Associate Professor, Facultad de Educacion, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile. Senior Editor, Higher Education, Cogent Education journal. Address: Santiago, Chile
Student Evaluation in Higher Education: Reconceptualising the Student Voice, 2016
This book provides a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the purpose and function of student e... more This book provides a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the purpose and function of student evaluation in higher education. It explores its foundations and the emerging functions, as well as its future potential to improve the quality of university teaching and student learning.
The book systematically assesses the core assumptions underpinning the design of student evaluation models as a tool to improve the quality of teaching. It also analyses the emerging influence of student opinion as a key metric and a powerful proxy for assuring the quality of teachers, teaching and courses in universities. Using the voices of teachers in the day-to-day practices of higher education, the book also explores the actual perceptions held by academics about student evaluation.
It offers the first real attempt to critically analyse the developing influence of student evaluation on contemporary approaches to academic teaching. Using a practice-based perspective and the powerful explanatory potential of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), the implications of the changing focus in the use of the student voice - from development to measurement - are systematically explored and assessed.
Importantly, using the evidence provided by a unique series of practice-based case studies, the book also offers powerful new insights into how the student voice can be reconceptualised to more effectively improve the quality of teaching, curriculum and assessment. Based on this empirical analysis, a series of practical strategies are proposed to enhance the work of student evaluation in the future university to drive pedagogical innovation.
This unique volume provides those interested in student evaluation with a more complex understanding of the development, contemporary function and future potential of the student voice. It also demonstrates how the student voice - in combination with professional dialogue - can be used to encourage more powerful and substantial forms of pedagogical improvement and academic development in higher education environments.
Global university rankings (GUR) have become increasingly influential as a proxy measure of highe... more Global university rankings (GUR) have become increasingly influential as a proxy measure of higher education quality. The more recent development of regionalised forms of rankings has increased their global reach, drawing a greatly expanded range of institutions into their orbit. As a result, regionalised GUR have developed an increasing potential power to shape social perceptions, institutional actions, and everyday academic practices. In this paper, the perceived impact of regionalised forms of GUR is analysed from the perspective of Latin American higher education. Based on a critical meta-synthesis framed by a glonacal heuristic (Marginson and Rhoades, Higher Education 43:281–309, 2002), the tensions arising around the application of regionalised forms of global rankings are mapped. Specifically, the impact of rankings on conceptions of the mission of universities is foregrounded. The meta-synthesis identifies three primary tensions around the regional application of GUR in Latin American contexts: how conceptions of regional higher education quality are most effectively developed, how the local university is imagined under the weight of global expectations, and the relativised value of local agency in assessing quality outcomes. The findings suggest that GUR have created strong fissures in Latin American higher education regarding the missions of institutions, particularly in confronting the powerful hegemonies of the epistemologies of the Global North imposing themselves on Latin American higher education. The paper concludes that the stratification and social anxiety caused by the regional applications of GUR may not be necessarily productive in encouraging regional institutional diversity or in enhancing the local relevance of higher education.
A key promise of neoliberalist ideologies in higher education is the valorization of student choi... more A key promise of neoliberalist ideologies in higher education is the valorization of student choice as a means of (re)shaping practices and improving the responsiveness of institutions. The power of this neoliberal imaginary (Ball, 2012) was grounded in market-like policies that demanded institutional accountability to both afford competition and maximizing prospects of student satisfaction. A key consequence of this imperative has been burgeoning institutional and system-level investment in metric-based instruments designed to measure and compare student experiences, engagement or satisfaction. However, how effective of these neoliberal policies been in empowering student choice and in producing more reflexive institutions? The research reported here investigated the influence of student voices in one of the earliest adopters of this neoliberal imaginary: the Chilean higher education system. This qualitative study explored the contemporary institutional role and function of student voices using a university typology, with data developed through artefact analyses and interviews with educational leaders. The findings suggest that institutions have heterogeneous orientations ranging from pseudo-democratic to instrumental forms of engagement, reflecting the distinctive sociocultural histories of institutions. However, the outcomes suggest that student voices are not a substantial presence in quality assurance or improvement practices.
The student evaluation of teaching and courses is ubiquitous and an increasingly influential elem... more The student evaluation of teaching and courses is ubiquitous and an increasingly influential element of the Australian higher education landscape. It is significant in the assessment of the value of academic work and often central in promotional processes and privileged in institutional funding arrangements. Yet the assumptions of the student evaluation model remain subject to limited critical enquiry compared to other dimensions of practice in Australian higher education. This paper explores the potential reasons for this, as well as the range of research around student evaluation that has been undertaken, which is largely confined to statistical and functionalist explorations of student-based evaluative practice. It suggests that evaluation of pedagogical practices needs to be considered as a complex social activity. The paper also argues that there is a need to challenge the range of significant mythologies that underpin student evaluation models that are based on reductive quant...
Internationally, there is increasing interest in the value of incorporating core practices into s... more Internationally, there is increasing interest in the value of incorporating core practices into second language (L2) teacher education programs. This article reports on a research project that investigated how a set core practices are integrated into the Methods courses and practicums in Chilean language teacher education programs for English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was framed by a two-stage, sequential data collection strategy based on a questionnaire ( n = 48) and semi-structured interviews ( n = 21) to university-based, Chilean English teacher educators. The questionnaire identified teaching practices in use, whilst the interviews sought to understand how teacher educators taught these identified teaching practices, as well as the rationale for these choices. Two practices – facilitating target language comprehensibility and building discourse communities – emerged as the most prominent practices. Primarily, these practices were taught through modelling, decomposin...
Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-ser... more Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-service teachers as a means of breaching the perceived divide between theoretical knowledge and contexts of practice. However, aside from the considerable methodological challenges of enacting action research itself, pre-service teachers also enter schools as 'outsiders', therefore often simultaneously struggling to make sense of both their research mission and school context. This anxiety is amplified by the characteristic relationship of action research outcomes to summative, programme-level assessment of prospective teacher capability. Following research that confirmed negative experiences of a group of late-stage, EFL pre-service teachers using action research-based projects in two Chilean universities, potential alternative methods of encouraging research practice was investigated and piloted. Based on the outcomes of this research, a new classroom-based model was designed to provide a more useful and ultimately productive research experience for pre-service teachers, particularly those in the challenging environment of EFL teaching. This model stresses the need for preservice teachers to be offered more research autonomy, to be less 'problem' focussed and to be more actively supported in the planning and enactment of achievable research to ensure the learning outcomes sought for this type of research-based inquiry were achieved.
Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-ser... more Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-service teachers as a means of breaching the perceived divide between theoretical knowledge and contexts of practice. However, aside from the considerable methodological challenges of enacting action research itself, pre-service teachers also enter schools as 'outsiders', therefore often simultaneously struggling to make sense of both their research mission and school context. This anxiety is amplified by the characteristic relationship of action research outcomes to summative, programme-level assessment of prospective teacher capability. Following research that confirmed negative experiences of a group of late-stage, EFL pre-service teachers using action research-based projects in two Chilean universities, potential alternative methods of encouraging research practice was investigated and piloted. Based on the outcomes of this research, a new classroom-based model was designed to provide a more useful and ultimately productive research experience for pre-service teachers, particularly those in the challenging environment of EFL teaching. This model stresses the need for preservice teachers to be offered more research autonomy, to be less 'problem' focussed and to be more actively supported in the planning and enactment of achievable research to ensure the learning outcomes sought for this type of research-based inquiry were achieved.
3rd international lifelong learning conference, Rydges …, 2004
This paper analyses a significant re-orientation of vocational education and training (VET) teach... more This paper analyses a significant re-orientation of vocational education and training (VET) teacher education programs at a major TAFE provider, to create a constructivist model for teacher education. The paper explores debates emerging in the VET sector around the impact of ...
The transforming contexts of higher education are heightening the imperative for more sophisticat... more The transforming contexts of higher education are heightening the imperative for more sophisticated understandings of student learning. An increasingly critical challenge is how to most effectively engage with student perspectives to more effectively understand the nature of their learning experiences. Traditionally, student ratings have been the primary means with which to understand the student voice. Although approaches to student ratings have fragmented in recent years with diversifying research interest in student satisfaction, experience and engagement, relatively limited attention has been given to the epistemological underpinnings of ratings-based surveys or toward emerging alternative approaches to engaging the student voice. This paper analyses the epistemic foundations of ratings-based methods in the context of other emerging strategies that attempt to engage with student voices more collaboratively. From this analysis, a map of the range of current and emerging approaches to the capturing of the student evaluative voice is proposed to identify their key characteristics in understanding and prospectively shaping practice. This analysis demonstrates that although alternative methods possess a clear potential to respond more effectively to the ever more complex pedagogical demands, their potential is limited by the hegemony of the ‘surveyed voice’ and the resource challenges of sustaining heightened student engagement.
Student Evaluation in Higher Education: Reconceptualising the Student Voice, 2016
This book provides a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the purpose and function of student e... more This book provides a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the purpose and function of student evaluation in higher education. It explores its foundations and the emerging functions, as well as its future potential to improve the quality of university teaching and student learning.
The book systematically assesses the core assumptions underpinning the design of student evaluation models as a tool to improve the quality of teaching. It also analyses the emerging influence of student opinion as a key metric and a powerful proxy for assuring the quality of teachers, teaching and courses in universities. Using the voices of teachers in the day-to-day practices of higher education, the book also explores the actual perceptions held by academics about student evaluation.
It offers the first real attempt to critically analyse the developing influence of student evaluation on contemporary approaches to academic teaching. Using a practice-based perspective and the powerful explanatory potential of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), the implications of the changing focus in the use of the student voice - from development to measurement - are systematically explored and assessed.
Importantly, using the evidence provided by a unique series of practice-based case studies, the book also offers powerful new insights into how the student voice can be reconceptualised to more effectively improve the quality of teaching, curriculum and assessment. Based on this empirical analysis, a series of practical strategies are proposed to enhance the work of student evaluation in the future university to drive pedagogical innovation.
This unique volume provides those interested in student evaluation with a more complex understanding of the development, contemporary function and future potential of the student voice. It also demonstrates how the student voice - in combination with professional dialogue - can be used to encourage more powerful and substantial forms of pedagogical improvement and academic development in higher education environments.
Global university rankings (GUR) have become increasingly influential as a proxy measure of highe... more Global university rankings (GUR) have become increasingly influential as a proxy measure of higher education quality. The more recent development of regionalised forms of rankings has increased their global reach, drawing a greatly expanded range of institutions into their orbit. As a result, regionalised GUR have developed an increasing potential power to shape social perceptions, institutional actions, and everyday academic practices. In this paper, the perceived impact of regionalised forms of GUR is analysed from the perspective of Latin American higher education. Based on a critical meta-synthesis framed by a glonacal heuristic (Marginson and Rhoades, Higher Education 43:281–309, 2002), the tensions arising around the application of regionalised forms of global rankings are mapped. Specifically, the impact of rankings on conceptions of the mission of universities is foregrounded. The meta-synthesis identifies three primary tensions around the regional application of GUR in Latin American contexts: how conceptions of regional higher education quality are most effectively developed, how the local university is imagined under the weight of global expectations, and the relativised value of local agency in assessing quality outcomes. The findings suggest that GUR have created strong fissures in Latin American higher education regarding the missions of institutions, particularly in confronting the powerful hegemonies of the epistemologies of the Global North imposing themselves on Latin American higher education. The paper concludes that the stratification and social anxiety caused by the regional applications of GUR may not be necessarily productive in encouraging regional institutional diversity or in enhancing the local relevance of higher education.
A key promise of neoliberalist ideologies in higher education is the valorization of student choi... more A key promise of neoliberalist ideologies in higher education is the valorization of student choice as a means of (re)shaping practices and improving the responsiveness of institutions. The power of this neoliberal imaginary (Ball, 2012) was grounded in market-like policies that demanded institutional accountability to both afford competition and maximizing prospects of student satisfaction. A key consequence of this imperative has been burgeoning institutional and system-level investment in metric-based instruments designed to measure and compare student experiences, engagement or satisfaction. However, how effective of these neoliberal policies been in empowering student choice and in producing more reflexive institutions? The research reported here investigated the influence of student voices in one of the earliest adopters of this neoliberal imaginary: the Chilean higher education system. This qualitative study explored the contemporary institutional role and function of student voices using a university typology, with data developed through artefact analyses and interviews with educational leaders. The findings suggest that institutions have heterogeneous orientations ranging from pseudo-democratic to instrumental forms of engagement, reflecting the distinctive sociocultural histories of institutions. However, the outcomes suggest that student voices are not a substantial presence in quality assurance or improvement practices.
