Editorial

Much has been made in recent years of the supposed ‘passivity’ of our learners or, more accurately, such passivity in our classrooms rather than passivity outside the classroom. It would seem that there is no such passivity outside the classroom as there are no calls in the literature for our learners ‘to be more active/less passive outside the classroom’ and that we are therefore of the view that whatever activity is actually taking place outside the classroom, it is not something that requires particular intervention or attention from us, the educators. Together with what we perceive as a need to get our learners to be more physically active in the classroom, evidenced by much greater attention being focused on group work taking place in the classroom as well as technological tools designed to foster collaboration of various types in recent years, this is bound up with the literature on engagement, again with the view that if students are actively doing something, such as working in groups and talking to each other, this is a ‘better’ sort of engagement with the subject matter than if they are not. And, by association, if they are engaging ‘better’, they are either learning more or learning more effectively or similar. However, unless we need to hone our physical skills, such as that of pinning a broken bone properly in order for it to heal in the right position or dissecting an animal effectively, most of our learners engage with their subject matter without needing to learn to or improve on any practical, physical skills of any sort, unless ‘writing’ is included in this physical skill set. And, indeed, writing is most certainly a requirement, and the better someone is at writing, the easier it is to demonstrate, via this medium, their knowledge of what is being tested, an issue which is discussed in greater detail in one of the articles in this issue. While it is certainly the case that some tasks that we have to learn involve physical activity, for example, learning to play a musical instrument or learning to carry out a medical operation (no one would say that you could learn to remove a gall bladder properly without having actually, physically done it), much of what our learners have to learn in higher education concerns subjects/disciplines for which such physical activity is not required. Nor is there any evidence, as far as can be seen from the literature anyway, that if they are sitting quietly, saying nothing, this is ‘inactivity’, and that such ‘inactivity’ means that little or no learning is going on.

On a long-running and well-known television programme called ‘University Challenge’ in the United Kingdom, where a panel/team of four students pit their wits against an opposing team from another university, the contestants often introduce themselves with the line ‘Hello, I’m Jo(e) Bloggs, and I’m reading for a degree in history/medicine/mathematics’. Reading. Even if they are studying medicine or another subject that is more likely to involve quite a lot of physical activity, they start with the same sentence. It is, perhaps, regarded as a bit old fashioned or archaic to say ‘I’m reading for a degree in x’, but it nonetheless pretty much sums up what, for most disciplines, is required, namely, if we are studying for an undergraduate, postgraduate or PhD-level qualification, we are going to have to do an awful lot of reading. And, then, to demonstrate our knowledge of what we have learned via that reading, a fair bit of writing (there are very few assessments where we are assessed on our ability to demonstrate what we have learned via oral means, although in practical subjects such as physiotherapy, there will naturally be assessments of a practical nature). That said, it is naturally the case that we, as learners, learn in different ways, and the literature on learning styles attests to this. If we have classrooms with many learners in them, we need to vary what we do in the classroom to ensure that, whatever the learning style, we cater for them all in some way. For some, but not for all, a classroom that involves more physical activity is welcomed, and so we should naturally ensure that we take this into account when designing what goes on within it. Given this, it is no surprise that ‘cooperative learning’ is being used more and more in our classrooms. It seems an odd term as, by definition, learning can be done by only the individual doing the learning, but perhaps it is shorthand for ‘working together and by so doing each participant, as an individual, might learn something from such an activity’. Whether it is an appropriate term or not, getting our learners to work in small groups or teams is certainly becoming more common in higher education, and it is good to see that, as this first article demonstrates, there is an attempt to look at how, precisely, such an activity makes an impact, and on what. In the article entitled ‘The impact of cooperative learning on student engagement: Results from an intervention’, its author Kim J Herrmann, from Aarhus University, Denmark, argues that while we have all been keen to include more of such activity in our classrooms in what is billed as a more student-centred approach to teaching, there is little empirical evidence to support the claims made. The article describes what is meant by cooperative learning and that it carries with it the notion that if each individual sees the task as benefiting the other(s) as much as it benefits themselves, this will make it more effective. Quite how much learning has taken place, within each individual, is another matter. Yes, we have, say, a report as the physical outcome of that collaboration, but what we do not know is what learning, if any, took place while this physical activity, the creation of the report, was going on. Measuring ‘learning’, if that is what we seek to do, is no easy matter.

