Editorial
Welcome to the 6th edition of
Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education (PESTLHE). The overlapping
themes in this edition of the journal are student perceptions of learning and
feedback; enhancing learning through feedback, and the
the scholarship of educational and
academic development.
Ferrante et al. offer a
fascinating insight into the kinds of metaphors that students use in order to
capture their experiences of effective and ineffective learning. Their finding
that connection, engagement and empowerment are associated by students with
effective learning echoes Boyask’s findings from a study on student perceptions
of what students expect in terms of feedback and what they judge to constitute
quality feedback. Her results
suggest that students value highly trustworthy relationships in the feedback
process.
King,
McGugan and Bunyan explore the value and perceived benefits of a fairly novel
form of giving feedback - recorded audio messages; they also give us an honest
account of the possible downside of introducing this as a common feedback
practice.
Swingler
and Bishop report on an intervention to help students learn the skills necessary
for experimental design in a psychology degree.
Their web-based resource also supports the learning of statistics,
frequently a challenge for non-statisticians.
Feedback is at the heart of their approach to promote student
self-efficacy in these areas..
In our
final two papers we see a slight shift in the focus for this edition.
Although the scope of the journal remains the same, to offer an
opportunity for practitioners in Higher Education to make their scholarly work
in the field of teaching and student learning public, this issue has two
contributions from the field of educational or academic development where the
focus is the learning and development of teachers in HE.
Fran
Beaton describes the changes made to a professional development PG certificate
in order to increase participants’ engagement in and ownership of their
experience as university teachers.
Lewis Elton’s contribution ends this edition and challenges us to consider the
nature of SoTL and the professional development necessary for its promotion in
university teaching practice. He describes a possible future for educational
development by grounding it in SoTL and draws comparisons between current
professional development activities in HE and the 19th Century
Humboldtian model of a university as a
community of scholars made of both teachers and students.
There are
opportunities to share discussions and comments regarding works in progress or
full articles with other readers and the authors through the journal site (www.pestlhe.org.uk).
The next edition of
Pestlhe will appear in April 2009 and the deadline for articles to be considered
for this issue is January 15th 2009.
Jane Pritchard, Jane
MacKenzie,