The student evaluation of teaching and courses is ubiquitous and an increasingly influential elem... more The student evaluation of teaching and courses is ubiquitous and an increasingly influential element of the Australian higher education landscape. It is significant in the assessment of the value of academic work and often central in promotional processes and privileged in institutional funding arrangements. Yet the assumptions of the student evaluation model remain subject to limited critical enquiry compared to other dimensions of practice in Australian higher education. This paper explores the potential reasons for this, as well as the range of research around student evaluation that has been undertaken, which is largely confined to statistical and functionalist explorations of student-based evaluative practice. It suggests that evaluation of pedagogical practices needs to be considered as a complex social activity. The paper also argues that there is a need to challenge the range of significant mythologies that underpin student evaluation models that are based on reductive quant...
Internationally, there is increasing interest in the value of incorporating core practices into s... more Internationally, there is increasing interest in the value of incorporating core practices into second language (L2) teacher education programs. This article reports on a research project that investigated how a set core practices are integrated into the Methods courses and practicums in Chilean language teacher education programs for English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was framed by a two-stage, sequential data collection strategy based on a questionnaire ( n = 48) and semi-structured interviews ( n = 21) to university-based, Chilean English teacher educators. The questionnaire identified teaching practices in use, whilst the interviews sought to understand how teacher educators taught these identified teaching practices, as well as the rationale for these choices. Two practices – facilitating target language comprehensibility and building discourse communities – emerged as the most prominent practices. Primarily, these practices were taught through modelling, decomposin...
Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-ser... more Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-service teachers as a means of breaching the perceived divide between theoretical knowledge and contexts of practice. However, aside from the considerable methodological challenges of enacting action research itself, pre-service teachers also enter schools as 'outsiders', therefore often simultaneously struggling to make sense of both their research mission and school context. This anxiety is amplified by the characteristic relationship of action research outcomes to summative, programme-level assessment of prospective teacher capability. Following research that confirmed negative experiences of a group of late-stage, EFL pre-service teachers using action research-based projects in two Chilean universities, potential alternative methods of encouraging research practice was investigated and piloted. Based on the outcomes of this research, a new classroom-based model was designed to provide a more useful and ultimately productive research experience for pre-service teachers, particularly those in the challenging environment of EFL teaching. This model stresses the need for preservice teachers to be offered more research autonomy, to be less 'problem' focussed and to be more actively supported in the planning and enactment of achievable research to ensure the learning outcomes sought for this type of research-based inquiry were achieved.
Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-ser... more Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-service teachers as a means of breaching the perceived divide between theoretical knowledge and contexts of practice. However, aside from the considerable methodological challenges of enacting action research itself, pre-service teachers also enter schools as 'outsiders', therefore often simultaneously struggling to make sense of both their research mission and school context. This anxiety is amplified by the characteristic relationship of action research outcomes to summative, programme-level assessment of prospective teacher capability. Following research that confirmed negative experiences of a group of late-stage, EFL pre-service teachers using action research-based projects in two Chilean universities, potential alternative methods of encouraging research practice was investigated and piloted. Based on the outcomes of this research, a new classroom-based model was designed to provide a more useful and ultimately productive research experience for pre-service teachers, particularly those in the challenging environment of EFL teaching. This model stresses the need for preservice teachers to be offered more research autonomy, to be less 'problem' focussed and to be more actively supported in the planning and enactment of achievable research to ensure the learning outcomes sought for this type of research-based inquiry were achieved.
3rd international lifelong learning conference, Rydges …, 2004
This paper analyses a significant re-orientation of vocational education and training (VET) teach... more This paper analyses a significant re-orientation of vocational education and training (VET) teacher education programs at a major TAFE provider, to create a constructivist model for teacher education. The paper explores debates emerging in the VET sector around the impact of ...
The transforming contexts of higher education are heightening the imperative for more sophisticat... more The transforming contexts of higher education are heightening the imperative for more sophisticated understandings of student learning. An increasingly critical challenge is how to most effectively engage with student perspectives to more effectively understand the nature of their learning experiences. Traditionally, student ratings have been the primary means with which to understand the student voice. Although approaches to student ratings have fragmented in recent years with diversifying research interest in student satisfaction, experience and engagement, relatively limited attention has been given to the epistemological underpinnings of ratings-based surveys or toward emerging alternative approaches to engaging the student voice. This paper analyses the epistemic foundations of ratings-based methods in the context of other emerging strategies that attempt to engage with student voices more collaboratively. From this analysis, a map of the range of current and emerging approaches to the capturing of the student evaluative voice is proposed to identify their key characteristics in understanding and prospectively shaping practice. This analysis demonstrates that although alternative methods possess a clear potential to respond more effectively to the ever more complex pedagogical demands, their potential is limited by the hegemony of the ‘surveyed voice’ and the resource challenges of sustaining heightened student engagement.
Student ratings are now an accepted orthodoxy in global higher education environments. They form ... more Student ratings are now an accepted orthodoxy in global higher education environments. They form an increasingly important metric that has been assimilated as a robust proxy measure of quality for evaluating individual, institutional and even system-level performativity. Although the technical design aspects of student ratings have received extensive attention, the broad sociocultural contexts of their use in higher education settings have had considerably less attention. In this study, a meta-synthesis framed by a critical sociocultural perspective was used to investigate the social evolution of student ratings over the last four decades. The outcomes suggest that student ratings have developed through three primary motives: an originating democratic improvement imperative; a dominating quality assurance assimilation and the emerging drive of satisfying the student-as-consumer. This analysis suggests that student ratings cannot be understood only in their benign technical form but must also be considered as performing significant functions in supporting the changing social imperatives of evolving higher education policy.
SRHE International Research Conference 2021 (Re)connecting, (Re)building: Higher Education in Transformative Times 6 – 10 December 2021, 2021
This paper reports on research on the contemporary effect of global university rankings on Latin ... more This paper reports on research on the contemporary effect of global university rankings on Latin American higher education. Over the last decade, several major international ranking models have moved to apply rankings metrics at a regional level to address the marginalising of universities from the global south in their lead offerings. Using a critical meta-synthesis method, the research analysed the application and impact of these rankings across Latin American higher education models. The analysis identified escalating anxiety that regionalised rankings have the potential to undermine institutional and academic diversity, imposing measures that discount the unique sociocultural histories of systems and undermining the differing social missions entrusted to Latin American higher education. The implications are that the imposition of the assumptions of global rankings are disrupting frameworks of meaning about the purpose of higher education, suggesting that alternative metrics that better reflect local system and institutional imperatives and trajectories are necessary.
