Abstract:

There are fierce debates about the purpose and quality of university teaching in the UK and internationally. This keynote examines the two senses of transforming university teaching: how university teaching can be transformational for students and how we might need to transform it for this to happen. Paul Ashwin argues that we are currently reliant on oversimplified accounts of the educational process provided by universities, which do not provide a supportive context for either of these senses of transformation to be realised. Drawing on a range of evidence, including from CGHE projects, he sets out an alternative vision for university teaching that is centred on the ways in which students are transformed by their engagement with disciplinary and professional knowledge.