#LTHEchat

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

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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.

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.

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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.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 11th March at 8pm GMT with guest Rachel Forsyth to discuss GenAI in higher education.

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In many conversations about generative AI in higher education, the products themselves take centre stage. It is very hard to think about services based on Large Language Models (LLM) without getting into discussions about big tech, data protection, ethical software development and environmental impact. Of course, those discussions are essential, especially when public money is being spent on these products and services, but for many of us they have to run in parallel with the reality that there are lot of these things around already, and we have to find ways to talk about them which help us to explain our positions more clearly. We can’t look away, even if we really, really want to. So in this #LTHEchat, let’s try, just for an hour, to focus on what we value in higher education and consider the impact of LLM-based services on four core principles: student-centeredness, trust, relevance, and agency. 

Sam Illingworth and I wrote GenAI in Higher Education: Redefining Teaching and Learning (open access from Bloomsbury) to support education-led discussions about these products, and we try to come back to these four principles in every section, whether we are talking about ethics, student engagement, assessment or teacher use of GenAI.   

Student-Centeredness focuses on how students can still engage with valued forms of knowledge, quality, standards, and expertise in higher education. If GenAI can summarise a text or propose ideas, does that mean students no longer need to develop those skills?  How do we ensure that learning remains rooted in meaningful disciplinary thinking, rather than in polished language extrusion (Bender, 2025)? How do we assess what students have actually learned (Fawns et al, 2026), when GenAI products may mask their authentic work? Can some LLM-based products reduce some barriers to traditional learning? Seeing GenAI through a student-centred lens forces us to explain to students what we think (and feel) about its impacts on them and their learning, and why we make certain decisions about assessment. 

Trust becomes especially important in a moment when staff and students alike may feel unsettled. Trust is built not through surveillance or suspicion, but through environments where students feel comfortable taking risks, admitting uncertainty, and trying things out. If GenAI destabilises some of our familiar assessment practices – which is by no means guaranteed, since many universities are returning to the familiar examination halls – perhaps it is also an invitation to rethink how we communicate expectations, and how we reassure students that learning is not simply about getting things “right” and offering up a perfect essay.

Relevance encourages us to connect learning to students’ lives, interests and social contexts. GenAI is already present in many workplaces, creative practices and everyday tools. Pretending it doesn’t exist risks making higher education feel disconnected or outdated. But that in itself isn’t a reason for adoption. A relevance-first approach asks: How can we help students situate GenAI within their discipline? How can we support them to evaluate its limitations, biases and consequences? How do we keep the curriculum anchored in the real worlds students inhabit whilst explaining why they need to learn to do some things themselves, even if that learning is uncomfortable or feels like drudgery at times?

Finally, Agency reminds us that neither staff nor students should be passive recipients of technological change. Both groups need autonomy and voice in shaping how GenAI is explored, questioned or resisted. For students, this might mean being transparent about how and when they use GenAI products, understanding that digital products and services may not always be risk-free, developing their own judgement about when it supports their learning and when it undermines it. For staff, agency includes the freedom to make pedagogical decisions that align with their values, not simply with technological trends, but also to consider whether some GenAI products and services might actually improve something in their practices.

Seeing GenAI through these four pillars gives us all some agency over our actions in relation to GenAI. Rather than asking whether students are “using AI correctly”, we might ask whether our practices enable them to think critically, act ethically and engage deeply with their disciplines. Is there any way that GenAI might help us to focus on creating spaces where human judgement, curiosity and connection still come first.

Our recent research on trust-building between teachers and students (Felten et al, 2024; Glessmer et al, 2025; Forsyth et al, 2025) shows that the responses of teachers, librarians, learning developers and others who have direct contact with students matter very much to them: they need and want to hear our critical and informed responses to the real challenges and opportunities students see in GenAI. We can’t look away. 

References 

Bender, E. M. (2025). We do not have to accept AI (much less GenAI) as inevitable in education. AI and the future of education, 41. 

Fawns, T., Boud, D., & Dawson, P. (2026). Identifying what our students have learned: a framework for practical assessment validation. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2026.2620053  

Felten, P., Forsyth, R., & Sutherland, K. (2023). Building Trust in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for Teachers, Scholars, and Academic Developers in Higher Education. Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal, 11. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/TLI/article/view/77047  

Forsyth, R., & Glessmer, M. (2025). How teachers build trust with students in the presence of GenAI Proceedings LTH: s 13: e Pedagogiska Inspirationskonferens, 4 december 2025, Lund. https://www.lth.se/fileadmin/cee/genombrottet/konferens2025/C1_Forsyth_Glessmer.pdf 

Glessmer, M. S., Persson, P., & Forsyth, R. (2025). Engineering students trust teachers who ask, listen, and respond. International Journal for Academic Development, 30(1), 106–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2024.2438224 

Illingworth, S., & Forsyth, R. (2026). GenAI in Higher Education: Redefining Teaching and Learning. Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/genai-in-higher-education-9781350535787/  

Questions

Q1 How does GenAI prompt us to re-examine what “valued forms of knowledge” look like in areas you teach or support students in?

Q2 What does a valid and secure assessment look like in your area of interest right now?

Q3 In what way(s) can our everyday interactions between educators and students foster trust rather than anxiety in how students approach GenAI?