Virtual Meeting on Teaching, Learning and Evaluation in Higher Education, 2020
The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharper relief one of the key contemporary challen... more The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharper relief one of the key contemporary challenges of higher education: how to most effectively engage students. The move to online teaching has increased the potential distance between teachers and students, amplifying the challenges of designing conditions for meaningful learning (Marinoni, Land, & Jensen, 2020; Rapanta, Botturi, Goodyear, Guàrdia, & Koole, 2020). This development has also forced more questions about how academic teachers can most effectively capture and harness student perspectives on their learning experiences to enhance current and prospective approaches to learning design.
Recent research undertaken across Chilean universities (Darwin, 2020a) suggests that most institutions place largely instrumental value on the student voice, with most universities relying primarily on end-of-semester, student ratings-based surveys as a means of quantifying student responses to their learning experiences. Moreover, existing (and anticipated) systems of institutional and program-level accreditation overseen by the Comisión Nacional de Acreditación (CNA) place little emphasis on the need for universities to better understand or more effectively evaluate student learning experiences. So, how has this unique reliance on student surveys evolved in higher education—including Chilean institutions—and why have these been adopted as a legitimate proxy for understanding teaching quality? Moreover, what alternatives have emerged as a potential more substantial and effective means of understanding student perspectives on their learning experiences?
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, 2020
This paper reports on the outcomes of a qualitative study that investigated the discursive positi... more This paper reports on the outcomes of a qualitative study that investigated the discursive position of the student voice in contemporary Chilean higher education. The data for the study was derived from the analysis of the system-level accreditation frameworks and publicly available institutional documents, in tandem with interviews with key university stakeholders and analysis of local artefacts. The outcomes of the research demonstrate that the position of the student voice remains largely peripheral, with limited evidence emerging of student opinion or representation performing any defined function in influencing the current or perspective pedagogical work of Chilean universities. This suggests there is a paradox between the rhetorical notions and the lived reality of students in the Chilean higher education model.
education, its status and function in contemporary higher education is arguably poorly theorised ... more education, its status and function in contemporary higher education is arguably poorly theorised and ambiguous (Kahn, 2014, Seale, 2010). In this vacuum, the rise of the discourses of student-as-consumer—that have been fundamental to the neo-liberalist development of universities over recent decades—have tended to orientate the student voice toward discriminating levels of satisfaction with educational services. This data, most often commodified in the form of standardised student satisfaction surveys, has in itself become a form of high-stakes testing to benchmark academic and institutional performance. This reification has been strengthened by the use of student satisfaction ratings as a foundational element of international and local university rankings. In response, considerable energy is now invested by universities in order to understand how to more effectively engage students in order to improve these levels of student satisfaction. This has generated ever more sophisticated efforts to measure, and even surveil, the action and activities of students. Arguably, this has tended to further abstract student voice, with a narrower focus on the metrics of activity.
This paper reports on a major research project that is investigating contemporary conceptualisations of the student voice in higher education and potential alternative constructions of the student voice. Specifically, it reports on a systematic analysis undertaken in the Chilean higher education model of the function ascribed to the student voice, including at the global level of systemic quality assurance, the higher education policy level and at the more local institutional level. The outcomes of this aspect of the research suggest that the student voice is considered largely in an instrumental form, primarily seen as contributing confirming evidence toward the quality assurance of student satisfaction with university teaching and levels of institutional support. Scant evidence emerged of the potential function of the student voice beyond this assurance function, such as for instance as a potential catalyst for substantive pedagogical improvement or as a means of engaging students more actively in the learning process. These outcomes suggest that the effect of neo-liberalist approaches to the development of higher education has been to marginalise more participative and democratic forms of engaging with the student voice that are more familiar outside post-compulsory education environments.
School-based practicums have been recognised as a critical site for pre-service teacher learning ... more School-based practicums have been recognised as a critical site for pre-service teacher learning (Flores & Day 2006; Roth & Radford 2011). A key challenge for pre-service EFL teachers undertaking practicums is maintaining confidence in the face of often daunting pedagogical problems elicited by the specific contexts of language teaching (Zan, 2013). This effect is seen as further compounded in social environments where English language capabilities and motivations of learners are generally low, or socio-economic factors deny opportunities for students to be effectively supported in language learning tasks (Barahona 2016). Moreover, in those countries where English remains essentially peripheral, these significant dilemmas confronting pre-service teachers (and those who seek to effectively equip them for later practice) are becoming further pronounced with rising social demands for expanded English language capability under the relentless drive of globalization. This paper reports on an innovative curriculum design response to these escalating challenges of preparing pre-service EFL teachers for their practicum experiences in a major university in Chile. This approach sought to disrupt conventional preparatory models centred on anticipated practice scenarios and micro-teaching scenarios. Instead, the design was re-orientated toward arming pre-service teachers with a range of pedagogical tools to improve their ability to more broadly analyse professional practice environments and to devise appropriate situated responses to the significant challenges of the teaching practicum. The range of tools integrated into the design of the curriculum included frameworks such as Brookfield’s critically reflective lenses, sociocultural analysis, situated action research, Bandura’s self-efficacy and the formative student voice. The ambition behind the course design was to improve the ability of students to more broadly analyse and more effectively understand the volatile and unpredictable nature of professional practice contexts. This was toward engendering more substantially laid pedagogical foundations that encouraged the sense and actions identified as characteristic of autonomous teaching professionals (Eraut, 1994; Harrison, Lawson & Wortley, 2007). The paper considers the significance of this approach as a potential response to the challenges increasingly facing the teaching practicum. Specifically, this potential is explored as a tangible response to three critical challenges facing pre-service ESL teachers in their practicum: the dissonance between expected teaching practices and understandings of effective pedagogy gained in university study; the ability to respond to the deadly pedagogical habits that have often formed in school environments, and encouraging the development of greater pre-service teacher agency as a means of counteracting the disorientation between theory and practice.
This presentation analyses the foundational conceptualisations of Action Research (AR), and their... more This presentation analyses the foundational conceptualisations of Action Research (AR), and their implications for use in EFL teaching programs as a means of supporting prospective teaching practices. Reflecting on the experiences of Chilean teachers undertaking university-based action research projects, the presentation critically examines the struggle of pre and in-service teachers in making action research relevant as a professional tool to understand their teaching practices, whilst also engaging with it quite differently as a bounded form of university-based assessment. Further reflection is made on enhancing the usefulness of conventional AR methodology.
