Transforming Higher Education

📖 The Scoop

The theme of this book is that the drive for quality in higher education in Britain and the concurrent moves to reform teaching and learning have not been connected organizationally or in practice. Drawing on the Quality in Higher Education research project, the book examines the variety of meanings of "quality" showing that a tension has emerged between quality-as-accountability and quality-as-transformation resulting in a "compliance culture" in which transformation in students is not occurring. Chapter 1 explores the concepts of "quality" and "transformation". In Chapters 2 and 3, the pragmatic views on quality of internal and external stakeholders are examined. Chapter 4 suggests a paradigm shift has occurred in the move from elite to mass higher education. Chapter 5 considers the purposes, principles, and role of external quality monitoring in the light of policy initiatives. In Chapter 6 an alternative improvement-led approach, which links external monitoring to transformative quality, is proposed. Chapter 7 reviews how transformation relates to existing research into students' learning. Chapter 8 proposes that the assessment of student learning can either reinforce or subvert the goals of transformation. Principles of teaching that facilitate transformative learning are considered in Chapter 9. The final chapter urges transformation on the university level. (Contains approximately 450 references.) (DB)

Genre: Education / Schools / Levels / Higher (fancy, right?)