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Enhancing student learning through innovative scholarship

by Jenny Burnham, Matt Mears, Kennedy Offor, Jane Woodin and Tim Herrick

This blog is a report on the Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship (ESLTIS) conference held at the University of Sheffield in July 2026. The conference involved participants from 24 different universities and nearly 50 sessions.

When higher education faces real pressure, coming together to reimagine how we teach and learn is more than just professional development – it is a vital act of community. In July 2026, 97 educators, researchers, and student partners gathered at the University of Sheffield for two energising days at the Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship (ESLTIS) conference.

Across two inspiring keynotes, 39 talks and oral bites, and seven hands-on workshops, the atmosphere was filled with practical optimism, bold experimentation, and genuine connection. At a time when financial constraints weigh heavily across the sector, ESLTIS 2026 proved that an exceptional, high-impact academic gathering does not have to cost the earth. By keeping delegate fees as low as possible without compromising on quality, the conference demonstrated that transformative scholarship can remain accessible, inclusive, and deeply rewarding for everyone involved.

To capture the spirit of those two days, this blog brings together the key ideas, personal reflections, and practical insights that defined the event. We explore the overarching themes shaping the sector, followed by firsthand perspectives from our keynote speaker, insights from a session chair navigating AI in the curriculum, and the invaluable contributions of our student partners.

Key Conference Themes

With the tone of ‘Dealing with Disruption’ set by Professor Sam Nolan, the conference explored how learning and teaching in higher education is responding to and being shaped by the outside influences bringing both adversity and opportunity into the sector. A recurrent theme of innovations drawing on AI technology encompassed support for diverse student needs, its use in assessment, and as a teaching aid. The conference mirrored the acknowledgement of the evolving higher education demographic, with discussions covering inclusivity, decolonisation, engagement, identity, and self-worth, with structured gap-filling support, and breaking down of participation barriers, busting out of disciplinary silos to support students’ belonging and wellbeing. Wide-ranging talks covered: curriculum both hidden and carefully designed, strategies to augment students’ development of their skills and their readiness for their post-graduation world, and experiences of collaboration with and between students, staff, and professional services teams

Underpinning it all was the continuing ethos of the ESLTIS community that recognises and celebrates the education-focus of academia, exploring this with talks and workshops on academic identity – how it grows and develops, the things that shape it, and how it can be described and evidenced. The conference was not one thing for all delegates, it had something for everyone; areas with which we are familiar and aspects provoking thought and reflection, from which we could learn.  Yet again, I have attended a conference and come away with more than I expected. 

Reflections from a keynote speaker 

Dr Jenny Burnham is a Senior University Teacher in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield. Here she writes about her career and how she shared her experience at the conference.

I am interested in everything and my career highlights have been similarly eclectic. Rather than focus on a single speciality, I used myself as the common thread to weave a story that would be useful, relevant, or inspirational for a diverse audience of enthusiastic and accomplished educators. Taking inspiration from the conference name and conference themes (academic identity, community in learning and teaching, SoTL, supporting student success, and learning and teaching possibilities), my keynote made a virtue of the meanders of my academic career so far.  

My academic journey started in chemistry, shaping my relationship with information (evidence is key) and placing the primacy of experimental investigation at the centre of my disciplinary awareness. My early scholarship interests grew from this, exploring the development of inquiry skills through laboratory education. Spending a lot of time teaching students in the lab and enjoying their individuality shaped a desire to see them all succeed. This developed into an education philosophy that students are clever and capable with enormous potential, which permeates my work. An MEd drawing on what can be learned from sharing practice and insight (Rowland, 1999) transformed my approach to education. The benefits I felt in sharing my work with people who were interested motivated me to extend my networks. These have been a source of inspiration, opportunity and support, and allowed me to define my leadership identity; supporting, facilitating, promoting, and enabling collegial interaction and growth within my community.

My keynote aimed to provide a little of something for everyone, and evidence that I succeeded in this is captured in three different post-keynote interactions. I was thanked for owning my nerves: “it helps” she said. I had lunch with a PhD chemist considering an academic career; and I received an enquiry about a Learning Landscapes initiatives I worked on. There was something for me too: a final, unexpected result of my talk was that pulling it together reminded me of the cool stuff I have done.  Celebrating successes is definitely something I intend to do more of.  

Reflections from a session chair 

Dr Kennedy Offor was a member of the local organising committee and reflects on his experiences at ESLTIS in the role of session chair.

Chairing the ‘AI in the Curriculum’ session gave me with a unique perspective on how colleagues from different disciplines are responding to the rapid emergence of generative AI in higher education. Although the eight presentations ranged from institutional policy to engineering, mathematics, business, humanities, and language learning, a common thread emerged throughout the session – how learning, assessment, and curriculum design should evolve to ensure that students continue to develop critical judgement, disciplinary understanding, and professional responsibility. The discussion reflected a noticeable shift from reacting to AI as a disruptive technology towards designing learning environments that make purposeful and educationally meaningful use of it.