A fundamental and ever more complex challenge for pre-service English teachers undertaking practi... more A fundamental and ever more complex challenge for pre-service English teachers undertaking practicums in Chile is maintaining confidence in the face of often daunting pedagogical problems. This paper analyses the design thinking behind an innovative course which offers teachers a range of proven pedagogical tools intended to improve their ability to more broadly analyse professional practice and undertake more autonomous forms of critical reflection. The course is part of an English teacher education program and responds to rising student calls for enhanced educational drives in the language teaching program It seeks to skill teachers with a range of pedagogical tools to respond to the significant challenges of the teaching practicum. It responded to three identified limitations in pre-service teachers approaches to situated practice: the triumph of pragmatism (dissonance between everyday expected teaching practices and their broader understandings of effective pedagogy gained in university study), deadly pedagogical habits (habits that have built up in school contexts in response to a variety of pressures) and the need to build greater levels of educational agency (counteracting the disorientation between theory and practice). Hence the core ambition behind the course design was to lift the ability of students to more systematically analyse (and therefore more effectively manage) the often volatile nature of professional practice in practicum settings. The range of tools integrated into the course included Brookfield’s critically reflective lenses, sociocultural frameworks, situated action research, Bandura’s conception of self-efficacy and the use of student evaluation. The nature of assessment focuses on specific pedagogical problems students have already encountered in practicum contexts, using the analytical tools considered in the course. The terminal learning objective of the course is to assist pre-service English teachers undertaking future practicums to maintain confidence in the face of often daunting pedagogical problems.
Student feedback-based evaluation is a familiar feature of the contemporary global higher educ... more Student feedback-based evaluation is a familiar feature of the contemporary global higher education landscape (Chalmers, 2007; Harvey, 2003; Johnson, 2000; Kulik, 2001). Student evaluation now acts as a powerful proxy for assuring the quality of teaching, courses and programs across diverse discipline and qualification frameworks. The data it generates increasingly guides significant judgments about the quality of teaching practices, as well as academic appointment, performance and promotion (Harvey, 2003). It is therefore more critical in shaping understandings of what constitutes effective pedagogical practices in university teaching environments. However, at the same time, student feedback-based evaluation also remains largely a frequently unwelcome fringe dweller in current academic teaching life, often responded to with scepticism and unease (Edstrom, 2008). For many academics, such scepticism arises around the real capacity of student feedback to effectively mediate the increasingly complex environments of higher education learning. Indeed, it has been argued that despite its considerable and influential institutional power, student feedback is widely perceived by academics to be inherently narrow and superficial (Edstrom, 2008; Kulik, 2001; Schuck, Gordon, & Buchanan, 2008). This paper reports on the empirical outcomes of case study-based action research conducted in a major Australian university, which was developed around identifying the tensions emerging around conventional quantitative forms of student evaluation in two major university teaching programs. These case studies suggested that the contradictions around the role of the student voice—contested between quality improvement of pedagogies and quality assurance of educational ‘products’ is having an increasing destabilising impact of how the nature of pedagogical work is understood. It is asserted that this outcome has potentially significant implications for those involved in both initial and ongoing professional development of academic teachers in universities.
This paper considers the theoretical implications of a significant CHAT-based research study unde... more This paper considers the theoretical implications of a significant CHAT-based research study undertaken in a higher education environment.
This study centred on the contemporary role and function of student evaluation in influencing academic pedagogical practices and the prospective developmental potential of the student voice. Using a novel twinning of CHAT and action research, the research sought to also determine whether this combination offered a viable and more sustainable expansion of the developmental potential of CHAT in situated practice settings.
The outcomes of the research demonstrated some expansive potential in the approach, however the complexity of engaging participants in the theoretical tools of CHAT represented a significant challenge. Although clear limitations emerged around both the model’s design (and particularly its complexity), the frame of action research provided some opportunity for participants to more genuinely engage with CHAT than would have been either feasible or desirable using a more directive interventionist method. It also facilitated developmental change over time that was more organic and self-directed than would have occurred with more atomised forms of intervention. On a broader level, the research also raised important questions about the methodological forms of intervention that are likely to become more necessary in ever more complex and demanding workplace contexts. Central to this is the need to critically re-mediate the CHAT framework to discover the potential of more democratised and less prescribed form of intervention than is conventional associated with this form of workplace-based research.
This study (albeit in a limited form) demonstrated the potential of action research to offer a more accessible, democratic and complementary methodology for CHAT theorising. It also potentially responds to claims that conventional interventionist drives of CHAT may over-socialise the nature of individual agency that has been identified as a potential limitation in CHAT-based workplace research. Based on these outcomes, the paper advances some perspectives on how the methodological tools of CHAT could be further developed to work in a more dynamic and ongoing form in everyday workplace practice.
The concept of identity and the link with language as a social and political construction has bee... more The concept of identity and the link with language as a social and political construction has been subject to a substantial body of research in the social sciences. Our interest in the link between language and social identity is rooted in our lived experiences as a man and a woman, traversing from/to North-South. In this autoethnographic work - centered on a critical dialogic exchange - we engage in processes of critical reflection on our lived experiences in order to explore the concepts of language, identity and the attempts to decolonize our own beliefs. This ongoing illumination reveals a complex and often conflicting experience of ‘belonging and becoming’ in different spaces and spheres: within cultures, within families and within academia.
In this exploratory paper, we analyse the key formative influences that have shaped this complex experience of belonging and becoming, especially regarding the learning and use of a foreign language (English/Spanish) and how it simultaneously acts as both an empowerment tool to participate in a global society, as well as a form of cultural and social exclusion. Through this work, we seek to build on an understanding that the formation of identity is fluid and dynamic, developed through experiences of relentless learning and unlearning. Such experiences are necessarily embodied in our own language use, made up of many (and often contradictory) self-understandings which are distributed across the material and social environment (Holland 1998).
The rise and fall of Australian higher education
There is no doubt that the Australian higher ed... more The rise and fall of Australian higher education
There is no doubt that the Australian higher education system has grown dramatically in the last fifty years. Yet so much of this growth has not been primarily driven by the genuine educational aspirations of government leaders to grow a high quality university system. Instead, growth has primarily (though not exclusively) come from real political pressures to broaden access to a university education. Unfortunately all too often the need to address these political demands has led to educational pragmatism, centred on generating university places rather than genuinely building the capability of Australian universities. Now we are on the eve of a further dramatic transformation, again based on the logic of expanding university places. This transformation is driven by a radical model that is unashamedly based on ‘other people’s ideas’, amounting to the effective privatisation of Australian higher education. This paper will reflect on this broad history and will argue that this market-driven model will represent (another) failure of leadership in higher education.
