#LTHEchat

Join us on Bluesky for the LTHEchat on Wednesday 3rd June at 8pm BST with guests Jill Dickinson (@jilldickinson.bsky.social), Debrorah Rigby (@debbierigby.bsky.social) and Monika Foster (@monika-foster06.bsky.social) to discuss potential challenges and opportunities for pracademics in navigating the research culture of higher education

Introduction

In an increasingly tricky global landscape, it has become even more important to identify opportunities for bringing together HE and external organisations in driving forward collaborations that generate impactful research and knowledge exchange. Following calls for recognising, rewarding, and championing the potential contributions that those with dual experience from practice and academia can make as part of a diverse faculty (Dickinson and Griffiths, 2024), and funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust (The British Academy, 2024), our research explores how ‘pracademics’ (Volpe and Chandler, 2007) renegotiate their professional identities as they seek to navigate HE research culture(s).

Context

Our research is presented against a backdrop of increasing discussion and debate around pracademia (see, for example, Hollweck et al., 2021; Dickinson and Griffiths 2024; Marcus, 2024) that raise provocative questions around professional identity(ies) within this context. These include whether staff with dual experience from practice and academia can be ‘proper’ academics (Hodgson and Garner, 2024) and why some academics might be viewed as more ‘proper’ than others (Dickinson et al., 2024). It is clear that such issues can also be compounded when HEIs seek to recruit pracademics without providing them with the support needed to make the most of their practitioner experience within their new academic working environments (Yusoff, 2026).

Pracademics’ navigations of HE research culture(s)

We are self-identified pracademics from the fields of law, business, and education respectively and are drawing on our positionalities as insider researchers (Merton, 1972) to conduct this multidisciplinary research project. We have framed our research around the following three questions:

• What do pracademics understand by the phrase ‘research culture in HE’?
• To what extent do pracademics perceive themselves as able to engage in, and navigate, the research culture within HE?
• What other factors do pracademics perceive as either supporting or inhibiting their potential to contribute to the research culture within HE?

Early findings from the analysis of survey data collected reveal themes around: conflicting priorities and tensions in sustaining dual roles and responsibilities around teaching and research; challenges in accessing institutional support, clarity, and guidance to develop confidence in conducting research; the importance of developing collegial, supportive, and inclusive environments that are characterised by shared interests and values; and questions around what might constitute becoming, and being, ‘a real academic’.

References

Dickinson, J. & Griffiths, T. (Eds). (2023). Professional Development for Practitioners in Academia: Pracademia. Springer Nature. 10.1007/978-3-031-33746-8.

Dickinson, J., Griffiths, T., Foster, M. & Johnson, S. (2024, 29 September). ‘Some academics are seen as more proper than others’. WONKHE. https://wonkhe.com/blogs/some-academics-are-seen-as-more-proper-than-others/. 

Hodgson, R. & Garner, I. (2024, 4 August). ‘Are staff with professional and industry expertise proper academics?’ WONKHE. https://wonkhe.com/blogs/are-staff-with-professional-and-industry-expertise-proper-academics/. 

Hollweck, T., Netolicky, D.M., & Campbell, P. (2021). Defining and exploring pracademia: identity, community, and engagement. Journal of Professional Capital and Community, 7(1), 6-25. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPCC-05-2021-0026.

Leeds Beckett University. (2026). ‘How do academics with practitioner experience renegotiate their professional identities as they navigate the research culture within Higher Education?’ Leeds Beckett University. https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/research/centre-for-justice-law-and-policy/pracademia-navigate. 

Marcus, J. (2024, 21 July). ‘‘Pracademics,’ professors who work outside the academy win new respect. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/21/pracademics-vocational-training-college-professors/. 

Merton, R.K. (1972). ‘Insiders and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge’. American Journal of Sociology. 78(1), 9-47. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2776569. 

The British Academy. (2024). Over £1.7 million in British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grants awarded to support SHAPE researchers. The British Academy. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/over-17-million-in-british-academyleverhulme-trust-small-research-grants-awarded-to-support-shape-researchers/. 

Volpe, M.R. & Chandler, D. (2007). ‘Resolving and Managing Conflicts in Academic Communities: The Emerging Role of the “Pracademic”’. Negotiation Journal, 17(3), 245-255. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1571-9979.2001.tb00239.x. Yusoff, A. (2026, 26 March). ‘The human side of the practitioner-to-academic pipeline.’ Times Higher Education.https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/human-side-practitionertoacademic-pipeline.

Speaker bios

Jill Dickinson is Professor of Law and Professional Development at Leeds Law School. Jill is an applied, interdisciplinary researcher whose projects explore professional development and place-making, and the inter-sections between them, and often draw on creative research methods. Jill is also a: Principal Fellow (Advance HE); Recognised Research Supervisor (UK Council for Graduate Education); Recognised Practitioner in Advising (UK Advising and Tutoring); Executive Coach (L7); and Solicitor (non-practising). Publications include Professional Development for Practitioners in Academia: Pracademia (Springer Nature, 2024).

Monika Foster is Associate Pro Vice Chancellor (International and Educational Partnerships) and Professor of Business Education at Northumbria University. Previously as Dean and Head, Professor Foster has led a number of Business Schools in the UK, as well as international, cross-institutional and interdisciplinary research projects to enhance student experience and internationalization strategies. Her research interests include leadership and change management, with publications in Production, Planning and Control and Journal of Economic Science. Monika’s external recognition includes the award of National Teaching Fellow, Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Visiting Professor from Shandong University of Finance, China.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 27th May at 8pm BST with guests Caroline Michelle Keep (@ka81.bsky.social) to discuss why HE outreach needs to move beyond marketing events and become a clearer, more inclusive bridge between schools, universities, and students’ developmental journeys.

Introduction

Having spent most of my career in secondary education, with time in primary, secondary, and Higher Education (HE), I have spent years mapping the educational landscape in the UK. My PhD in Educational Digitisation using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) does exactly this: mapping how technology works in schools. Living at the crossroads of three different sectors: as a teacher (yes, I still teach), a researcher, and a student, I see inclusion and outreach from three different, often conflicting, worldviews.