In the article, aspects such as positive interdependence, promotive interaction and individual accountability are discussed, as well as the important issue of how we, as markers, must assess our learners. Because, while no one could or would disagree that asking our learners to work together in or outside the classroom is anything other than ‘a good thing’ (as humans, we are inherently social beings, and so it goes without saying that working in groups is what we do), we nonetheless award marks and, importantly, degrees, not to groups but instead to individuals. The article says that while the extensive literature on cooperative learning tells us that classrooms in which we ask learners to work together rather than those which are ‘competitive and individualistic’ in nature have been shown to demonstrate better learning outcomes, studies on this have almost exclusively been carried out in the primary and secondary education sector, that is, with children. The author says that literature within higher education, with adults, has been ‘ambiguous and contradictory’, hence the need for the study described in this article. Describing its many downsides, not least of which is free-riding, resentment at having to rely on fellow students, distrust and conflict, all described in the article, there is evidence to support the notion that while it might well be ‘a good thing’ to help out our fellow human beings, when it comes to getting a degree, the literature cited in this article tells us that unless cooperative learning activities are seen to directly benefit the individual student in terms of the upcoming assessment, they perceive them to be of less value/use than other activities. So, while it is true that working with our fellow colleagues is certainly what our graduates will have to do in the workplace, after graduation, and so allows us to say ‘we ask you to work in groups or teams because you will need to do this effectively in the workplace’, if we are to ‘sell’ it as ‘a good thing’ to be carried out in our classrooms, then saying ‘you will need this in the workplace, after you graduate’ needs to be backed up with ‘evidence tells us that working in groups or teams whilst at university will help you in your learning, whilst you are still at university’. Yes, this can be criticised as looking too much at the short term at the expense of the long term, but both are important, in their different ways. If we cannot put forward a sufficiently convincing argument that it will benefit the student, as an individual, there is less incentive to do it (few of us are as altruistic as to do something that benefits only someone else). So, it is a ‘tough sell’ when it comes to promoting the idea that working in a group or team will benefit students while they are at university, at least when it comes to the issue of assessment, anyway.

Whatever the arguments for and against, our interactions with our fellow human beings impact in one way or another on our thinking, and it is our thinking that is the issue here when it comes to learning and to our understanding of whatever it is we are trying to understand. Taking the context of tutorials, the study described in the article sought to find out to what extent cooperative learning increased student engagement and how learners perceived cooperative learning. A revised Study Process Questionnaire was constructed to measure differences in students’ approaches to learning and open-ended questions offered an insight into their perceptions of cooperative learning. Results from the study show that while their approach to learning did not change, working cooperatively increased their in-class participation and thus affected their in-class learning behaviours. However, as the results demonstrate, and as the author rightly says, it is not just about learning and learners but also about teaching and teachers, that is, there is the view that ‘if we, the students, are doing all the work, where is “the teaching” (which I am paying for) in all of this’. That is, there is a view that coming to university entails ‘being taught’ or, at the very least, that whatever is going on in the classroom needs to involve the teacher to a great extent. An article should prompt us to think hard about the subject matter, and this one certainly does that. Continuing the theme of working in teams or groups, the second article comprising this issue looks satisfaction with regard to teamwork. In this article, entitled ‘Teamwork satisfaction: Exploring the multi-level interaction of teamwork interest and group extraversion’, its authors Kimberly A French and Janet L Kottke from California State University in the United States look at whether or not extroversion impacts satisfaction with teamwork. Arguing the case that while teamwork is naturally critical for much of the work that our graduates will be doing after they leave university, and describing all the benefits associated with teamwork in the university setting, the authors rightly say that we need to better understand the factors that make their contribution to a positive teamwork outcome. Satisfaction is, the authors say, an appropriate outcome variable given its link with student motivation, student engagement and self-perceptions of learning and that it is often used when evaluating learning strategies, although they acknowledge that there are other factors and that this matter is complex. While teamwork is indeed complex, literature in this area, say the authors, means that we need to look much more closely at how our differences, as individuals, play their part in both how the team works (or does not) and/or what the team achieves (or does not). Interest in teamwork, say the authors, has not been the subject of many studies in the literature on teamwork, and so their own study adds to the knowledge base in this way. As we all use teamwork in our classrooms, regardless of discipline or institution or context, if we want to better understand it, and also to improve the experience of our learners of teamwork, the results of the study described in this article will help us to do so.