Q4 How do we connect learning to the real social, personal and professional contexts students inhabit?

Q5 What opportunities can we create for students to make informed choices about when and how to use GenAI in ways that support, rather than replace, their learning?

Q6 How can institutions ensure that educators retain autonomy in deciding how GenAI fits (or does not fit) within their pedagogical practice?

Speaker Bio

Rachel Forsyth is a senior educational developer at Lund University. She works in a unit which focuses on digital tools in education, and is mainly involved with pedagogical development, assessment design, and academic trust-building. More relevantly, this is her third time facilitating #LTHEChat but she is no quicker at typing than she was in 2014, unfortunately.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 4th March at 8pm GMT with guest Dr Olivia Kelly to discuss how algorithmic bias can influence what students see on social media and what our role as educators should be. As students consume increasing amounts of information through algorithm-driven platforms, educators face new challenges: misinformation, echo chambers and AI-curated feeds. This chat explores whether HE institutions and educators should teach students how algorithms influence what they see and ultimately what they believe.

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More and more students now have their worldviews shaped not by textbooks or lectures but by endlessly scrolling feeds, carefully tailored by algorithms they rarely think about. Algorithmic systems increasingly mediate how students encounter information, particularly through social media platforms. Recent scholarship highlights the structural impact of these systems on youth information practices. Ahmmad et al.’s (2025) systematic review shows that social media algorithms consistently reinforce ideological homogeneity, limit viewpoint diversity, and intensify polarization among young users. This resonates strongly with concerns in HE where students often rely on algorithmically curated content as a primary source of news, learning materials and public discourse.

The concept of algorithmic literacy (understanding how algorithms shape what we see) has gained traction as a critical extension of digital literacy. Gagrčin et al. (2024) argue that although awareness of algorithms is rising, the field lacks a unified framework for teaching algorithmic literacy in formal educational settings. Their review emphasizes that algorithms across platforms optimize for engagement, not educational value, making students especially vulnerable to selective exposure. The rise of generative AI also complicates the information landscape. García-López & Trujillo-Liñán (2025) warn that while generative systems enable personalized learning, they introduce risks such as loss of cognitive autonomy and institutional misuse of student data, reinforcing the need for robust digital and algorithmic literacy frameworks in HE. As social platforms increasingly integrate GenAI into feeds and search interfaces, students face not only biased recommendations but AI-fabricated or AI-amplified misinformation.

Finally, public-facing research also shows that users themselves unintentionally reinforce algorithmic bias. Rathee et al. (2025) demonstrate that people often accept and perpetuate biased algorithmic recommendations, highlighting the dual interplay between system design and human behaviour. For educators, this underscores the importance of teaching students not only how algorithms work but how their own actions shape algorithmic outputs.

Together, these studies suggest an urgent need for HE to address algorithmic bias through explicit teaching of how social media shapes knowledge, moving digital literacy beyond skills toward critical, reflective understanding. As educators, we can no longer treat social media as peripheral to learning. Algorithmic systems shape how students interpret the world, encounter political ideas, understand scientific claims and engage with global events. When students are nudged toward certain viewpoints, whether subtly or aggressively, our commitment to fostering critical thinking requires us to step in.

Teaching about algorithmic influence is not about shaming students for their media use. Nor is it about demonizing technology. It’s about opening a window into the invisible forces that shape their digital lives, helping them see why certain narratives feel omnipresent and others almost invisible. Importantly, the goal is empowerment. Students who understand how algorithms work can push back, diversify their feeds and seek out credible sources. They become more intentional learners and more reflective digital participants. 

This #LTHEchat invites us to imagine what HE could look like if algorithmic awareness were embedded into our teaching practices. Not as an add-on, but as essential literacy for navigating contemporary knowledge environments.

References

Ahmmad, M., Shahzad, K., Iqbal, A., & Latif, M. (2025). Trap of Social Media Algorithms: A Systematic Review of Research on Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Their Impact on Youth. Societies, 15(11), 301. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15110301

Gagrčin, E., Naab, T.K., & Grub, M.F. (2024). Algorithmic media use and algorithm literacy: An integrative literature review. New media and society, 28(1), 423-447. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241291137 

García-López IM and Trujillo-Liñán L (2025). Ethical and regulatory challenges of Generative AI in education: a systematic review. Front. Educ. 10:1565938. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1565938 

Rathee, S., Banker, S., Mishra, A. & Mishra, H. (2025). Algorithms are Propagating Bias – Are we complicit?. Keller Centre for Research. https://kellercenter.hankamer.baylor.edu/news/story/2025/algorithms-are-propagating-bias-are-we-complicit 

Questions

Q1 What does “algorithmic bias” mean to you, and where do you see it most affecting students’ information environments?

Q2 Should algorithm awareness be formally embedded into digital literacy or academic skills curricula in HE? Why or why not?

Q3 How does algorithm-driven content contribute to misinformation or echo chambers among students, and what signs do you notice in your teaching?

Q4 To what extent do educators have an ethical responsibility to address algorithmic influence on students’ knowledge formation? Is this outside of our teaching role?

Q5 What practical activities, assessments, or discussions have you (or could you) use to help students critically evaluate algorithm-curated content?

Q6 As generative AI becomes more embedded in social platforms, what new challenges or opportunities might emerge for teaching about algorithmic influence in HE?

