Concepto de la RSE

Participants identified the most direct and important influences on their curriculum decisions as their beliefs about:

 educational goals and purposes  discipline

 research

 approaches to teaching and learning, and  students.

Each of these beliefs is summarised briefly below and discussed in relation to what is reported in the literature.

Participants expressed distinctive beliefs about the goals and purposes of higher education, however some participants reported multiple and inter-related beliefs which suggested they represented an overlapping continuum as follows: (1) to induct students

to develop generic cognitive skills; (4) to make learning personally meaningful; (5) to explore social issues and structures, with a view to reform; and (6) to design a system for learning.

Government reviews of higher education, for example the 1997 UK Dearing Report, present a similar range of purposes as all being relevant to the provision of higher education (Barnett & Coate, 2005; Trowler, 1998). In contrast, studies of academics suggest these beliefs about educational purposes represent competing educational ideologies (Fanghanel, 2009; Kemmis et al., 1983; Trowler, 1998). These studies regard some beliefs as being incompatible, in particular, vocational or enterprise ideologies are seen to conflict with personal relevance and social reform ideologies. However this study found that many participants included vocational goals and skills alongside most other beliefs about educational purposes. For example, participants who saw the purpose of education as making learning personally meaningful for students, reasoned that cognitive skills had personal relevance to students for reaching their potential at university, in addition to preparing them for future careers. A focus on developing skills and graduate employability was central to the purposes of the most recent Australian Review of Higher Education (Bradley et al., 2008).

Common educational purposes were found within discipline groups, which suggested that purposes were influenced by disciplinary knowledge practices. However, some disciplines were associated with a range of educational purposes, informed by individual and contextual factors. Physics participants’ educational purposes almost exclusively focused on acquiring disciplinary knowledge and ways of thinking, which is a characteristic of hard-pure disciplines (Becher & Trowler, 2001). Arts participants identified educational purposes focused on both personal relevance and social relevance and reform, which are consistent respectively with interpretive and critical knowledge practices associated with the social sciences and humanities (Neumann et al., 2002). Participants from law identified with more varied educational purposes: inducting students into the discipline; preparing students for professional practice; and social relevance and reform. Law participants also described two kinds of knowledge practices informing law curricula, a rules approach and a social context approach, which were associated with different beliefs about educational purposes. Similarly, environmental sciences participants identified with two educational purposes: preparing students for

one would expect the applied disciplines of law and environmental sciences to identify with educational purposes that are both practice-oriented and value social relevance and reform.

Educational purposes were also adapted to course levels, reflecting participants’ perceptions of students’ needs at different levels. Developing cognitive skills was a common goal for first year courses, whereas preparing students for future professional practice and research careers was more common for final year courses. In some cases these were expressed as the dominant educational purpose or were incorporated alongside other educational purposes. Some participants also identified that their educational purposes were shaped by the mission of a research university, and included engaging students with research and preparing them to be future researchers.

Participants’ beliefs about the influence of their discipline on curriculum decisions were categorised as providing: (1) specialist content knowledge and the structure for

organising knowledge; (2) skills for thinking and problem solving; (3) problems for applying knowledge; (4) scholarly and professional roles, attributes and values; and (5) pedagogies and teaching norms.

Patterns of beliefs about the influence of discipline were found for different disciplines and beliefs about educational purposes. Physics participants perceived the discipline as central to their curricula decisions, which emphasised acquiring disciplinary content knowledge and ways of thinking relevant to inducting students into the discipline. Arts participants also perceived the discipline as an important influence, which defined content knowledge and thinking skills. However, in arts, disciplinary knowledge and skills were contextualised to demonstrate personal and social relevance to students. Participants in applied disciplines described the influence of discipline as the real world problems for applying disciplinary knowledge, developing problem solving and

thinking skills, and experiencing professional roles and tasks.

The first four categories for discipline influences suggest Barnett’s and Coate’s (2005) curriculum domains of ‘knowing’, ‘acting’ and ‘being’, which were described in Chapter 2. The ‘knowing’ domain is represented by category (1) the disciplinary knowledge and ways of knowing that inform decisions about course content. The

‘acting’ domain is represented by categories (2) skills for thinking and problem solving, and (3) the problems, as action contexts, in which students develop skills. The ‘being’ domain is represented by (4) the roles and attributes that help shape students’ personal, professional and scholarly identities. Different disciplines were found to prioritise different curriculum domains, with physics concerned primarily with knowing; and arts, with knowing and being, in terms of making sense of one’s own experiences. The applied disciplines of law, business and environmental were primarily concerned with acting in terms of both professional problems and developing skills, and to a lesser extent with ‘being’ in terms of developing understandings of professional roles,

attributes and values. Discipline was also found to influence curriculum decisions about pedagogies when these were intrinsic to educational purposes, such as a focus on experiential learning in applied disciplines, or when the participants were challenging disciplinary norms, such as the physics example above.