Higher Education often talks about inclusive pedagogy, widening participation and belonging. Yet, from the school side, outreach can still feel more like a marketing event than a structural bridge into university learning. If universities want to be genuinely inclusive, outreach cannot remain a “nice-to-have”. It needs to become part of the student developmental journey: helping learners understand pathways, expectations, support structures and the shift in autonomy before they arrive.

Clear Pathways vs. Enthusiastic Joy

I have found simple things to be baffling. Why is HE outreach often just an assembly or a talk with no direct pathways? The most useful thing you can do is provide clear pathways to your courses and careers. Enthusiastic joy is insufficient if a child cannot see the way forward. In the classroom, inclusion is not a department we outsource, it is the daily management of sensory environments, cognitive load, and social communication. When HE outreach teams arrive with generic presentations, they often miss the students they claim to support. Truly inclusive outreach should meet students where they are, acknowledging specific needs, providing clear guidance, and sharing a joint vision before they arrive.

The “High-Friction” Transition

The transition to HE is a high-friction event for most students. We lose students not because they are not capable, but because the support structures in schools and HE do not communicate with each other. We need a model of “Pedagogical Outreach” where HE staff and schoolteachers collaborate to build the skills students need to survive the shift in autonomy. These shifts are particularly challenging for disabled and neurodivergent students.
In the first year of my PhD, despite being an experienced professional in education for over 20 years, I found myself overwhelmed and crying on the first day. Why? Because we still do not provide neurodivergent people with clear maps in universities. (For more information, see the paper I wrote on this experience: Keep, C. (2024) Lost in the Maze: Navigating Neurodiversity in Built Environments. Town & Country Planning).

A Structural Failure

We lack clear guidance for disabled and neurodivergent students at the PhD and Master’s levels, as if we suddenly become “able” at that stage. We don’t. There is a glaring lack of national-level organisations providing support to these students. The data backs this up. The 2025 Access Insights Report showed that while 87% of disabled students have agreed adjustments, only 44% report that those adjustments are actually delivered. Similarly, early findings from the first National Disabled Staff Survey (NDSS) in 2025, covering 837 staff across 127 institutions, exposed deep structural barriers undermining well-being and retention. While the launch of Advance HE’s Inclusive Institutions Framework is a start, proper inclusion is long overdue in the UK.

Learning from the School Practitioner

HE can learn from the “practitioner’s agility” found in schools. By observing how schools manage micro-decisions of inclusion, HE can stop waiting for students to fail before intervening. 

We must build proactive and high-clarity structures from day one. Outreach should not just be about showing students a lecture hall; it should be an opportunity for HE to study successful inclusion strategies already working in classrooms and translate them into the university setting.

Speaker bio

​Caroline is an award-winning Teacher, AI & Edtech Researcher, and Data Scientist. Having recently completed her PhD at The University of Lancashire, she focuses on crafting a unique Neurodivergent Edu/Tech narrative.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 20th May at 8pm BST with guests Puiyin Wong (@puiyin.bsky.social) and John Brindle (@johnbrindletel.bsky.social) to discuss how curiosity-driven conversations can spark meaningful professional growth and evolve into vibrant, supportive communities.

Introduction

Some of the most meaningful professional learning does not begin with a formal programme. It begins with a question, a conversation, and the curiosity to keep exploring. Sometimes, that shared curiosity is enough to start a community. 

We started #TELresearchers and #HEresearchers out of sheer curiosity and a desire to learn more about research career pathways from academics who supervise on our PhD programme. What has grown from that is a global community series with a wide range of speakers and participants. 

So, how do we pursue our curiosity to develop ourselves? And how can we build community around our interests? 

Getting Informal

Informal learning can be a powerful way to develop yourself and others. While it requires a high degree of self-motivation, it can be strengthened through communities and special interest groups (Macià and García, 2016). Although the definition of informal learning is highly contested (Švigelj and Cruz, 2023), it is widely recognised as a core part of continuous professional development across a range of disciplines. In our view, creating space and time for this type of learning is key to a successful and fulfilling career in learning, teaching, and research. 

Curiosity drives this self-directed approach to learning. So how do we build on that curiosity and develop it into a community-focused informal learning opportunity? 

Network

A strong informal learning approach depends on networks, particularly personal learning networks. At the heart of this are four behaviours of learning in an informal network: Consuming, Creating, Connecting, and Contributing (Milligan et al., 2014). In setting the scene for this week’s #LTHEchat, we want to explore these four behaviours in relation to our own practice in informal learning networks.  

Consuming

Creating space for those who want to listen and learn is important in informal learning opportunities. For some, this is their preferred way of “discovering new knowledge and ideas”. We allow participants to ‘lurk’ and listen to the discussion, or to contribute actively if they wish.  

Creating

Creation should be encouraged, and participants should be ‘making knowledge structures public’. By providing opportunities to share sense-making and personal accounts of their journeys, the #TELresearchers and #HEresearchers communities enable speakers to make their knowledge structures public and add ‘a layer of value from which others can benefit’.  

Connecting

As hosts of the community, we have seen our personal learning network grow significantly. Many peers want to talk about research and scholarship beyond our initial PhD cohort, and we have seen this most clearly when speakers and participants are encouraged to share their experiences.  

Contributing

Contribution happens openly. Curated questions, speaker engagement, and open-floor Q&A sessions all help those who want to contribute to the knowledge-creation process. 

How do you see yourself in Milligan et al.’s (2014) four C’s of learning behaviour? 

Openness

Open practice, for us, is a non-negotiable part of informal learning and grassroots CPD development. All of our talks are open: some are shared through the National Teaching Repository, and all are available through YouTube. Invitations are open to anyone who is curious and interested in the shared practice of #TELresearch and #HEresearch, and in the journeys that prominent researchers and scholars have taken. For us, that is the real value of open and informal learning networks. They show that grassroots CPD can start with a small question, grow through shared curiosity, and become a space where people connect, contribute, and keep learning together. 

References 

Macià, M., & García, I. (2016). Informal online communities and networks as a source of teacher professional development: A review. Teaching and Teacher Education, 55, pp. 291-307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.01.021. 

