Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 8 | Page 70

EDITOR’S EPILOGUE | 71
70 | JADE
DR. RACHEL BERKSON & DR. ADAM MOOLNA
your own experience is valuable. We have the frameworks such as
constructive alignment and outcomes-based teaching and learning
to structure this communication with students.
The annual Keele Teaching Symposium is not just about that one
day in June when academics across the university gather for
enlightenment by invited external speakers. Rather, it focuses our
thoughts and gives a forum for transformational concepts to take
root. This year, the 2017 symposium fitted within a wider week of
pedagogical development sessions that formed the core of Keele
University’s first annual Digital Festival—a week of collaborative
activities focused on digital tools and exploring how to incorporate
them in your own practice to benefit student learning. Sally Brown
followed up her symposium keynote with a seminar the next day on
streamlining assessment as part of the Keele “DigiFest”.
The symposium and related activities have been a refreshing
emphasis on pedagogy and scholarship rather than the “research
first, and teaching naturally follows” still too common in the Higher
Education sector. A timely seminar one week later with The Higher
education Network Keele (THiNK) wrapped up my experience of
the Teaching Symposium and its ripple effects. External speakers
Professor Glynis Cousin and Professor Gurnam Singh brought us a
seminar on “Critical Explorations of Differential Degree Outcomes:
through and beyond ‘race’”, addressing the structural reasons for
the attainment gaps of both BME and international students. They
stressed the social relationship of teaching and learning, how trusting
relationships with all learners is key to overcoming barriers, and that
we need to recognise the singularity of the individual within “groups”
such as international students. Bringing us full circle, homogenising
individuals as group members does a disservice to “white British”
students too.
Lots of talk but what do we actually do about it? Following the
Teaching Symposium, my frame of reference for engaging with my
next year personal tutees from China has shifted and my practice with
it. As Sally Brown explained, “the students who are experts in country
X are the students from country X”. What do my tutees consider
to be the environmental science issues and career opportunities in
China? How can I take advantage of their knowledge to develop my
teaching for them? What do they think is important for them to be
able to do when they return to China next year? What do they want
from one year in the UK Higher Education context?
The challenge now is putting these pedagogical discussions into
practice.
EDITOR’S EPILOGUE
F
or this eighth edition of JADE, I thought I would use my epilogue
as a mechanism to share my thoughts and impressions from
my attendance at a Higher Education Academy (HEA) event
on the 29th March 2017 that has some links to many of the
ideas and research in this issue and on our collective teaching mind.
It was held in not-so-foggy London and was entitled “Innovation and
Excellence in Teaching and Learning”. As an academic developer, I
tried not to read too much into the implied importance of the order of
the words in that title… it was hard, but I tried not to.
A Strong Starter for 10!
The opening address was by ex-Keele Deputy Vice Chancellor and now
Chair of the HEA Board, Prof. Rama Thirunamachandran. As always,
his relaxed manner served as a great introduction to the event and
despite admitting that he himself does not tweet, he immediately asked
the audience to engage with Twitter! At least it was not a Technology
Enhanced Learning (TEL) conference, I suppose!
He gave a potted history of both the evolution of teaching and learning
over the last decade using changes in governments and other HE
governing bodies as reference points over that time span. This sort of
overview serves to remind us that the HE sector has always been in a
near constant state of flux and that our perception that we are currently
going through dramatic change should be tempered by an appreciation
that we are always going through dramatic change. Throughout his talk,
the word “perspective” kept being repeated, both in terms of looking
forward to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), but also in terms
of the impact and value of the individual teaching practitioner. The
core theme therefore morphed into excellence of teaching, filtered and
captured through competitive recognition of teaching and learning
excellence at the school, institute and international level.
The event Keynote was delivered by acting Vice Chancellor of
Aberystwyth, Prof. John Grattan. His presentation concentrated on
a central ethos of changing his institutional culture around achieving
excellence. Principally, he advocated putting in place infrastructure to
support and scaffold excellence and the quality enhancement strategies
adapted to reliably track through to the level of the individual teacher.
His central message was one of enhancing staff morale rather than
handing out top-down edicts, which was perceived in the room as an
inspired way to address change. Prof. Grattan then detailed the barriers
he had faced in affecting these changes, principally his colleagues,
and their reflex to argue against sweeping change. Although the tone
was light, his examples were not: Assessment strategy and Lecture