Participants’ beliefs about the influence of discipline on curricula decisions also suggest the three broad ways of recontextualising disciplinary knowledge identified by

Bernstein (2000), where (1) the discipline maintains its unique voice and also defines the problems of interest; (2) it is integrated with other disciplines and addresses problems from the real world; or (3) the disciplinary voice is weak and the focus is on generic skills and learning to learn. The findings suggest that most participants maintain a strong disciplinary voice in the knowledge and problems presented in their curricula, which Bernstein would predict for the elite context of a research-intensive university (Ashwin et al, 2012). However they are also responding to broader educational and social agendas for engaging students by making knowledge relevant to professional problems, to students’ lives, and developing their generic skills for work and learning to learn. Courses where knowledge is recontexualised to address real world problems are more common in applied disciplines and later year courses, and generic cognitive and learning skills in first year courses.

Disciplinary research was conceptualised as an influence on curricula that provided (1) specialist disciplinary content knowledge, (2) real world problems and projects, (3) a process and skills for finding things out, and (4) a scholarly or critical approach to knowledge. These categories are similar to those identified for discipline in the previous section and also reflect the Barnett & Coate (2005) curriculum domains. These

similarities between beliefs about the influence of discipline and the influence of research would be expected, given the essential interconnectedness between research and the development of disciplinary knowledge and knowledge practices (Neumann et al., 2002).

Participants’ beliefs about how research influenced their curriculum also suggested variations that were informed by both disciplinary knowledge practices and educational purposes. Physics participants perceived research in the curriculum as providing

specialist knowledge, however their own research was considered to be too advanced for undergraduate students, and so they saw little opportunity for making connections. This belief is congruent with the hierarchical knowledge practices of a hard-pure discipline, where research and teaching are seen as occupying separate planes (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Brew, 2006). Law participants typically perceived their professional experiences as more relevant than their research for preparing students for practice, which is consistent with law as an applied discipline. However in both these disciplines, some participants included student research projects in the curriculum, to allow students to explore their own interests and to develop research skills. These goals reflect

educational purposes beyond the discipline, for engaging and motivating students, and enacting the mission of a research university. Arts participants aligned research with their personal relevance educational purposes by using research essays to allow students to explore their own interests in topics. In the applied disciplines of business and

environmental sciences, participants used problems and projects relevant to both research and practice to provide real world learning experiences. Some of these

participants embedded research throughout their curricula because they believed it was central to the mission of a research university.

Almost half of the participants made explicit reference to pedagogical research, which they saw as distinctive from their disciplinary research. Engaging with pedagogical research led to evidence based approaches to teaching and ongoing curriculum improvement.

Participants’ philosophies and approaches to teaching and learning represent a

continuum of categories from teacher and content focused to facilitating active student learning. These philosophies reflect the range of conceptions of teaching identified in

phenomenographic and cognitive studies (Akerlind, 2003; Kember, 1997; Prosser & Trigwell, 1999). In this study, approaches for facilitating active learning were further differentiated as either experiential or inquiry and research-based. An additional approach was identified as flexible learning, which focused on giving students flexibility of access to resources and learning activities, along with an active learning approach.

Phenomenographic and cognitive studies are concerned with identifying the variations in conceptions and their consequences for teaching and learning approaches and learning outcomes, but do not develop explanatory frameworks for the observed variations. However, Neumann et al. (2002) explores disciplinary knowledge practices as an organising framework to understand similarities and differences in the teaching activities, conceptions and approaches observed within and across disciplines. Many of the teaching activities and approaches identified in this study were congruent with those identified by Neumann et al based on disciplinary knowledge practices, and were also congruent with participants’ beliefs about educational purposes. For example, arts participants, who expressed educational purposes for making learning personally meaningful to students, emphasised student-teacher engagement approaches. Participants from professional and applied disciplines of law, business and environmental sciences identified experiential learning as a teaching philosophy informing their focus on real world problems and skills.

However many participants also described approaches that were not aligned with the expected disciplinary knowledge practices, indicating that they experienced agency in their decisions. For example, physics participants’ disciplinary knowledge practices are associated with a knowledge transmission/ acquisition approach to teaching and

learning. However, most physics participants were using active learning approaches, in particular peer instruction. They described peer instruction as an innovative approach that challenged traditional disciplinary practices, however it is an approach that was developed for physics and has progressively gained acceptance within the discipline (Mazur, 1997).

A more general trend towards active learning approaches was found across disciplines in the study, and participants reported that they were influenced by their experiences of

educational professional development and changing norms for teaching and learning. However, as indicated in the section 5.5.5, participants’ beliefs about active learning were often expressed at the level of ‘folk beliefs’ (Fanghanel, 2007), that being active enhanced student learning, rather than as a fully developed theory of learning.

The term, students, was the most frequently mentioned term by participants throughout their interviews, suggesting that students were a central consideration in their

curriculum decisions. When specifically asked about the influence of students on curriculum they expressed three main concerns: (1) catering for students’ prior knowledge and abilities, and diversity in student background, (2) the importance of motivating, engaging and challenging students, and (3) accounting for, or guiding, students’ learning behaviours.

Beliefs about students’ prior knowledge were a key concern that influenced decisions about the foundational knowledge required in the curriculum and how best to deal with a diversity of student backgrounds. The different ways in which participants responded to their beliefs about student diversity suggested a connection with their approaches to teaching and learning that were content focused, teacher-student engagement focused, or student focused. The literature also finds similar relationships between approaches to teaching and roles and assumptions about how students learn and their prior knowledge (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999; Toohey, 1999). This section identified some useful strategies that participants used to understand and capitalise on students’ different levels of prior knowledge and abilities.