Personality clearly plays its part when it comes to working in teams. The authors tell us that the Five Factor model of personality is a widely known and well-researched framework for conducting research on personality, particularly in group research, and that this personality theory defines five personality categories: conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience, emotional stability and extraversion. In recent years, say the authors, team composition, particularly personality composition, has been the focus of some attention in the literature, and in the study described in the article the authors look at the link between group extraversion, scores according to interest in teamwork and student satisfaction with the group. To ascertain interest in teamwork, the authors used the Team Player Inventory (TPI), a test designed to measure teamwork interest which, in turn, may predict meaningful outcomes associated with group work which, they say, includes positive individual characteristics such as emotional intelligence and agreeableness, lack of teamwork knowledge skills and abilities, and group participation, cohesion and performance. Extraversion was measured using the Mini Marker Big Five scale and satisfaction with the group was measured at the individual level using various scales including that of the Job Diagnostic Survey. While using such measures may perhaps be commonplace in certain countries or contexts, it is rare, in the United Kingdom at least, to do this. Yet it seems that, even if we do not use them in order for students to better understand their role in the context of teamwork, these are, at heart, measures that in some way are about ‘better understanding yourself’, whether for teamwork or anything else. ‘Better understanding yourself’ is usually taken to be ‘a very good thing indeed’ when it comes to most things, including learning, and while we would not perhaps want to collect such data about our learners for ourselves, as teachers, it would most certainly be useful for our learners to find this out as it may impact their thinking and behaviour in some way. The authors of this article also share this view, saying that they are surprised that we do not use it more in research, although it is not clear whether they would advocate its wider use as a tool for our learners to use for their own means.

As the authors rightly say, their results will usefully inform us as to how and in what ways we can improve the student group work experience, not least of which in terms of what the team comprises in terms of individual personalities but also how those teams are formed in the first place. In essence, should we do what many of us do, that is, just randomly assign students to groups using the argument ‘we rarely get choice in the workplace and we want you, here at university, to experience what you will normally experience in the workplace’ or do we ourselves construct the composition of the team. In the workplace, after leaving university, it is the case that, on occasion, someone gets to create their own team, so this in itself may provide suitable justification, for those who wish to use the ‘this will be useful to you after graduation ‘argument, anyway. However, what goes on in the university does not necessarily have to reflect what goes on outside or beyond it as universities are not just ‘preparation and/or training for work’. As the authors themselves note, working in groups has the potential to improve self-esteem and achievement and to strengthen knowledge, skills and problem-solving abilities, which are as useful outside of the workplace as they are inside it. Whatever our views of what a university education is or is not, the implications following from this study tell us that we need to look very carefully at our own role in composing and managing groups. Previous studies had indicated teamwork interest is an important predictor of team performance and cohesion, say the authors, but their own study revealed otherwise. The results of their study, say the authors, were ‘significant and … unexpected’, as well as interesting.

