In Swedish higher education, student evaluations of teaching (SETs) have become a central instrument for quality assurance and pedagogical revision. While student feedback can provide valuable insights into their lived experience of courses, an overreliance on such evaluation risks elevating satisfaction over learning and sidelining the professional judgment of university teachers who understand curricular progression across multiple study years. Grounded in research-based pedagogy and long-term program coherence, this paper argues for a balanced approach that integrates student perspectives with the expertise of educators. Drawing on Biggs' theory of constructive alignment, Bernstein's pedagogic device, and Bourdieu's field theory, the study develops a dialogic model of curriculum development that explains how academic judgment mediates between learning experience and teaching expertise. The discussion is situated within the Swedish context, which rests simultaneously on democratic and scientific ideals. It also generates implications for higher-education policy and teaching practice internationally.
This study reports the findings of a follow-up investigation into the influence of drama education on teachers' morality development at the pre-service and beginning teaching stages. Data are drawn from a case study of extracurricular drama activity in H teacher education university. This study demonstrates that drama-based pedagogy shapes pre-service teachers' professional morality through four interconnected mechanisms: dialogic fieldwork bridging theory and practice; safe reflective spaces negotiating moral tensions; embodied performance within professional dilemmas; and collaborative teamwork fostering moral learning ecologies. Significantly, this impact is not ephemeral; it is sustained and reshaped through ongoing interaction with the ecological contexts of early career teaching.
This study examines how faculty and students manage generative AI in higher education when expectations remain unclear and institutional guidance is still developing. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with teachers and students in Pakistani universities, it explores uncertainty around acceptable AI use, fairness in assessment, and differing expectations across classes and peer groups. Participants were recruited from Education and English departments, situating the study within Social Sciences and Humanities contexts where AI is closely tied to writing-intensive teaching, assessment, and feedback. The analysis shows that participants relied on moral improvisation, making practical and ethical decisions in the moment when formal rules offered limited direction. The findings indicate that generative AI reshapes everyday academic work by creating new forms of uncertainty, emotional responsibility, and uneven expectations. The study argues for clearer, consistent, and context-sensitive guidance developed through shared understanding between faculty, students, and institutions.
While universities make commitments about equity and inclusion, pursuing these values can be challenging. In this paper, we explore such challenges in the controversies surrounding dyslexia's classification, disclosure and support at UK universities. We examine how multiple forms of 'inclusion' and 'exclusion' are achieved and continually renegotiated for dyslexic students, using Mol's [Mol, A. (2003). The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Duke University Press] concept of multiplicities from Science and Technology Studies (STS), to relate lived experience to classificatory politics [Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]. Students' experiences of torque illustrate how diagnostic tests, physical spaces and staff attitudes all enact dyslexia differently, incorporating medical explanations of genetic and neurological difference between individuals; critical analyses of ableism; legal definitions of disability; links between funding requirements and standardised tests; and teachers' denial of dyslexia. These create consequences for students, affecting their self-concept, their engagement or withdrawal from support services, and their ability to progress with their courses.
Student voice is widely promoted as a pathway to inclusion in higher education, yet in multicultural classrooms it often remains epistemically constrained. This study introduces the concept of pseudo-voicing to describe pedagogical conditions in which students are invited to speak but lack epistemic authority to influence how academic knowledge is constructed and interpreted. Drawing on an autoethnographic study of fifty Arab undergraduate students in Israel, the analysis examines classroom episodes and students' reflective texts using a voice-centred relational approach. The findings show that student resistance to canonical theories signals epistemic misalignment between theoretical frameworks and students' realities. Across the data, voice was present, yet its epistemic status varied depending on how pedagogical responses engaged contradiction. The article proposes the 6C Model as a discursive heuristic specifying conditions under which pseudo-voicing is sustained or disrupted, demonstrating how engagement with contradiction can enable epistemic repositioning and reshape how canonical knowledge is interpreted.
Drawing on program records and interviews with administrators of Drexel University's STAR program - a paid ten-week summer research experience for first-year undergraduates across disciplines at - this article examines how participation in research-based learning has been organized over twenty years. Using feminist and institutional perspectives, we analyze patterns of participation by recorded gender and academic unit to show how access to undergraduate research is shaped by disciplinary hierarchies and program design. Participation expanded over time, and that the recorded gender distribution shifted substantially, yet participation remained concentrated in STEM-oriented units and data remained limited for assessing intersectional equity. We argue that undergraduate research should be understood not only as enrichment but as pedagogy. Inclusive research pedagogy, however, depends on investment, distributed mentoring, and attention to material constraints on access. As a bounded institutional case, STAR shows how universities can assess use how research-based learning is defined, supported and made available.
This theoretical and argumentative paper contributes to the scholarship on Open Classroom Climate (OCC) and on teaching controversial issues by highlighting how broader societal polarization and antagonistic tensions undermine efforts to cultivate OCCs in higher education. Using a widely publicized incident in a Swedish master's program as an illustrative case, the paper shows how in-group/out-group dynamics, hostile rhetoric, and chilling effects on participation can disrupt teaching. Bringing research on teaching controversial issues and OCC into dialogue with scholarship on affective polarization and with Chantal Mouffe's distinction between antagonism and agonism, the paper argues that OCC is both increasingly necessary and increasingly difficult to sustain in an 'antagonistic age,' a heuristic label used in the paper. The paper concludes by formulating this as the OCC paradox: the classroom climate needed to resist affective polarization is itself threatened by the social conditions that make such resistance urgent.
