1. Sub-brand to go here
Thoughts on Pedagogical
Research: Scholar-teacher or
Teacher-Scholar?
Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, London
University of Westminster HERC seminar, 11 October 2013
Centre for Higher
Education Studies

2. A student’s story
‘ … I had no … awareness of my own ability, so when you get an inspiring
teacher that has faith in you, or helps you understand a topic then you
know, it’s amazing.
… You get excited … it makes you want to know, say, if it’s about a
particular topic, then you want to go and know more about it, you want
to find more … and that way you end up learning more
… if a teacher inspires you in a subject then you are going to pay a lot
more attention, feel that drive to get involved in a way.’
(4th yr student, UK post-92 university)
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3. Faith, hope, mystery
• ideas of faith, hope, mystery – in the student’s own words
• the student undergoes experiences that can’t be fully
explained
• the formation of excitement
• of a will to learn (‘you want to find more’)
• of a will to engage (‘feel that drive to get involved’)
• but perhaps we can work towards an explanation
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4. The scholarship of teaching and learning
– first thoughts on scholarship itself
• Ernest Boyer’s book, ‘Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities
of the Professoriate’
• Scholarships of Discovery; Integration; Application;
Teaching
• The idea of scholarship
• As care/ concern, reflection, public mission, contribution to
community/ service, taking matters forward.
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5. Boyer’s scholarship of teaching and
learning
NB: the addition of ‘and learning’ is subsequent to Boyer but
was implicated in B’s conception of the SofT
• ‘T is … a dynamic endeavour involving all the analogies,
metaphors, and images that build bridges between the
teacher’s understanding and the student’s learning’. (p23)
• ‘Good T means that faculty, as scholars, are also learners.
Thro (good T), professors themselves will be pushed in
creative new directions.’
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6. Being a scholar of teaching and learning
• Levels of scholarship
1 of reflection-in-action
2 of reflection-on-action (Schon)
• Perhaps B was mainly focused on level 1
• And that’s necessary – but it isn’t sufficient
• We need level 2 as well
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7. On ‘the student experience’
• What does it mean – ‘the student experience’
• What is the experience of being a student?
• Do we have a sense of what it would be like to change places with our
students?
• Is the experience of being a student out there – or is it with us, in our
teaching, in our approach to teaching, in our conceptions of learning?
• What is it, what are its possibilities?
• What responsibilities does it imply? And for whom?
• (NB: talk of students as consumers – responsibilities are shared.)
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8. Expressing a voice; losing a voice; finding
a new voice
‘ I’ve always had a huge passion for languages. But coming to (x
university), I found the French and Italian departments very different, and I
did start to feel a bit bitter towards French. And I wasn’t enjoying that any
more. I loved it at school more than Italian. I found the French
department very rigid … I did feel I was back in school, but not in the sixth
form … I felt I was going back to GCSE … I didn’t feel very free to express
myself in the lessons, whereas (in) the Italian … department, you go to
know all the individuals. With the Italian classes, we all sit round a big
table, or chairs without tables in front. There would be a lot more
interaction … It was more friendly, just a liberating atmosphere.’
(student just having graduated with a 2.1 at a post-92 university)
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9. Enhancing the student experience
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Can’t be a matter of a pedagogical/ technological fix
It’s problematic – not at all straightforward
A matter of values/ priorities
Is ‘student voice’ important?
Is student ‘excitement’ important?
The will to engage?
So reflection on/in teaching (as part of SofTL) takes two forms:
How are my/ our students faring? What is their experience? (empirical
enquiries)
• How might they go forward? (conceptual and values-led enquiries)
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10. On anxiety
‘Being pulled in a large number of different directions … [is] not easy to cope with …
[beginning the student journey] is [an entry into] a scary, exciting and fascinating world
… We need … self-belief to survive and prosper … I remember thinking … this is
amazing, exciting, exhilarating and downright terrifying … Working with a complex
world is also about attitude … not giving up when you feel overwhelmed … You can
never be totally prepared.
(Natasha Thomas, a recent graduate, talk at Univ of Surrey, June, 2006)
… What’s fascinating about Alison’s courses is the amount of panic, you know, that
surrounds the essays and I felt it personally … It was a very, very scary thing to do
because … there were no right answers.
(Postgraduate student, Univ of Glasgow)
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11. Scholarly texts - 1
•
•
•
1
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Scholarship is a love of texts
But what are the texts in question here?
Two kinds of texts:
Books and papers on T and L
- and these are of three kinds
i
Empirical research
ii
Scholarly reflection – eg Rowland, Nixon, Macfarlane, McLean, Walker
iii
Philosophical/ theoretical work as such – eg Heidegger, Bourdieu, Zizek
(who are our favourites to be?!)
‘Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this:
to let learn’ (H: What is Called Thinking, 1968)