Student feedback-based evaluation has been widely adopted over the last three decades in American... more Student feedback-based evaluation has been widely adopted over the last three decades in American, European and Australian universities, moving rapidly from the status of an academic development fringe dweller to a privileged institutional citizen in the recent life of the academy. This paper reports on the key contradictions and tensions identified in a small-scale research project that sought to understand student feedback-based evaluation as a complex socio-cultural activity in Australian higher education, using the explanatory potential of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). This research used an action research model informed by CHAT to investigate how conceptions of academic practice are influenced by the activity of student feedback-based evaluation. This was developed through a series of interpretive lenses considering the historicity of student feedback-based evaluation and the disturbances, contradictions and tensions that have been fundamental to its evolution. This paper reports specifically on these identified contradictions and tensions that were identified in this research, notably ambiguities around the desired and feasible outcomes of student learning, complex and divergent expectations of graduate learning outcomes, heightening demands for accountability in 'autonomous' academic practices, growing uncertainty around the rights and responsibilities of academics, students and institutions and ever more complex demarcations for academics, professional staff and students in learning relationships. These key contradictions and tensions are broadly explored in the context of the current institutional framing and contemporary work of student evaluation in Australian higher education that is increasing contested around the poles of accountability versus enhancement, quality versus resources and pedagogy versus consumerism. Finally, the implications of these contradictions and tensions are considered in the development of tentative conclusions on the potential expansive use of student evaluation in higher education settings.
As has been observed, CHAT does not provide a ready-made methodology nor a strongly predictive th... more As has been observed, CHAT does not provide a ready-made methodology nor a strongly predictive theory but its explanatory potential provides researchers with a powerful framework for understanding complex socially mediated relations and
potentially contribute to transform social practices. This paper explores two methodological responses to the application of CHAT in educational research. The two studies one in higher education and one in teacher education offer divergent
methodological approaches that are both conceptually drawn from the CHAT tradition that understands learning as an inherently social activity. One of the studies
sought to study a novel use of activity theory with an action research methodology to analyse the expansive potential of students' opinions in higher education pedagogy.
Whilst the second study, used CHAT as a heuristic tool to examine how pre-service teachers learnt to teach EFL in a Chilean SLTE program. This paper will seek to
analyse the commonalities and differences in these two methodological approaches, including compared to more conventional interventionist methodologies. Although
the methodological approaches used were different, the findings of both studies concluded that learning is an activity that begins on the social plane, in social relations among individuals engaging in practical activity within spatial, temporal, and social contexts before making its way to the intra-psychological plane of consciousness. The paper will conclude to tentatively draw some observations about how CHAT methodologies need to broaden for application in educational research environments.
La actual pandemia de COVID-19 ha puesto de manifiesto uno de los principales retos contemporáneo... more La actual pandemia de COVID-19 ha puesto de manifiesto uno de los principales retos contemporáneos de la enseñanza superior: cómo lograr la participación más efectiva de los estudiantes. El paso a la enseñanza en línea ha aumentado la distancia potencial entre los profesores y los estudiantes, amplificando los retos de diseñar las condiciones para un aprendizaje significativo (Marinoni, Land & Jensen, 2020; Rapanta, Botturi, Goodyear, Guàrdia, & Koole, 2020). Este desarrollo también ha obligado a plantear más preguntas sobre cómo los académicos pueden captar y aprovechar más efectivamente las perspectivas de los estudiantes sobre sus experiencias de aprendizaje para mejorar los enfoques actuales y futuros del diseño del aprendizaje.
It is now over a quarter of a century since the fall of the 17-year Pinochet dictatorship and the... more It is now over a quarter of a century since the fall of the 17-year Pinochet dictatorship and the return of democracy in Chile. Yet the impact of this period remains profoundly felt in contemporary Chilean life. This is not only a result of the now well-known heinous crimes committed by the dictatorship: the more than 3000 Chileans murdered, the widespread use of brutal torture, the quarter of a million arbitrary arrests and the massive campaign of internal and external exile of political opponents. It is also a result of the ongoing damage inflicted by a series of radical economic, political and constitutional measures imposed during the dictatorship, many of which have proven almost impossible to unravel. These measures implemented in the late 1970s and early 1980s included the mass privatisation of public assets, the slashing of all state expenditure (aside from that of the military), outlawing of organised labour and the sudden removal of price controls and trade restrictions. As a consequence, Chile today has the highest level of income inequity and the lowest public investment in education in the OECD, as well as being one of the most privatised economies in the world. Significantly, these outcomes are a testament to the extreme free-market theories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, who—under the benign tutelage of dictatorship—were able to undertake their first 'real life' experimentation without fear of social consequences. And now in Chile, we are able to clearly observe the profound social and economic implications of four decades of neo-liberalist economic policy. So how did this disastrous social experiment emerge and what implications has it had for a generation of Chileans? As is the case with so much of the recent history of Latin America, what happened in Chile has deep roots in the obsessive desire of the United States to maintain its political and economic hegemony in the region. We know from declassified documents from the Nixon-era White House that the real prospect of the election of socialist Salvador Allende in the 1970 Chilean Presidential election was something the US refused to accept. Indeed, the now infamous Henry Kissinger (who was Nixon's Secretary of State at the time) argued to that 'the election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere'. The threat (and inspiration) of a democratic socialist who may threaten the interests of US capital was too much for the White House to bear. This was the catalyst for the commencement of a CIA-led covert campaign in Chile, which was to involve the funding of Allende's opponents and increased contact with the Chilean military forces. However, despite their best efforts—including an attempt to stop Allende's inauguration through the assassination of the Chilean Chief of the Armed Forces days before—the covert campaign failed and Allende became president in November 1970. Refusing to accept the democratic outcome and enraged by Allende's popular early moves to nationalise foreign capital and moves toward agrarian reform, the Nixon administration further stepped up its covert operations to bring the Allende government down. This involved 'making the economy scream' through an economic blockade and such things as funding truck drivers to strike and encouraging the stockpiling of goods to create shortages. More insidiously, the
Chile was the first country in Latin America to introduce a market-based model and tuition fees f... more Chile was the first country in Latin America to introduce a market-based model and tuition fees for post-secondary education. In 1980, under the influence of emerging US free-market economists, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet opened up the then small and largely elite university system to deregulated private, including for-profit provision.