Laurie Wilson opened the session by introducing the University of Sheffield’s developing ‘Common Approach to AI in the Curriculum’, emphasising “harmonisation rather than homogenisation” and arguing that AI should support good disciplinary teaching rather than drive it. Joanne Irving-Walton then offered a thought-provoking perspective by examining the “gaps” where judgement develops, suggesting that AI increasingly participates in the uncertainty, rehearsal and reflection through which students and educators learn. 

Panos Kloukinas, Nick McCullen and Will Roberts built on this by arguing that mathematics and computation education should increasingly prioritise application, interpretation and problem formulation over procedural execution, while Dawn Whitton demonstrated how students could critically evaluate AI itself through a staged business assessment that required them not only to use AI, but also to critique its assumptions, biases and wider societal implications.

The engineering perspective was represented through our own presentation, which used longitudinal Graduate Teaching Assistant reflections to show how observations of student uncertainty, teamwork and AI use informed iterative redesign of an MSc engineering design module. Mireilla Bikanga Ada’s graduate study provided an interesting counterpoint by showing that, despite widespread AI adoption, teamwork remained the strongest predictor of graduates’ perceptions of degree relevance. 

Rachel Johnson illustrated how a simple, low-stakes classroom activity could encourage students critically to examine AI-generated information and its biases, while Franziska Collier demonstrated how AI avatars could provide authentic, low-risk opportunities for students to practise high-stakes language assessments.

The discussions reinforced my own view that the key educational question is no longer whether students should use AI, but how curricula can help them develop the professional judgement needed to use it responsibly. Rather than diminishing the role of educators, the session demonstrated that AI makes thoughtful curriculum design, assessment, and disciplinary expertise more important than ever, and highlighted an encouraging direction of travel for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning community.

Students as Partners 

Dr. Jane Woodin was a member of the local organising committee and offers her thoughts on working with students as volunteer partners 

The conference ethos of inclusive dialogue was also evident in the organisation of student volunteers who were invited to participate in whatever they wished, from visiting and advising on the venue beforehand, supporting registration and general enquiries, and co-chairing sessions together with a staff volunteer. Responses from the eight volunteers ranged from tentative interest in helping out to requests to ‘have a go at everything’, and others who did the minimum in terms of active volunteering because they found the topics of the talk so interesting and important.

It was heartening to hear one volunteer offer to sit at the front of the large auditorium to oversee a presentation session, handling the Q &A masterfully, including interventions from the co-chair. Another volunteer started out shyly offering to help at the registration desk, but seeing fellow students taking the chairing role, threw herself into it enthusiastically. 

These experiences remind us how the processes surrounding education are as important as the education itself – or perhaps are or should be inseparable, as the ‘way that you do it’ melds seamlessly into ‘what you do’; offering an example of SoTL in action at its best.  

Final Reflections

Dr Matt Mears is a Senior University Teacher in Physics at the University of Sheffield, and was chair of the Local Organising Committee for ESLTIS2026

As Conference Chair, reflecting on the energy across those two days fills me with immense pride and a distinct sense of gratitude. While hosting an event of this scale undoubtedly takes work, the dividend it pays back to the host team and the wider community is extraordinary. Watching colleagues reconnect, draw genuine inspiration from such a rich variety of presenters, and spark new collaborations in real time reminded me why these gatherings are so vital for our sector.

If you have ever toyed with the idea of organising a conference, or perhaps bringing ESLTIS to your own institution, I cannot encourage you enough to take the leap. The effort involved is far outweighed by the connection, camaraderie, and fresh momentum it generates. Whether as an attender, a presenter, or a future host, I look forward to seeing where our community goes next.


Dr Jenny Burnham is a chemistry university teaching specialist with 20 years’ experience teaching and learning about education at the University of Sheffield. 

Dr Matt Mears is a Senior University Teacher in Physics in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on inclusive education practices and laboratory-based teaching.

Dr Kennedy Offor is an engineering educator and researcher with experience teaching undergraduate and postgraduate engineering at the University of Sheffield’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and, more recently, apprenticeship and technical engineering education at the AMRC Training Centre.  

Dr. Jane Woodin is a Senior University Teacher in the School of Languages, Arts and Societies at the University of Sheffield. She has taught and researched in intercultural communication, focusing on peer interaction and dialogue approaches.

Dr Tim Herrick is a Senior University Teacher in the School of Education, and a National Teaching Fellow. He was part of the ESLTIS conference committee and helped co-ordinate this blogpost.