Speaker Bio

Dr Olivia Kelly is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, whose work focuses on advancing engaging, high-quality learning experiences in higher education distance learning. Drawing on deep expertise in teaching practice and student support, she brings a thoughtful, research-informed approach to curriculum design and academic development. Olivia’s research interests focus on the role of Social Media in HE, having researched student community building on Twitter (X) for her Doctoral study. She currently leads The Open University’s Praxis Social Media Scholarship Hub focusing on social media related research in education and she recently completed a funded project using Discord with students. Olivia hosts a podcast interviewing researchers on various HE related topics to champion innovative pedagogies that enhance student success. Passionate about widening participation and building inclusive learning environments, she regularly presents at academic events.

https://bsky.app/profile/oliviakellyou.bsky.social

www.linkedin.com/in/dr-olivia-kelly-952860a9

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 25th February at 8pm GMT with guest Samantha Ahern to discuss “Shifting sands and professional identities in Higher Education”.

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Change in Higher Education always seems slow but is also always constant.  

Those that have been in the sector a while will have been through several regulatory changes, alongside internal changes within our institutions.

Humans are always at the centre of these changes. 

Technologies have always shaped how we interact, and our ways of working. We are currently seeing mass disruption across the board in teaching and assessment,

Research, professional services and our personal interactions.  This is alongside concerns around the financial sustainability of the sector. Many institutions, including my own, are undertaking 

initiatives that impact on the nature of our roles and our professional identities. Some of these changes are more optional than others.

Twice in my professional life I have had to reconsider my professional identity. The first was in December 2012, when I left the secondary classroom to join UCL.

Who was I if I was no longer a teacher?

The second time was Summer 2025 when my contract moved from our Digital Education team to the Centre for Advanced Research Computing.  I went from being a Senior Digital Research Trainer to a Senior PRISM.

A job title and description where education related activity is not the primary focus. Although my day-to-day role had not changed,  I had concerns around how the Job title would be perceived and difficulties reconciling 

my new professional identity. My first permanent job since graduating that didn’t feature education related words. I was very unsettled for a while and had a number of emotive discussions with various members of the ARC SLT.

In addition, I am working in an area where professional identities and career pathways are being shaped. That of digital research technology/technical professionals.  

Many of us are also by nature of our roles and expertise in third spaces.  As such, professional identities are regularly being renegotiated.

What is the interplay between our official job titles and our job roles? Which is more important with regards to our professional identities.

Questions

Q1 – Does your role align with your official job title? Does it matter?

Q2 – How does this relate to your professional identity?

Q3 – What drives / determines your sense of professional identity?

Q4 – Has your professional identity changed over time?

Q5 – What has helped you with a change of professional identity?

Q6 – How can we best support ourselves and each other in the current UK HE context?

Speaker Bio

Samantha Ahern is the Education co-lead and for the Centre of Advanced Research Computing (ARC), UCL.  She is a Fellow of the University of London Centre for Online and Distance Education, a Trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering, and both a Carpentries Instructor and Trainer, and is a member of The Carpentries Board of Directors.  Samantha’s research has focused on learning analytics and student wellbeing. She completed her undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Kingston University, her MSc in Intelligent Systems at De Montfort University and both PGCE Secondary ICT and PGDip IT in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 18th February at 8pm GMT with guest Jacqui Thijm to discuss how can we empower students to be part of a larger university ‘It is not just about belonging, it is also about mattering’

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In recent years, belonging has become a central concept in UK Higher Education, with an increase in research on the topic, particularly over the last 5 years (Gilani and Thomas, 2025).

It is commonly presented as a key driver of retention, engagement, student success, and, more recently, linked to mental health. This is grounded in the idea that when students feel part of their university, they are more likely to persist and thrive.

This shift was an important one. It moved attention away from framing retention and attrition as individual student failings and towards recognising that institutions play a role in shaping students’ experiences. As a result, many universities have invested heavily in initiatives designed to “build” students’ sense of belonging.

However, belonging is often positioned as something that institutions do to students: something that can be provided, measured, or fixed. When students do not appear to belong, the assumption can be that something is lacking in the student—their confidence, engagement, or willingness to integrate. Looking at belonging in this way can miss how power, expectations and university systems affect a student’s sense of belonging. 

Much of the current thinking around belonging also reflects a narrow image of the “traditional” student: young, campus-based, and visibly engaged in university life (Joseph et al., 2024).  This does not reflect the realities of contemporary Higher Education, where many students study online, commute, work alongside their studies, or balance caring responsibilities. For these students, engagement may be quieter, less visible, and shaped by everyday interactions rather than campus presence.

This is where mattering offers a useful alternative lens. Mattering shifts the focus away from whether students have successfully integrated into institutional expectations and towards whether they feel noticed, valued, and taken seriously. Importantly, mattering is not something students must achieve. It is something that staff and institutions do through their everyday practices.

Mattering is shaped in small but significant moments: how a question is responded to, whether a student’s circumstances are acknowledged, how feedback is framed, or whether a student feels their contribution carries weight. In this sense, mattering can be understood as a relational pathway into belonging, rather than an outcome students are expected to reach independently.

