The assessment of student learning outcomes in the tertiary school sector has seen an increase in global popularity in recent years. Measurement instruments that target higher order skills are on the rise, whereas assessments that foster the recall of factual knowledge are declining. The Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO)…

Considerable academic attention has been placed on analysing whether, and to what extent, socioeconomic background affects higher education participation. However, the use of socioeconomic status (SES) is problematic as it may be constructed from various data sources. Similar issues can be inherent in study design-related operationalisation…

A key role for educational leaders within undergraduate medical education is to continually improve the quality of education; global quality health care is the goal. This paper reports the findings from a study employing a power model to highlight how educational leaders influence the development of undergraduate medical curricula and the…

Current understandings suggest that three aspects of writing practice underpin the research student publication process: knowledge creation, text production and identity formation. Publishing a literature review is the first opportunity most students have to publish. This article compares the pedagogical benefits of different literature review…

There is a growing need to design learning experiences in higher education that develop collaborative and mediated social writing practices. A wiki way of learning addresses these needs. This paper reports findings from a case study involving 58 postgraduate students who in small groups participated over eight weeks in a mediated collaborative…

Two studies, a cross-sectional (173 first-year and 215 final-year participants) and a longitudinal (81 participants), examined whether two aspects of the learning experience of student teachers (epistemological beliefs and learning approaches), and the interrelations between them changed as a result of their tertiary education. Between the first…

This article reports the use of concept mapping to reveal patterns of student learning (or non-learning) in the course of master's level teaching for research methods. The work was done with a group of 12 postgraduate students, and the concept maps of four individuals produced "before" and "after" a single teaching intervention…

Research education has been dominated in recent years by policy-driven preoccupations with doctoral completions, funding and contributions to the economy. This has led universities to focus on enhanced institutional support for research degrees, with an emphasis on supervision, in particular the training of supervisors, and provision of a richer…