Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

University teaching and learning take place within ever more specialized disciplinary settings, each characterized by its unique traditions, concepts, practices and procedures. It is now widely recognized that support for teaching and learning needs to take this discipline-specificity into account. However, in a world characterized by rapid change, complexity and uncertainty, problems do not present themselves as distinct subjects but increasingly within trans-disciplinary contexts calling for graduate outcomes that go beyond context-specific and context-transcendent aspects of teaching and assessment. It explores critical questions, such as: What are the 'ways of thinking and practicing' characteristic of particular disciplines? How can students be supported in becoming participants of particular disciplinary discourse communties? Can the diversity in teaching, learning and assessment practices that we observe across departments be attributed exclusively to disciplinary structure? To what extant do the disciplines prepare students for the complexities and uncertainties that characterize their later professional, civic and personal lives? Written for university teachers, educational developers as well as new and experienced researchers of Higher Education, this highly-anticipated first edition offers innovative perspectives from leading Canadian, US and UK scholars on how academic learning within particular disciplines can help student acquire the skills, abilities and dispositions they need to succeed academically and also post-graduation. -- from back cover.