Milligan, C., Littlejohn, A. and Margaryan, A. (2014) Workplace learning in informal networks. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, pp. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.2014-06 

Švigelj, M., & Cruz, C. (2023). Youth as educators. International Encyclopaedia of Education, 4^th Edition, 337-345. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.08049-0 

Speaker Bios

Puiyin Wong

Puiyin is Senior Advisor (Digital Pedagogy & Practice) at Buckinghamshire New University, where she leads the strategic direction of digital education and contributes to improving teaching quality University wide. She is also a Trustee of Association for Learning Technology (ALT), where she helps govern the strategic development of ALT and supports sector initiatives. Puiyin has a keen interest in bringing people together; she is connected to colleagues in the UK and internationally. Puiyin is at the final stages of her PhD at Lancaster University, exploring the interplay between pedagogy and technology for learning and professional development. Finally, Puiyin leads a multi award winning researchers community – #TELresearchers & #Heresearchers that connects educational researchers at different career stages, from around the world.  

John Brindle

John is Learning Design Manager at Edge Hill University where he leads the design and development of online and blended programmes and non-credit bearing CPD. He is also and advisory panel member for BETT. John has an interest in inclusive practices and curriculum approaches. He is currently finishing his thesis for his PhD at Lancaster University where he is exploring sense-making of inclusive practice by third-space professionals. He co-hosts the award winning #TELresearchers and #HEresearchers community with Puiyin Wong.    

Questions

1. What questions or interests first sparked your curiosity in learning, teaching, or research?  
2. How has informal learning shaped your professional development compared with more formal CPD opportunities?  
3. What role has your personal learning network played in helping you learn, reflect, or grow?  
4. Which of the four C’s — Consuming, Creating, Connecting, or Contributing — feels most natural to you, and which would you like to develop further?
5. What helps you feel able to move from listening quietly to actively contributing in a learning community?  
6. How can open practices help turn individual curiosity into shared learning and community?

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 13th May at 8pm BST with guest Sarah Rhodes (@sarahjrhodes.bsky.social) to discuss how well we design for the sensory experience of learning.

Higher Education is good at designing content. Outcomes are aligned, assessments mapped, activities justified. We design for cognition, accessibility, and progression.

But how often do we design for the sensory experience of learning?

In early years, schools, and Further Education, sensory-aware practice is well established, supported by SEND reforms and regulation-informed approaches (Education Committee, 2025). In contrast, universities often treat learning environments, physical, digital, or hybrid, as sensory-neutral.

As blended and online learning continue to expand, it’s worth asking:
Are we designing for learning or simply expecting students to adapt?

Learning is sensory

Learning is not just intellectual; it is embodied. Neuroscience recognises eight sensory systems, including vestibular, proprioceptive and interoceptive systems that underpin attention, regulation, posture and readiness to learn (Neff, 2022).

Every learner has a sensory profile. Some seek movement or pressure; others are highly sensitive to light, noise or visual clutter. When sensory input is overwhelming or insufficient, it can affect concentration, emotional regulation, motivation and persistence.

This is well understood in earlier educational stages. In Higher Education, it remains largely invisible.

The hidden sensory load of HE

Lecture theatres, seminar rooms, studios and libraries carry sensory demands we rarely name: lighting, acoustics, seating, proximity, routes of movement. Digital environments add further load, scrolling VLEs, screen glare, notifications, video fatigue and multi-device study (Borda-Niño-Wildman & Gillies-Walker, 2025).

Students increasingly study in environments they did not design, while managing work, care responsibilities and high levels of stress. Research suggests that sustained sensory strain can lead students to avoid learning spaces, reduce participation, or reconsider their programme choices altogether (Nolan et al., 2023).

When this happens, the problem is often framed as individual disengagement rather than environmental mismatch.

Behaviours we misread

Higher Education rarely talks about vestibular or proprioceptive regulation, yet these systems underpin behaviours we associate with “engagement”.

Fidgeting, shifting position, pacing or standing are often attempts to stay regulated and focused, not signs of distraction (Neff, 2022; Rhodes, 2023). When these behaviours are constrained or discouraged, learners are left with fewer ways to self-regulate.

Sensory-inclusive design is practical, not specialist

Designing for the senses does not require radical redesign. Small, intentional choices can make learning more sustainable:

• Flexibility in posture and movement
• Built-in breaks and transitions
• Reduced visual and auditory clutter
• Explicit permission for fidgeting or standing
• Online sessions designed for sensory stamina, not endurance

These supports benefit all learners, not only those with identified needs.

A sensory reckoning for Higher Education?

Higher Education has become comfortable talking about learning design frameworks, accessibility checklists, and digital innovation. Yet we rarely ask the more uncomfortable questions about how learning actually feels to participate in.

If lecture theatres exhaust students before content even begins, if online learning requires prolonged sensory suppression, if participation relies on sitting still, staying silent, and tolerating overload then these are not neutral design choices. They are values made material.

Perhaps the real provocation is this: When students disengage, withdraw, or “fail to thrive”, how often is it the learner we position as the problem, rather than the sensory demands of the environments we have designed?

Designing for the senses is not about comfort, preference, or lowering academic standards. It is about recognising that learning has always been embodied and that ignoring sensory experience advantages some bodies and brains over others.

Higher Education has rightly embraced conversations about inclusion, equity, and belonging. A sensory lens pushes those conversations into the physical and digital realities of learning.

So perhaps the question is no longer “Can we design for the senses?” But instead:
What does it say about our institutions if we continue not to?

References

Borda-Niño-Wildman, C. & Gillies-Walker, L. (2025). The importance of the sensory environment in Higher Education. Teaching Matters, University of Edinburgh.

Education Committee (2025). Solving the SEND Crisis (HC 492). London: House of Commons.

Neff, M. A. (2022). The 8 Senses of the Body: Exploring Hidden Sensory Systems. Neurodivergent Insights.

Nolan, C., Doyle, J. K., Lewis, K. & Treanor, D. (2023). Disabled students’ perception of the sensory aspects of the learning and social environments within one Higher Education Institution. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 86(5), 367–375.

Rhodes, S. (2023). Sarah Rhodes on Sensory Learning. L&T Chatshow Podcast.

Speaker bio

Sarah Rhodes is Associate Professor of Educational Practice at BPP University, with over 25 years’ experience across academic, developmental and professional service roles. Her work centres on inclusive curriculum design, technology‑enhanced learning and reflective practice, alongside interests in wellbeing and movement pursued through a PGDip in Nutrition and Exercise Science.