Activity or otherwise is the subject of the third article which comprises this issue, although this time this is not related to activity within the classroom itself but instead in the online environment. As more and more of us, including our learners, find ourselves in the online environment, it is all the more important to better understand how this impacts, in this case, their satisfaction, engagement and connectedness, among other factors. Its authors, Doris U Bolliger and David Des Armier Jr, from the University of Wyoming in the United States, look at active learning and engagement when it comes to looking at how to do so via the medium of such technology, and as we are today all using virtual learning environments (VLEs) for everything related to learning, it is timely that we now look at how we might do so when it comes to sharing in this ‘virtual classroom’. Entitled ‘Active learning in the online environment: The integration of student-generated audio files’, the article says what the authors of the earlier articles in this issue say, namely, that we are all looking at ways to foster better engagement, and that so doing may assist our learners in their learning and foster a greater sense of connectedness with not only us, the educators, but also their institution and, importantly, each other. The technology that we select and/or how we use the technology impacts either negatively or positively on these. The use of digital audio or video files is becoming commonplace, and such ‘rich media’ as it is known may be particularly beneficial to those who prefer to learn/whose learning style is better suited to a more visual or auditory medium. No one could argue that, as posited in this article, as the world becomes more media-rich in all ways, this technology also needs to be incorporated into higher education as this is what our ‘digital natives’, our learners, are not only used to but which they expect to find. There is, however, some way to go before we, the educators, are all so comfortable with such technology or, at any rate, using it to support our learners, whether inside or outside of their classrooms.

However, many of us have gone as ‘far’ as incorporating the use of podcasts, and aside from flexibility, it is certainly the case that their use offers an additional or alternative channel for communication and, it is argued in this article, may assist with fostering the much-needed connectedness in an online environment; an environment that, by its nature, is perhaps less social and more impersonal in some ways. However, while listening to podcasts and similar is normally something that we do alone, and is usually based on the ‘transmission’ model, that is, we believe that there is ‘content’ within the podcast that we wish to ‘transmit’ to our learners, there is the potential, say the authors, to use podcasts in a very different way, and one which directly involves our learners. So, instead of teacher-generated audio files, the authors of this article look instead at student-generated ones. Fortunately, creating such files is not at all difficult and so while a few students may feel that they lack the technical skills to do so, this should not prove a barrier to their making or use, although they will need sufficient technical support from the institution, which may well prove to be a far greater barrier (it could be argued that many, if not most, institutions are not necessarily as well geared up for the support of technology as they need to be these days). Whatever the nature of the technical support available or not, it is the case that with the literature on student-generated files being scant, the study described in this article sheds light on the perceptions that learners have of such files and how this non-text-based medium impacts their use and also their perceptions of satisfaction, engagement and connectedness. The results from their study tell us that while there were the inevitable downsides, not least of which was that it was time consuming, the benefits outweighed these. The study raises, as the authors themselves say, the very interesting question as to what online learners (or should this be learners online) are willing to do in order to build, foster and sustain the learning community in which they learn/work. And, by association, what we ourselves are willing to do, too. Sharing in or outside the classroom, face to face, is one thing, but doing the same in a virtual environment is perhaps quite another.

Whatever the medium or the task, and however valuable we ourselves might believe it to be, we cannot go far without the matter of assessment coming into the picture, whether we are talking about teamwork, using podcasts or anything else. We very often design coursework tasks as a means of helping our learners to better understand the subject matter ahead of the tasks that they have to undertake during an examination. In the United Kingdom at least, it is a rare degree course that is not ‘heavy’ on examinations as the assessment tool of choice, despite the known (and considerable) disadvantages of written examinations, whether seen or unseen. However, as the fourth article tells us, there is little literature which has looked at the impact, if any, of the coursework task or tasks on the examination which follows. Entitled ‘The impact of assessment tasks on subsequent examination performance’, its authors Frank Van Gaal and Annemieke De Ridder, from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, report on the issues around assessment, not least of which is the nature of assessment itself, including formative and summative assessment and the impact or otherwise that feedback has on future performance. The authors cite literature which says that frequent and timely testing and giving feedback increases motivation, and so from the motivation point of view, anyway, asking our learners to undertake coursework or any other kind of assessment prior to them undertaking an examination is clearly worthwhile. And, it goes without saying that the more they practise, via such assessments prior to the examination, the more opportunities for learning there are. However, it does not necessarily follow that this will positively impact their actual marks/grades when it comes to the examination, hence this study. Of course, these days, the assessments that we ask our learners to undertake, apart from written examinations, can be undertaken online or via more ‘traditional’ means, for example, the writing of an essay, although many of us ask our learners to actually submit the finished document online (rather than write it online). Whatever the nature or medium, the authors tell us that by and large students much prefer an assessment which is not a formal, written examination. But, whether they like them or not, or that examinations have the (known, many) disadvantages that they do, the day when universities do not set written examinations is likely a long, long way off, if it even comes at all.