12. Scholarly texts - 2
2 Concrete practices subjected to reflection and interrogation:
i those that illuminate what it is to be a student today
ii tutor’s/ tutors’/ own practices
-
So lots to hand in becoming a scholar of T&L – but requires close, selfcritical and creative attention.
- It includes reflection on one’s own values and assumptions (‘assumptive
world’)
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13. Are lecturers even necessary?
• A story from nursing studies:
‘After five weeks, one day we turned up about half an hour
later than them and they were doing exactly what they
would have been doing with us …’
• A medical student’s story
- ‘there were a couple of occasions when I was the
only person in the resuscitation room …’
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14. Being a university teacher
‘To me, teaching is engaging with young people who are visionaries and
dreamers in vibrant spaces that resonate with the collective energies of
intellectuals … Teaching is a passion and a commitment that is a constant joy
on my life … The simple and yet complex concepts of honesty, integrity and
respect are fundamental in my professional and personal interactions with
students. The value I place on my teaching and research contributes to the
passion I bring to teaching and ultimately to the successful learning by
students.’
(Winner of both a national and a university teaching prizes.)
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15. Forms of pedagogical research
• The student experience – interviews etc with students (disciplines/ groupings)
• Academics’ conceptions/ practices – interviews/ observations with academics
• Examination of particular approaches (PBL/ e-learning/ dialogue/ self-learning)
• Curricula/ disciplines/ T&R/ ped rel/ student & ac identity
• Conceptual/ theoretical (social theory/ philosophical analysis – eg ‘space’, ‘time’, ‘openness’)
• Overviews of literature
• Managers and their conceptions of students
• Institutional environment
• History/ histories
• Policy analysis – how has the new fee regime affected the student exp/ the ped rel?
• Comparative essays
NB: small-scale empirical enquiries can go a long way, even conducted from one’s own
computer/ laptop. (But do involve more than one institution.)
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16. Scholar-teacher or teacher-scholar?
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Does the scholarship derive from the teaching OR
Does the pedagogy emerge from the scholarship?
(A particular example of the T-R relationship debate)
Likely to be oriented according to the individual dispositions
BUT there should be SOME degree of inter-relationship
And these reflections bring into view the matter of academic identity
– Eg Joelle Fanghanel/ Mary Henkel/ RB& RdeN
– Just what is it to be an academic these days? Do we even use the term
‘academic’ as a form of self-identity?

17. Conclusion
•Being a scholar of T&L is precisely a matter of continuing
critical reflection on one’s own T
•What are our possibilities – for ourselves & for our students?
• We gain insight into these possibilities by close
attention to the many texts around us
• Conventional academic texts are helpful but let’s recognize that
there is much to hand, in our students, and in ourselves.
• Being such a scholar is to live a life with many parts
– and so it’s challenging
• But, seen in this way, such a never-ending journey is
all the more worthwhile.
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Web www.ioe.ac.uk

18. Selected bibliography
Barnett, R (2007) A Will to Learn: Being a Student in an Age of Uncertainty. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/ Open University
Press.
Cowden, S and Singh, G (eds) (2013) Acts of Knowing: Critical Pedagogy In, Against and Beyond the University. London
and New York: Bloomsbury.
Fanghanel, J (2012) Being an Academic. Abingdon & New York: Routledge.
Ngaard, C, Branch, J and Holtham, C (eds) (2013) Learning in Higher Education: Contemporary Standpoints. Faringdon:
Libri.
MacFarlane, B (2004) Teaching with Integrity: the ethics of higher education practice. London & New York: Routledge.
McLean, M (2008) Pedagogy and the University: Critical Theory and Practice. Continuum: London and New York.
Preece, S (2009) Posh Talk: Language and Identity in Higher Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rowland, S (2000) The Enquiring University Teacher. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Savin-Baden, M (2008) Learning Spaces: Creating opportunities for Knowledge Creation in Academic Life. Maidenhead:
McGraw-Hill/ Open University Press.
Sotto, E (2007/1994) When Teaching Becomes Learning: A Theory and Practice of Teaching. London and New York:
Continuum.
Tynjala, P, Stenstrom M-L and Saarnivaara, M (eds) (2012) Transitions and Transformations in Learning and Education.
Dordrecht: Springer.
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