University of Warwick Press: Journals
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Merging Self-Regulatory Strategies with GTA Pedagogical Practices: Enhancing Student Autonomy and Engagement
Get PDFGraduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) play a dual role in higher education, balancing their research responsibilities with teaching duties. This dual identity provides a unique vantage point for GTAs to implement innovative teaching practices that encourage students to utilize self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies. This paper explores how GTAs can adopt teaching practices centered on promoting SRL among students. Drawing on data from focus groups and surveys conducted with five GTAs, the study identifies key techniques—such as reflective journals, peer assessments, and technology-enhanced learning tools—that GTAs can incorporate into their teaching. The intervention was conducted over one semester in an English proficiency course tailored for students with low English proficiency. Findings indicate that these strategies not only enhance student engagement and motivation but also improve critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The paper underscores the positive impact of SRL on student learning outcomes and discusses how GTAs can effectively integrate and promote these strategies in their pedagogical practices
Harnessing the power of peer dialogue to support GTAs’ professional development: Two reflective stories
Get PDFGraduate teaching assistants (GTAs) have played an essential role in supporting teaching and learning in higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe. Enhancing GTAs’ professional development (PD) is critical for ensuring the quality of higher education. The influence of peers in GTA’s PD has been widely acknowledged (e.g., Bale & Moran, 2020; Dobbins et al., 2021). However, there is limited research on the benefits of peer dialogue, one of the most accessible means of harnessing peer powers in GTAs’ PD. This qualitative study aims to explore how peer dialogue can contribute to GTAs’ PD. This study will use data from two narratives detailing the experiences of peer dialogue, completed independently by two senior GTAs in a UK-based university, who are also the first and second authors of this study. Through thematic analysis, the two researchers will first identify the themes of the data separately and then work together to synthesize the key themes from the data, to uncover the key benefits of peer dialogue in promoting GTAs’ PD. The findings of this study will add to the literature on the power of peers in GTAs’ PD and provide insights into the positive impacts of engaging in peer dialogue activities to promote GTAs’ PD. This study will have significant implications for GTAs interested in seeking PD opportunities and for stakeholders who support GTAs in higher education. By highlighting the benefits of peer dialogue, this study also underscores the need to create a supportive environment or platform for GTAs to be engaged in open and collaborative peer dialogue
Journal of Pedagogic Practice: GTAs’ (Re/De) Constructing the Learning and Teaching Space Piece By Piece”
No full textThis editorial introduces our fourth issue- “GTAs’ (Re/De) Constructing the learning and teaching space piece by piece.” First, we outline how we continue to build upon the successes that previous JPPP issues have already achieved. Following this, we explain what we mean by the theme and how the nine articles in this issue contribute to this theme. Finally, we conclude the editorial by reflecting on the journal\u27s fourth year and offering some thoughts for future JPPP issue
Research design and preliminary findings from the EUniWell MASOEE project on teaching skills to disadvantaged cohorts
Get PDFThe ERASMUS+ European University of Wellbeing alliance (EUniWell) has seed-funded the project “Maximising Academic and Social Outcomes in Engineering Education” (MASOEE). This initiative explores how to better teach non-technical skills with the aim of ensuring the success of students from disadvantaged backgrounds in their professional lives, making a significant contribution to societal wellbeing. It can be argued that because engineering jobs are relatively well-paid, engineering education might be considered a force for social mobility if universities reduce attainment gaps between marginalised and mainstream cohorts. To this end, we are sharing best practice for professional, business and sustainability skill teaching between the engineering faculties at the Universities of Florence (Italy), Birmingham (UK), and Linnaeus (Sweden), whilst appreciably contrasting how their disadvantaged cohorts are profiled and supported. In this paper we provide an overview of the project and present some preliminary results comparing students self-rated skills levels and engineering identity against an objective measure of disadvantage – the number of parents who attended university. We discuss our research method with emphases on methodological and contextual reflexivity. This enables us to select our procedures and acknowledge the study setting, and to offer readers insights to help them assess its transferability. 
The Transport and General Workers’ Union in Leamington Spa
No full textThis short article details the little known links between the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) and the Warwickshire town of Leamington Spa, from its formation in 1921 to the post-war activities of its future General Secretary, Jack Jones
‘Musical Reflections’: An experience with public engagement
No full textIn this short piece, I reflect on my experience in organising and convening a public engagement event after submitting my PhD Thesis. I explain how my initial motivations to put together a seminar series on the philosophy of music were centred on the idea of distributing the finding of my doctoral work. Yet, I conclude showing how the two-way relationship with a small, motivated and enthusiastic audience ended up being the inspiration for further research.
Funding Acknowledgement
Funding supplied via the Early Career Research Fellowship, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick.