Reference Rowland, S (1999) ‘The role of theory in a pedagogical model for lecturers in higher education’ Studies in Higher Education, 24(3), 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079912331379915


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From ad hoc to constructive: the ABC levels of GenAI integration in business education

by Qianqian Chai and Xue Zhou

Introduction – the challenge of GenAI integration in business education

Since the release of ChatGPT, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly entered higher education. Business schools, with their strong ties to industry and emphasis on applied skills, provide a particularly important setting for examining GenAI’s role in curriculum design. Yet, while adoption has expanded quickly, the educational outcomes of GenAI integration have not been consistent (Kurtz et al, 2024). Across cases, educators identified both benefits and risks, including engagement, skills development, and overreliance. This unevenness suggests that rather than reflecting a single trajectory of adoption, early practice appears to involve different approaches to integration. The central issue is not whether GenAI is used, but how different approaches shape outcomes.

This blog draws on our recent study of GenAI integration in business modules at a UK Russell Group university (Zhou et al, 2026). Through a qualitative analysis of 17 educator cases across 24 modules, we examined how GenAI was incorporated into curriculum design, and how different approaches were associated with distinct benefits and challenges. Using the lens of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996), we identified three patterns of integration: ad hoc, blended, and constructive, which together form the ABC levels for understanding how GenAI is integrated into curriculum practice. We use these levels to explore why some approaches appear more educationally effective than others. In particular, this blog will offer research-informed insights into how GenAI can be integrated more effectively and sustainably in business higher education. While the cases are drawn from business education, the patterns identified and principles of constructive integration have wider relevance across disciplines where GenAI is increasingly embedded in curriculum design.

ABC levels of GenAI integration in the business curriculum

Our analysis identified three levels of GenAI integration: ad hoc, blended, and constructive. Table 1 outlines these distinctions across key dimensions.

Table 1 ABC levels of GenAI curriculum integration

Constructive integration represents a qualitatively different approach, grounded in constructive alignment, where intended learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment are deliberately designed to develop and evaluate students’ ability to use GenAI critically and effectively. At this level, GenAI is not an optional or supporting tool, but an integral component of disciplinary learning, with a clear pedagogical purpose and coherent role across the curriculum.

By contrast, ad hoc integration is characterised by occasional and isolated use, where GenAI is introduced as an optional or experimental tool without being planned into the broader curriculum design. Blended integration moves beyond this by incorporating GenAI into selected learning activities or tasks, giving it a more purposeful pedagogical role, but its use remains only partially embedded. Both approaches therefore fall short of the coherence and strategic alignment that define constructive integration.

The distinction between these patterns is therefore not simply a matter of more or less GenAI use, but of how GenAI is positioned within the curriculum: as an experiment, as a support, or as a capability to be deliberately developed. Although developed from business education contexts, this typology offers a lens that can be applied more broadly to understand how GenAI is positioned within different disciplinary curricula.

Why constructive integration matters

Across the cases, GenAI integration generated benefits and challenges across students, educators, and institutions. At the student level, reported benefits included stronger engagement, confidence, and employability-related skills, while the main risks centred on overreliance, inequality, ethical concerns, and ineffective outputs. For educators, benefits included efficiency gains, professional learning, and improved teaching performance, but these were accompanied by increased workload and the need to redesign activities and assessments. At the programme level, GenAI enhanced curriculum relevance but raised concerns about academic standards.

Figure 1 shows that these benefits and challenges were not distributed evenly across the three patterns of integration. Constructive integration displayed the strongest and broadest benefits, while ad hoc and blended approaches showed narrower gains alongside more exposed challenges. In other words, the issue is not whether GenAI brings value or risk, but how curriculum design shapes the balance between them.

Figure 1 Trade-offs of GenAI integration: challenges (red) vs benefits (green)

What makes constructive integration different is not the removal of challenge, but the stronger presence of educational value. In the study, constructively integrated cases were linked more clearly to student engagement, capability development, employability, and curriculum relevance because GenAI was embedded through aligned outcomes, activities, and assessment, rather than added on as a tool or support. Importantly, these cases also showed stronger educator development, including pedagogical reflection and confidence, despite workload pressures. This suggests constructive integration enhances both student outcomes and educator learning by embedding AI within coherent curriculum design.

How constructive integration is achieved

Table 2 presents examples from the modules in this study, showing how GenAI was constructively integrated into existing pedagogical strategies without requiring curriculum redesign.

Table 2 Constructive GenAI Integration into Existing Pedagogical Strategies

Taken together, the cases suggest several practical principles for integrating GenAI more coherently within the curriculum. These principles are not specific to business education, but reflect broader curriculum design considerations that can be adapted across disciplines with different pedagogical traditions.

  • Integration builds on existing pedagogical strategies: GenAI should be embedded within approaches already familiar to the discipline, such as project-based or simulation-based learning, without requiring curriculum redesign (Chugh et al, 2023).
  • Sharpen the role of GenAI by disciplinary purpose: In different contexts, GenAI supported strategic analysis, research and synthesis, reflective thinking, or data interpretation. Its value depends on alignment with module aims (Zhou & Milecka-Forrest, 2021).
  • Make AI use purposeful through assessment and evaluative tasks: In stronger cases, GenAI was connected to tasks that required students to interpret, justify, compare, or critique AI-supported outputs, rather than simply using AI to complete tasks (Biggs & Tang, 2010).
  • Support deeper student engagement through scaffolding: Structured guidance, such as prompting strategies, comparison activities, and reflective tasks, enabled more critical and purposeful use (Cukurova & Miao, 2024).

