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The Society for Research into Higher Education

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Can folk pedagogies help us understand the limited impact of research on higher education?

by Alex Buckley

The SRHE conference is a great place to see our field in all its glory. From the sessions I attended in December 2025, one thing that was abundantly clear was the desire of so many HE researchers to change the world. A distinctive feature of contemporary HE research – reflecting the social sciences more broadly – is the focus on political and ethical issues, with avowedly political and ethical intentions. The improvement of society is often the explicit end, rather than the more humble improvement of our own part of the education system.

Despite this desire to make a difference, higher education research has for many years been held up as an area where the impact of those working in the field is not what it could be. As George Keller said in 1985, “hardly anyone in higher education pays attention to the research and scholarship about higher education”,

Asking the right questions?

There hasn’t been a lot of work on the gap between research and practice in HE – though there is a fair amount in the schools sector from which we can extrapolate, to a greater or lesser extent – but one issue that has received some attention is the fundamental one: are researchers actually asking the right questions?

Vivianne Robinson is a researcher who has laid a substantial amount of blame at the feet of researchers, who “have little to offer by way of alternative solutions, when the problems they have been studying are not those of the practitioner” (Robinson 1993). I have recently used Robinson’s model of Problem-Based Methodology to explore whether research about exams in higher education does engage sufficiently with the challenges that teachers take themselves to face. The results were not encouraging.

One of the more straightforward of Robinson’s criteria for impactful research is that researchers should be addressing teachers’ beliefs, and correcting them where they are erroneous. That’s important, but what if those beliefs are hard to shift? We all have stubborn hunches about how higher education works: good ways of motivating students, how to write feedback that will make students pay attention, how to clearly communicate complex ideas. What if there are teacher beliefs that are deeply embedded, so deeply that we don’t always know we have them, but that aren’t helping us and need to change?

One idea that has been explored in the school sector, but has largely passed us by, is the concept of ‘folk pedagogies’. This idea was developed in the 1990s as an extension of the more famous concept of ‘folk psychologies’: the tacit theories that we all have that allow us to make sense of people’s behaviour. For Jerome Bruner, a natural next step from folk psychologies was the idea that we have intuitive theories about how people learn.

“Watch any mother, any teacher, even any babysitter with a child and you’ll be struck by how much of what they do is steered by notions of ‘what children’s mind are like and how to help them learn,’ even though they may not be able to verbalise their pedagogical principles.” Bruner (1996)

There has been some research in the school sector about the implications of this idea, particularly in terms of how much difference research makes to educational practice. Folk pedagogies have two features that will make them a factor in the impact of education research: they interfere with the uptake of new research-based ideas and approaches, and they are stubborn. On the first point, the idea is that new ideas about higher education will have to replace the old if they are to influence teachers; and on the second, evidence suggests that even where trainee teachers have ostensibly internalised more scientific theories of learning, the folk pedagogies come creeping back.

In the case of higher education, what might these commonsense, intuitive theories look like? They might just be very general ideas about how people learn, applied to the particular context of higher education. Bruner identifies a range of broad folk pedagogical views, such as one which sees ‘children as knowers’, with a focus on the gathering and organising of facts. Perhaps one kind of folk psychology of higher education would be the application of that idea specifically to students in universities rather than other sectors: a focus on the selection, organisation and retention of propositional knowledge within degree programmes. Perhaps there are also specific intuitive theories about higher education that influence teachers’ practices. Perhaps there is a folk intuition that university students should not be spoon-fed – that they must take responsibility for their own learning and seek to develop their own views. Perhaps there is a folk intuition that students should encounter challenging views that encourage them to question their own certainties. In the absence of research, we can only speculate (and introspect).

Respecting the ‘folk’

The idea that teachers have deep intuitions about how students learn, that those intuitions can prevent them from acting on more evidence-based beliefs, and that those intuitions are hard to shake; none of those ideas are particularly earth-shattering. They are probably common sense among those researching and enhancing higher education. The value of the idea of ‘folk pedagogies’ lies instead in the way that it encourages us to take those intuitions seriously, both as an object of study and a powerful barrier to change.

Rather than dismissing intuitions about higher education – as ignorant beliefs and hide-bound traditions – we can study them. What are they? Where do they come from? How do they change? The idea of folk pedagogies is not pejorative. There’s no shame in having intuitions about how learning works. As with folk psychological theories, they are necessary parts of how we navigate the world, and something we can’t do without. There is also deep wisdom to be found in those intuitions, even if they are sometimes misleading. Research goes wrong by departing from common sense, at least as much as the other way around.

Acknowledging the existence of folk theories of higher education can help improve the impact of our research in all sorts of ways. We can research them, to understand why teachers and students (and others) do what they do, and the conditions in which deep intuitions can change. It can help us understand where – and why – research has departed so far from common sense as to be of little practical relevance.

It can also help us understand the scale of the challenge. In much of what we do, we’re seeking to modify what university teachers do, which very often means changing how they think. The reality is that we aren’t usually changing superficial, specific beliefs, at least not where the improvements we’re seeking are substantive. We’re changing deep beliefs picked up over a lifetime. Our model of improvement may then need to fit the old adage: if you’re not making progress at a snail’s pace, you’re not making progress. That’s a bit different from annual quality enhancement cycles or short-term strategic initiatives. We can change the world, but it will take time.