When students feel that they matter in educational settings, this is reflected by both their peers and the staff with whom they interact; they feel they are important and valued by others, and this creates conditions where they belong in that space, be that a classroom, an academic advising space, or a peer group session. 

Belonging and mattering are closely connected, but they are not the same. A student may formally belong to a programme or institution and yet still feel invisible or peripheral. Paying attention to mattering helps shift the focus from student deficit to staff responsibility and relational practice.

By creating mattering and caring moments in the spaces where, as university staff, we meet, connect, and build relationships with students. This is in our day-to-day interactions in lecture halls, the library, online spaces, and in pastoral and student support conversations.  

In a sector increasingly driven by metrics, benchmarks, and belonging frameworks, this perspective offers a timely reminder: students’ experiences are shaped less by abstract concepts and more by how they are treated in everyday encounters across teaching, assessment, and support.

Mattering is shaped by what staff in higher education do through the relationships we form with students—sometimes intentionally, and sometimes in ways we may not even realise. These interactions, whether small or significant, can have a lasting influence on a student’s university experience. By framing our everyday interactions as acts of mattering rather than measures of belonging, we can be more intentional about creating caring environments where students are supported to thrive.

Belonging matters, but it does not happen on its own. Mattering shifts the focus from whether students fit in to how they are treated. It reminds us that feeling valued is created through everyday staff actions, not student effort.

It is in small moments—how we respond, listen, and acknowledge—that students learn whether they matter. When staff focus on mattering, we create the conditions for belonging to grow.

So, rather than asking whether students feel a sense of belonging, should we ask whether they feel they matter, and what can we, as university staff, do to foster a sense of mattering? -change/

Reference List

Gilani, D. and Thomas, L. (2025) ‘Understanding the factors and consequences of student belonging in higher education: a critical literature review’, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (34).

Joseph, C., Kelly-Ann, A., Taren, S., Roy, B., Philip, P., Cassandra, S. and Dianne, T. (2024) ‘Sense of Belonging in Higher Education Students: An Australian Longitudinal Study from 2013 to 2019’, Studies in Higher Education, 49(3), pp. 395-409.

Questions

1 – If a sense of belonging is framed as something students need to have to be a successful student, what might change if we instead focused on what we do as student-facing staff to foster belonging?

2 – How do our everyday interactions signal to students that they are noticed, valued, and taken seriously, that they matter?

3 – Where might institutional processes unintentionally undermine students’ sense that they matter?

4 – Is the work of belonging/mattering gendered? Who does the work of caring for students? Who do students want to do the mattering and caring roles?

5 – How can we create mattering moments in online spaces?

6 – Do you feel that you matter to students and colleagues? What makes you feel that way?

Speaker Bio

Jacqui Thijm is a doctoral researcher in Higher Education whose work examines student engagement, belonging, and mattering in contemporary HE. Alongside her research, she is an experienced lecturer and academic adviser, with a strong interest in inclusive pedagogy, relational student support, and research-informed practice.

https://bsky.app/profile/jacquithijm.bsky.social

www.linkedin.com/in/jacqui-thijm

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 11th February at 8pm GMT with guest Dr Alina Congreve to discuss how can we empower students to be part of a larger university ‘How real is too real? Authentic learning and climate change across the curriculum’?

Climate change is no longer confined to the parts of the curriculum where it has traditionally been expected to sit. While environmental science and geography have long engaged with climate change as core content, students are now encountering it across a much wider range of disciplines (Molthan-Hill and associates, 2025).

For example, law students are grappling with climate litigation, regulatory frameworks, and questions of responsibility across jurisdictions. Fashion students are engaging with fast fashion, supply chains, chemical dyes, and waste. Chemists are working on materials, energy transitions, and environmental impacts of production. Business students are examining climate risk, reporting, and organisational responsibility. Creative writing students are exploring climate futures, loss, and uncertainty.

This shift is not simply the result of institutional strategies or policy decisions. It is being driven by students themselves. The annual national survey of over 1,600 students in the UK in further and higher education, reports (79 %) reported being “fairly” or “very concerned” about climate change (SOS, 2025). Research by Leal Filho and associates notes that students believe climate change education can shape their attitudes and equip them with skills useful in their future professional lives and recommend that universities include climate change in curricular and extracurricular programmes to prepare future professionals. Climate change is increasingly experienced not as a specialist topic, but as a defining context for work, creativity, and decision-making across fields.

For educators, this creates both opportunity and unease. Climate change is clearly relevant beyond core environmental disciplines, yet many staff do not identify as climate experts. The question becomes not whether climate change should appear in these curricula, but how it can be engaged with responsibly and meaningfully. It is at this point that debates about authentic learning come into sharp focus.

Authentic learning is not just a change of format

Discussions of authentic learning in higher education often begin with assessment design. Essays are replaced with policy briefs, exams with consultancy-style reports, imagined audiences with real ones. These moves are frequently framed as ways of making learning more relevant, students more employable, and the experience more “real”.

Climate change exposes the limits of this framing.

A policy brief written only for a marker can feel just as artificial as an essay, while a more traditional academic task can feel authentic if it helps students make sense of complex realities and their place within them. The authentic learning literature consistently suggests that authenticity does not reside in task format alone, but emerges from purpose, context, and sustained engagement. Students are adept at recognising when “real-world” tasks are only nominally real and disconnected from meaningful participation.

