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LEAD - Learning Enhancement and Academic Development

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14083

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    Tacit Knowledge and a Mysterious Code: Articulating Academic Writing Expectations in Disciplinary Grading Criteria
    (2025-07-04) McGrath, Lisa; Donaghue, Helen
    Academic writing is integral to student achievement in higher education. Despite a move towards enhanced transparency in assessment, little is known about how writing is represented in the grading criteria of the various university disciplines. This qualitative study analyses criteria to uncover how writing expectations are presented within them. First, we reveal what facets of writing are included in the criteria. Second, we identify three issues: a mismatch between the level of challenge and the grade awarded; inconsistencies within criteria in terms of what is being graded; and ambiguities in terms of the language used. We interpret these findings through the conceptual lenses of non-formal learning and tacit knowledge and argue that professional development activities for lecturers need to be designed to render tacit knowledge of academic writing explicit. Our paper is a catalyst for university departmental discussion as to what constitutes quality writing for a specific assignment, and how those expectations might be better conveyed through rubrics.
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    Belonging through compassion: Supporting hope through the design of a website for educational development and social justice
    (OpenBook Publishers, 2025-07-02) Hill, Vikki; Bunting, Liz; Abegglen, Sandra; Burns, Tom; Heller, Richard; Madhok, Rajan; Neuhaus, Fabian; Sandars, John; Sinfield, Sandra; Singh, Upasana Gitanjali
    This chapter advocates for a more compassionate approach to Higher Education as a pathway to achieving social justice. Central to this vision is the cultivation of belonging through relational learning communities that honour interconnectedness, shared humanity, and equitable power dynamics. Through a case study of a digital educational development platform, the authors demonstrate how compassionately designed, co-produced, dialogic, and person-centred resources can support more inclusive and humane pedagogies. They outline practical strategies for embedding an ecology of compassion within institutions and highlight the necessity of systemic, institutional commitment to challenge inequitable policies and practices in Higher Education.
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    Listening with Compassion: Using a logic chain and theory of change model to evaluate the use of podcasts to foster compassionate pedagogy within an academic enhancement programme
    (2025-03-20) Hill, Vikki
    This paper presents a process evaluation, using logic chains and a theory of change model, of a pilot academic enhancement programme that aims to develop compassionate pedagogy to reduce ethnicity awarding differentials. In this small-scale qualitative study that combines interviews with graphic-elicitation methods, I focus on the experiences of academic and support staff of listening to two podcasts that explore belonging and relationality in higher education. The evaluation provides insights for future design and iteration of educational development to address inequity and informs recommendations to create compassionate cultures for staff; devise inclusive and affective resources and develop interventions that provide space for both epistemic and practical considerations.
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    Using genre analysis to design formative assessment in higher education
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-12-09) Donaghue, Helen; Heron, Marion
    Formative assessment (FA) is universally recognised as key to supporting student learning and success in higher education (HE). Despite this, summative assessment dominates HE students’ studies. We join an increasing call for more focus on formative assessment and propose an original professional development (PD) approach to help HE teachers design formative assessment tasks, using the concept of genre knowledge. Data from pre-workshop questionnaires, in-workshop activities and post workshop interviews demonstrate genre knowledge to be an effective heuristic to identify task requirements. This genre knowledge helps teachers design FA tasks which scaffold final summative assessments through focused development of specific areas of genre knowledge. We make recommendations on how teachers and trainers can use genre knowledge to raise awareness of and provide support for designing FA tasks which enhance student learning and success.
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    ‘Now you’ve said it, it’s like a big light bulb!’: enacting post observation feedback suggestions
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-08-14) Donaghue, Helen; Heron, Marion
    Teaching observations have become a ubiquitous feature of teacher education programmes, development schemes and assessment regimes. Whilst the processes and procedures of classroom observation are well documented, the feedback which follows teaching observations has been given less attention. Most research into teaching observations focuses on eliciting teachers’ perspectives on their experiences of being observed. In contrast, we examine two aspects vital to teacher development and enhanced teaching practice: (1) post observation feedback talk; (2) teachers’ enactment of feedback following the feedback session. This article argues that examining feedback talk and how talk may influence enactment can help both observers and teachers maximise the effectiveness of teaching observations. We focus on suggestions, a common way of helping teachers to develop and improve. We analyse empirical examples of authentic post observation feedback talk to explore how suggestions are made and responded to, identifying features of suggestions which prompt teacher understanding and enactment. Analysis enables us to provide observers with concrete advice on how to make suggestions, thus showing the practical affordances and methodological warrant of analysing feedback talk.