As it is highly likely that we shall continue to set formal, written examinations, any study which seeks to shed light on how, if at all, assessment tasks undertaken prior to these impact performance is to be warmly welcomed. The study described in this article is one such study. In this, the authors compared the examination results (marks/grades) of two groups of students, both of whom sat a ‘traditional’ examination, that is, a written, unseen one. One group sat only the examination, and the other group undertook assessment tasks prior to/in addition to the examination. The authors reasoned that the group of students who undertook the assessment tasks prior to taking the examination would perform significantly better than students who did not undertake any assessment tasks prior to taking the examination. In addition, they also looked at whether or not the marks/grades achieved on assessment tasks (as a whole) would have a significantly positive impact on examination results, whether or not students who achieved good (high) marks/grades would do so on/across all their courses undertaken within the same academic year and, importantly given that not all students pass an examination the first time round, whether or not those students who took an examination at the second attempt would have an advantage and perform better than those who did not. Results revealed ‘a significant difference in examination performance’. The role that GPA (grade point average) plays in performance is, from this study anyway, not to be dismissed as something that is minor, and so it merits particular attention for us, the educators, when it comes to looking at the performance of our students but also in terms of how we support them, in and outside the classroom. Also of note is literature which, say the authors, tells us that even when the assessment tasks are not related to the examination questions, students perform better in the examination, which tells us that what they are doing when they are undertaking the assessment tasks goes beyond merely ‘learning the content’ and instead is more about how and in what way they study and other factors. Naturally enough, any study has its limitations and that the study was carried out in a particular discipline is but one of them.

And, when it comes to disciplines, there are factors which make them what they are, that is, different, and not just in terms of the obvious, that is, content, as the fifth article demonstrates. Whether for coursework or examinations, and irrespective of the fact that these days we are increasingly using technology in our classrooms, when it comes down to assessment, for the most part, we ask our learners to demonstrate what they know via examination. And, it is ‘what they know’ which we are assessing rather than ‘what they have learned’ as we normally do not measure what knowledge they had at the very start of our module/course and thus cannot say with certainty whether our intervention, the module/course and all that is associated with it, changed the ‘what they already knew on day one’. However, regardless of what is or is not measured or when and how, it is the case that disciplines vary in terms of the thinking underpinning them and thus the academic discourse associated with each. In their article entitled ‘Making disciplinary writing and thinking practices an integral part of academic content teaching’, Kerry Hunter and Harry Tse from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, start by saying, rightly, that regardless of discipline, many of our learners come into higher education not knowing the principles underpinning academic discourse. Nor could we expect them to, naturally enough, as prior to that they have been exposed to and used a very different discourse. To make matters worse, the authors say that we, the lecturers of our subject matter, do not make this explicit, either in our documentation or in our classrooms when we are talking about what our learners have to do. What, for example, do we mean by ‘critically discuss x’ and how, even if this is understood, do we expect our students, by now writers, to structure their text in order to tell the story that they need to tell. It is all very well having a good story but there is also the need to be able to communicate that story; knowing it is not sufficient. However, unlike our subject matter, most of us, as teachers/lecturers, have not ‘unpacked’ how we write, nor have we normally looked at writing, whether within our own discipline or as a subject matter itself. As the authors say, it is not that we know it and are deliberately keeping it hidden from our learners but instead that, for various reasons, we do not do so, despite the great efforts that we have made in recent years to make clear to our students what we expect in terms of assessment, where we are now well versed in writing suitably clear criteria when it comes to marking. Literature in this area, say the authors, tells us that there is much that we need to do if we are to help our learners to better understand what we want of them when it comes to how to write text in the language that we expect of academic discourse.

