Teaching, Learning, and Research in Higher Education: A Critical Approach (review)

“Universities are now very different places from the universities where current academics studied as students and perhaps began their teaching and research careers” (p. 2), state the authors of Teaching, Learning, and Research in Higher Education: A Critical Approach. This volume provides a very different way of looking at the practice of teaching and learning in higher education.

Mark Tenant, Cathi McMullen, and Dan Kaczynski consider the changes that have taken place in higher education in recent decades and how these changes are reflected in the teaching, learning, and research functions of colleges and universities. The book combines theory and evidence to analyze the contemporary academic profession and provides practical suggestions for how to do this job more effectively and efficiently. Each of the 11 chapters supports its content with research citations. Each also concludes with a section on “Enhancing Professional Practice” that encourages readers to reflect on the material and apply it to their own situations.

Chapter 1, the introduction, describes seven trends that currently influence academic life. Two trends, “Growth and Diversity” and “Internationalism.” reflect the changing nature of the student body. There are now an estimated 132 million students enrolled in colleges and universities worldwide, the authors point out, up from 68 million in 1991. This figure includes a growing group of international students who study outside their country of origin. The number and diversity of these students present new challenges for universities and university teachers, including developing a more internationally focused curriculum to help students prosper in a global economy.

Two other trends reflect the growing globalization of higher education. In “Marketization of Higher Education and Global Competition,” the authors point out that national practices of ranking and comparing colleges and universities have evolved into international practices. Colleges and universities are now being ranked and compared against global competitors, not just with their local peers. This means that collectively the world, rather than individual nations, will define what it means to be an excellent university. By implication, the world will also define what it means to be an excellent academic. This evolution toward global higher education demands common standards.

In “Uniformity of Systems and Processes,” the authors suggest that countries need common standards concerning the skills and knowledge that students will possess as graduates from a particular disciplinary area. Employers and the public need this uniformity to support greater mobility across borders, as students are increasingly educated outside the countries in which they will ultimately reside and work. The authors point to the European Union’s Bologna Model as a first step in this process.

The next two trends concern the products and processes of higher education. In “Information and Communication Technologies,” the authors point to the obvious and very large impact that technology is having on teaching, learning, and research. Through technology, the classroom is becoming more public, students are engaging with the material in new ways, and new types of relationships are developing between teachers and students. Researchers also engage with data in new ways, access more extensive information than ever before, develop online collaborations independent of geographic proximity, and disseminate research around the world.

In “New Conceptions of Knowledge,” the authors highlight the imperative to make education more relevant to employers’ needs. This means that instructors will need to incorporate content that is less abstract and discipline-bound and more pertinent to workplace needs (p.8).

The seventh trend, “Accountability and Quality Assurance,” ties the six together. Governments and the public increasingly view higher education as an economic resource. This trend gives rise to a corresponding desire to assure the quality of higher education and hold individual institutions accountable for their efficiency and productivity. Mechanisms such as the public reporting of student achievement and common datasets have multiplied, allowing the tracking of institutional progress over time and comparisons between institutions. They also can form the bases for incentive schemes and accreditation criteria.

These...