Learning and Teaching (LATISS)

This issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences is truly international! The authors come from Denmark, China, Albania, India, Finland, Brazil and Uzbekistan.

This article examines how the mandatory subjects of innovation and entrepreneurship are taught in Chinese universities and how they are taken up by learners. Innovation and entrepreneurship education are part of the policy to promote ‘Quality Education’ through more experiential learning aimed to foster independent, creative and well-rounded citizens. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2018 and 2019, I argue that innovation and entrepreneurship courses often reproduce the same educational practices they are intended to change. This is the case because the criteria for determining which universities and teachers successfully foster innovation and entrepreneurship do not prioritise pedagogical practice. Instead, by organising numerous courses or winning prizes in entrepreneurship competitions, it is possible to mobilise institutional resources and become empowered within the system.

With higher education being more internationalised, English-medium instruction (EMI) and transnational universities have become prominent features of China's tertiary education. However, EMI implementation has faced challenges, with stakeholder perceptions varied. Guided by Bernard Spolsky's (2004, 2009) language policy and management frameworks, the study investigated the lecturer's perceptions of EMI practices, rationale and the policy in one university to reveal the complexity of the interplay between the three-pronged aspects involved in EMI teaching and learning. It highlights the challenges lecturers face due to students’ insufficient English proficiency, despite students showing positive attitudes towards EMI, as evidenced by parallel studies on students’ perspectives. Meanwhile, a significant misalignment between stated EMI policies and their actual implementation is revealed, raising concerns about the effectiveness and outcomes of EMI in the concerned transnational university.

This article will show how the 2015 higher education reform in Albania, instead of increasing the autonomy and the quality of teaching and research as it officially aims, is broadening the control of the government over public universities. After discussing the concepts of reform and autonomy, I will analyse the new law to track the transformation it brought to the higher education system, demonstrating that the autonomy and the quality of higher education have not improved. On the contrary, the government has provided new tools to deepen its presence in internal management.

The purpose of this article is to present the experience of an Indian university in aligning its vision and mission to assurance of learning for a new academic programme in management education. Through a thorough and multi-layered case study methodology, it attempts to describe the process undertaken in the curriculum design, development, and delivery with a special focus on the identification, evaluation, adoption, and adaptation of its assurance of learning. The originality of the article is in presenting the curriculum design, development, delivery, and assurance of learning for a programme that is not based in law in a law university. This article also attempts to provide a conceptual process flow of incorporating a vision and mission linked assurance structure that other academic institutions may refer to while curating new academic programmes.

This article explores the cultural aspects of transnational education by examining a case of pedagogical development cooperation between a Finnish and a Brazilian higher education institution. Informed by scholarship on transnational education, organisational cultures and poststructuralist discourse perspectives, this study analyses teaching and learning cultures at the Brazilian organisation during its education cooperation with a Finnish university. The research dataset includes texts written by thirty-eight Brazilian university teachers during a transnational education programme organised between 2017 and 2018. Our poststructuralist discourse analysis identified four discourses: (1) integral education, (2) changing roles of students and teachers, (3) contextual forces, and (4) educating for citizenship. The study shows that the transnational programme prompted a discursive transformation of teaching and learning cultures in Brazil through processes of diversification and hybridisation.

This article reports a small-scale case study implemented in a higher education institution that fosters students’ active construction of knowledge. The research was conducted at an international university in Uzbekistan, with the primary objective of exploring and analysing the students’ attitudes towards active learning classrooms. The learning scenario was created and used with three distinct groups of students. Data regarding the students’ experiences during the active learning exercises were gathered through a questionnaire and focus group discussions. The results of data collection were supportive of active learning, indicating that scenario activities enhance the educational process by making it more interesting and engaging. The study recommends promoting active learning approaches while considering the continuously evolving educational trends of the current student generation.