Sarah has led major initiatives across several UK universities, including inclusive policy development, staff induction design, PgCert leadership and Advance HE awards and recognition schemes. A Senior Fellow of Advance HE, trained ILM Coach and Mentor and SEDA accredited Learning to Tutor Online and Digital Transformation practitioner she contributes widely through examining, advisory roles and sector engagement. At BPP, she leads the Postgraduate Certificate in Educational Practice and supports Fellowship recognition.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rhodes-889b4a74/

X @sarah_rhodes2

BlueSky @sarahjrhodes.bsky.social

Questions

1. Where do you most notice sensory overload or sensory mismatch in your own teaching and learner development (physical, digital, or hybrid)?
2. Which student behaviours have you previously interpreted as “disengagement” and how might a sensory lens reframe them?
3. What small, practical changes have you made (or could you make) to support movement, regulation, or sensory flexibility in learning spaces?
4. How do your online or blended teaching and learner support practices acknowledge sensory stamina, not just attention span?
5. In what ways might our institutional norms around “professional behaviour” unintentionally limit sensory self-regulation?
6. Could a sensory-informed perspective sit alongside UDL or learning design frameworks in your context and what might that change?

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 29th April at 8pm BST with guest Jenni Rose (@jennirose21.bsky.social) to discuss how we can support students’ critical thinking through self-feedback.

Introduction

We all want our students to think critically. It’s embedded in our learning outcomes, our professional body requirements, and our assessment criteria. Yet, despite decades of focus on critical thinking, graduates consistently arrive in practice without these capabilities. Whether your students are training to become accountants, engineers, nurses, journalists, lawyers, or social workers, they need to move beyond seeking ‘right answers’ to exercising professional judgement in ambiguous situations. Perhaps part of the problem is that we do not always consider the intellectual development that must happen before students can demonstrate critical thinking.

What’s missing from our approach to critical thinking

Perry’s Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development (Perry, 1970; 1999) offers a crucial insight that critical thinking isn’t just a skill to be taught, it’s a capability that emerges when students reach particular stages of intellectual development (Rose and Moore, 2024). Before students can consistently demonstrate critical thinking, they must progress through earlier positions where they develop the foundational capacities for independent judgement.

Consider a typical first-year student who arrives seeking “the right answer”, a mindset Perry termed ‘dualism’ (position two). These students see knowledge as a collection of facts to be memorised, and view teachers as authorities who possess correct answers. This dualistic thinking appears across disciplines, whether students expect clear legal precedents, defined clinical procedures, single correct equations, or specific marking criteria. Students become passive receivers of knowledge, with teachers positioned as all-knowing authorities (Freire, 1996). In this environment, students naturally adopt dualistic thinking, seeing answers as simply right or wrong based on what their teacher has told them.

From dualism, students move to multiplicity (position three), where they recognise that multiple viewpoints exist but lack tools to evaluate them, creating what Evans et al. (2010) call disequilibrium in meaning-making. Critical thinking only emerges at pure relativism (position four) and contextual relativism (position five), where students construct evidence-based arguments, view teachers as sources of thinking frameworks rather than answers, and ultimately evaluate knowledge within context to exercise sophisticated professional judgement (Rose and Moore, 2024).

This developmental lens reveals why simply teaching critical thinking skills often fails. We’re asking students to demonstrate capabilities that depend on intellectual positions they haven’t yet reached. It’s like expecting someone to run before they can walk.

Are we measuring what we think we’re measuring?

This developmental framework also illuminates a troubling question about our assessments. Traditional assessments such as essays, exams or case analyses require students to demonstrate critical thinking within constrained formats and time pressures. But what if these assessment methods inadvertently prevent students from showing the intellectual development they’ve achieved?

A recent study with first-year accounting students revealed that 55% of students who completed formative assignments demonstrated higher intellectual positions in reflective tasks than in their academic essays (Rose and Stoner, 2026). Students capable of sophisticated evaluative thinking when reflecting on their own work reverted to more dualistic approaches when writing formal essays. While this research focused on accounting education, the implications extend across disciplines and asks if our traditional assessment formats are systematically underestimating students’ intellectual capabilities?

This matters because we make crucial decisions based on these assessments. We conclude students “can’t think critically” when perhaps they can’t demonstrate it within our particular assessment constraints. We design interventions to “teach critical thinking” when students may need support developing the intellectual foundations that enable critical thinking to emerge.

How self-feedback supports development

If intellectual development precedes critical thinking, how do we facilitate that development? One promising approach draws on Nicol’s (2021) theory of inner feedback, operationalised through structured self-feedback activities.

Self-feedback involves students comparing their work to information in resources such as exemplars, peer work, videos, AI-generated content and explicitly articulating their evaluative responses through guided prompts. It is more effective when students do something before comparing (Nicol and Rose, 2025), so that they can cope with the uncertainty of the blank page before refining. This process moves students from passive knowledge reception (characteristic of dualism) toward active evaluation and contextual judgement (characteristic of relativism).

The developmental power lies in what self-feedback requires students to do. They must:

• Articulate evaluative judgements rather than seek ‘the right answer’
• Justify their evaluations with evidence (position four)
• Make contextual judgements about quality (position five)
• Develop autonomy rather than relying on teacher authority

In the same study of 80 first-year accounting students, 86% progressed by at least one position on Perry’s scheme (Rose and Stoner, 2026) by using self-feedback pedagogy. More remarkably, 74% showed at least glimpses of pure relativism (the threshold for critical thinking) by the end of the intervention, compared to just 14% at the outset. This substantial development occurred autonomously, without direct teacher feedback and perhaps accelerating intellectual growth precisely because students weren’t relying on teachers as arbiters of correctness.

While this research was conducted in accounting education, the principles apply across disciplines. Self-feedback activities can be adapted to any field where students need to develop evaluative judgement whether comparing their laboratory reports to exemplars, evaluating rubrics, or looking at peers’ screen play writing (Rose et al., 2024).

Making thinking visible through dialogue

This approach resonates with Freirean dialogic pedagogy, where students develop knowledge through “invention and reinvention, the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue with the world and with others” (Freire, 1996, p.53). Self-feedback enables this inquiry by creating structured opportunities for students to:

• Engage with diverse viewpoints (building comfort with multiplicity)
• Articulate their evaluative thinking (developing metacognition)
• Practice independent judgement (supporting autonomy)
• Build confidence in their reasoning (reducing reliance on authority)

When students complete self-feedback comparing exemplar essays, they encounter multiple valid approaches to the same question. When comparing their work to peers, they recognise their thinking as one perspective among many. These experiences support progression from dualism (seeking the single right answer) through multiplicity (overwhelmed by many answers) to relativism (confident in evaluating multiple answers contextually).

