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Engaging students as partners (SaP) in teaching and learning is an emerging yet contested topic in higher education. This study interviewed 16 students and staff working in partnership across 11 Australian universities to understand how they conceptualised SaP and the opportunities they believed SaP afforded their universities. Thematic analysis revealed three overlapping conceptions of partnership: SaP as counter-narrative, SaP as values-based practice, and SaP as cultural change. The findings are first interpreted through the lens of liminality and an ethic of care. This is followed by a discussion of inclusivity of involvement, resistance, and reinforcement of neoliberal agendas despite good intentions. Finally, implications for cautious enactment of both practice and research are offered. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

There is an increasing focus on relationship-rich education and relational pedagogies in higher education. Engaging students as partners (SaP) to nurture values-based pedagogical relationships is one such approach, yet it is contested with limited research outside of Anglophone countries. To advance a collective understanding of SaP as a global practice, we interviewed 35 postgraduate students at a research-intensive university in Hong Kong with a hybridised educational setting combining Chinese and westernised strategies and heritages. Reflecting on their learner-teacher relationships as both undergraduate and postgraduate students, they discussed differing senses of student identity that shaped how they perceived their pedagogical relationships: entanglement of positioning themselves as followers, customers, and co-teachers. The influence of neoliberalism, capitalism, and marketisation of higher education in the Hong Kong context was evident throughout the interviews. We discuss the implications for learner-teacher relationships as a pedagogical partnership in the broader hybridised higher education context of Hong Kong. In doing so, we argue that students are navigating an in-betweenness that shapes how they see themselves and the pedagogical relationships they form with teaching staff. [Author abstract]

This review provides a critical appraisal of the measurement of students' social class and socioeconomic status (SES) in the context of widening higher education participation. Most assessments of social class and SES in higher education have focused on objective measurements based on the income, occupation, and education of students' parents, and they have tended to overlook diversity among students based on factors such as age, ethnicity, indigeneity, and rurality. However, recent research in psychology and sociology has stressed the more subjective and intersectional nature of social class. The authors argue that it is important to consider subjective self-definitions of social class and SES alongside more traditional objective measures. The implications of this dual measurement approach for higher education research are discussed.

LOCATE: There are many general books and articles on publishing in peer-reviewed journals, but few specifically address issues around writing for scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) journals. One of the challenges of beginning to write about SoTL is that most scholars have become interested in exploring teaching and learning issues in higher education (HE) alongside their disciplinary interests and have to grapple with a new literature and sometimes unfamiliar methods and genres as well. Hence, for many, as they write up their SoTL projects, they are simultaneously forging their identities as SoTL scholars. FOCUS: We unpack the process of writing SoTL articles for peer-reviewed journals with the goal of supporting both new and experienced SoTL scholars (faculty/academics, professional staff, and students) as they nurture and further develop their voices and their SoTL identities and strive to contribute to the enhancement of learning and teaching in HE. REPORT: We pose three related sets of overarching questions for consideration when writing SoTL articles for peer-reviewed journals followed by heuristic frameworks for publishing in five specific writing genres (empirical research articles, conceptual articles, case studies of practice, reflective essays, and opinion pieces). ARGUE:  Using the metaphor of being in conversation, we argue that writing is a values-based process that contributes to the identity formation of SoTL scholars and their sense of belonging within the SoTL discourse community.

Engaging students as partners (SaP) is an approach promoting meaningful pedagogical relationships in higher education. Scholars have called for more culturally situated research on SaP that compares Anglophone countries with other contexts. In response, we conducted an exploratory qualitative study by interviewing 36 undergraduate students from Australia, Mainland China, and Hong Kong. Adopting the relational lens of SaP, the interviews focused on conceptualisations of pedagogical partnership, specifically learner–teacher identities and power dynamics. Through comparative and reflexive thematic analysis, we found that understandings of partnership in different contexts were influenced by broader cultural differences. The findings showed that the perception of SaP in Australia was consistent with the prevailing Western discourse, but the notion of SaP was adapted and re-shaped in Mainland China, and in Hong Kong, there were diverse interpretations of it. This study contributes to new understandings of the influence of specific sociocultural and policy variations in SaP practises through culturally situated and comparative research using theorisations of perpetual translation. We argue for future research to contribute collective insights and nuanced, diverse understandings that expand SaP as an approach to global scholarship.

