissie
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71333 , vital:29834 , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14703297.2012.677658
- Description: Across the world, university teachers are increasingly being required to engage with diversity in the classes they teach. Using the data from a large Economics 1 class at a South African university, this attempts to understand the effects of diversity on chances of success and how assessment can impact on this. By demonstrating how theory can be used to understand results, the paper aims to encourage university teachers to adopt proactive strategies in managing diversity, rather than simply explaining it using student characteristics.
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- Date Issued: 2012