Critical thinking is embedded in national university graduate outcomes and included in international bodies' statements on higher education. At the same time, there are tensions surrounding critical thinking in higher education, such as its commodification, Eurocentrism, and relationship to rapidly digitalising cultures. Drawing from the…

Educational discourse constantly demonstrates a cursory dichotomous view of knowledge in which positivism and relativism are contrasted, a condition which almost unavoidably results in favorable references to relativism. The difficulty lies in the objective qualities of knowledge being associated with positivist absolutism, which brings about fear…

Assessment and feedback research constitutes its own 'silo' amidst the higher education research field. Theory has been cast as an important but absent aspect of higher education research. This may be a particular issue in empirical assessment research which often builds on the conceptualisation of assessment as objective measurement. So, how does…

Sociologists are engaging in a long-overdue reckoning about the place of the traditional canon in social theory courses and pedagogy. Instructors are revising their syllabi to include a more diverse set of authors while "provincializing" classics that have long been taught as universal. We confront the question of how to teach contested…

Our study provides a review of theories that were used to study race and racism between 2010 and 2019 in higher education. We conducted a content analysis to identify concepts, statements and models used in higher education studies focused on race and racism in the three most highly read United States higher education journals. We also identified…

The paper characterises the learning and teaching process with a focus on higher education and describes the basics of contemporary theories of learning and teaching. Against this conceptual background, the interweaving of performance indicators and theories and practice of learning and teaching is analysed. For a small, selected number of…

The United Kingdom's (UK) goal of a 20% increase in participation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups in higher education (HE) by 2020 has not been met. Pakistani and Bangladeshi students are some of the most underrepresented BAME groups in UK HE institutions. This systematic review included 20 papers that identified barriers and…

In this collection of writing and reflection, readers are invited to reclaim the connection between curriculum studies and the work of educators in schools and society. As the curriculum field has grown more complex and theoretical, our schools have become more corporatized, standardized, and dehumanized. This volume focuses on curriculum theory's…

Despite the unanimous agreement regarding the positive outcomes of learner engagement, theorists and researchers draw attention to the disparate conceptualizations and structural models of "engagement" construct. The present study, in this respect, attempts to contribute to the development of a theoretical framework by suggesting a…

In the face of calls for the standardization and professionalization of leadership education, a sub-field in higher education, it is important to understand who leadership educators are and how they come to understand themselves as belonging to this sub-field. Recent critiques have arisen about the overwhelming whiteness that permeates the…

Transnational higher education (TNHE) was introduced to mainland China in the 1980s, influenced by the Chinses government's neoliberal university model strategy. Some existing literature discusses this strategy and its role. However, since then, little research has explored how teaching and learning impact students' agency within TNHE.…

This three-study dissertation explored: "How are higher education stakeholders radically (re)imagining liberatory, abolitionist, decolonizing, and queering futures within U.S. higher education and beyond?" With diverse cohorts of Collaborators, I examined this question through a bricolage methodology (Hammersley, 2008), which blended the…

Background: Inclusive research has sidelined discussion of theoretical issues with researchers with intellectual/learning disabilities. This is a situation which the Big Ideas initiative sought to change. Between 2021 and 2023, the Open University, Leipzig University and the University of Koblenz organised nine workshops to explore influential…

Humanities educators are frequently frustrated by students' poor engagement in reading. The contemporary student experience is characterised by disruption and precarity. Similarly, is that of teachers who work in casual employment. This discussion is located within broader conversations around the neoliberal university, but aims to make more…

In this paper, Matthew Cowley advances a theoretical approach toward higher education drawn from critical race theory (CRT) and Black Marxism. After an overview of CRT and Black Marxism, Cowley builds a working understanding of two recent (re)conceptualizations of race and class analysis that draw from both: (1) "economies of racism" and…