What this means for our teaching

If intellectual development precedes critical thinking, and self-feedback facilitates that development, several practical implications emerge.

We need to start early and scaffold carefully. Introducing self-feedback early can help establish trajectories of intellectual growth across a degree. Structured prompts can also help students articulate evaluative thinking that is only just beginning to emerge. These prompts can be drafted with generative AI (Rose, 2025) and then refined by the teacher.

We should diversify our assessment formats. If 55% of students demonstrate higher intellectual positions in reflective self-feedback than essays, we need assessment portfolios that capture development across contexts. Written self-feedback responses, reflective commentaries on peer work, and evaluative annotations of exemplars might reveal capabilities that traditional essays miss.

Finally, our pedagogy needs designing for autonomy. The intellectual development required for critical thinking involves moving from dependence on authority toward autonomous judgement. Pedagogical approaches that position students as active agents in their learning – comparing, evaluating, articulating judgements – support this shift more effectively than approaches that position teachers as answer-providers. 

This focus on intellectual development connects to wider conversations about student empowerment and learning communities. We want students to develop the intellectual capacities that enable genuine participation in their disciplinary communities, including the capacity to question, evaluate, and exercise professional judgement.

References

Evans, N.J., Forney, D.S., Guido, F.M., Patton, L.D. and Renn, K.A. (2010) Student development in college: Theory, research and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the oppressed. Translated by D. Macedo. New York: Continuum.

Nicol, D. (2021) ‘The power of internal feedback: Exploiting natural comparison processes’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 46(5), pp. 756–778.

Nicol, D. and Rose, J. (2025) ‘When should students engage with exemplars? Comparing the impact of pre-task versus post-draft exemplar analysis on student performance and self-feedback quality’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2534870

Perry, W.G. (1999) Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years. New York: Routledge.

Rose, J. (2025) Teacher prompt for creating a self-feedback worksheet. Available at: https://zenodo.org/records/17611231

Rose, J. and Moore, W. (2024) ‘Encourage intellectual development in students to improve work readiness’, Times Higher Education.

Rose, J. and Stoner, G. (2026) ‘Measuring and enabling engaged first-year students’ intellectual development towards critical thinking’, Accounting Education (under review).

Rose, J., Dewsnip, H., McBride, J., McDonagh, L. and Walker, L. (2024) Active self-feedback guide for staff. Available at: https://assets.manchester.ac.uk/staffnet/files/itl/active-self-feedback-for-staff/

Speaker Bio

Jenni Rose is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Academic Lead for Employability at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Jenni was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2025 (the first for AMBS) and holds Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Her innovative work on self-feedback has trained over 1,000 educators across multiple continents. As Chair of the ICAEW Academia and Education Committee, she supports the professional development for 20,200+ accounting educators globally. Jenni co-founded the University of Manchester Teaching and Scholarship Network (450+ members) and co-edited the Accounting Streams open-access textbook (83k+ interactions across 131 countries). Her research focuses on intellectual development, active self-feedback methodologies, and dialogic pedagogy in accounting education.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 22nd April at 8pm BST with guests Heather Pennington (@heatherpennington.bsky.social) and Rachel Johns (@johnsrm.bsky.social) to discuss anti-racist curriculum, and what it really requires.

Across higher education, the phrase anti‑racist curriculum is increasingly visible in strategies, conversations, and staff development initiatives. Many of us recognise its importance and urgency; yet, as with any ambitious institutional goal, questions often arise about what this work actually involves, how to begin, and how to sustain meaningful change over time.

Anti‑racist curriculum development is more than an aspiration or a well‑meaning statement. It demands that we look closely at the histories that shape our disciplines, the voices and epistemologies centred- or marginalised- in our reading lists, and the assumptions embedded in our assessment practices. It also requires us to attend carefully to the lived experiences of our students and colleagues. This work involves both structural change and everyday practice, and it can be challenging and sometimes uncomfortable. But it is necessary if we are committed to creating learning environments where all can thrive.

Although there is no single route or universal template, educators across sectors are experimenting with creative, critical, and relational approaches to curriculum transformation. For some, this means re‑examining foundational concepts or questioning disciplinary traditions; for others, it means collaborating with students to understand experiences of inclusion and exclusion; and for many, it involves reframing what counts as knowledge, and how success is recognised.  

Anti‑racist practice is not a checklist, a compliance exercise, or a quick rebranding of existing approaches. Anti‑racist curriculum work invites educators to examine the assumptions, histories, and power structures that shape their disciplines. As Advance HE’s Anti‑Racist Curriculum (ARC) project argues, this involves challenging the myth of neutrality and interrogating the pathways through which particular narratives become privileged while others are marginalised or silenced.  This requires educators to recognise how our own positionality shapes both what we teach and how we teach it, and to reframe curricula with students’ experiences, identities and aspirations firmly at the centre.

Anti‑racist pedagogical scholarship echoes this. Kishimoto (2018) emphasises that anti‑racist teaching is fundamentally about process: creating learning environments grounded in reflexivity, shared power, and explicit acknowledgement with race and racism. This includes questioning traditional authority structures, co‑creating aspects of the curriculum with students, and embracing learning as a mutual—rather than academically hierarchical—endeavour. Similarly, Wagner (2005) suggests that the process of learning, not simply the outcomes, matters most-a principle that has important implications for designing assessment practices that prioritise learning journeys over standardised expectations.

Engaging in anti-racist work can surface discomfort and resistance. It asks us to question established norms, examine our assumptions, and confront aspects of institutional culture that may feel deeply embedded. Yet it also opens up powerful possibilities: learning spaces where diverse voices are valued as central rather than peripheral; modules where global perspectives shape disciplinary boundaries; and learning spaces where students can see themselves reflected, affirmed, and empowered.Developing an anti‑racist curriculum is an ongoing, iterative practice; one that requires openness, humility, and collective commitment. It is shaped through conversations, collaborations, and the willingness to question long-held assumptions. Over time, it is these everyday acts of re-imagining and adjusting our practices that gradually create meaningful and sustainable change.