Many institutions have attempted to tackle this by setting up ‘teaching centres’ of some sort, and these are non-discipline-specific, that is, those who work within them cater for students from all departments, and thus all disciplines, across the institution. Known as a ‘study skills approach’, the authors say that this has attracted much criticism, not least of which because it says that the student is in some way deficient, that the problem is with them, and so we, the lecturers, need to send them somewhere else to get it ‘fixed’. Another issue with this approach is that it risks the students believing that it cannot be important, or not important enough, because we, the lecturers, do not deal with it (if it is important to the subject matter, we, not someone else, should be dealing with it), and in any case, such institution-wide provision is optional rather than required, thus adding credence to a belief that it cannot be important. There is, then, a growing awareness of the need to do this ‘in house’, that is, to embed the dealing of writing about the subject matter within the development of the subject matter itself, that is, to not divorce ‘writing’ from ‘the subject matter’, in short, to deal with writing within the curriculum in some way. However, even that is not straightforward, as many of us, lecturers in the subject matter, do not do it ourselves but instead leave that to others, often those with specialist training in writing (often based in ‘teaching centres’) to come along and to offer lectures or seminars or whatever on writing. Again, this is a ‘study skills approach’, with the only difference being that rather than send the students to the ‘teaching centre’, the ‘teaching centre’ comes to them. As the authors rightly note, this leaves the responsibility for the development of suitable writing and study skills in the hands not of us, the lecturers, but instead within the remit of the writing specialist, what it called in the literature, say the authors, an ‘outside agent’, who normally has no discipline-specific knowledge or background. However, there is a growing awareness that we need to take full charge of this ourselves, and not to ‘outsource’ it to writing specialists. Instead, we can (and many of us would say ‘should’) do it ‘in house’. Like those quoted in the article, we are the ‘expert speaker’ of our own ‘language’ (the discourse of our discipline), and as such, it is for us to teach it within our ‘normal’ teaching of the subject matter, as the two are intertwined, bound up with each other, not able to be so easily separated if at all.

However, as many will recognise, there is considerable resistance to us, the lecturers, doing this ourselves, not least of which is that it is claimed that so doing would be at the expense of dealing with the subject matter itself, the ‘content’ (with the argument that ‘there is hardly enough time in the week to deal with the ‘content’ side let alone the writing, as well’). Add to this ‘even if I knew how to deal with the writing side, which I don’t’ and it becomes clear as to why very few indeed have attempted it. Or, to put that in more suitably academic language, as the authors say, our ‘knowledge of writing construction is usually tacit and unarticulated and [we] may not be able to make writing practices visible for students’. Or, if there are some of us who have attempted it, it is normally in one or two modules, often at the very start of a programme or perhaps in a particularly critical module, such as the dissertation on a master’s programme or similar, where the writing being asked of students is, structurally at least, and if not in other ways, somewhat different. There are, then, considerable challenges to bringing the development of disciplinary discourse ‘in house’. The review of the literature in this article is comprehensive, and for the reader looking for insights and practical implications, these are thoroughly explored. Given that very few of us have in place such fully embedded writing instruction in our disciplines, it is unsurprising that there are similarly even fewer studies reporting on this, so the study reported in this article is all the more welcome from this perspective. Describing a programme which implemented a discipline-specific, integrated writing intervention embedded within the ‘normal’ teaching of a module/course, the results of the study confirm that it is certainly worthwhile, and as the authors say, exploring the complexities of writing practices can help in the development of knowledge about the subject matter. The matter of the subject discipline is the focus of this sixth and final article comprising this issue. As we, educators, are so closely bound up with the everyday aspects of what we do in higher education as we go about our daily, busy working lives, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture perhaps, and so this article reminds us that not only is our own discipline important to us and to our learners but it is also something which sits within the society and culture more widely.