The International Collaborative Writing Groups (ICWG) initiative creates a space for ongoing collaboration amongst scholars of teaching and learning who co-author a manuscript on a topic of shared interest. The second ICWG, linked to the 2015 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference in Melbourne, Australia, involved 59 scholars from 11 countries. In this piece, we describe the aims, process, and outcomes for the ICWG, comparing it with the first ICWG in 2012. While international collaboration around a topic of shared interest is generally viewed positively, the realities of collaborating online with limited face-to-face interactions to complete a manuscript can be challenging. We argue, despite such challenges, that ongoing collaboration amongst scholars is vital to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) movement. Drawing on our experience of leading the overall ICWG initiative and our research into participants' experiences, we suggest there are individual dispositions toward collaboration that enrich and enable successful participation in ICWG experiences. We end by highlighting the final products arising from almost two year of collaborative thinking and writing from six groups.

In the global higher education sector, government accountability initiatives are increasingly focused on degree-level competencies that may be expected from university graduates. The purpose of this paper was to examine the extent to which SoTL reflects this increased interest in student learning across the degree program. Articles (N=136) published in three international SoTL journals, over the past three years, were systematically reviewed using a framework that concentrated on the extent to which they reflected a focus of (a) teaching-emphasis versus learning-emphasis and (b) unit-level (subject, course) versus degree-/ program-level. Our analysis indicated that the majority of SoTL publications (47%) were focused at the level of a single unit with an emphasis on teaching practice; in contrast, only a small minority of SoTL publications (9%) were focused at the level of the overall degree with an emphasis on learning processes. Drawing on our review, we highlight SoTL publications that exemplify the inquiry into student learning at the level of the degree program and offer questions to guide future SoTL inquiries.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has been described as the fastest growing academic development movement in higher education. As this field of inquiry matures, there is a need to understand how SoTL research is conducted. The purpose of our study was to inform this debate by investigating research approaches used in SoTL publications. We analysed 223 empirical research studies published from 2012 to 2014 in three explicitly-focused SoTL journals. We classified the studies as either qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods using an analytical framework devised from existing literature on research methods. We found that the use of the three research designs was fairly evenly distributed across the papers examined: qualitative (37.2%), quantitative (29.6%), and mixed methods (33.2%). However, there was an over-reliance on data collection from a single source in 83.9% of papers analysed, and this source was primarily students. There was some, but limited, evidence of the use of triangulation through the use of multiple data collection instruments (e.g. survey, assessment tasks, grade databases). Similarly, only one-third of publications classified as mixed methods integrated the analysis and interpretation of the qualitative and quantitative data equally within the study. We conclude that current SoTL research is characterised by methodological pluralism but could be advanced through inclusion of more diverse approaches, such as close reading, and adoption of strategies known to enhance the quality of research, for example, triangulation and visual representation.

Within the context of changing government policies demanding accountability and a desire for science curricular leaders to draw on evidence to inform on-going curricular reform efforts, this paper reports on a cross-institutional benchmarking study of graduates' perception of their learning gains across the whole of their degree program. The study utilises a purpose-built instrument, the Science Students Skills Inventory (SSSI), which is one tool for evidencing the obtainment of the recently articulated national Learning Threshold Outcomes in Science. The results indicate that students gained content knowledge along with writing, communication and teamwork skills at equal levels with no statistically significant differences across the two university cohorts. The exception was student's low perception of building quantitative skills, which differed significantly across the cohorts. The benefits, limitations and scope of the SSSI as one tool for evidencing learning outcomes are discussed. Implications are presented for evaluating program-level learning outcomes framed within the quality assurance versus quality enhancement national policy debate, along with directions for further research. [Author abstract, ed]

Students often find it difficult to appreciate the relevance of statistical analysis and the role of quantitative skills (QS) to their future profession in the health sciences. Recent studies have pointed to the use of interdisciplinary or context-based approaches to bring relevance to the role of statistics and mathematics in the life sciences. This paper reports a strategy used to teach statistical concepts and building QS of biomedicine students by linking the teaching of biology and statistics using interdisciplinary case studies. Students' perceptions of the initiative were determined through the use of a questionnaire asking students to provide their opinions about the relevancy and importance of studying QS. It was found pre and post survey students held negative views about mathematics and statistics, and although students' comments indicate the use of real-life case studies kept the lessons in statistics interesting, they did not think statistical analysis was important to them or their careers. The authors have speculated that choosing case studies that cater to the interests of the students undertaking the introductory statistics subjects may improve the importance of QS for them. [Author abstract, ed]