This matters particularly in climate change education, where students are often acutely aware of the gap between curricular activity and lived reality. Authenticity here needs to become less about surface realism and more about how students are positioned as learners, participants, and future professionals.

Climate change as a super-wicked problem

Climate change is widely described in the research literature as a wicked, and in some accounts a super-wicked, problem. It has no clear solution, no single authority, and no neutral framing. Time to act is constrained, and many of the students we teach already have direct experience of its impacts.

My work with Iain Cross has explored what this framing means for curriculum design, showing how climate change is often taught as a technical issue rather than as a complex, interconnected system (Cross & Congreve, 2021). To use an analogy, to understand the challenges face by contemporary rail passengers, we first spend week understanding how a steam engine works. Where students are taught about climate change, this can often take the form of weeks of lectures about atmospheric science, with some technical fixes such as heat pumps and battery storage bolted on at the end. From a pedagogical perspective, this distinction matters. Many models of problem-based and challenge-based learning implicitly assume that problems are ultimately solvable within bounded contexts. Climate change resists this logic.

Mitchell’s Wicked from the Start (2023) is helpful here in clarifying why this mismatch persists. Mitchell argues that climate change education is constrained not only by the nature of the problem itself, but also by features of education systems that prioritise certainty, content coverage, and closure. He does not focus on higher education directly, however his analysis is useful for university teachers in highlighting why pedagogies oriented towards open-ended inquiry are better aligned with wicked problems than approaches that assume clear answers or resolution.

Students cannot meaningfully “solve” climate change in a module, a programme, or even a career. When curricula imply otherwise, learners often recognise the dissonance between educational tasks and reality. This can lead to disengagement, cynicism, or a sense that learning is performative rather than meaningful. Authentic learning in this context does not require solutions. It requires helping students understand what it means to act, think, and make judgements within conditions of uncertainty, disagreement, and constraint.

Agency without solutionism

University discourse around climate change frequently emphasises individual responsibility through consumer behaviours. Reusable bottles, keep cups, and lifestyle choices are visible and easily promoted. Research and commentary have noted that such framings to individualise responsibility can obscure the structural dimensions of climate change. Within the curriculum, there is an opportunity to offer a different form of agency.

When students make a small but genuine contribution to one element of a complex problem, the experience is qualitatively different from being positioned as responsible consumers. Working collaboratively on a bounded aspect of a larger issue can foster a sense of participation without implying solutionism. This kind of participation is associated with deeper engagement than activities framed primarily around individual behavioural change (Cross & Congreve, 2021).

Sharp and associates (2021) offer a complementary perspective. Their work does not propose students attend lectures about techncial solutions to environmental wicked problems. Instead, it explores pedagogical approaches that emphasise situated engagement, bounded inquiry, and co-learning, and argues that such approaches are more likely to support student agency and hope than teaching that foregrounds scale, abstraction, or global complexity too early. This emphasis aligns closely with concerns about agency in climate change education, without implying that students can or should resolve the problem itself.

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Emotion as part of authentic learning

Climate change education is unavoidably affective. There is increasing recognition that students bring anxiety, anger, fatigue, as well as urgency and hope into climate-related learning. This is why talking about the full range of climate emotions is more useful than climate anxiety. From an authentic learning perspective, emotion is not something to be managed away. It is a signal of how students are being positioned within learning activities. Powerlessness often leads to disengagement, while excessive moral burden can generate anxiety or withdrawal. In contrast, shared and bounded forms of participation can support motivation and care without overwhelming learners. Sharp and associates discussion of hopeful pedagogies is useful here as an illustration of how pedagogical framing can shape students’ emotional relationship to wicked problems.

Staff authenticity and pedagogical responsibility

Authenticity does not apply only to students. It also applies to university staff.

Many educators feel increasing pressure to address climate change in their teaching, often without feeling confident or supported in how it intersects with their disciplinary identities. Research on sustainability education in higher education has repeatedly noted that curriculum change is difficult to sustain when it is experienced as imposed or misaligned with subject-specific practice.

Work by Molthan-Hill and colleagues, which draws on case studies and institutional experience, highlights the importance of supporting educators to engage with sustainability and climate change in ways that are pedagogically credible and professionally legitimate. Rather than prescribing particular content or methods, this work emphasises professional learning, dialogue, and shared sense-making as foundations for capacity-building.

If learning does not feel authentic to staff, it is unlikely to feel authentic to students. University teachers modelling uncertainty, partial knowledge, and thinking-in-progress can be pedagogically powerful, but it also challenges traditional expectations of expertise and authority. There are moments when careful scaffolding and limits to authenticity may be more responsible than full exposure to real-world complexity. Recognising those limits is not a failure of authenticity; it is part of ethical teaching.

An invitation

“How real is too real?” is not a question with a single answer. It is, however, a productive one.

In this LTHE Chat, we invite participants to reflect on how authenticity is framed in their own teaching, how students are invited into complex and unresolved problems, and how agency, emotion, community, and staff identity shape engagement with climate change across the curriculum.

Climate change does not simply demand more authentic learning. It demands a more careful, relational, and ethically attentive understanding of what authenticity actually means, and how we support educators to teach wicked problems well across disciplines and over time.