Today, Chile now has a significant post-secondary system, with around 75% of students attending new private universities, professional institutes and technical colleges created since 1980. However, Chile also now has the highest level of private contributions and lowest public funding per capita in the OECD. There has also been rising social concern about the failure of a number of private institutions, high dropout rates and the inconsistent quality of educational outcomes these institutions are producing. Now the Chilean government is proposing major reforms. What are the details of the government’s plan and how has it been received? Will changes spell the end of for-profit post-secondary education in Chile?
A seismic shift in how Australia's universities do business was near-inevitable. Students will pa... more A seismic shift in how Australia's universities do business was near-inevitable. Students will pay more for an education system less concerned with the public good.
In this session, I debate the challenges of market-based higher education in Australia, including... more In this session, I debate the challenges of market-based higher education in Australia, including deregulation and educational quality. The audience also put a series of further questions for disucssion
Uploads
Books by Stephen Darwin
The book systematically assesses the core assumptions underpinning the design of student evaluation models as a tool to improve the quality of teaching. It also analyses the emerging influence of student opinion as a key metric and a powerful proxy for assuring the quality of teachers, teaching and courses in universities. Using the voices of teachers in the day-to-day practices of higher education, the book also explores the actual perceptions held by academics about student evaluation.
It offers the first real attempt to critically analyse the developing influence of student evaluation on contemporary approaches to academic teaching. Using a practice-based perspective and the powerful explanatory potential of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), the implications of the changing focus in the use of the student voice - from development to measurement - are systematically explored and assessed.
Importantly, using the evidence provided by a unique series of practice-based case studies, the book also offers powerful new insights into how the student voice can be reconceptualised to more effectively improve the quality of teaching, curriculum and assessment. Based on this empirical analysis, a series of practical strategies are proposed to enhance the work of student evaluation in the future university to drive pedagogical innovation.
This unique volume provides those interested in student evaluation with a more complex understanding of the development, contemporary function and future potential of the student voice. It also demonstrates how the student voice - in combination with professional dialogue - can be used to encourage more powerful and substantial forms of pedagogical improvement and academic development in higher education environments.
Papers by Stephen Darwin
The book systematically assesses the core assumptions underpinning the design of student evaluation models as a tool to improve the quality of teaching. It also analyses the emerging influence of student opinion as a key metric and a powerful proxy for assuring the quality of teachers, teaching and courses in universities. Using the voices of teachers in the day-to-day practices of higher education, the book also explores the actual perceptions held by academics about student evaluation.
It offers the first real attempt to critically analyse the developing influence of student evaluation on contemporary approaches to academic teaching. Using a practice-based perspective and the powerful explanatory potential of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), the implications of the changing focus in the use of the student voice - from development to measurement - are systematically explored and assessed.
Importantly, using the evidence provided by a unique series of practice-based case studies, the book also offers powerful new insights into how the student voice can be reconceptualised to more effectively improve the quality of teaching, curriculum and assessment. Based on this empirical analysis, a series of practical strategies are proposed to enhance the work of student evaluation in the future university to drive pedagogical innovation.
This unique volume provides those interested in student evaluation with a more complex understanding of the development, contemporary function and future potential of the student voice. It also demonstrates how the student voice - in combination with professional dialogue - can be used to encourage more powerful and substantial forms of pedagogical improvement and academic development in higher education environments.
Recent research undertaken across Chilean universities (Darwin, 2020a) suggests that most institutions place largely instrumental value on the student voice, with most universities relying primarily on end-of-semester, student ratings-based surveys as a means of quantifying student responses to their learning experiences. Moreover, existing (and anticipated) systems of institutional and program-level accreditation overseen by the Comisión Nacional de Acreditación (CNA) place little emphasis on the need for universities to better understand or more effectively evaluate student learning experiences. So, how has this unique reliance on student surveys evolved in higher education—including Chilean institutions—and why have these been adopted as a legitimate proxy for understanding teaching quality? Moreover, what alternatives have emerged as a potential more substantial and effective means of understanding student perspectives on their learning experiences?
This paper reports on a major research project that is investigating contemporary conceptualisations of the student voice in higher education and potential alternative constructions of the student voice. Specifically, it reports on a systematic analysis undertaken in the Chilean higher education model of the function ascribed to the student voice, including at the global level of systemic quality assurance, the higher education policy level and at the more local institutional level. The outcomes of this aspect of the research suggest that the student voice is considered largely in an instrumental form, primarily seen as contributing confirming evidence toward the quality assurance of student satisfaction with university teaching and levels of institutional support. Scant evidence emerged of the potential function of the student voice beyond this assurance function, such as for instance as a potential catalyst for substantive pedagogical improvement or as a means of engaging students more actively in the learning process. These outcomes suggest that the effect of neo-liberalist approaches to the development of higher education has been to marginalise more participative and democratic forms of engaging with the student voice that are more familiar outside post-compulsory education environments.
This paper reports on an innovative curriculum design response to these escalating challenges of preparing pre-service EFL teachers for their practicum experiences in a major university in Chile. This approach sought to disrupt conventional preparatory models centred on anticipated practice scenarios and micro-teaching scenarios. Instead, the design was re-orientated toward arming pre-service teachers with a range of pedagogical tools to improve their ability to more broadly analyse professional practice environments and to devise appropriate situated responses to the significant challenges of the teaching practicum. The range of tools integrated into the design of the curriculum included frameworks such as Brookfield’s critically reflective lenses, sociocultural analysis, situated action research, Bandura’s self-efficacy and the formative student voice. The ambition behind the course design was to improve the ability of students to more broadly analyse and more effectively understand the volatile and unpredictable nature of professional practice contexts. This was toward engendering more substantially laid pedagogical foundations that encouraged the sense and actions identified as characteristic of autonomous teaching professionals (Eraut, 1994; Harrison, Lawson & Wortley, 2007).