References

Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Harvard

Robinson, V. M. J. (1993). Problem-Based Methodology: Research for the Improvement of Practice. Pergamon Press

Dr Alex Buckley is an Associate Professor in the Learning & Teaching Academy at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland. His research is focused on conceptual aspects of research and practice in assessment and feedback.


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The scholarship of learning and teaching: a victim of its nomenclature?

by Nathalie Sheridan

Scholarship historically suggests there are elements of reading, of engaging with other scholars’ and researchers’ thoughts and publications. It is a historical exercise analysing and critiquing a body of existing knowledge. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) also necessitates a strong element of reflectivity – or better reflexivity – to become a meaningful activity. However, SoTL is more than ‘just’ scholarship. Indeed, it would be of little use for educators, if it would not involve for instance researching the impact of learning and teaching strategies, or interventions.

There is debate about the definition for SoTL and it has not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion or sound framework, despite attempts such as that by Miller-Young and Yeo (2015). However, most of the publications trying to explore positioning SoTL assume that it involves some form of research, as they speak of methods, methodology, and theories. That SoTL tends to focus on a specific context, very often a narrow view of a classroom, a course, programme or a faculty, does neither mean it is not research. Nor that the way we collect data should not adhere to research processes and standards (Reinman, 2019). If educators in their subject disciplines aim to gain meaningful insights about their practice, the data needs to be meaningful and this is done by research design.

The nomenclature is confusing. I would like to get away from the notion of equating a term for a specific context with the meaning behind it. The actual philosophies, methodologies, and approaches to which this this subfield of educational scholarship and research relates are the same as those employed generally in scholarship and research in education. SoTL is the context of educational research in higher education, with an emphasis – but not exclusionary – on exploring the effects of learning and teaching strategies on the students’ learning experience and often attainment and retention, usually with a very specific focus. However, the content of SoTL, the stuff people who ‘do’ SoTL engage in, is research and scholarship of education within the higher education context. Therefore, SoTL ought to use the same tools and rigour as educational research (and scholarship). When teaching my masters level course ‘Approaches to Educational Inquiry’, I try to convey that SoTL goes beyond an evaluation of a new classroom activity, or the use of end-of-course questionnaires as the sole measurement for course evaluation.

As an Erziehungswissenschaflter (Learning Sciences Scientist, there is no actual translation for my discipline) who moved into the English language context, it never sat easy with me that my Wissenschaft ‘science’ – simply because I changed language – suddenly was a little less and I am not a scientist anymore. Educational research has attracted a barrage of not unreasonable critique as to its quality. But it also attracted critique which demonstrates a lack of understanding of Erziehungswissenschaften (learning science, education).

A recent critique (Hazel, 2019) was that educational research does not even use the scientific method. This point of critique is based on a flaw in thinking; unlike in a chemistry or engineering lab, the variables and factors affecting our learning and understanding cannot be controlled nor can all of them be observed (at the same time). In our team we joke about learning following the Heisenberg principle; one cannot observe all variables at the same time, and the act of observing will change at least some of them.

To suggest testing and modification of hypotheses as a reasonable approach to understand an effect on learning shows a clear lack of understanding the complexities of learning. Learning is a social, neurological, cognitive, and personal process. The effects of one learning instance cannot often be predicted. As an example, if you have been teaching for a while, you will have noticed that an activity which worked well with one cohort, completely flatlined with a different cohort, or the same cohort on a different day. Experienced educators might be able to draw from tacit knowledge and make decisions that lead to planned outcomes but this is a whole other debate. However, we need to remain vigilant in addressing the various levels of theoretical framing and not confuse worldviews, theories, paradigms, methodologies and methods. If we, for the sake of simplification, cut out these steps it will just lead to more confusion and less sound scholarship or research.

Valid points in the aforementioned critique (Hazel, 2019) were the lack of replicability and sharing of data in educational research. Sharing data about our learners might appear to be in conflict with open science. However, there is an imperative for the public sector to share data, and institutions work towards making it ethically possible (UKRIO, 2018). The often narrow focus on exploring the effect of an intervention cannot tell us much more than an analysis of a conjunction of circumstances within a certain period of time. Will we know that evaluating one cohort’s reaction to a change in assessment, is transferable to another cohort, in another year? If so, how do we know? To ensure replicability we need to attempt to answer these questions. Replicability is a complex issue, which I can’t address fully within the word-limit here. Maybe one point to make would be to explore the emergence of patterns amongst similar projects. I was taught that any educational research which claims an undisputable truth is flawed, due to the complexity of influencing factors. It is near to impossible to isolate influencing variables and draw conclusions that are generalisable; this is due to human nature not due to lack of research rigour.

Let’s embrace the chances for gathering rich data and gaining in-depth understanding which the use of SoTL permits us, and explore how to strengthen the validity and reliability of our approaches to data collection and analysis.

Nathalie Sheridan is a lecturer in academic and digital development at the University of Glasgow (LEADS). Her first degree is in Erziehungswissenschaften (Learning Sciences, TU Dresden) with an MPhil (University of Glasgow) and PhD (University of Strathclyde) in education. She has worked in culture and museums education throughout her studies and been teaching in higher education since 2006. Her focus is the translation of creative learning and teaching practices into higher education, through active pedagogies and rethinking learning spaces with the aim to improve the student experience and include disenfranchised learners and educators.