References

Cross, I.D. and Congreve, A., 2021. Teaching (super) wicked problems: authentic learning about climate change. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 45(4), pp.491-516.

Leal Filho, W., Ayal, D.Y., Wall, T., Shiel, C., Paco, A., Pace, P., Mifsud, M., Salvia, A.L., Skouloudis, A., Moggi, S. and LeVasseur, T., 2023. An assessment of attitudes and perceptions of international university students on climate change. Climate Risk Management, 39, p.100486.

Mitchell, J.T., 2023. Wicked from the start: Educational impediments to teaching about climate change (and how geography education can help). Education Sciences, 13(12), p.1174.

Molthan-Hill, P., Ledley, T.S., Blaj-Ward, L., Mbah, M.F. 2025. Climate Change Education at Universities: Relevance and Strategies for Every Discipline. In: Lackner, M., Sajjadi, B., Chen, WY. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-84483-6_153

Sharp, E.L., Fagan, J., Kah, M., McEntee, M. and Salmond, J., 2021. Hopeful approaches to teaching and learning environmental “wicked problems”. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 45(4), pp.621-639.

Students organising for Sustainability. 2025. The latest student attitudes about climate change. https://sos-uk.org/post/the-latest-student-attitudes-about-climate-change/

Questions

Q1 – When you hear the phrase “authentic learning”, what comes to mind in your own role or context?

Q2 – In your experience, what makes learning feel authentic to students: is it the task itself; the purpose behind it; or how students are involved?

Q3 – What do you find most difficult about engaging students with climate change in higher education, regardless of discipline or role?

Q4 – How do emotions like anxiety, hope, or frustration show up in climate-related learning, and what responsibility do we have to respond to them pedagogically?

Q5 – What kinds of spaces, conversations, or communities help educators engage with climate change authentically over time?

Q6 –  Looking ahead, what kinds of collective professional learning would you like to see to help educators develop confidence and expertise in teaching climate change authentically?

Speaker Bio

Alina is a Lecturer in Grand Challenges at University College London, where she leads interdisciplinary teaching on sustainability, cities, and real-world problem solving. With over 20 years’ experience in higher education, she has designed and led challenge-based programmes that connect students with external partners and develop critical, collaborative, and facilitation skills.

Alongside her university teaching, Alina works extensively on sector-facing education and sustainability projects. She recently co-authored an Advance HE evidence-informed review on sustainable institutions, examining how universities adopt whole-institution approaches to sustainability across teaching, research, estates, and civic engagement. She has also led skills-focused work for the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), including research on skills gaps and new pathways into nature-based green jobs. 

Alina is delighted to convene the #LTHEChat this week and looks forward to conversations that support thoughtful, creative, and socially engaged teaching in higher education.

🔗 https://bsky.app/profile/alinacongreve.bsky.social

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 4th February at 8pm GMT with guest Prof Stephen Rutherford to discuss how can we empower students to be part of a larger university ‘Learning Community’?

Humans are social animals; we build communities. Universities are themselves built of numerous intersecting communities, each with their own core identities – students, professional services, educators, ‘teaching and research-focused’, ‘teaching and scholarship-focused’, etc (Henkel, 2000). Communities can be powerful, if they are mutually supportive, and if they are inclusive. Arguably, as educational institutions, the most important community in a university is the ‘Learning Community’. But are our university learning communities as comprehensive and functional as they could be, or is there a divide that hinders its effectiveness?

Learning communities are groups of people who share common goals and work collaboratively (Tinto, 1997). There are examples of these in both the academic plenary and the student body. Students naturally form learning communities (reviewed by West & Williams, 2017). Learning communities can provide mutual support, a feeling of belonging, and ease transitions. Networking is important for students as they develop. At the micro level, students readily form networks of support, ‘Personal Learning Networks’ (PLNs; Fair, 2019) with peers, friends and (if provided the opportunities to collaborate in the pedagogic environment) course-mates. These PLNs are self-constructed, unique to each student, and enable students to identify whom to turn to for support. PLNs overlap reciprocally with other students, and evolve and reorganise over time (Rutherford, 2019). But learning communities are broader than these PLNs. Lenning et al. (2013) identify three interconnected learning communities: The student learning community (SLC), the professional/academic learning community (PLC), and learning organisations (LO). The SLC intersects with both the PLC and LO, and contains student-student, student-faculty, and student-curriculum interactions within it. There are therefore potential links between different learning community structures. But are these links as powerful as they could be, and how do we encourage members of the SLC into the PLC?

An effective learning community is a partnership between the learners and the educators. Importantly, that partnership involves two-way interaction and interplay. This interaction can be either face-to-face, online, or a mixture of both. Lenning et al. (2013) stress that powerful learning communities can empower students to excel over and above what they could achieve in isolation. Effective learning communities foster improved outcomes for students, higher academic achievement, increased retention, improved thinking and communication, greater understanding of self and others, and increased social effectiveness. Effective learning communities can also support students who are underachieving, or who are facing mental health challenges (Lenning & Ebbers, 1999). Being part of an effective learning community can impact upon the student’s transition to, transition through, and performance at, university. The more impactful learning communities in universities are underpinned by partnership between students and staff, where students are respected as equal contributors. Healey et al. (2014) provide excellent suggestions on how to build partnerships with students that empower them as change-makers and co-creators. This shared responsibility and equal agency is fundamental to a true learning community.