In interdisciplinary undergraduate education, the integration of knowledge structures and social practices across disciplines poses challenges, as teachers and students may be unaware of the differing 'rules of the game' inherent to each discipline. University research and practice on interdisciplinary education have disregarded knowledge, which is problematic because disciplinary knowledge can shape what students think and how they engage with the world. This study extends the 'knowledge debates' by exploring what constitutes success as reflected by 42 curriculum documents and 63 course syllabi from an interdisciplinary undergraduate programme. Our findings indicate that curriculum documents emphasise knowers, whereby students are expected to internalise personal and social characteristics and dispositions when engaging with disciplines. Conversely, course syllabi prioritise knowledge, whereby students are expected to learn theories, concepts, and methods derived from disciplines. Our empirical case emphasises how success in interdisciplinary education is defined by epistemological logics rather than by merely instrumental accounts.
This study investigates Afghan women's experiences with online education at an online university in Afghanistan following the Taliban's ban on women's higher education. Framed by theories of transformative learning and feminist pedagogy, it explores how online education serves as a site of resilience and empowerment. The study adopted a critical narrative inquiry and conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 female students. Findings revealed motivations centered on continuing education, career advancement, social contribution, psychological well-being, and asserting equality. Opportunities included accessible education, engagement with prominent instructors, and holistic support services. However, students reported substantial challenges, including infrastructural limitations, financial constraints, and sociocultural restrictions. Despite these obstacles, the university represents a critical alternative educational pathway, demonstrating how crisis-driven pedagogical innovation can foster transformative outcomes for women in restrictive contexts. The study highlights the profound resilience of Afghan women and offers implications for critical pedagogy in higher education globally.
This article examines how neuroqueer postgraduate students navigate higher education environments that increasingly emphasise inclusion, belonging and wellbeing, yet often remain structured around neuronormative and cisheteronormative assumptions. Drawing on a postqualitative, Deleuzian-informed case-assemblage approach, the article explores the postgraduate journey of Lindi, a neuroqueer student in a South African university. The study explores how academic survival emerges through fragmented, relational and more-than-human assemblages of care, supervision and companionship. Rather than positioning belonging as an institutional outcome, the analysis traces how postgraduate life unfolds through shifting material, affective and relational conditions that extend beyond formal supervisory structures. The findings suggest that dominant models of inclusion frequently overlook the complex intersections of neurodivergence, queerness and mental health within postgraduate education. By foregrounding Lindi's experiences, the article contributes to emerging discussions on postgraduate pedagogy and argues for more relational, responsive and situated approaches to supervision that acknowledge diverse modes of academic becoming.
This paper contributes to the growing research interest in the quality of learning and teaching in higher education (HE). The paper argues for the rethinking of learning and teaching cultures in HE regarding learning and teaching quality enhancement. Using Fielding's (1999) 'radical collegiality' and Cook-Sather's (2015) 'pedagogical partnerships' as theoretical anchors, the paper interrogates the theory and applied practice of authentic collaboration between students and academic staff. It starts with a critical discussion of the literature on student-staff partnerships and the co-creation of learning and teaching. Drawing on data from a 2-year student-staff partnership project involving three UK universities, it reveals how authentic, collaborative and successful student-staff partnerships evolve over time, are contingent on reconfiguring the power dynamics between both parties and creating shared spaces for these beneficial situated partnerships to be developed. The underpinning values of these partnerships include shared responsibility, mutual respect and reciprocity.Este art & iacute;culo contribuye al creciente inter & eacute;s en la investigaci & oacute;n sobre la calidad del y la ense & ntilde;anza y el aprendizaje en la Educaci & oacute;n Superior (ES). El art & iacute;culo plantea la necesidad de repensar las culturas de ense & ntilde;anza y aprendizaje en la ES con el fin de mejorar su calidad.. Utilizando los conceptos de 'radical collegiality' de Fielding (1999) y 'pedagogical partnerships' de Cook-Sather (2015) como marcos te & oacute;ricos, el art & iacute;culo examina la teor & iacute;a y la pr & aacute;ctica aplicada de la colaboraci & oacute;n aut & eacute;ntica entre estudiantes y personal docente. Comienza con un an & aacute;lisis cr & iacute;tico de la literatura sobre el partenariado entre estudiantes y personal docente y la cocreaci & oacute;n de la ense & ntilde;anza y elaprendizaje. A partir de datos de un proyecto de partenariado entre estudiantes y personal docente de dos a & ntilde;os de duraci & oacute;n, en el que participaron tres universidades del Reino Unido, el art & iacute;culo revela c & oacute;mo las relaciones aut & eacute;nticas, colaborativas y exitosas entre estudiantes y personal docente evolucionan con el tiempo, c & oacute;mo dependen de la reconfiguraci & oacute;n de la din & aacute;mica de poder entre ambas partes, y de la creaci & oacute;n de espacios compartidos para el desarrollo de estas colaboraciones beneficiosas y contextualizadas. Los valores fundamentales de estos partenariados incluyen la responsabilidad compartida, el respeto mutuo y la reciprocidad.