References

Advance HE (2021) ARC Explained. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-10/ARC%20Explained.pdf  (Accessed: 18^th December 2025).

Kishimoto, K. (2018) ‘Anti‑racist pedagogy: from faculty’s self‑reflection to organising within and beyond the classroom’. Available at: https://servicelearning.duke.edu/sites/servicelearning.duke.edu/files/documents/Anti-racist%20pedagogy_%20from%20faculty%E2%80%99s%20self-reflection%20to%20organizing%20within%20and%20beyond%20the%20classroom%5B3%5D.pdf  (Accessed: Accessed: 18^th December 2025).

Wagner, A. (2005) ‘Unsettling the Academy: working through the challenges of anti‑racist pedagogy’. Race, Ethnicity and Education 8(3): pp. 261-275. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248970647_Unsettling_the_Academy_Working_through_the_challenges_of_anti-racist_pedagogy  (Accessed: Accessed: 18^th December 2025)

Speaker Bios

Heather Pennington

Heather Pennington is a senior lecturer and works in the Learning and Teaching Academy at Cardiff University, where she focuses on inclusive education and improving the student learning experience. She works closely with colleagues to develop teaching practices that support belonging, engagement, and meaningful learning. Heather is particularly interested in partnership approaches and inclusive curriculum design, and in helping create learning environments where all students feel valued and able to succeed.

Heather Pennington – People – Cardiff University 

@heatherpennington.bsky.social

Rachel Johns

Rachel Johns is an Education Developer for Inclusion at Cardiff University, working within the Learning and Teaching Academy. Her role focuses on advancing inclusive curriculum design and assessment through partnership approaches with students and staff. She has a particular interest in co‑creation as a means of redistributing power in learning and teaching, and in culturally sustaining pedagogies that recognise, value and build upon students’ diverse multi-faceted  identities. Rachel’s work supports colleagues to embed inclusive, and socially just practices, with the aim of creating learning environments where all students can belong and thrive.

Mrs Rachel Johns – People – Cardiff University

@johnsrm.bsky.social

Questions

Q1. How do you define anti‑racist curriculum within your own disciplinary context, and what values or principles underpin that definition?

Q2. What examples, however small, have you seen of anti‑racist practices in teaching, assessment, or curriculum design that have positively influenced student experience?

Q3. What kinds of resistance, barriers, or discomfort tend to surface when pursuing anti-racist curriculum work, and how might educators navigate these constructively?

Q4. In what ways can students contribute meaningfully and be genuine partners in shaping anti‑racist curriculum change? What forms of partnership feel authentic rather than tokenistic?

Q5. What ongoing support, resources, structures, or communities of practice are needed to help educators sustain anti‑racist practice over time?

Q6. What one concrete step could you take-or encourage a colleague to take-in the next month to advance anti-racist curriculum development in your context? 

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 15th April at 8pm BST with guest Danielle Hinton (@hintondm.bsky.social to discuss Brookfield’s Four Lenses!

Introduction

Educators in Higher Education often find it challenging to move from describing their teaching to articulating the impact of their decisions. This emerges repeatedly in postgraduate teaching qualifications, professional recognition (e.g., HEA Fellowship or National Teaching Fellowship), promotion cases, and peer observation. Across these contexts, reflective writing is expected to show critical thinking, synthesis, and a clear link between choices made and their influence on student learning.

Stephen Brookfield’s Four Lenses (1995; 2017) – Student, Autobiographical, Peer and Theoretical offer a practical and powerful structure for developing richer reflection. They help us step outside our familiar narratives, surface assumptions, and build more credible, evidence-informed accounts. As Brookfield notes, “seeing how we think and work through different lenses is the core process of reflective practice” (Brookfield, 1995).

Triangulating across lenses strengthens our claims of impact and moves reflection beyond storytelling into scholarly, thoughtful inquiry. This #LTHEchat invites you to explore how triangulation can deepen reflective teaching skills, identities and support more confident accounts of impact.

Triangulation as a Scholarly Habit

Each lens refracts our teaching differently, offering a unique hue in the spectrum. Where these colours converge or contrast, we begin to see the fuller pattern of our work. Using diverse forms of evidence is like adjusting how the prism catches the light – subtle shifts that reveal deeper detail, sharpening our understanding of what our teaching truly looks like in practice.

Scholars of reflective practice remind us that:

• Using diverse forms of evidence – student feedback, emotions, behaviour patterns, peer insights, theory – creates stronger, more credible reflections.
• Reflection is social and contextual, not a solitary activity. Peer dialogue and collaborative reflection add nuance.
• Relying on a single perspective risks blind spots and limits criticality.
• We have many tools to actively support reflective development (e.g., Edinburgh’s Reflection Toolkit; Advance HE’s scholarly guides). As educators, we must be lifelong reflective learners.

Together, these insights remind us that triangulation is not an optional extra – it is a scholarly habit essential for evidencing teaching impact.

Why We Get Stuck Writing About Impact?

Many educators describe common barriers:

1. Confusing action with impact  – Reflection often focuses on what we did rather than what changed for learners.

2. Anxiety for early-career colleagues – Understanding that there is no single “right way” to reflect; accessible models encourage honest conversations about teaching.

3. Local norms shape what counts – Disciplines and institutions differ in how they define meaningful impact and credible evidence.

4. Narrow views of evidence – Impact can be affective, behavioural, peer-validated, or theoretical—far beyond formal feedback.5. Lack of structure – Without a framework, reflection easily slips into description rather than analysis.

Applying the Four Lenses to Evidence Impact

Each lens generates distinct forms of evidence and challenges different assumptions. Used together, they help us move from observation → interpretation → impact.

1. Student Lens

The student lens foregrounds how learners actually experience our sessions, drawing on patterns in questions, engagement data, feedback, emotional tone, and discussion activity. This evidence highlights learner-centred effects, helps us see where clarity or confidence has shifted, and often uncovers surprises that challenge our assumptions. Sentence stems such as “A pattern in student questions suggested that…” or “Student feedback indicated that…” can help frame these reflections.

2. Autobiographical Lens

The autobiographical lens encourages us to explore our own identities, histories, and assumptions as educators. Through reflective logs, values mapping, emotional responses, and decision documentation, we begin to surface the reasoning behind our choices and notice how our positionality shapes our practice. Useful prompts include “Reflecting on my positionality as a…” and “My initial assumption that… became visible when…”.

