Traditionally, the candidate-supervisor-relationship is predicated on a supervisor as teacher/expert -- candidate as learner/novice model. But what becomes possible when the materialities of this power dynamic are destabilised and reimagined? This article draws from emerging feminist ontologies to introduce the concept of velo-onto-epistemology…

A growing practice of engaging students as partners (SaP) has been conducted to nurture values-based pedagogical relationships. Yet, SaP is contested with little known about how Chinese students understand their relationships with teachers in a sector shifting toward student-centred approaches. To advance the collective understanding of SaP…

The focus of this paper is on the contestations and dilemmas emergent in the higher education curriculum in a context of increasing processes of unbundling, digitisation and marketisation. The paper explores the notion of contestation through the theoretical lens of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory. It points to illustrative examples of this…

Student voice in governance and decision-making has become ubiquitous in higher education, evolving from buzzword to orthodoxy. Student engagement measures have become instruments of quality control, with students expected to take an active role in shaping institutional policy and practice. In this paper, we argue that this ubiquity of demands for…

For efficient and effective learning, intensive-mode programs have increasingly focused on threshold concepts -- transformative, often-troublesome, moments in learning that represent the development of key knowledge. Threshold concept theory has support in the context of content-based, disciplinary domains, but questions remain about its…

How does the process of racialization unfold as a discursive project at the university? How do students and faculty in the classroom use racial categories in supposedly post-racial places? How do People of Color in higher education in Norway narrate their experiences of being 'Othered'? We draw on two linked studies and use membership…

The importance of academic literacy acquisition through enculturation in higher education is self-evident. Important within the processes of enculturation is how interactants are positioned. This study examines how interactants within the writing classroom of a higher education institution in Ghana are positioned through dialogue. Data for this…

This paper focuses on the potential, challenges, and limits of participatory, narrative and multimodal research methods as contributions to decolonising research on understanding student experiences of teaching and learning in higher education. Drawing on Fraser's social justice concepts of participatory parity, redistribution, recognition, and…

Student self-assessment has been framed as a way to address the issues of power in assessment in higher education. However, rarely has self-assessment been used to challenge the broader political issues of grading. In this study, I introduce the concept of summative self-assessment, drawing on self-grading as a practice that seeks to disrupt the…

Assessment of class participation (ACP) has been widely adopted in higher education because, presumably, it motivates students and facilitates active learning. Despite its popularity, evidence regarding how teachers perceive and implement ACP has remained largely anecdotal. This study explored teachers' perceptions and practices of ACP based on a…

This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the…

Many observed that the rise of GenAI is causing an 'erosion of trust' between students and teachers in higher education. Such distrust mainly stems from concerns about student cheating, which is believed to be massively facilitated by recent technological breakthroughs in GenAI. Despite anecdotal discussions, little empirical research has explored…

The practice of student-staff partnerships is fundamentally about relationships. As new partnerships are formed, and existing power relations challenged, people experience a range of emotions. Despite their importance, there are few studies that have systematically researched the emotional challenges of student-staff partnership. Through a…

The prevalence of publication pedagogy in doctoral education has created a hybrid space in which doctoral work is done. The emphasis on knowledge production is increasingly making doctoral students the subject of research performance and productivity measures, creating a borderland which they must cross in order to achieve academic success.…

Although often suffering from a lack of conceptual clarity and definition, the use of problem-based learning (PBL) as a pedagogical approach has become almost ubiquitous across many disciplines in higher education in recent years. As well as purported benefits for student learning, the empowerment of students through increased autonomy is…