Papers by Sandra Sinfield
Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 2012
Book Review: Hartley, P., Hilsdon, J., Keenan, C., Sinfield, S, and Verity, M. (2011). Learning D... more Book Review: Hartley, P., Hilsdon, J., Keenan, C., Sinfield, S, and Verity, M. (2011). Learning Development in Higher Education . Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan
Nonlinear Analysis Hybrid Systems
In January, 2014, we participated in the MOOC Rhizomatic Learning: The community is the curriculu... more In January, 2014, we participated in the MOOC Rhizomatic Learning: The community is the curriculum (#rhizo14) facilitated by Dave Cormier. A group of us decided to research participant experiences in this course, but not by repeating existing scholarly research on cMOOCs, which to our minds has two serious shortcomings. First, most MOOC research has not brought the connectivist experience to life for readers who have not experienced the rhizomatic swarm of open, online, connected learning. And second, most MOOC research is not participatory, is not told from inside the process. We want to write from the inside, for as Tanya Sasser says, “we have the tools and the opportunity to write our own story, rather than suffering someone else to write it for us.” So following the rare example of Bentley, et al, we decided to conduct a collaborative autoethnography (CAE), which began mid-February, 2014, as an open Google Doc to which 31 #rhizo14 participants eventually added their post-MOOC na...
Within psychological and educational psychological communities, debates over strategies such as t... more Within psychological and educational psychological communities, debates over strategies such as the practice of notemaking tend to focus on memory and/or behaviour change (Buzan, 1989: Buzan 1999). In the Learning Development community such exploration traverses contested terrain. Lea and Street (1998) set the scene with their typology of academic practices that moved from 'study skills' to 'academic literacies'. However, this literature review draws on Bourdieu's theory of 'habitus' and Burr's discussion of social constructionism to explore notemaking as a socio-political activity set within the wider discourse of higher education. At a time when education policy is ever changing, with frequently conflicting outcomes, particular attention is paid to New Labour's policy initiative to Widen Participation, considering the consequences of this policy for non-traditional students, i.e. "students from under-represented groups" (Medway, Rhodes...
Trentham Books Limited Westvicw House 22883 Quicksilver Drive 734 London Road Sterling Oakhill VA... more Trentham Books Limited Westvicw House 22883 Quicksilver Drive 734 London Road Sterling Oakhill VA 20166-2012 Stoke on Trent USA Staffordshire England ST4 5NP > 2004 Jerome Satterthwatte, Elizabeth Atkinson and Wendy Martm All rights reserved. No part of this ...
This case study examines a module for mainly mature, 'non-traditional' students on the Ea... more This case study examines a module for mainly mature, 'non-traditional' students on the Early Childhood Studies [ECS] open entry degree programme at London Metropolitan University. The nature of the particular module - entitled 'An introduction to Early Childhood Studies: reflecting, learning and communicating' - means that this paper will briefly consider the debate about 'skills' that is presently preoccupying many higher education [HE] institutions, especially in today's Widening Participation climate. I also argue for a change in attitudes to teaching and learning in HE as a whole, referring to current research that is taking place at the University in this area.
We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harness... more We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harnessing ludic spaces for empowering practice (Sinfield et al. forthcoming). The chain of mini case studies interspersed in this issue reveals how we use playful, creative and visual strategies to enable our students to become the professionals that they wish to be as they enact academia more on their own terms. Play and playful practice is not 'dumbed down' learning, but 'serious business' (Parr
We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harness... more We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harnessing ludic spaces for empowering practice (Sinfield et al. forthcoming). The chain of mini case studies interspersed in this issue reveals how we use playful, creative and visual strategies to enable our students to become the professionals that they wish to be as they enact academia more on their own terms. Play and playful practice is not 'dumbed down' learning, but 'serious business' (Parr
We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harness... more We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harnessing ludic spaces for empowering practice (Sinfield et al. forthcoming). The chain of mini case studies interspersed in this issue reveals how we use playful, creative and visual strategies to enable our students to become the professionals that they wish to be as they enact academia more on their own terms. Play and playful practice is not 'dumbed down' learning, but 'serious business' (Parr
We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harness... more We operate in the multidisciplinary fields of Education Studies and Education Development harnessing ludic spaces for empowering practice (Sinfield et al. forthcoming). The chain of mini case studies interspersed in this issue reveals how we use playful, creative and visual strategies to enable our students to become the professionals that they wish to be as they enact academia more on their own terms. Play and playful practice is not 'dumbed down' learning, but 'serious business' (Parr
Postdigital Science and Education
This paper is a summary of philosophy, theory, and practice arising from collective writing exper... more This paper is a summary of philosophy, theory, and practice arising from collective writing experiments conducted between 2016 and 2022 in the community associated with the Editors’ Collective and more than 20 scholarly journals. The main body of the paper summarises the community’s insights into the many faces of collective writing. Appendix 1 presents the workflow of the article’s development. Appendix 2 lists approximately 100 collectively written scholarly articles published between 2016 and 2022. Collective writing is a continuous struggle for meaning-making, and our research insights merely represent one milestone in this struggle. Collective writing can be designed in many different ways, and our workflow merely shows one possible design that we found useful. There are many more collectively written scholarly articles than we could gather, and our reading list merely offers sources that the co-authors could think of. While our research insights and our attempts at synthesis a...
There are numerous avenues for improving student engagement. This chapter focusses on the respons... more There are numerous avenues for improving student engagement. This chapter focusses on the responsibility of the teacher set within the context of the contemporary landscape of Higher Education. We place emphasis on the lived experience of being a teacher – the unique perspectives, challenges, limits and potential capacities of the role – and heighten awareness of how engaging with the complexity of the learning relationship can open up possibilities for reducing barriers to students’ meaningful engagement with their learning. The underlying assumption is that student engagement is fundamentally linked to staff engagement: with students, with the process of teaching and with oneself as a teacher; and furthermore, that the way in which we as teachers engage, or do not, with students has a significant influence on how students engage with us and with their learning. This chapter explores: • staff engagement as an agency for student engagement • the educational landscape of engagement: ...
Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 1969
This edition of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education brings together five pape... more This edition of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education brings together five papers, five case studies and three opinion pieces whose themes and contents span many of the broad territories covered by our work. The notion of territories, or spaces for learning development, their dimensions-cultural, physical, analogue and digital-and the scope for action within them, has particular relevance at this time. The accelerating changes in the world of higher education, in the UK and globally, present many challenges but also many crossovers and nodes. As Gráinne Conole points out in her opinion piece, 'Connectivity', networks offer the potential for powerful positive interventions by learning developers, students and academics working to promote learning in a global, connected
Learning Development in Higher Education, 2011
Improving Student Learning: Diversity and Inclusivity. Improving Student Learning, 2005
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Papers by Sandra Sinfield