Pedagogic Research

In the past few years strong arguments have been made for locating academic writing in higher education within the students' disciplinary contexts in the belief that a full understanding of the role and dynamic of writing can only be achieved if it is examined as a social practice in its context of production. This chapter reports on a study that examined the conceptualisations of writing for business by a group of undergraduate and postgraduate lecturers and students at the business school of a British university. Based on a critical analysis of the literature reviewed for the study, and the data collected, the chapter contributes to existing writing pedagogy with a number of research-informed transformative pedagogical applications for teaching discipline-specific writing for business. Such applications which combine context-oriented practices (e.g. raising awareness of the role of disciplinary values in shaping writing) and text-oriented activities (e.g. discipline-specific referencing) aim at influencing the pedagogic agenda for teaching writing in higher education. The chapter concludes with questions for reflection and discussion that provide an opportunity for readers to reflect upon their own teaching environment.

In recent years, numerous studies have discussed, examined and explored the links between research and teaching in Higher Education. These studies have given rise to anumber of concepts, such as the research-teaching nexus and research-informed teaching, but the relationships that these concepts have to one another, and to the wider research-teaching debate, is not well-understood by a significant number of academics. Here, eachof these concepts, and their relationship to one another, is briefly examined. This leads to a redefinition of research-informed teaching that acknowledges input from academic programme research, as well as pedagogic research and the scholarship of learning andteaching. This broader definition also gives rise to the notion of a research content continuum along which teaching may be placed according to its research content. Finally,an overarching context is proposed that provides a framework within which these variousconcepts may be viewed and understood, and which is referred to here as the research-teaching complex. It is hoped that this framework will aid development in this area and stimulate further discussion and debate.

The Higher Education Academy report  Undergraduate attainment and retention across the disciplines (Woodfield 2014) highlights Philosophy and Religious Studies as one discipline cluster for comparison and comment. This supplementary report explores some of the findings in more detail and suggests some of the sources of differences in retention and attainment for the disciplines covered; and it points to other possible areas of research that might improve future development of retention and attainment at a discipline level. It should be read in conjunction with that original report.

The report explores three main areas where student retention, and some aspects of attainment, could be improved by consideration of the motivations of students to study PRS disciplines; their cognitive journey and personal experiences of encountering troublesome and personally challenging concepts; how the PRS disciplines present themselves to students through role models and engagement with views of wider society and the nature of higher education itself; and through consideration of how students benefit from studying PRS and what learning gain they actually experience.

The intended readership for this report is teachers of Philosophy and Religious Studies; those with a strategic concern for enhancing attainment and retention at the departmental and institutional level, and those specifically interested in the discipline perspective. It has been written to be accessible to any reader interested in the issues Woodfield (2014) raises.
- See more at: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resource/retention-and-attainment-across-disciplines-philosophy-and-religious-studies

Previous studies have drawn attention to the challenges faced by researchers undertaking research into learning and teaching in higher education. These challenges are particularly highlighted at times of national measurement of research excellence. It is against the context of the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF), that this paper presents findings from a recent survey of research into higher education in Scottish Higher Education Institutions. Discussion focuses on the underground and undervalued nature of some of this research. Researchers are often based within disciplines and their research is not always well known within wider higher education research discourse. Many academics face pressure to prioritise publishing within their main discipline over publishing research into higher education. There is also a lack of capacity within some Scottish institutions to return research into higher education within the forthcoming REF exercise. The wider implications of these findings are then examined.

In the past few years strong arguments have been made for locating academic writing in higher education within the students’ disciplinary contexts in the belief that a full understanding of the role and dynamic of writing can only be achieved if it is examined as a social practice in its context of production. This chapter reports on a study that examined the conceptualisations of writing for business by a group of undergraduate and postgraduate lecturers and students at the business school of a British university. Based on a critical analysis of the literature reviewed for the study, and the data collected, the chapter contributes to existing writing pedagogy with a number of research-informed transformative pedagogical applications for teaching discipline-specific writing for business. Such applications which combine context-oriented practices (e.g. raising awareness of the role of disciplinary values in shaping writing) and text-oriented activities (e.g. discipline-specific refer...

In the past few years strong arguments have been made for locating academic writing in higher education within the students’ disciplinary contexts in the belief that a full understanding of the role and dynamic of writing can only be achieved if it is examined as a social practice in its context of production. This chapter reports on a study that examined the conceptualisations of writing for business by a group of undergraduate and postgraduate lecturers and students at the business school of a British university. Based on a critical analysis of the literature reviewed for the study, and the data collected, the chapter contributes to existing writing pedagogy with a number of research-informed transformative pedagogical applications for teaching discipline-specific writing for business. Such applications which combine context-oriented practices (e.g. raising awareness of the role of disciplinary values in shaping writing) and text-oriented activities (e.g. discipline-specific refer...