The question of whether academic development and higher education research can be considered fields is one of ongoing significance, centred on debates about knowledge-building. This study analyses the published outputs of a highly influential South African scholar, Suellen Shay, to identify the characteristic modes of knowledge generation that she…

The rise of populism has sparked a debate about the role of facts in public discourse. How should higher education teachers respond? This article reviews the literature on approaches to teaching and identifies and problematises a tension between emphases on facts and thinking. It then outlines the current 'post-truth' challenge, which suggests…

Course Evaluation Instruments (CEIs) are critical aspects of faculty assessment and evaluation across most higher education institutions, but heated debates surround the value and validity of such instruments. While some argue that CEI scores are valid measures of course and instructor quality, others argue that faculty members can game the…

The debate around what constitutes teaching excellence and how to measure it remains a contentious issue in higher education, with little consensus reached. Despite this, measures of teaching excellence influence university ranking league tables throughout the world. This paper explores the thinking and practice of five academics, recognised…

Team-teaching is arguably shifting from the realm of pedagogic choice to that of necessity in a complex and demanding Higher Education (HE) landscape. This research gives a voice to staff collaborating in team-teaching, considering their motivations and approach, to identify key challenges and opportunities. Results indicate that the changing…

As an emerging field within higher education, academic development remains fragmented, both as a field of theory and practice. In the vibrant, on-going debate about the theoretical foundations and directions of academic development as a nascent field, some relatively wide-ranging claims which have been made seem to be lacking in supporting…

In this article, the author offers a personal view on the meaning of "teaching excellence" in higher education which makes connections with the particular historical moment people are living through--which has been variously described as "post-traditional", "postmodern", or "reflexive modernity". The author…

This article presents the author's response to Karlsson (2007) who pointed out that the author's original article that appeared in the "Points for Debate" section of "Teaching in Higher Education" (Greenbank 2006) did not discuss the concept of service as comprehensively as teaching and research. Karlsson's paper--together with the work of…

The paper draws on an extensive literature search about the 'research-teaching nexus', insights from interviewing twelve university history lecturers about student progress in undergraduate degrees, and ideas about the role of disciplines in student learning to argue (i) that the educational goal for students of 'becoming a practising historian'…

This article is a response to Greenbank's (2006) "The academic's role: the need for a re-evaluation?" It is also a contribution to the ongoing debate about the need to develop a broader view of scholarship and the different activities related to it such as "teaching", "research" and "service to the community". Arguments related to current research…

The growth in the student population within higher education against a background of government policy promoting the concept of "widening participation" has led to much debate about the nature of university teaching. Academic engagement of all students within increasingly large and diverse classrooms has proved difficult to achieve. The research…