However, in practice there is typically a visible, and potentially damaging, disconnect between the student and academic learning communities in the HE sector. Although they intersect, they don’t necessarily interact as a partnership. This disconnect can lead to problems in communication, mismatched expectations, and low satisfaction with the educational environment (Rutherford, 2019). Yet the whole premise of a university should be that the students are effectively less-experienced versions of the academics, and therefore on the same continuum of development. As educators we need to ensure that we encourage our learners along this continuum. Socio-cultural models of learning emphasise that learning is typically (though not always) an interaction between more and less experienced individuals – a collaborative activity, undertaken by social interactions (Bruner, 1996). In particular, ‘apprenticeship’ models of learning emphasise guided interactions between learners and more-experienced others. Rogoff’s ‘guided participation’ (Rogoff, 2003), Vygotsky’s ‘Zone of Peripheral Development’ (Vygotsky, 1978), and Lave and Wenger’s ‘Legitimate Peripheral Participation’ within a Community of Practice (CoP; Lave and Wenger, 1991) present how a naïve learner becomes more expert. The learner, who is often initially on the periphery of a CoP, is paired with a more-experienced other. The learner becomes increasingly encultured within that CoP by increasingly complex interactions with the more experienced guide. Mercer’s ‘Intermental Development Zone’ (IDZ, Mercer, 1996) emphasises that this learning is reciprocal, and can occur between two learners, as well as between a learner and an expert. These models, however, assume that the learner and the expert are part of a progressive continuum of expertise within the same community of practice. Yet in universities, students and academics often perceive themselves as separate communities. This divide is made even more stark in a highly commercialised HE sector, where students are ‘customers’, and where universities are increasingly forced by financial pressures to recruit high numbers and ‘teach efficiently’. This situation induces a ‘them and us’ mentality on both sides of the potential partnership. Academic staff are critical of students’ lack of engagement, while students are critical of faculties’ lack of individualised support. Limited contact time, workload pressures, and large class sizes worsen this divide.

So what would be the benefits of encouraging a more integrated learning community? One of the immediate benefits would be for students to see themselves as belonging to a larger whole, and (more importantly) feeling connected to the organisation. Visibly embedding both students and educators within the same learning community would help signpost disciplinary practices to the student that would make the learning experience more authentic. The student would potentially find it easier to ‘learn the rules of the game’ for their discipline, if it was clear that they were considered to be members of that discipline (albeit relatively junior ones). Learning communities also help foster and agentic identity, aligned with the discipline as well as the institution. We already see this with vocational degrees such as medicine, where the students typically have a strong identity aligned with their School and discipline. There is also potential positive impact on metrics such as the NSS. If individuals feel a sense of belonging within an organisation, with a better understanding parameters influencing how the organisation functions, they may be more tolerant of any potential rough edges or shortcomings that organisation might have.

The challenge, therefore, is how to frame university learning, and the university environment, to empower students to feel (and more importantly actually be) part of an integrated learning community. To be active agents in that community, rather than as passive recipients of a ‘product’, separate to the community of academics. Making the relationship truly collaborative and mutual would have the effect of enhancing both sides’ investment in the learning process: Increasing student satisfaction with their courses, increasing engagement, and even potentially reducing some students’ desire to cut corners by using generative AI. 

A recent discussion group of colleagues from 8 universities across Europe, led by the European University Association (Rutherford et al., 2025) tackled this question of how best to empower students, and develop partnerships with academic staff. We identified several potential ways in which students could be empowered to be part of a collective whole, and a mutualistic community with (at least some) shared goals. A key point of agreement within this discussion group was that any empowerment approach needed to be genuine and meaningful, and not just a superficial cosmetic exercise, “ticking a box” for student partnership. Empowering students in this way benefits all parties involved, but it needs active engagement and commitment on both sides to make it happen.

So, how best to go about it?

Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fair, N. (2019) Understanding the networked student: how personal learning networks are used for learning. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Healey, M., Flint, A. & Harrington, K. (2014) Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. York: HE Academy.

Henkel, M. (2000). Academic identities and policy change in Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lenning, O. T., & Ebbers, L. H. (1999). The powerful potential of learning communities: Improving education for the future. Washington D.C.: George Washington Universiity Press.

Lenning, O. T., Hill, D. M., Saunders, K. P., Stokes, A., & Solan, A. (2013). Powerful Learning Communities: A guide to developing student, faculty, and professional learning communities to improve student success and organizational effectiveness. Sterling, VA.: Stylus.

Mercer, N. (1996). Words and minds: How we use language to think together. London: Routledge.

Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rutherford, S. 2019. ‘Flying the nest’: An analysis of the development of self-regulated learning during the transition to Higher Education. Ed.D Thesis. University of Reading. https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/124834/

Rutherford, S., Francis, N. and Peterbauer, H. (2025). Learning and teaching to empower students: Thematic peer group report. Project Report.[Online].European University Association. Available at: https://www.eua.eu/publications/reports/learning-and-teaching-to-empower-students.html.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

West, R. E., & Williams, G. S. (2017). “I don’t think that word means what you think it means”: A proposed framework for defining learning communities. Educational Technology Research and Development, 65(6), 1569-1582. doi:10.1007/s11423-017-9535-0

Q1 What comes to mind when the term ‘learning community’ is mentioned?

