Abstract
This chapter explores some of the ways in which academic decision-making can be shaped by engagement with three different sources of influence: policies that construct an environment within which staff performance is increasingly linked to student evaluations of teaching; literature that at once critiques the legitimacy of some forms of student evaluations and seeks to identify the factors that impact positively upon the student experience; and data collected directly from students concerning the ways they interpret the quality of their academic experiences. In exploring these related bodies of knowledge, the chapter seeks to identify recurring themes and patterns relating to factors that impact upon the engagement and satisfaction of diverse students without suggesting that these factors will always, and everywhere, lead to the same outcomes.
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Notes
- 1.
Across my academic career I have observed a consistent tendency for staff who are working in areas such as sociology or history or, sometimes, literature, to be identified as the people with responsibility for ensuring that issues relating to justice of equity are explored with the students.
- 2.
I am not suggesting that these can be used interchangeably but this book does not seek to offer definitional certainty. All of these terms are used within university conversations that recognise (in varying ways and to varying degrees) the financial importance of capturing and keeping a sufficiently large market share; the social importance of widening participation rates; and the equity arguments for diversifying student populations.
- 3.
To paraphrase Dear Evan Hansen: if you’re applauded in a forest when there’s nobody around, did it ever really happen? Did you even hear a sound?
- 4.
This data set is part of the 2015 project: Building Rapport-ability through Collegial Conversations: Action Research for Teaching Development. Funding was provided by a Griffith Grant for Learning and Teaching as part of the Strategic Priority Scheme. Chief Investigators were: Leonie Rowan, Peter Grootenboer, Barbara Garrick, Harry Kanasa, Kevin larkin, Sherilyn Lennon and Sue Whatman. Ethical clearance was received through Griffith University: Reference Number: EDN/25/15/HREC.
- 5.
As far as possible written/typed student comments have been reproduced exactly as entered. As well as respecting the integrity of the data set, this helps to illustrate the challenges facing academic staff who sometimes have to decode data before they can begin to interpret it.
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Rowan, L. (2019). Influences on Academic Decision-Making in University Teaching: Perspectives from Policy, Literature, and Student-Centred Research. In: Higher Education and Social Justice. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05246-1_2
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