SRHE Blog

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Tag Archives: academic staff development


by Leave a comment

Teaching in higher education: Connected practice for changing times?

by Karen Gravett and Simon Lygo-Baker

Why does teaching matter, and how might we understand what it means to teach in higher education, in contemporary times? This blog introduces our new book Reconceptualising teaching in higher education, published by Routledge. The book is created from our own reading, research, ideas, and practice as two academics working in the field of higher education, where we have been teaching for over twenty years in universities in the UK, America and Australia. It was inspired by our thoughts and discussions surrounding what it means to teach and the joys, pleasures and challenges that accompany our role.

At present there are many questions regarding higher education, its purpose and possible futures. For teachers too, questions remain regarding the necessity and shape of teachers’ contributions in a marketised sector mediated by artificial intelligence and pinched by precarity. And yet, this book is underpinned by our continued belief that teaching matters. We believe that meaningful teaching matters for our students, for our own development and experiences as educators, and for the futures of universities themselves. We argue that teaching provides opportunities for meaningful learning which matters for personal growth and for the development of knowledge. We believe that meaningful learning matters for the creation of new opportunities and possibilities. As bell hooks (1994) explains, fundamentally, education is about ‘the practice of freedom’. In a world where perhaps the experiences we have, the products we purchase, and the information we consume may not always seem meaningful, we believe that the connections that happen when we learn and when we teach have a power that should be harnessed and celebrated. Education matters, because not only does it open doors, but it allows us to recognise them and frame them for ourselves, offering the opportunity to challenge and evolve.

The book is designed for anyone seeking to develop their role as teachers in contemporary universities. This includes new teachers as well as those of us who still have questions and are still keen to develop and respond to our changing times. Specifically, it asks us to rethink our role and the directions we typically follow and suggests the need to disrupt these and to rethink our role as teachers, to take a different path, talk to someone new, or see things a different way. Viewing higher education from new positions can help us to reimagine our role and discover or reclaim the pleasure of teaching. 

To do this, our book challenges the traditional view of teaching as an individual act. Instead, it frames teaching as a relational and situated practice, built on connections with others. Secondly, we explore teaching as an affirmative and emotional endeavour that can inspire others and lead to joyful and generative moments of connection. Lastly, the book positions teaching as a critical practice, where educators are encouraged to embrace uncertainty, question assumptions, and let their approaches evolve. These ideas are all interwoven with practical insights into contemporary areas of practice, including assessment, learning spaces, feedback, digital education, artificial intelligence, learning design, belonging and inclusion, to develop ethical and relational pedagogic approaches. Specifically, the last chapter examines a wide range of key issues, for example feedback frustrations or student engagement, in order to examine how as a reader you might be able to develop approaches and ideas that work for you in responding to some of these challenges. We hope that readers will find the book useful and look forward to continuing conversations around what it means to teach in changing times.

References

Gravett, K and Lygo-Baker, S (2026) Reconceptualising teaching in higher education: Connected practice for changing times Routledge

hooks, b (1994) Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom Routledge

Dr Karen Gravett is Associate Professor of Higher Education, and Head of the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory-practice of higher education. She is Executive Editor for the journal Teaching in Higher Education, and a member of the editorial board for Learning, Media and Technology. Karen’s latest books are: Gravett, K and Lygo-Baker, S (2026). Reconceptualising teaching in higher education: Connected practice for changing times, Gravett, K (2025) Critical Practice in Higher Education, and Gravett, K (2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and Mattering in Higher Education.

Simon Lygo-Baker works as a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Education at King’s College London and has previously worked in the University of Wisconsin, USA and the University of Surrey, UK. He has previously worked on developing curricula with refugees, asylum seekers and other socially excluded groups, as well as working for a number of years in academic development.

