Book Description

Pedagogical Peculiarities: Conversations at the Edge of University Teaching and Learning explores the peculiarities characterising university teaching cultures through a consideration of the implications, tensions and impacts associated with academic development in higher education. This is achieved through a series of deliberative dialogues, involving experts in pedagogy and academics working within specific disciplinary and institutional contexts. The chapters provide an important and currently missing critique of the peculiarity of teaching practice and the idealisation of teaching excellence in higher education. As a result, the volume's major contribution lies in the advancement of a unique discourse of pedagogy in higher education, comprised of multiple contexts. Ultimately Pedagogical Peculiarities' distinctiveness lies in its articulation of different pedagogical identities. These emanate from, and are characterised by different teaching and learning environments, across different institutions and sectors. This, in turn, serves to illuminate the current contexts and challenges across higher education as they relate and respond to ideology, values, policy and changes in the organisation of the sector. In essence, Pedagogical Peculiarities explores what it means to be a contemporary academic.