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    Rethinking assessment? Research into the affective impact of higher education grading
    (University of Greenwich, 2024-05-09) Currant, Neil; Bunting, Liz; Hill, Vikki; Salines, Emily
    Assessment plays a central role in learning in higher education (HE), but often the impact of grading assessment on student motivation, behaviour and wellbeing is insufficiently considered in policy and practice. With the growing concern in the HE sector about student mental health, a consideration of the affective dimension of grading is timely.The discussion in this paper on the affective dimension of grading is based on research conducted during the pandemic on the ‘no-detriment’ implementation of pass/fail assessment at the University of the Arts London (UAL). Qualitative research was undertaken with first-and second-year undergraduate students in the fields of creative arts, design and communication to investigate the effects of the switch from letter grading to pass/fail and student views on grading more generally. Our findings suggest that grading affects student stress, anxiety, learner identity, motivation, student self-expression, creativity, and peer relationships.In the light of our findings, we bring together discourses about assessment, grading and student wellbeing to consider the longer-term implications for assessment practices in a post-pandemic world.
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    Embedding students’ academic writing development in early-career disciplinary lecturers’ practice
    (2023) McGrath, Lisa; Donaghue, Helen; Negretti, Rafaella
    This study proposes a theoretically grounded and resource-efficient triadic model with the aim of supporting early-career subject lecturers in learning how to understand discipline-specific academic writing and teach it to their students. The model constitutes a ‘bottom-up’ collaboration process among a subject lecturer, an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) lecturer, and an academic developer. Adopting a case study approach, qualitative data were collected at multiple points in the process and were analysed using both thematic and linguistic analysis. Results indicate that the collaboration's genre-based, dialogic and egalitarian nature enabled the subject lecturer to grow her understanding of students’ writing development. She acquired some metalanguage to conceptualise and articulate her expectations in terms of her students’ assignments and was able to co-create learning tasks. Our study contributes novel insights into debates around where and how students’ academic writing development should be delivered, and, importantly, early-career lecturers’ role in that delivery. Finally, we propose an extension of the EAP lecturers’ remit to encompass working with early-career subject lecturers in a developmental role.
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    The role of situated talk in developing doctoral students’ researcher identities
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2023-10-28) Donaghue, Helen; Adams, Gill
    It is widely recognised that an important aspect of doctoral study is the development of a researcher identity. However, little is known about how to support this. Although previous research has highlighted the importance of discursive engagement for researcher identity development, no studies examine talk or discuss how identities are constructed through interaction. This article examines how doctoral students’ researcher identities develop during tutorials on a professional doctorate in education. Analysis reveals how researcher identities are constructed and accomplished, turn by turn, during study-based talk. Researcher identities are co-constructed with and confirmed by peers, and verified by a tutor who validates students’ actions and describes experiencing similar, often difficult, processes herself. Knowledge and understanding facilitated by discussion prompts identity development and tutorial talk builds a sense of belonging and confidence, acculturating students into the research community. The article makes an original contribution to research by analysing situated talk to show identity accomplishment in action. The article also makes recommendations for both practice and further research which include setting up opportunities for doctoral students to talk and share experiences, and close analysis of doctoral interactional events such as supervision meetings and peer support groups.
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    Developing Researcher Identity Through the PhD Confirmation
    (University of Wollongong Australia, 2023-05-29) Heron, Marion; Yakovchuk, Nadya; Donaghue, Helen
    The PhD confirmation, or upgrade stage, is a key requirement and rite of passage for most doctoral students. Yet despite its significance and high-stakes nature, little attention has been paid to students’ experiences of this stage of the PhD journey and how it influences the development of their researcher identity. Through semi-structured interviews with PhD students from a range of disciplines who had recently successfully completed the confirmation stage, we found that for many the confirmation stage was a catalyst for ‘feeling’ like a researcher through external validation, recognition and legitimacy. Students also developed their researcher identity through talking about their research with significant others. We argue for recognising the pivotal role the confirmation stage plays in developing doctoral students’ researcher identity and offer suggestions on how supervisors and researcher developers can support students through this transition.
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    Relational Reflections: How do we nurture belonging in creative Higher Education?
    (Staffordshire University, 2021-10) Bunting, Liz; Hill, Vikki
    In this paper, we reflect on a strand of educational development work that aims to foster belonging and develop compassionate pedagogies within a UK creative arts university in response to COVID-19 and global calls for racial justice. We underpin our paper with our theoretical understanding of belonging as a relational phenomenon and explore how this aligns with antiracist policies and practices. We present our rationale for the design of podcasts as dialogic, affective and asynchronous tools for use in educational development to respond to both practical and epistemic needs. Contributions from academic and support staff on ‘myth-busting belonging’ are explored as we consider the implications for educators in planning and delivering the curriculum. We position the role and responsibility of institutions to design and implement equitable policies and practices, to support staff to foster belonging, as central to this work.