Editorial

in Learning and Teaching
Author:
Penny Welch University of Wolverhampton

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Susan Wright University of Aarhus

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In this issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, academics from Denmark, Chile, the United States and the United Kingdom analyse capacity-building projects between European and African universities, the experiences of mobile academics returning to their home country, the role of tutors on international interdisciplinary MA programmes, the contemporary relevance of classical and medieval approaches to education and levels of information literacy among undergraduates.

In this issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, academics from Denmark, Chile, the United States and the United Kingdom analyse capacity-building projects between European and African universities, the experiences of mobile academics returning to their home country, the role of tutors on international interdisciplinary MA programmes, the contemporary relevance of classical and medieval approaches to education and levels of information literacy among undergraduates.

In the first article, Hanne Kirstine Adriansen and Lene Møller Madsen explore relations of coloniality in capacity-building projects between universities in the Global North and the Global South. The assumption that Western knowledge is universal and Western educational practices superior often underlies such projects with the result that local knowledges are erased and local needs ignored. Western academics involved in educational partnerships should be aware of current asymmetries of power and their historical roots and aim to share their knowledge and experience in ways that are centred on the collective aspirations of African students and scholars.

In the second article, Ana Luisa Muñoz-García examines the experiences of Chilean academics returning from doctoral study in other countries. For the past twenty years, the Chilean government has funded PhD scholarships abroad as part of its strategy to strengthen the ability of Chilean universities to produce knowledge that can stimulate innovation and economic growth. But the returning scholars find that high teaching and administrative loads restrict their time for research and the intellectual conservatism of those who control access to research funding make it difficult to get grants to pursue new research questions, undermining the key purpose of the government's academic mobility programme.

In the third article, Hanne Tange investigates the role of academics in helping international students adapt to a new academic culture. Twenty-five teachers from four different international interdisciplinary MA programmes in Denmark were interviewed about their approach to classroom diversity, the extent to which they took responsibility for academic socialisation of students and their pedagogic practices. Some respondents focussed on the challenges arising from the diverse nationalities of the students, others on their varied disciplinary backgrounds. Most of the tutors believed it was the students’ responsibility to learn the rules of their new discipline, but nonetheless they provided significant support for the process of integration into the course and for assignment preparation.

In the fourth article, Jonathan Klauke advocates incorporating some elements of classical and medieval educational methods into contemporary pedagogic practice. Teaching the skills of grammar, logic, rhetoric and self-learning can be particularly useful in general education liberal arts courses. He recounts how quizzes, analysis of documents and practice debates prepared students on an introductory history course for written assignments and formal class debates that were assessed on the basis of the effectiveness of the arguments presented.

In the fifth article, Stephen Thornton compares the results of two surveys about information literacy undertaken with first-year Politics and International Relations undergraduates in 2009 and 2017. The later cohort did not show significantly more awareness of how to locate, evaluate and deploy information effectively and ethically than the earlier cohort had done. The main differences were that a bigger minority of 2017 respondents had experienced some information literacy training during their school or college courses and more students were aware of biased information and the seriousness of plagiarism.

Our thanks go to the authors of the articles, the anonymous referees who commented on the manuscripts, our publisher (Berghahn Journals) and the Editorial Board.

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Learning and Teaching

The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences

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