3. Peer Lens

The peer lens brings in external perspectives from colleagues through observation, debriefs, mentoring, teaching circles, moderation, conversations and online opportunities such as #LTHEchat exchanges. These insights can reveal blind spots, validate ideas, and offer alternative approaches while strengthening our sense of scholarly community. Sentence stems might include “A colleague noted that…” or “Peer discussion revealed…”.

4. Theoretical Lens

The theoretical lens situates our practice within broader pedagogic and disciplinary debates. Drawing on pedagogic literature, research, learning theory, policy frameworks, sector guidance and resources (eg. Advance HE, ICED, HERDSA, POD Network) allows us to justify decisions, articulate our reasoning, and connect our reflections to wider scholarly conversations. Prompts such as “Drawing on X theory, I interpreted this as…” or “Research on Y suggests that…” help anchor insights in theory.

Bringing the Lenses Together: Triangulation in Action

As we bring these lenses together, our education practice becomes less like a single beam of light and more like a spectrum revealed through a prism. Each lens refracts our practice in its own way, offering colours we might otherwise overlook. When we allow these perspectives to converge – student experiences, our own assumptions, peer insights, and theoretical frames –  we begin to see the fuller pattern and evidence of our impact. Triangulation helps us move beyond recounting events toward understanding why they mattered, illuminating the deeper shifts in learning and practice. In embracing this prism-like approach, we strengthen not only our reflections but our confidence in the story our teaching truly tells.

Bibliography

• Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. Jossey-Bass.
• Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
• Goldman, A., Moed, D., & McMahon, C. (2025). Extending beyond the self: Leveraging Brookfield’s four lenses for critical reflection in WIL. University of Toronto.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379238164_Extending_beyond_the_self_Leveraging_Brookfield’s_four_lenses_for_critical_reflection_in_WIL 
• Harvey, M. et al (2020). Reflection for Learning: A Scholarly Practice Guide for Educators. Advance HE. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/reflection-learning-scholarly-practice-guide-educators 
• Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. (2023). Reflective Practice in Initial Teacher Education. https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Reflective_Journal_Briefing_Paper.pdf 
• McCabe, G. and Thejll-Madson, T. (2026). Reflection Toolkit. University of Edinburgh. https://reflection.ed.ac.uk/

Speaker bio

A long‑standing contributor to #LTHEchat by night, by day I’m a Principal Educational Developer at the University of Birmingham (UoB). I’m passionate about accessible scholarship and community‑driven pedagogic development, sharing models, frameworks, and curated SoTL resources to support educators across the sector. Founding member of the Brookfield Appreciation Society headquartered at UoB’s PGCHE.

Questions

Q1. What do you or others find hardest about articulating impact in reflective writing about educational practice?

Q2. Which of Brookfield’s Four Lenses do you lean on most – student, peer, autobiographical or theoretical – and which could help you triangulate better?

Q3. What helps you move from describing events to interpreting their significance?

Q4. Which evidence – student, peer, autobiographical, theoretical – best helps you show impact?

Q5. How do you use triangulation to show change and evidence educational impact?

Q6. What tools, prompts, or stems help you get “unstuck” when reflecting?

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 25th March at 8pm GMT with guest Deeba Parmar (@deebaparmar.bsky.social) to discuss Academic Wellbeing, Emotional Energy and Caring Leadership!

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Higher education continues to navigate significant challenge. Change is constant, expectations are high and the pace can feel unrelenting. In these moments it is often the visible outputs that take priority: delivery, performance, metrics. Yet beneath all of this sits something less visible but equally powerful. Care.

Care is sometimes misunderstood in university settings. It can be seen as soft or secondary, something that sits alongside the “real” work. But in practice care is what enables that work to happen. It shapes how people show up, how they engage and whether they feel able to contribute. In times of challenge care is not a luxury. It is a form of strength.

Academic wellbeing is often framed through the lens of individual resilience. While this has its place, it risks placing responsibility on individuals without fully recognising the environments they are working within. A well academic community is one where wellbeing is relational. Where people feel belonging. Where their contributions are recognised. Where there is space to be stretched and supported. This matters deeply in a sector where many colleagues carry substantial emotional as well as cognitive load.

Thinking about emotional energy can help. Every interaction, every meeting and every teaching moment draws on and contributes to the emotional climate of a space. Over time this accumulates. Research in the UK shows that relational and pastoral support in universities is often hidden, unevenly distributed and not formally recognised in workload models. This affects many colleagues but especially women and racially minoritised staff who frequently hold this work without acknowledgement (Advance HE, 2024). 

If care is a form of energy, then leadership plays a vital role in shaping how that energy is created and sustained. Caring leadership does not mean lowering expectations or avoiding difficult conversations. It is about how expectations are held. With clarity. With fairness. With empathy. With a strong sense of context. Caring leadership notices who is contributing, who is quiet, who is carrying more than they are saying and who may need support to take part fully.

Often this care appears in very small moments. Taking time to notice and appreciate effort rather than just outcomes. Creating room for real dialogue rather than relying only on transmission. Being intentional about inclusion rather than assuming it will happen on its own. Speaking up for colleagues when they are not present. These moments may feel small but they shape culture in powerful ways.

There is also something important about how we recognise relational work in learning and teaching. Much of what makes education meaningful is grounded in relationships. The trust between educators and students. The support between colleagues. The feeling of being part of a community. Yet this work is rarely reflected in the metrics that dominate our sector. Naming it, valuing it and giving it visibility helps reinforce its importance.

Care must also be sustainable. There is a real risk that in recognising the importance of care we inadvertently create more burden for the people who already give so much. Wellbeing cannot rest on individuals alone nor can it be carried by a small group of generous colleagues. It needs to be embedded across our cultures, our systems and our leadership practices. Supportive structures, thoughtful development opportunities and fair recognition all contribute to this.

Across UK higher education many of us work in roles that cross boundaries. We work in teams that blend academic, professional and specialist expertise. We contribute to teaching, research, student experience, operations, community and strategy. Sometimes our work fits established categories. Sometimes it does not. Recent research shows that across UK universities colleagues who work in these blended or less defined spaces often contribute significantly while navigating questions of belonging and recognition (Whitchurch, 2026). This is not about a single group but about the reality of modern higher education where roles, responsibilities and identities overlap and shift. 