Taking a more philosophical stance, one of the questions asked in the article is how the academic subject as a discipline can be seen as open to society and culture, in addition to being open to the ‘world’ of the student. Entitled ‘Repositioning the subject discipline for an “academic-enhancement” model of widening participation: A philosophical sketch’, its author, Mark O’Brien, reports that getting a university education is still considered to be what is called a ‘positional good’ in a society like ours, that is, one which is already advantaged. In common with other societies such as that in the United Kingdom, the author reports that while higher education is open to all, those deemed to be ‘non-traditional’ face economic and other barriers which make it less likely that they will undertake study at this level, despite having the academic ability to do so. These are not just barriers to entering higher education but barriers to social mobility, the author argues, and while we, academics, might well be doing our best to widen participation, such are the pressures that this does not get the attention that everyone agrees that it merits. The article captures, elegantly and so well, what is likely the ‘dominant culture’ of working within higher education the world over, and it also highlights the importance of the historical and culture factors that have shaped, and which continue to shape, it. This interesting article also explores how disciplines are perceived and what does and does not contribute to the professional purpose underpinning each of our own disciplines. The author discusses some of the philosophical considerations which help us to better understand aspects such as social diversity and its relationship with academic work in all disciplines and then takes us to a discussion of critical pedagogy. Looking at ‘society’, culture and the academic subject, there is a fascinating insight into how and why we now perceive higher education to be what we perceive it to be, at least as it pertains to what is quoted to be ‘the cancerously growing bureaucratic machinery of modern capitalism’. If, as is claimed, we need to ‘open up’, and in various ways, we must also do so at the level of the discipline, says the author, if we are to properly acknowledge the role of the student, traditional or otherwise.

How and why we do what we do when it comes to ‘the systematic modes of thinking’ which underpin our activity is explored, as is how ideas that are part and parcel of the fabric of intellectual culture in our wider society find their ways into specialist areas of thought. While it might seem that such a philosophical look at these matters is a somewhat ‘academic’ exercise, reading this article tells us that this is not the case at all. One of the sections of this article looks specifically at how what has earlier been described affects how we see ourselves, as teachers and how students and knowledge itself are viewed, including the didactic or ‘transmission’ model that still underpins much of what we do, despite claims to the contrary. However, rather than look simply at addressing how we might embrace different teaching styles, the author argues that we also need to ask questions at a different level, that is, if, and if so how, such approaches can shape the work of the discipline itself. In what follows the reader is taken on a journey through aspects such as relativism, perspectivism, the ways in which learning is organised, social structure and cultural context and inter-generational dynamics, old and new conceptions of knowledge and, importantly, personal and social transformation. For those questioning the future of universities themselves, the author reports literature looking at both ‘seeing beyond’ and ‘thinking beyond’ the confines of the classroom and the campus and quotes a leading thinker of our times who calls for teaching to take place not only away from the campus but even beyond the (mental) ‘walls’ of the city. For those who seek a brief but highly informative overview of the concepts and theoretical categories of social-constructivist theories of learning, ‘situated learning’, ‘communities of practice’, ‘collaborative learning’ and others, this is a must-read. Text on such matters can often be a bit ‘dry’ and dull, but as the reader will find, this article is not only easy to read but also accessible to all, regardless of how much or how little reading has been done around these complex matters. The article concludes by saying that the universities in which we work are themselves institutions of ‘situated learning’, and that this has implications for the intrinsic nature of academic work itself. Greater social diversity among the student body, argues the author, would give us a different kind of ‘scholarly community’, one which benefits in various ways everyone within it, not least our students, which is a fitting note on which to end this issue.