The paper considers the significance of this approach as a potential response to the challenges increasingly facing the teaching practicum. Specifically, this potential is explored as a tangible response to three critical challenges facing pre-service ESL teachers in their practicum: the dissonance between expected teaching practices and understandings of effective pedagogy gained in university study; the ability to respond to the deadly pedagogical habits that have often formed in school environments, and encouraging the development of greater pre-service teacher agency as a means of counteracting the disorientation between theory and practice.
engaging with it quite differently as a bounded form of university-based assessment. Further reflection is made on enhancing the usefulness of conventional AR methodology.
respond to the significant challenges of the teaching practicum. It responded to three identified limitations in pre-service teachers approaches to situated practice: the triumph of pragmatism (dissonance between everyday expected teaching practices and their broader understandings of effective pedagogy gained in university study), deadly pedagogical habits (habits that have built up in school contexts in response to a variety of pressures) and the need to build greater levels of educational agency (counteracting the disorientation between theory and practice). Hence the core ambition behind the course design was to lift the ability of students to more systematically analyse (and therefore more effectively manage) the often volatile nature of professional practice in practicum settings. The range of tools integrated into the course included Brookfield’s critically reflective lenses, sociocultural frameworks, situated action research, Bandura’s conception of self-efficacy and the use of student evaluation. The nature of assessment focuses on specific pedagogical problems students have already encountered in practicum contexts, using the analytical tools considered in the course. The terminal learning objective of the course is to assist pre-service English teachers undertaking future practicums to maintain confidence in the face of often daunting pedagogical problems.
However, at the same time, student feedback-based evaluation also remains largely a frequently unwelcome fringe dweller in current academic teaching life, often responded to with scepticism and unease (Edstrom, 2008). For many academics, such scepticism arises around the real capacity of student feedback to effectively mediate the increasingly complex environments of higher education learning. Indeed, it has been argued that despite its considerable and influential institutional power, student feedback is widely perceived by academics to be inherently narrow and superficial (Edstrom, 2008; Kulik, 2001; Schuck, Gordon, & Buchanan, 2008).
This paper reports on the empirical outcomes of case study-based action research conducted in a major Australian university, which was developed around identifying the tensions emerging around conventional quantitative forms of student evaluation in two major university teaching programs. These case studies suggested that the contradictions around the role of the student voice—contested between quality improvement of pedagogies and quality assurance of educational ‘products’ is having an increasing destabilising impact of how the nature of pedagogical work is understood. It is asserted that this outcome has potentially significant implications for those involved in both initial and ongoing professional development of academic teachers in universities.
This study centred on the contemporary role and function of student evaluation in influencing academic pedagogical practices and the prospective developmental potential of the student voice. Using a novel twinning of CHAT and action research, the research sought to also determine whether this combination offered a viable and more sustainable expansion of the developmental potential of CHAT in situated practice settings.
The outcomes of the research demonstrated some expansive potential in the approach, however the complexity of engaging participants in the theoretical tools of CHAT represented a significant challenge. Although clear limitations emerged around both the model’s design (and particularly its complexity), the frame of action research provided some opportunity for participants to more genuinely engage with CHAT than would have been either feasible or desirable using a more directive interventionist method. It also facilitated developmental change over time that was more organic and self-directed than would have occurred with more atomised forms of intervention. On a broader level, the research also raised important questions about the methodological forms of intervention that are likely to become more necessary in ever more complex and demanding workplace contexts. Central to this is the need to critically re-mediate the CHAT framework to discover the potential of more democratised and less prescribed form of intervention than is conventional associated with this form of workplace-based research.
This study (albeit in a limited form) demonstrated the potential of action research to offer a more accessible, democratic and complementary methodology for CHAT theorising. It also potentially responds to claims that conventional interventionist drives of CHAT may over-socialise the nature of individual agency that has been identified as a potential limitation in CHAT-based workplace research. Based on these outcomes, the paper advances some perspectives on how the methodological tools of CHAT could be further developed to work in a more dynamic and ongoing form in everyday workplace practice.
In this exploratory paper, we analyse the key formative influences that have shaped this complex experience of belonging and becoming, especially regarding the learning and use of a foreign language (English/Spanish) and how it simultaneously acts as both an empowerment tool to participate in a global society, as well as a form of cultural and social exclusion. Through this work, we seek to build on an understanding that the formation of identity is fluid and dynamic, developed through experiences of relentless learning and unlearning. Such experiences are necessarily embodied in our own language use, made up of many (and often contradictory) self-understandings which are distributed across the material and social environment (Holland 1998).
There is no doubt that the Australian higher education system has grown dramatically in the last fifty years. Yet so much of this growth has not been primarily driven by the genuine educational aspirations of government leaders to grow a high quality university system. Instead, growth has primarily (though not exclusively) come from real political pressures to broaden access to a university education. Unfortunately all too often the need to address these political demands has led to educational pragmatism, centred on generating university places rather than genuinely building the capability of Australian universities. Now we are on the eve of a further dramatic transformation, again based on the logic of expanding university places. This transformation is driven by a radical model that is unashamedly based on ‘other people’s ideas’, amounting to the effective privatisation of Australian higher education. This paper will reflect on this broad history and will argue that this market-driven model will represent (another) failure of leadership in higher education.
potentially contribute to transform social practices. This paper explores two methodological responses to the application of CHAT in educational research. The two studies one in higher education and one in teacher education offer divergent
methodological approaches that are both conceptually drawn from the CHAT tradition that understands learning as an inherently social activity. One of the studies
sought to study a novel use of activity theory with an action research methodology to analyse the expansive potential of students' opinions in higher education pedagogy.
Whilst the second study, used CHAT as a heuristic tool to examine how pre-service teachers learnt to teach EFL in a Chilean SLTE program. This paper will seek to
analyse the commonalities and differences in these two methodological approaches, including compared to more conventional interventionist methodologies. Although
the methodological approaches used were different, the findings of both studies concluded that learning is an activity that begins on the social plane, in social relations among individuals engaging in practical activity within spatial, temporal, and social contexts before making its way to the intra-psychological plane of consciousness. The paper will conclude to tentatively draw some observations about how CHAT methodologies need to broaden for application in educational research environments.
a plantear más preguntas sobre cómo los académicos pueden captar y aprovechar más efectivamente las perspectivas de los estudiantes sobre sus experiencias de aprendizaje para mejorar los enfoques actuales y futuros del diseño del aprendizaje.
Today, Chile now has a significant post-secondary system, with around 75% of students attending new private universities, professional institutes and technical colleges created since 1980. However, Chile also now has the highest level of private contributions and lowest public funding per capita in the OECD. There has also been rising social concern about the failure of a number of private institutions, high dropout rates and the inconsistent quality of educational outcomes these institutions are producing. Now the Chilean government is proposing major reforms. What are the details of the government’s plan and how has it been received? Will changes spell the end of for-profit post-secondary education in Chile?