Institution-wide curriculum change is a costly, time-intensive and politically fraught undertaking. It is a challenge identifying who has responsibility for the curriculum and who is empowered to change it. The unbundling of the traditional tri-partite academic role of teaching, research and service leaves a gap of who in those communities decides…

This article considers how the performing arts integrate with research, learning and teaching. In doing so, it addresses the relation between research and performance practice, and the connections between research/practice with learning and teaching. Reference to A/R/Tography is made as a constructivist praxis facilitating integration of these…

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…

In this article, we directly address five of the six questions presented by Misiaszek & Rodrigues, including the definition of 'sustainability' and 'development' in higher education teaching, the politics of teaching, and the responsibilities of teachers within the institution of higher education. We argue for contemplative inquiry and…

The omission of epistemologies from the Global South inhibits holistic pedagogical approaches for effective sustainability teaching and learning. Employing the theoretical lens of ecology of knowledges, the structures and dynamics that frame and constrain sustainability education in higher education were critiqued. Six constraints of environmental…

While recent years have seen increasing initiatives to engage students as partners in higher education, some students tend to be privileged yet others are excluded based on certain selection standards. This paper situates near-peer mentoring within the 'students as partners' context, and investigates the mentoring experience of 3 student mentors…

Holistic assessment is an evaluative approach in which assessors work backwards from an overall appraisal of work to determine the criteria relevant to individual student responses. One of the strongest proponents of this approach in higher education is Royce Sadler, whose theoretical contributions over recent decades provide a strong conceptual…

The complexity and challenges of higher education (HE) in recent times have been widely discussed in HE literature, as have concomitant demands on university teachers and their professional learning needs. Much attention has been paid to new academics in these conversations, but less so to international PhD and post-doctoral researchers, who are…

This paper explores the emotional responses that assignment feedback can provoke in first-year undergraduates. The literature on the link between emotions and learning is well established, but surprisingly research on the relationship between emotions and feedback is still relatively scarce. This article aims to make an additional contribution to…

Educational literature shows that students from working-class backgrounds are significantly less likely to persist to completion in higher education than middle-class students. This paper draws theoretically and analytically on Bernstein's ([1990. "Class, Codes and Control, Volume IV: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse." London:…

Feedback is widely acknowledged as the crux of a learning process. Multiplicities of research studies have been advanced to address the common "cri de coeur" of teachers and students for a constructive and effective feedback mechanism in the current higher educational settings. Nevertheless, existing pedagogical approaches in feedback…

The notion of student-centred learning is often not defined; within the pedagogic literature it is generally associated with constructivism or principles associated with a constructivist environment such as building on prior knowledge, purposeful active learning and sense-making. An informal enquiry into conceptions of university staff prior to…

This study aims to explore Chinese international students' academic and personal transformation under the influences of formal education in schools and informal education outside of the classroom. A qualitative inquiry using in-depth, semi-structured interviews was employed with eight senior undergraduate Chinese international students attending…

This paper describes the implementation of a university-wide initiative aimed at providing a holistic view of a student's academic standing by conducting early, formative assessment for all first-year students. It tracks the Early Assessment System as a student support intervention at Stellenbosch University and suggests that the system has been…

The teaching of classical Greek dramas is integral to drama education at the University of Pretoria. In the past few years these dramas increasingly faced the danger of becoming "foreign"/irrelevant to modern day students. The introduction of performance practice to teach these dramas brought a whole new dimension to teaching and…