Q2 How do we promote the idea of a learning community to students?

Q3 How can we get staff on board with Learning Communities?

Q4 How do we ensure that our learning community is fully inclusive of all demographics of learners and staff?

Q5 How can we design our learning activities to embed students within a wider learning community?

Q6 Should the drive to create an effective learning community in our institutions be top-down or bottom-up?

Speaker Bio

https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/rutherfords

https://www.eat-erasmus.org/

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 28th January at 8pm GMT with guest Prof Damien Page to discuss Leadership and Academic Flourishing.

University leaders juggle a lot. Financial sustainability. Strategy. Governance. Regulators. Government. Partnerships. Reputation. Committees upon committees. It’s no surprise leadership can feel like permanent firefighting.

But if there’s one role that should trump all others, it’s this: creating the conditions in which people can flourish. Everything else flows from that. And yet, in a sector under huge pressure –  tighter regulation, shrinking resources, constant “transformation” that usually means cuts – this core purpose is often the first thing to slip.

Ironically, it’s precisely in difficult times that leaders should double down on it.

What does “flourishing” actually mean?

Ask a room of academics what they need to thrive and you’ll get a hundred different answers. That’s not a problem, that’s the business. Academic work is deeply personal. Discipline matters. Career stage matters. Institutional context matters.

But some themes keep coming up: autonomy, time, trust, space to think, freedom to explore and challenge, and leadership that supports rather than constrains. Real wellbeing isn’t lunchtime yoga (pleasant though that may be). It’s manageable workloads, clear priorities, and leaders who remove obstacles rather than add them.

Flourishing isn’t abstract or fluffy. It’s intensely practical. And leadership is the difference between it happening or not.

Leadership has to be close to reality

If leaders want academics to flourish, they need to understand what university life actually looks like now – not how it felt when they last taught regularly, and not the sanitised version that makes its way up through layers of management.

The more senior you become, the more reality gets filtered. Bad news is softened. Problems are minimised. A “good news culture” creeps in. And reality never reaches the top on its own.

There’s a lot of advice in higher education about leaders needing to be ‘less operational and more strategic’. Strategy matters, of course. But separating the strategic from the operational is one of the biggest mistakes universities make. Adaptive leadership depends on moving constantly between the two , understanding how the organisation actually works and letting that shape strategy.

Why so much university strategy fails

Most university strategies look impressive. Slick design. Inspiring verbs. Five or ten year horizons. Pillars, themes, golden threads. They arrive with a sense of destiny.

And then… very little changes.

For most staff, strategy only becomes visible at appraisal time, when they’re asked how their work aligns with it. That’s a problem.

As Richard Rumelt explains, bad strategy is usually full of buzzwords, avoids naming real problems, confuses goals with plans, and sets vague objectives detached from reality. Universities are particularly prone to all of these.

Good strategy starts with honesty: heavy workloads, rising expectations from students, tighter regulation, changing job markets, and finite resources. It then sets a clear approach to tackling those problems and backs it up with coordinated, realistic action. Without that grounding, strategy becomes theatre.

Get closer, not higher

This is why leaders need to become proximal. Town halls and all-staff meetings rarely surface the real issues – speaking up in those spaces often feels risky. To understand what’s really going on, leaders need to meet people where the work happens, without layers of management present.

But proximity only works if people feel safe to speak honestly. Psychological safety matters here. Not performative listening, but listening that leads to change.

Flourishing lives in the operational details

Flourishing isn’t enabled by vision statements. It lives in budgets, workload models, systems, and calendars.

Financial stability matters because money buys time and space. If people are constantly asked to do more with less, flourishing is impossible. Workload models aren’t boring admin, they’re strategic choices about what a university values.

And then there’s the other activity: endless meetings, sprawling committees, bloated processes, and clunky systems. Much of this adds little to teaching, research, or people’s development. Leaders should be ruthless minimalists here. Fewer meetings. Fewer forms. Fewer systems. Less noise.

Culture is felt, not declared

Culture isn’t a statement on a website. It’s what people feel every day. Trust. Transparency. Freedom. Authenticity.

Leaders shape that culture by how they behave: explaining decisions openly, trusting people to do good work, admitting what they don’t know, modelling healthy boundaries, and treating failure as learning rather than punishment. Being human matters.

Strip away what blocks purpose

Academics don’t need leaders to invent purpose, it’s already there. What they need is leadership that removes the barriers that suffocate it: bad strategy, needless bureaucracy, punitive cultures, and constant distraction.

University leadership is hard, emotional, and often uncomfortable work. But creating the conditions for people to flourish isn’t a nice to have. It’s the job.

Q1. Leaders should create the conditions in which academics may flourish. What does flourishing in the workplace look like / mean to you?

Q2. Should creating conditions for people to flourish be the utmost priority in the HE sector at a time of competing pressures?

Q3. What enables staff to feel as though their development, wellbeing and contributions are valued?

Q4. The TV series ‘Undercover Boss’ features CEOs in disguise investigating how their organisation really works. What might an undercover senior leader find in an HEI?

Q5. If ‘flourishing lives in the operational details,’ what one thing would streamline HE workloads?

Q6. What would help us to ‘feel’ a university culture?

Speaker Bio