Sustainable pedagogical change for embedding reflective learning across higher education programs

For course improvement to be sustained over time, and over the span of a higher education course, it needs to be framed widely and well integrated, rather than ‘tacked on’. This framing includes approaches to curriculum design, resource provision as well as pedagogical development with teaching staff. This is especially true for initiatives (such as student reflection or group-work) that target broadly based, high-level skills and dispositions. For various reasons, such initiatives can easily lose focus, particularly as improvement in higher education contexts is typically both difficult and episodic. In such circumstances, we argue that a strategic approach is necessary where practitioner-lead pedagogic development is fostered through trust and communication and is purposefully embedded within key dimensions of curriculum integration, pedagogical refinement and technological resource provision. This chapter describes an approach to pedagogical change in fostering student reflection in ways advocated in earlier chapters. But we look at where curriculum, pedagogy and resources are simultaneously and collaboratively orchestrated to provide an effective framework for sustainable and effective change over a program of study. A conceptual model with two perspectives is proposed to guide the implementation of such change.

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