Overall, constructive integration is less about introducing new tools than about redesigning existing curriculum elements so that GenAI is meaningfully aligned with disciplinary learning.

Conclusion

The ABC levels developed in our study show that GenAI integration in business education does not follow a single trajectory but ranges from ad hoc and blended use to constructive integration. The key difference lies in approach: constructive integration embeds GenAI through aligned outcomes, activities, assessment, and scaffolding. The challenges observed across GenAI integration practices suggest an urgent shift from ad hoc GenAI integration toward strategic and constructive integration in business education. In this way, higher education can support students’ employability and capability development, strengthen educators’ professional and pedagogical confidence, and enable institutions to sustain coherent, future-facing curricula.

Dr Qianqian Chai is a Lecturer in Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London and Chair of the AI in Education Innovation Sub-committee in the School of the Arts. Her research focuses on AI in higher education, including curriculum design, academic integrity, and policy. q.chai@qmul.ac.uk

Professor Xue Zhou is a Professor in AI in Business Education and Dean of AI at the University of Leicester. Her research interests include digital literacy, digital technology adoption, cross-cultural adjustment, and online professionalism. xue.zhou@le.ac.uk


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Using Tentacular Pedagogy to change the HE culture

by Kai Syng Tan

From Leonardo da Vinci (whose trans-disciplinary inventiveness was attributed to his ADHD) to bell hooks (whose professorial role drew on her activism and poetry practice), history has no lack of examples of how creative and neurodivergent processes have produced insights to catalyse social and culture change. There are also growing calls for interdisciplinary and creative approaches prioritising equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to solve wicked global challenges (AHRC 2022, WEF 2016).

However, the ‘dog-eat-dog’ culture of Higher Education (HE), austerity measures and more are leading to harmful consequences, and stakeholders with protected characteristics are worst affected (Berg, Huijbens, and Larsen 2016; UKRI 2021; Bhopal 2020; Blell, Liu and Verma 2022).  Creative arts (CA-HE), often deemed less valuable than STEM subjects, are particularly threatened (Puffett 2022, Redmond 2020), evidenced in the closure of departments, and exacerbating the already tense relationship between the CA-HE and HE (Elkins 2009). Furthermore, research suggests CA-HE is elitist (Annetts 2018; Starkey 2013), racist (Orr 2021; Tan 2021a), and failing neurodivergent students and staff by not paying enough attention to their mental wellbeing (who are over-represented in CA-HE at around 30% in the student population, in Bacon and Bennett 2013; RCA 2015).

Octopuses and Tentacles

I have been cultivating ‘Tentacular Pedagogy’ (TP) for 24 years as a HE teacher and consultant. Prioritising creative thinking, leadership and EDI, this teaching and learning practice draws on the octopus’s extraordinary composition of three hearts and nine minds. My keynote lecture for the European League of Institutes of the Arts Teachers Academy argued for a polycentric, transversal, (co-)creative teaching/learning approach which aims to make CA-HE more inclusive. In doing so, and following artist-academic James Elkin’s (2009) call to use creative research to inform and transform HE, TP rallies CA-HE to play a more (pro-)active leadership role within HE and beyond in nurturing a more creative and compassionate future. UNESCO (2021) have called for HE to ‘repair injustices while transforming the future’ by 2050, with a new ‘social contract’ that prioritises ‘human dignity and cultural diversity’, plus ‘care, reciprocity, and solidarity’.

Three Hearts and Nine Minds

TP features three EDI tenets and nine dimensions. TP’s heart(s) lies in neurodiversity, decolonisation (and the related notions of anti-racism and internationalisation), and intersectionality. Neurodiversity has remained largely ‘invisible’ in HE (Tan 2018), even though it has been called a ‘competitive advantage’ or ‘the next talent opportunity’ for organisations (Harvard 2017, WEF 2018). This is a missed opportunity, given HE’s ‘omnicrisis’ (Gill 2022). Activating research about how creativity, neurodiversity, and leadership interrelate (Tan 2021b; Tan 2019, Baron-Cohen 2017; Lesch 2018, Abraham et al 2006), TP cares about teaching/learning with/from/for/by marginalised ideas, methods and communities, who are often excluded from HE and syllabi. Surviving – even thriving – within hostile systems, TP purports that these communities are already creative and leader-ful by nature and design, and CA-HE should learn from them. TP also allies with other minoritised communities to address all social oppression (Obasi 2022, Walker 1983). Just as each tentacle of the octopus is an independent mind, TP’s nine embodied ‘minds’ teach/learn through nine Cs.

