This article troubles a pervasive concept within higher education studies: authentic assessment. Authentic assessment is well-established within higher education, and yet its common usage leaves it limited in possibility. Often understood as a practice focused on tasks, where assessments represent a 'reality' beyond universities, authentic…

The planetary crisis facing humanity makes essential the incorporation of learning about climate change and sustainability in the university curriculum. Yet the ooting of climate change in values, knowledge systems and societal structures means that this incorporation must be more than just addition of knowledge content into a pre-existing…

The dominant response within higher education to the emergence of free online text- and graphic-generating software has been a concern with identifying AI usage in students' work. We argue that this is both a waste of time and neglects our educational responsibilities. A police-catch-punish approach to AI, as with the use of this process in…

Through an evaluation of an institution-wide curriculum change process, this paper analyses how strategic policy is variously enacted in departmental communities. Linguistic ethnography of public, institutional and internal policy documents illuminates departments' engagement with the change process. With curriculum change positioned as a…

This study examines teachers' language appropriation strategies in the multilingual setting of Pakistani universities to show how they negotiate the official/institutional constraints imposed in the implementation of English Medium Instruction (EMI). Working in a monoglossic environment gripped by 'guilty multilingualism', these teachers assert…

In the shift to Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERT&L) during the COVID-19 pandemic, remote assessment and feedback became a major source of discontent and challenge for students and staff. This paper is a reflection and analysis of assessment practices during ERT&L, and our theorisation of the possibilities for shifts towards…

Te Tiriti o Waitangi [te Tiriti] articulates the relationship between the government and Maori [Indigenous New Zealanders]. Universities have a responsibility to prepare graduates to work with te Tiriti. The literature on teaching te Tiriti is sparse. In this conceptual paper, we propose "he hokinga ki te mauri" [a return to vibrancy] as…

Much academic development work, whether it be student, academic staff, institutional or curriculum development, is undertaken from an affirmative rather than a transformative approach (Luckett, L., and S. Shay. 2020. "Reframing the Curriculum: A Transformative Approach." "Critical Studies in Education" 61 (1): 50-65). To be…

This article presents a critical reflection on how we, instructors of a graduate-level course in higher education administration, sought to integrate theoretical and subject-matter content and research methodology. Our reflection, guided by autoethnography and teacher reflection, challenged both our assumptions about curriculum design and our…

Using a dialectical mode of exposition, I offer a reflexive sociological theorisation of the paradox that characterises my academic identity: a fatalistic disenchantment concerning the colonisation of Higher Education (HE) by neoliberalism co-exists with a utopianism concerning HE's emancipatory possibilities. I begin with a discussion of Weber's…

Transformation involves rethinking values and ways of seeing and acting, particularly as time stress compounds legacies of oppression and systematic underdevelopment in many postcolonial countries. These are exacerbated by structural challenges, as many societies are undergoing national, democratic, urban, race, class and gender revolutions…

This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to…

This paper is a critical review of some recent literature around the "literacies of the digital" in schools and higher education. It discusses the question: "what does the conjoining of the terms "digital" and "literacy" add to our understanding of teaching and learning in higher education"? It explores the continuing role of critical literacy in…

As the USA experiences rapid growth of nontraditional adult students in higher education, educators and institutions will increasingly need to look beyond the traditional youth-centric educational models to better address adult learning needs. To date, no research has been conducted examining the learning experiences of adult students enrolled in…

It is widely accepted in the higher education literature that a student-centred approach is pedagogically superior to a teacher-centred approach. In this paper, we explore the notion of student-centredness as a threshold concept and the implications this might have for academic staff development. We argue that the term student-centred in the…