Exchanges Discourse Podcast
Public Engagement, Philosophy & Musical Expressions: In Conversation with Giulia Lorenzi [31:32
Developing a Research Culture with Trainee Teachers on International Initial Teacher Training Programmes
No full textPostgraduate initial teacher training from the UK perspective is a fast-paced 36-week full time programme. In parallel with assessed teaching and subject studies, trainees carry out classroom-based research. To do this, they draw on approaches to evidence-informed teaching that include taking the best available evidence from research and practical experience to answer context-specific research questions. This paper looks at the case of trainees who undertake their PGCE programme internationally i.e. they remain based in their international schools for the practical elements but engage in the wider programme via distance learning. One of the greatest regrets of university staff working with these trainees was that the research knowledge gained was contained only within the assessment system and that the trainees would leave, taking this wealth of knowledge with them. The fear was that these emerging practitioner researchers would see their research work as being completed solely for the purpose of certification, without recognising themselves as beginning a career-long process of reflective research in their schools.
From this, the Sunderland Reflective Action in Education project (SunRAE) was developed in response to the challenge of building a community of research-informed practice when working remotely and a/synchronously across different international time zones. It is a student research conference, journal and podcast initiative integrated into the PGCE (Distance Learning) programmes. Linking this initiative to the wider research of the contribution of initial teacher education to the professional learning of teachers in schools, this critical reflection paper connects with the wider debates around developing research culture and makes links between the importance of both for creating better school-based practitioner researchers. The paper reflects that the same themes of widening participation, raising awareness, and reducing silo working that are important for all researcher development are relevant for school-based teacher researchers.
Exchanges Discourse Podcast
International Teacher Practitioners as Researchers: In Conversation with Elizabeth Hidson [24:21
Developing Fundamental Research Practice Training at the University of Oxford
No full textThe adoption of up-to-date research practices is the foundation of reliable and trusted academic research. Yet researchers are often left to piece together increasingly more complex and ever-evolving guidance on how to design, plan, execute, and report their research findings or sources. Higher educational institutions have a responsibility to develop more coherent ways to assist researchers to access the latest policies, guidance, and tools, e.g. for establishing equitable partnerships, managing research data, ensuring information security, choosing open and reproducible publication models.
At the University of Oxford, enabling and promoting good research practice is one of three key pillars in our research culture strategy. To deliver on the institutional ambitions for Research Practice, we are designing and implementing a comprehensive training and support programme, which includes running digital transformation projects and defining organisational guidance and policies.
This paper focuses on the training component and the creation of a set of short, e-learning modules on topics which include: Research Integrity and Governance; Open Research Practices; Research Design; Collaboration; Data; Authorship, Publication and Peer Review; and Research Impact and Public Engagement.
We share the criteria we have developed to help us map, assess and integrate pre-existing training and resources. The central aim is to deliver researcher-centred educational material that is applicable to any discipline and career stage. We also discuss how we are engaging key domain experts across the university through membership of small working groups for each of the modules. Once the core modules have been finalised, the materials will be publicly released under an open licence.
Funding Acknowledgement
The Research Practice Programme is funded by the University of Oxford with support from the Enhancing Research Culture Fund from Research England
The Moral Dimension to Developing Research Culture: Advocating for caught, taught and sought approaches
No full textThe paper seeks to justify a moral dimension to research culture, both in terms of the moral commitment to pursuing a shared sense of purpose by researchers, and a moral obligation to provide a positive environment for researchers to flourish in by the employer. The paper draws on synergies and comparisons with work on character education, in schools and professions, and which has found prominence in education policy and practice since 2012. Where work on character education in higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is in its infancy in the UK, there are both examples from overseas (USA, Singapore) and transferable elements from work in schools that can help to demonstrate that focussing on moral development is beneficial to all. This paper views the cultivation of research culture not as a ‘fix’ for negative experiences that researchers encounter, nor as a means to correct perceptions that see culture as inherently bad. By viewing research culture through a moral lens, it is possible to approach its development and cultivation in holistic and encompassing ways which seek to allow researchers to become the best versions of themselves.
In establishing what the moral dimension to research culture is, I suggest that we can learn from work on character education to further explore frameworks for embedding provision within HEIs for morally focussed research culture initiatives. The paper draws insights from successes in how character education has been embedded in schools and professional education, with a particular focus on a framework for character and constitutive of four categories of virtue, embracing individual moral development with collective, communal citizenship. Further, I present three approaches for a framework for how it can be developed; where culture is ‘caught’ through a positive and collegial ethos, ‘taught’ through a combination of discrete teaching and learning activities, which, in combination, can encourage researchers and those supporting research to ‘seek’ out their own opportunities to develop research culture more actively.
The paper concludes with two main recommendations to view culture as more than a ‘nice to have’, but as means to facilitate positive, impactful research; and to actively cultivate culture through caught and taught approaches that will lead to researchers seeking opportunities to do so themselves
‘Do your duty; get together, work together and take action together, with confidence and pride’: Campaigns from the National Union of the Deaf, 1976-2005
No full textDrawing on sources from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) collection at the Modern Records Centre (MRC), this critical reflection draws on some of the seminal works from the National Union of the Deaf. In addition, MRC sources showed the dialogue between the NUD and TUC, including private correspondence, draft notes and sent letters amongst Deaf members of the NUD and TUC Executive members. Furthermore, these discussions and foundation works provide insight into Deaf people’s political organising in Britain throughout the mid-1970s, as well as the labour movement and broader political landscape of twentieth-century Britain. Deaf histories are integral to better understanding conceptualisations of trade unions, work conditions and political pressure groups