Creativity, Community and Co-Creation

TP celebrates creativity, community and co-creation. This concerns creative thinking (Krathwhol 2002, Marton and Säljö 1976) encompassing everyday creativity and disruptive invention alike (Kaufman & Beghetto 2009). TP engages with external communities toform unique learning communities. Learners include peers, professors and professionals within and beyond CA-HE and HE, including psychological and social sciences and third sector organisations. TP also foregrounds multi-directional and anti-hierarchical learning. Often gathered in the same learning environment together, TP’s diverse learners, including the ‘teacher’, learn via collaboration.

Creativity, Community and Co-Creation were exemplified in the 75th Anniversary Celebrations of the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester(PAC75) for Black History Month 2020. Led by Manchester Metropolitan University in collaboration with the Universities of Manchester and Salford, and local arts bodies, PAC75 marked Manchester’s impact on global history in nationhood and Black Lives Matter through a programme celebrating diverse leadership and intersectional engagement through culture. In 18 seminars, performances, and workshops black students chaired sessions with elders like Afua Hirsch and Kwame Anthony Appiah (Princeton), elevating their self-worth and leadership. Materials produced continue to be used, for example in Manchester’s ‘Remaking Modern British History’ MA, and at the University of Ghana.

Collage, Can-Do, Curiosity

TP cultivates novel, meaningful synergies between diverse and/or disconnected body-minds, subjects, disciplines, classes and cultures, driven by ‘productive antagonisms’ (Latham and Tan 2017). TP itself collages pedagogies like undercommons (Moten and Harney, 2013), and STEM-to-STEAM movements (Pomeroy 2012, Eger 2011). Following the shapeshifting octopus, TP also nurtures a can-do attitude. Agility, resourcefulness and enterprise are cultivated through role-play, advocacy, volunteering and action-learning. As an artist-teacher-reflective practitioner (Thornton 2005) and a REF-submitted researcher, I conjoin teaching/learning with scholarship, research, knowledge exchange, community/ industry/public engagement and widening participation. Furthermore, like the adventurous octopus, TP teachers/learners are exploratory and ‘ill-disciplined’ (Tan and Asherson 2018). Using play and interdisciplinarity, ‘deficits’ become positive action.

The ethos of collage, can-do and curiosity are played out in the Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network. The Network was set up to continue conversations and actions started by an art-psychiatry project #MagicCarpet (National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement Culture Change Award 2018) that I led at King’s College London. I invited a #MagicCarpet participant to co-lead the Network. Today, this global alliance embodies bell hooks’ ‘beloved community’ (1996) that affirms — not eradicates — difference. It comprises 360 neurodivergent people, including the inventor of neurodiversity, sociologist Judy Singer. Local and spinoff groups that members lead like the Kansas City League of Autistics and the Scottish Neurodiverse Performance Network empower HE staff and students to connect and advocate for themselves and others. Applying TP’s ‘cross-species’ learning through intersectionality, the Network is an evolving hub, and models what an inclusive teaching/learning ecosystem looks like. Its masterclasses and seminars foster best practices in teaching/learning and research between and beyond CA-HE. HE teachers, students and researchers and professionals aside, members include activists, policy-makers, clinicians, CEOs and entrepreneurs who learn from/with one another as critical friends. Unusually, the Network welcomes self-proclaimed ‘allies’ too, which protects those unable/un-ready to disclose their difference. To counter exceptionalism and racism, which is not uncommon in other disability/neurodiversity-led communities (Barbarin, 2021; Russell, 2020; Mistry, 2019; Tan, 2019; Rashed, 2019), the Network welcomes racially-diverse people, and those with neuro-differences beyond the ‘classical’ remits of neurodiversity like stroke and PTSD.

Established in response to the pandemic, the Network attracted 150 members by April 2020, hinting at how CA-HE has hitherto failed neurodivergent teachers/learners. The Network has ignited pathways to improve teaching/learning practices and cultures, empowered neurodivergent HE stakeholders, and led to further work such as a dance commission ‘Dysco’ for Southbank Centre by a Glasgow PhD student (Watson 2021) and a journal article by a US neuroscientist (Zisk 2021). Members tell their own stories, instead of being ventriloquised, commodified or white-washed by others. Mobilising their new-found confidence, skills and knowledge, members forge new initiatives, and lead further changes at local, institutional and sectoral levels, to collectively make CA-HE and HE more equitable. For instance, a member, as Jisc Head of Strategic Support Unit, founded Jisc’s first ever neurodiversity group, which is now 100 members strong. That group is supported by Jisc’s new EDI director, while the member has gone on to become a Trustee of the National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service. Members will co-produce A Handbook of Neurodiversity and Creative Research (2024) with a major academic publisher, with reviewers describing it as a ‘distinctive’ and ‘valuable’ intervention with a ‘very high scope of impact’ to HE.