Brenda Leibowitz


by 3 Comments

Brenda Leibowitz 1957 – 2018

It is with much sadness that the SRHE community notes the passing of Brenda Leibowitz, a South African scholar in academic development and higher education. Her recent work on academic staff development features twice in the SRHE/Routledge book series; first, a chapter in the edited 2016 book “Researching Higher Education: International perspectives on theory, policy and practice”, and then, with Vivienne Bozalek and Peter Kahn, a 2017 book “Theorising learning to teach in higher education”. She also presented her work at the SRHE annual conference and will be known to many in the community for her engagement across a wide range of higher education conferences in South Africa and abroad.

Brenda’s engaged scholarship over nearly 30 years was strongly rooted in her activist commitment to recognizing a democratic and transformed South Africa through education and higher education. She began teaching in secondary schools designated for ‘coloured’ pupils and this sharpened sense both of the inequities of apartheid and the possibilities in education led to a most formative stint in the Academic Development Centre at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where her practice and emerging scholarship focused on language issues in the university. She followed this with a period of curriculum work as a Director in the national Department of Education, completing a PhD from the University of Sheffield, and moved from here to nearly a decade directing the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Stellenbosch University. Here her work moved from a focus on student development to staff development, bringing with it a critical edge and an exceptionally strong commitment to collaboration and empowerment. In 2014 her scholarship was noted with the appointment to a chair in Teaching and Learning at the University of Johannesburg (and more recently, with the award of an National Research Foundation (NRF) funded South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) position on Post School Education and Training).

Brenda was one of the Principal Investigators on an ESRC Newton/NRF funded project entitled “Southern African Rurality in Higher Education” (SARiHE), which began in 2016 and will complete work in 2019. Brenda’s long-term interest in social justice in higher education especially for students from rural backgrounds in South Africa helped to secure funding for this project. The Southern African University Learning and Teaching (SAULT) forum, which she helped to build, has also been important in this project and has facilitated the involvement of academics and academic developers from across nine Southern African countries.

Brenda was absolutely prolific in her deep scholarship, and pulled many others along in her wake. She published across national and international journals, book chapters and books. A flavour of the evolution of her distinctive scholarship can be seen in the perusal of some of her article titles that drew on direct quotes from her research participants:

* “Why now after all these years you want to listen to me?” Using journals in teaching history at a South African university. The History Teacher, 1996 

* “Communities isn’t just about trees and shops”: Students from two South African universities engage in dialogue about ‘community’ and ‘community work’. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 2008 

* What’s Inside the Suitcases? An investigation into the powerful resources students and lecturers bring to teaching and learning. Higher Education Research and Development, 2009 

* “Ah, but the whiteys love to talk about themselves”: Discomfort as a pedagogy for change. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 2010 

* “It’s been a wonderful life”: Accounts of the interplay between structure and agency by “good” university teachers. Higher Education, 2012 

The title of her most recent paper, with colleague Vivienne Bozalek, ‘Toward a Slow scholarship of teaching and learning in the South’ is also revealing. ‘Slow scholarship’ foregrounds qualities such as thoughtfulness, attentiveness, the valuing of relationships, creativity, and depth of engagement – qualities that embody so well Brenda’s own scholarship and her way of being in the world.

In her research, Brenda leaves an extraordinary written record of scholarship; however, more importantly, there are the many, many lives that this extraordinary educator and scholar touched and influenced deeply. Brenda had an openness and generosity of spirit that allowed her to traverse boundaries and bring together collaborative teams across all the usual divisions of discipline, social background and institutional type. She had a solid compass that never deviated from its pointing towards the long arc of social justice, but she accomplished all she did with notable humility and serious interest in others and their educational and research journeys.

The period of late apartheid bred a distinctive sort of higher education researcher, many of these working in academic development at UWC in the 1990s. In this group of hugely influential higher education scholars, including Chrissie Boughey and Melanie Walker, Brenda made a distinctive and important contribution, cut much too short by her cancer diagnosis. We will remember her with love and admiration.

Jenni Case, Lisa Lucas and Delia Marshall