ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

Whose Agency? Skills, Academics and Students in the Social Sciences.

Methods
Education
Higher Education
Heidi Maurer
University for Continuing Education Krems
Heidi Maurer
University for Continuing Education Krems

Abstract

Marketisation and a discourse centred on employability in higher education has resulted in a severe loss of ownership for the academic and their students in the Social Sciences. Despite our commitment to active learning we argue that the move towards innovative teaching methods and skills has occasioned a loss of key, related skills, especially those associated with traditional learning methods. The emphasis on “active”, driven by ideas about student satisfaction, efficiency and quality assurance has pushed the academic to the sidelines of the teaching and learning debate, resulting in a superficial implementation of the student-centred teaching and learning literature, to the detriment of Higher Education. Instead of fixing what others claimed to be broken but was not, the academic in the Social Sciences should reclaim their agency.