In challenging times it can be tempting to focus only on what feels urgent and measurable. But it is often care that sustains people through these periods. Care builds trust. Trust enables change. Care creates the conditions in which people feel able to contribute, take thoughtful risks and grow. Care is not the opposite of rigour. It is what makes rigour possible.

Perhaps the challenge for us in UK higher education is to see care not as something extra but as something essential. To recognise it. To value it. To share responsibility for it. Because when care is present people do more than cope. They thrive.

Advance HE (2024) How do “care” or “pastoral support” activities contribute to core strategic outcomes in higher education? Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-views/how-do-care-or-pastoral-support-activities-contribute-core-strategic-outcomes-higher (Accessed: 9 March 2026)

Whitchurch, C. (2026) ‘Achieving Inclusion: University staff working in third space between academic and professional spheres of activity’, Social Inclusion, 14, Article 9596. Available at: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/download/9596/4251 (Accessed: 14 March 2026). 

Whitchurch, C. and Healy, G. (2024) ‘The concept of third space as an enabler in complex higher education environments’. London Review of Education, 22 (1), 42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.22.1.42.

Speaker Bio

Dr Deeba Parmar is Head of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at BPP University, Fellow of the Institute for Equity and Principal Fellow (PFHEA). She is passionate about relational practice, academic wellbeing and creating learning environments where colleagues and students feel seen, supported and able to thrive. Her work focuses on caring leadership, emotional energy in higher education and the everyday practices that shape healthy academic cultures. Deeba is especially interested in aspects of equity, equality, diversity and inclusion, reward and recognition and student voice.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 18th March at 8pm GMT with guest Hannah Robinson to discuss the Use of Humour in Higher Education Teaching.

Have you ever found yourself making a joke or laughing at yourself during your lectures? Research evidence shows most academics report that they use humour with their students. The use of humour in education has been reported to effect different areas of students’ educational experiences such as their wellbeing, the classroom environment, relationships, and learning outcomes. 

Despite possibly seeming straightforward, humour is much more complex than a single category. Research into humour in education has identified humour styles which could be linked to different outcomes on students’ educational experiences and educators’ wellbeing. 

Our research has built on this understanding. A 24-item Higher Education Humour Styles Questionnaire (24-HEHSQ) was developed which identified eight humour styles used by academics: course-related, course-unrelated, festive, affiliative, enhancing, self-defeating, sarcastic, and personal characteristic humour. Although humour has distinct humour styles, these are not used in isolation. When using humour, in education or otherwise, people will often use a combination of these different styles. 

Course-related and Course-unrelated humour

If you make jokes in your teaching, are they used to support your students learning? Or are they used to lighten the mood and make students laugh? This distinction between these uses of humour is the difference between course-related and course-unrelated humour. 

If you are using humour related to your teaching or the module content, then you are using course-related humour. On the other hand, if there is no link to learning or academic skills then it is course-unrelated humour. Course-related humour is suggested to support learning and understanding, whereas course-unrelated humour may lead to confusion over what students should be learning. 

Festive Humour 

Have you ever played an April Fools’ prank on your students? Or had them play one on you? This is a common example of festive humour, which refers to humour used related to holidays and special occasions such as April Fools’, Christmas, or birthdays. In academic subjects where holidays or special occasions are taught, course-related festive humour could also be used to explain key ideas to students. 

Affiliative Humour

When you use humour, is it mostly positive or negative? Any positive uses of humour are defined as affiliative humour. It incorporates humour such as dad jokes, wit, and banter. This could be to improve relationships, make others laugh, or to create a positive environment. 

Enhancing Humour

When you or your students are stressed or overwhelmed, have you used humour to lighten the mood? This is an example of enhancing humour. In previous definitions this humour style was defined as self-enhancing, referring only to humour to improve an individual’s own wellbeing. But in an educational environment humour is found to be used to improve students’ wellbeing too. 

Self-defeating Humour

Have you ever made a mistake or error and used humour to handle it? If so, you were using self-defeating humour. This style involves using humour at your own expense, laughing at your own flaws or mistakes. Some studies suggest this humour style could be viewed as an unproductive use of time by students. 

Sarcastic Humour 

This humour style is one I find myself using in my own teaching, but is also frequently reported by educators across academic levels. Sarcastic humour refers to light-hearted teasing, sarcasm, and banter. 

This is the humour style with the most mixed findings in the literature with some students responding positively due to perceiving it as a little bit different and interesting. In contrast, some students describe sarcasm as being inappropriate for educators to use. The mixed reports from students suggest the nuances of how sarcastic humour is used and individual student humour preferences, could dictate how positively it is received. 

Personal Characteristic Humour

Have you ever used stereotypes to explain a concept using humour? If so, this would be an example of personal characteristic humour. This humour style involves using humour with topics relating to an individual such as stereotypes, gender, ethnicity, or sexuality. This style has limited inclusion in research, as it was adapted from aggressive humour. 

This humour style can be viewed as a negative or harmful humour style due to it including protected characteristics. In the literature students have reported feeling offended from this use of humour. However, when used correctly it could have positive outcomes by being used to spread awareness of important issues.  

Current Research

The ways that humour is used is becoming more understood in the literature. Despite this there is still very little discussion of humour in educational institutions or support for the integration of humour into teaching. As there are mixed outcomes reported on students’ experiences, it is important that educators have the tools and resources available to better understand humour and how it can be used. My current research is currently piloting a humour toolkit with academics teaching in higher education in the UK. This toolkit was co-created with academics to support the reflective use of humour. It includes informational videos on humour, reflections from students, scales to identify humour styles and preferences, and activities to integrate into learning or use to reflect on humour use. 

Questions

Q1 How do you feel about academics using humour in higher education teaching?

Q2 When you were a student, what were your experiences of educators using humour?

Q3 Are there any uses of humour you think are more beneficial to use in education?

Q4 Are there any uses of humour you think should be avoided in education?

Q5 How can we minimise the risk of negative outcomes of humour in education?

Q6 What resources or institutional support would help with the productive uses of humour in education?

Speaker Bio

Hannah Robinson is a PhD researcher at University of Staffordshire, and Psychological Experimental Officer at Arden University. Her research area focuses on humour use in an educational environment.