Circulation, Courage and Curating Change

Neurodiversity is a subset of biodiversity (Singer 1998); ergo, TP ‘re-pays’ nature and society, prioritising ‘zero waste’ in natural and human resources, and enacts ‘Look, Think, Act’ to ‘sustain reform in teaching/learning ecologies’ (Patterson et al, 2010). To enrich the 3Rs (writing, arithmetic, reading), TP ‘up-cycles’ frameworks like ‘Curiosity, Compassion, Collaboration and Communities’ (Orr 2021), rhizomatic learning (Guerin 2013) and ‘tentacular thinking’ (Haraway 2016). TP seeks to dismantle colonialist ‘monuments’ and master’s narratives (Lorde 1984). Its ‘unruly’ tentacles celebrate ‘multiplicity in knowledge production’ (Zarabadi et al, 2019; Branlat et al, 2022) and, like the audacious octopus and ADHD-er, power towards unknowns. Last but not least, TP is about curating change. ‘Curating’ originated in care, and octopuses have thrived for 300 million years: TP nurtures future-facing models of leadership marrying compassion and vision. I seek to embody such a change-maker in what/how I teach/learn. As an outsider gate-crashing into environments historically shut to others like myself, I use my privilege to open doors for others, and make them co-leaders.

Circulation, Courage and Curating Change are enacted in a new MA Creative Arts Leadership for which I am Programme Leader, to be launched in September 2023 at Manchester Metropolitan University. Prioritising decolonised and environmentally-conscious models of change-making, the MA is with/for/by teachers/learners to generate personal, organisational, and social change, and addresses gaps in current HE offerings in leadership development and arts management/policy. Using examples like MMU alumna artist-turned-suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst, the MA counters the danger of a ‘single story’ (Adichie 2009) of how ‘leadership’ is taught/learnt. The MA entangles creativity with business acumen, sustainability and inclusion.

The mission of the study of art and design is to develop ‘cognitive abilities related to the aesthetic, ethical and social contexts of human experience’ that ‘contributes to society, the economy and the environment, both in the present and for the future’ (QAA 2019). Amid multiple threats to CA-HE, Tentacular Pedagogy’s nine ‘tentacles’ can extend teaching excellence in CA-HE and HE. TP’s ‘three hearts’ of neurodiversity and how it intersects with race and gender, manifested in the examples above as subject and teaching/learning approaches, and in collaborating with neurodivergent teachers/learners, illustrate how a more inclusive CA-HE can foster a legacy of teaching excellence and make HE thrive. 

Dr Kai Syng Tan PhD FRSA SFHEA is an artist, curator, academic, consultant, agitator, change-maker, volunteer and gatecrasher who is known for her ‘long-established expertise in using creative research as a form of critical co-creation of knowledge’ that ‘challenges dominant frameworks in and beyond the academy’ (AHRC review 2021). Her keynote lectures, op-eds, exhibitions, creative interventions and more have been featured at MOMA (New York), BBC, Biennale of Sydney and Tokyo Design Week. She has (co-)led projects with budgets from £0 to £4.8m (opening and closing ceremonies of ASEAN Para Games 2015). Her creative leadership innovations include extending ‘Running Studies’ through her RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale. Apart from being the first artist on the Editorial board of the British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin, Kai is a trustee board member of Hear Me Out (charity for detained migrants), and was Expert Panel Advisor for Media Authority of Singapore (2007-2012). Having taught/examined/consulted at more than 100 universities worldwide, Kai is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art.

Kai is grateful for the feedback and critical friendship of Susan Orr,  Stephanie Aldred, Chrissi Nerantzi and Laura Housman in developing aspects of Tentacular Pedagogy


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Offering a curriculum change evaluation tool

by Camille Kandiko Howson and Martyn Kingsbury

This blog offers an overview of a curriculum evaluation tool, part of a recently published article ‘Curriculum change as transformational learning’, in Teaching in Higher Education.

A decade ago, one of us led a strand of work exploring global best practice in whole-institution curriculum change, as part of a wider Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) project. The resulting book, Strategic Curriculum Change, identified that while huge amounts of time and money were spent doing large-scale curriculum change, as well as vast costs on the subsequent marketing of it, next to nothing was invested in evaluating it.

One of the main challenges is that while a curriculum change initiative starts off as a separate project, it eventually becomes business as usual. Such change efforts often come at a high political cost as well, with senior leaders often moving on and leaving the implementation to others. Many efforts never really get off the ground, instead lingering and taking on board new ideas, blending the old and the new. These may water down the original vision and drive for change, further hindering evaluation.

Evaluating change

We have recently had the opportunity to remedy this gap, through evaluating a whole-institution curriculum review project, part of a comprehensive nine-year investment plan to reposition teaching and learning within an institution. While it is easy to check the administrative side of a change effort (were boxes ticked, forms filled out), analysing the whether the ethos, purpose and guiding principles were adopted requires a much more nuanced approach.

