A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching, supervising, learning
The role of teachers and the curriculum
There are many opportunities for supporting students in their learning through teachers
recognising and monitoring the approaches to study being taken. This is as much to do
with creating an ethos between tutor and student as it is about using specific methods.
Students should feel that they can admit to needing support without risking the tutor’s
disapproval, although this does not mean that it is appropriate for tutors to be available
for their students all the time. Set aside specific times when you can be available and
advertise these to the students. Support may also be given via e-mail or through
discussion groups on the VLE.
The design of the curriculum is an essential aspect of supporting student learning. The
following are some of the key principles of course design that supports student learning:
• Begin where the students are: match course content to the knowledge and skills of the
intake. Course content is sometimes regarded as sacrosanct but it is pointless teaching
content that students are not ready to receive. Students must be challenged and
stretched, but the starting point needs to reflect their current level of understanding.
• Make skill development integral to the curriculum. Do not assume that skills already
exist. Make space for skills to be acquired in a risk-free environment.
• Pay attention to learning processes and not simply to the content or products. Design
in the steps that students need to be taken through to get them to the desired learning
outcome.
• Demonstrate the valuing of different cultures by building on students’ own
experience wherever possible. Knowledge and values cannot be taken for granted as
higher education becomes more internationalised. Be on the lookout for cultural
assumptions reflected in the curriculum and allow for alternative ‘voices’ to be heard.
• Avoid content and assessment overload which is liable to produce a surface approach
to learning (see Chapter 2).
Useful texts that elaborate on these ideas are Biggs (2003) and Ramsden (2003).
Subject-specific skills
Each subject has its own set of specialist skills and processes that students need to be able
to use. These need to be identified and students given the opportunity to develop and
practise them. Examples of subject-specific skills include laboratory techniques, use of
statistical methods, interpretation of texts, performance and making skills in the arts,
investigative skills/methods of enquiry, field investigations, data and information
processing/IT, and professional skills (SEEC, 2002).
It is important to recognise that academic writing is also a subject-specific skill. The
types of writing demanded by academics reflect a variety of specialist genres. For
example, essays required by each discipline have developed as part of the ‘community
of practice’ (Wenger, 1998) of each subject and reflect subtle differences in the ways in