Analysing Teaching-Learning Interactions in Higher Education: Accounting for Structure and Agency / Edition 1

by Paul Ashwin

Overview

Whilst current research into teaching and learning offers many insights into the experiences of academics and students in higher education, it has two significant shortcomings. It does not highlight the dynamic ways in which students and academics impact on each other in teaching-learning interactions or the ways in which these interactions are shaped by wider social processes.

This book offers critical insight into existing perspectives on researching teaching and learning in higher education and argues that alternative perspectives are required in order to account for structure and agency in teaching-learning interactions in higher education. In considering four alternative perspectives, it examines the ways in which teaching-learning interactions are shaped by teaching-learning environments, student and academic identities, disciplinary knowledge practices and institutional cultures. It concludes by examining the conceptual and methodological implications of these analyses of teaching-learning interactions and provides the reader with an invaluable guide to alternative ways of conceptualising and researching teaching and learning in higher education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826494184
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/09/2009
Series:	Continuum Studies in Education (Hardcover)
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Paul Ashwin is Professor of Higher Education at Lancaster University, UK.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Conceptualising Structure and Agency in Relation to Teaching-Learning Interactions
3. Current Ways of Analysing the Relations between Structural-Agentic Processes and Teaching-Learning Interactions
4. An Activity Theory Approach to Analysing the Relations Between Student and Academic Identities and Teaching-Learning Interactions
5. A Symbolic-Interactionist Approach to Analysing the Relations between Student and Academic Identities and Teaching-Learning Interactions
6. A Bernsteinian Approach to Analysing the Relations between Disciplinary Knowledge Practices and Teaching-Learning Interactions
7. A Bourdieusian Approach to Analysing the Relations between Institutional Cultures and Teaching-Learning Interactions
8. Implications for Researching Teaching-Learning Interactions
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

'The book ends with a call for more empirical studies that examine the relations between "particular sets of structural-agentic process and teaching-learning interactions" (p. 141) where the empirical data and the explicit conceptual framework interrogate each other. I am already recommending it to those engaged in these studies.' British Educational Research Journal

'A major contribution to the study of teaching and learning in higher education through its perceptive analysis of theoretical frameworks and their implications. Ranging across studies of perception, identity, activity systems, field and pedagogic device, Paul Ashwin offers both an accessible review and a wealth of ideas for the future development of understanding.' Andrew Pollard, Professor of Education and supports educational research, Institute of Education, University of London, UK, University of Bristol, UK, and University of Cambridge, UK

'Ashwin's analysis of teaching-learning interactions is insightful and will be useful to any college teacher who reads it. He writes well so that the book is both thoughtful and readable.' Bill McKeachie, Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, USA

From the Publisher