We designed a multi-stage evaluation plan to explore to what extent were the principles of a Learning and Teaching Strategy embedded within new curriculum structures, as well as the impact on personal and disciplinary culture.

This output provides insight into the first stage of curriculum change – taking new ideas and pedagogical approaches and building them into the bricks and mortar of the educational experience and into the minds and practices of those delivering the curriculum. This approach allows for evaluating to what extent a change effort is just words on a slick new webpage, or whether there has been a transformation of the curriculum.

The review in context

The review is based in a highly devolved, mid-size urban research-intensive institution in the UK. The institutional change programme is based on four pillars:

1) Assessment Reform: A review of curricula with the objective of reducing over-assessment

2) Active Learning: An evidence-based transformation of pedagogy, to make teaching more discovery-based

3) Diversity and Inclusion: The fostering of an inclusive and diverse culture and sense of belonging

4) Digital and Technology Enhanced Learning: The development of online and digital tools to enhance curricula, pedagogy and community

We evaluated the degree of departmental engagement with the institution-wide curriculum review policy through a discourse analysis of three sources: 1) a public Learning and Teaching Strategy; 2) internal Curriculum Redesign Forms, the quality assurance process stating changes, rationale and engagement; and 3) external Programme Specifications, detailing the educational offer for prospective students.

The evaluation tool

We designed an evaluation rubric, and in the paper we cover two aspects of it. The first explores engagement with the four pillars of the Strategy in the Curriculum Redesign Forms, through the adoption of language, intent and application, resulting in 12 indicators. This allowed us to evaluate the degree to which words and meaning of the Strategy were embedded within the new curriculum structures of the departments.

We also explored the alignment of the Curriculum Redesign Forms and the Programme Specification, focusing on the sections on Programme Overview, the Learning Outcomes, the Learning and Teaching Approach and the Assessment Strategy. This led to another 16 indicators. This offered insight into the extent the internal changes had made it into the public ‘offering’ of the course.

These 28 indicators were judged on a scale of Absent, Vague, Implicit, Present, Explicit. Scores were assigned and each department in the institution was reviewed by the researchers. We found varying engagement across the pillars of the Strategy and the challenge of applying principles in practice. We identified three different patterns of engagement across departments, with ‘active’ departments integrating the aims of the Strategy with disciplinary knowledge and pedagogy, ‘engaged’ departments adopting much of intent of the strategy, and group of ‘passive’ departments with minimal engagement and a focus on structural changes.

We hope this research and evaluation tool help others conduct evaluation of curriculum change. We found this approach uncovered both structural and cultural change. This is just the start of our research on curriculum change, and we hope it kickstarts other curriculum change research and evaluation, whether at the institution, faculty or departmental level.

SRHE member Dr Camille Kandiko Howson is Associate Professor of Education in the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship at Imperial College London. Follow Camille on Twitter @cbkandiko

SRHE member Professor Martyn Kingsbury is Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship at Imperial College London.


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Making knowledge more explicit in the English for Academic Purposes classroom

by Mark Brooke

This post is part of a series tied to a special issue of Teaching in Higher Education published in March 2019. This special issue aimed to spark a re-evaluation of what higher education needs to do to respond to the post-truth world, especially from the perspective of individual educators. The twelve papers, nine of which are accompanied by posts here on the SRHE blog, take different perspectives to explore the ways in which higher education is being challenged and the responses that it might make in terms of curriculum, pedagogy and professional practice.

In 2000, Moore (2000: 33) wrote that the ‘curriculum of the future should be the curriculum of knowledge’. He argued that knowledge should be accessible to all members of society and, in this way, education should promote social and educational justice. However, we find that the educational climate for such an objective is not wholly welcoming. In many university settings, academic language courses tend to be devoid of a theoretical approach to education that places the teacher in the role of linguistic expert. Indeed, courses prominently feature notions such as grammatical accuracy instruction based on isolated clauses at the lexico-grammatical level or independent self-directed learning and study habits. Unfortunately, in these cases, the focus of instruction may first be decontextualised as extracts, which oversimplifies the meanings in the texts; and second, a theory of language or knowledge may play a backseat role or even be entirely absent. As many researchers have pointed out, focusing on common errors in a de-contextualised way is probably not effective. Additionally, independent learning, although a useful process, is often given too much focus. This detracts from the time spent with a qualified tutor as knowledge provider, taking the onus away from what the teacher does. In the case of independent learning instruction, what is being foregrounded is ‘the social circumstances of knowers’ (Maton, 2014: 5), not knowledge.

In contrast, the main goal of our research is to provide knowledge to students in the form of analytical lenses to enable them to deconstruct and judge information effectively. What we strive to do is move away from educational ‘knowledge blindness’ (Maton, 2014). Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) as a sociological framework has guided our educational practices to do this. The basic premise of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is that knowledge is power. LCT is a toolkit for analysing socio-cultural practices and uncovering what constitutes the ‘rules of the game’ that provide the means to that power. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a gaze or ‘a mode of thinking, acting and being’ (Dong et al, 2015: 8) through the explanatory power of the codes. In this research we seek to develop our students’ critical gaze. We achieve this by applying the dimensions of specialisation (including cosmologies) and semantics.

