Recognition is increasing that Ph.D. graduates require transferable skills for employment within or outside academia, and professional written communication skills form an important subset which contributes to many other skill categories. Writing journal articles for publication is a key task within candidatures and research workplaces, so…

This article considers the notion of a praxis of higher education teaching. Our arguments are drawn from the existential literature and the particular contribution made by Heidegger. They point to a learning community where the community practises the scholastic processes of conversation, involvement and engagement as modes of revealing knowledge.…

This article analyses current educational reform documents pertaining to the role, nature and scope of tertiary education in New Zealand. The argument posited here is that these reform proposals, while signaling a welcome paradigm shift in the values that underpin higher education policy, risk marginalizing the notion and the pursuit of higher…

Integration has always been a prominent issue debated in the burgeoning literature on professional doctorate programs. This focus on integration, however, has largely involved the integration between theoretical and practical understandings of various professions. Exploring the integration between research and coursework components of professional…

To understand why an individual is engaging in a particular behaviour during learning requires an investigation of subjective conceptions held by the learner. Historically, the research interview has been widely used as a means for gaining an insight into students' learning, and responses have been presented as explanations of how individuals…

Research on student responses to Critical Pedagogy frequently highlights their opposition to transformational agendas. This paper focuses on student opposition at a predominantly 'white' South African university to materials that represent the apartheid past. Engaging with the imperatives of transformation characterizing post-apartheid Higher…

In the last two decades, there have been noticeable changes in the ranks of academic labourers, specifically the increasing reliance on part-time instructors. The use of part-time instructors can be attributed to, among other things, cutbacks in state funding to universities and colleges due to, or as a response to, globalization. This study…

The conventional image is that we (and other students) reach an understanding of something after a period of puzzled wrestling with the material. Understanding is the end-point of learning. However, there is an important sense in which understanding (of a rudimentary kind) precedes effective learning. Trying to develop this conceptually, I draw on…

The writing of academic abstracts is more than a tiresome necessity of scholarly life. It is a practice that goes beyond genre and technique to questions of writing and identity. In this article we deconstruct a series of abstracts from a variety of refereed journals to 'read' for the representation of data, argument, methodology and significance.…

Initiatives encouraging the professionalization of teachers in the UK Higher Education sector should employ pedagogies that support the idea of discipline-based interdependence. Such initiatives with pedagogies cultivating a critical professionalism capable of challenging the marketization of Higher Education, presume adequate consideration of…

This paper reports the outcomes of a study, undertaken from a phenomenographic perspective, of academics' ways of experiencing or understanding being a university teacher. A range of understandings was found, representing in particular a varying focus on the experience of teaching as a: teacher transmission focused experience; teacher-student…

The employment of graduate students on a part-time basis to help with the teaching of undergraduates is growing in the UK and many higher education institutions are confronted with challenges about how best to do this. UK institutions have much to learn from North American experience of appointing graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), and this…

Many higher education courses, across the whole range of disciplines, include subjects that are somewhat problematic because they appear to be unrelated to other components of the curriculum. Students frequently perceive them as irrelevant and boring. This makes it extremely difficult for lecturers to stimulate interest and results in an…

Progress files represent a major policy initiative involving the use of Personal Development Planning (PDP) aimed at the production of autonomous learners who are capable of planning for their own career and personal futures. The paper is organized in three parts and argues for a more critical approach, which locates PDP as part of broader shifts…

We note that there is a scarcity of methodological literature aimed at guiding Higher Education teachers wishing to conduct pedagogic research, despite the increasing value accorded to such research. This may be because pedagogic research in HE does not differ significantly from that in other educational settings; if this were so, HE teachers…