Specialisation determines principles of privilege in fields of practice. Practices that emphasise epistemic relation and downplay actors’ dispositions view specialised knowledge as the basis of achievement (ER+). We believe a curriculum should primarily be built on ER+. Practices that emphasise social relations, and downplay epistemic relations, are represented by the knower codes (SR+). Independent learning is an example of this, which has often been given too much focus in our field. Knower codes can be explored in greater depth through the use of the concept of ‘axiological cosmologies’. Maton (2013) defines cosmologies as ‘constitutive features of social fields that underlie the way social actors and practices are differentially characterised and valued’ (p 152). In identifying how clusters are formed, we can help students to understand the means by which experts and authors attempt to persuade the reader to align with a position on a particular issue. ‘Semantics’ is a dimension from LCT that ‘conceives social fields of practice as semantic structures whose organizing principles are conceptualized as semantic codes’ (Maton, 2014: 2). Using Semantics, it is possible to explore the relations that exist between knowledge structures and, in particular for this purpose, how to apply a critical lens to a social phenomenon or text to analyse it. 

We conducted research between 2015 and 2017 at the Centre for English Language Communication at the National University of Singapore. Our findings, from three parallel case studies within the broad framework of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), provide results from classroom-based action research working with semantics, specialisation and axiological cosmologies from Legitimation Code Theory. Each case study is outlined, explaining how these LCT dimensions have guided practice in the teaching of English for academic writing. Specifically, LCT has been applied in the development of our students’ critical dispositions by teaching them how to apply critical lenses to analyse texts and to make informed judgements. The first case study explores semantics as a strategy for teaching how to use lenses for the theoretical framework section of an IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Research and Discussion) research paper in the social sciences. The second is set in a standalone EAP module and describes the use of a systemic-functional linguistics-informed pedagogical tool as a lens to analyse academic discourse so learners can better understand the meanings including the assumptions, unsupported claims, or biases in texts. The third regards the embedding of LCT approaches for students engaged in writing hortatory blogs in a unit entitled Public Writing and Communication. Students are taught to explore ‘axiological cosmologies’ to understand how evaluative meanings form patterns of clusters that enable the writer to create a persuasive expository text.

References

Dong, A, Maton, K and Carvalho L, (2015) The structuring of design knowledge The Routledge Companion to Design Research, pp38-49 London: Routledge.

Maton, K (2008) ‘Knowledge-building: how can we create powerful and influential ideas?’ Paper presented at Disciplinarity, Knowledge and Language: An International Symposium Sydney: University of Sydney

Maton, K (2013) Knowledge and knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education Routledge: London

Maton, K (2014) ‘Building powerful knowledge: the significance of semantic waves’ in Barrett, B and Rata, E (eds) (2014) Knowledge and the future of the curriculum, pp181–197 London: Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Studies in Excellence and Equity in Global Education.

Moore, R (2000) ‘For knowledge: tradition, progressivism and progress in education – reconstructing the curriculum debate’ Cambridge Journal of Education 30(1): 17–36

Mark Brooke is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for English Language Communication at the National University of Singapore. He specialises in research and teaching in two fields: English for Academic Purposes and the Sociology of Sport. He can be found on Google Scholar, Facebook and LinkedIn.The full article by Mark Brooke, Laetitia Monbec and Namala Tilakaratna (all National University of Singapore), ‘The analytical lens: developing undergraduate students’ critical dispositions in undergraduate EAP writing courses’, is in Teaching in Higher Education 24(3): 428-443


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Learning, teaching and the curriculum

By Marcia Devlin

This abstract covers three aspects of research in learning, teaching and curriculum over the past 50 years: research issues and their drivers; the impact of this research on policy and practice; and future priorities. What follows are my observations and thoughts on these aspects, which are shaped by my experience, beliefs, values and preferences.

My observations relate to: changes in higher education per se; learning theory; the role of discipline-based research; the nature of research collaborations; dissemination and impact; and possible future priorities.

Changes in higher education per se

One important defining feature of the past 50 years of research in learning, teaching and curriculum has been that the context of this research has changed so fundamentally. In 2015, we find ourselves on the trajectory predicted by Trow (1972) of higher education expansion and transformation from elite, through mass, to universal access.

A massified system has meant that not only are there more students but also, alongside the internationalisation of higher education, that students are from a far wider range of social and cultural backgrounds than the cohort who attended Western universities 50 years ago. This has changed research into learning, teaching and curriculum in these universities significantly and irreversibly. Naturally, this research has increasingly focused on how to best teach and assess students from a range of diverse backgrounds. Continue reading →