After Standards: Australian Historians

Grapple with a Compliance/Audit

futureSean Brawley

New Regulatory FrameworkTertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency

(TEQSA)

Provider standards

Qualification standards

Learning and teaching

standards

Research standards

Information standards

National protocols and ESOS Act

Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF)

Threshold learning

outcomes

Excellence in Research in Australia (ERA)

For the market and regulators

Disciplines Setting Standards

Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Project

Purpose of the LTAS project.

• Government commissioned the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) to manage the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards (LTAS) project.

• Approach designed to ensure that discipline communities define and take responsibility for implementing academic standards within academic traditions of collegiality, peer review, pre-eminence of disciplines and academic autonomy.

• LTAS project to facilitate and co-ordinate discipline communities identifying academic standards (‘Disciplines setting standards’).

Principles underpinning the identification of academic standards.

• Academic standards should be expressed as assessable learning outcomes.

• Input and process (e.g., tutorials) may support but are not substitutes for learning outcomes.

• TLOs will ultimately be defined by each discipline community for each level of AQF qualification (i.e., bachelors, masters, doctorate)

• TLOs must be comparable with appropriate international standards (e.g. QAA, Tuning).

• Should take account of pre-existing professional accreditation standards.

• Individual institutions may set standards that are over and above the defined thresholds.

• Individual institutions will determine the curriculum, resources, teaching and assessment methods leading to the achievement of TLOs in their institution.

• Not about a National Curriculum

Discipline Reference Group – History.Chair Prof Iain Hay ALTC/Flinders

President (or nominee), peak discipline body

Prof Marnie Hughes-Warrington

Monash

DASSH nominee A/Prof Deborah Gare UND (Fremantle)

Discipline expert Prof Stuart Macintyre Melbourne

Discipline expert A/Prof Adrian Jones La Trobe

Discipline expert A/Prof Sean Brawley UNSW

Recent graduate Louise Douglas National Museum

Discipline expert – jurisdiction outside Australia

Prof Alan Booth Nottingham

Relevant employer representative

Helen Withnell Australian War Memorial

Alignment

• Australian Qualifications Framework• National Curriculum• European Tuning• Latin American Tuning• United Kingdom QAA Benchmark

Statements• Dublin Descriptors

• Threshold Learning Outcomes•  • Upon completion of a Bachelor degree with a major in History, graduates will be able to:•  • Knowledge• 1. Demonstrate an understanding of at least one period or culture of the past.•  • 2. Demonstrate an understanding of a variety of conceptual approaches to interpreting

the past.•  • 3. Show how History and historians shape the present and the future.•  • Research• 4. Identify and interpret a wide variety of secondary and primary materials.•  • 5. Examine historical issues by undertaking research according to the methodological

and ethical conventions of the discipline.•  • Analysis• 6. Analyse historical evidence, scholarship and changing representations of the past.•  • Communication• 7. Construct an evidence-based argument or narrative in audio, digital, oral, visual or

written form. •  • Reflection• 8. Identify and reflect critically on the knowledge and skills developed in their study of

History.

What Next?

ALTC Priority Project, 2011 - 13Project Team

Sean Brawley (UNSW)Jennifer Clark (UNE)

Chris Dixon (UQ)Lisa Ford (UNSW)

Shawn Ross (UNSW)

After Standards Objectives

• 1. To model, demonstrate, evaluate and disseminate how a discipline with no background experience in professional accreditation or national standards can engage successfully with TLO implementation and compliance requirements as part of the new TEQSA national standards framework;

The best means of disseminating new knowledge and promoting knowledge

utilisation is to construct a methodology that complements the epistemology of the target audience

Corbett, Dawson & Firestone, 1984; Deal, 1986;

Fullan, 1985; Healey, 2000;Healy, 2003

History’s Signature Pedagogy

Lendol Calder, (2006) ‘Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for

the History Survey’, Journal of American History, 92(4):1358-

1370.

Alan Booth, (2009) “Pedagogy and the practice of academic history in

late-twentieth century Britain”, Rethinking History,

13(3): 317-344.

Overarching Rationale

• Whole-of-Discipline

Overarching Rationale

• Whole-of-Discipline• Bottom-up

Gina Curro & Robin McTaggart (2003)

“Supporting the Pedagogy of Internationalisation”

17th IDP Australian Education Conference, Melbourne.

Overarching Rationale

• Whole-of-Discipline• Bottom-up• Self-organised

Self-nomination

G. Lefoe, D. Parrish, G. Hart, H. Smigiel, and L. Pannan (2008)

The GREEN Report: Development of Leadership Capacity in Higher Education. ALTC Final Project Report:

http://www.altc.edu.au/resource-green-report-uow-2008

Overarching Rationale

• Whole-of-Discipline• Bottom-up• Self-organised• International collaboration

Overarching Rationale

• Whole-of-Discipline• Bottom-up• Self-organised• International collaboration

Secures meaningful sustainable change

After Standards Objectives

• 2. To build, with the assistance of the Project’s institutional partners, a sustainable community of practice around teaching and learning that can both implement and monitor change and, where necessary, assume or support an advocacy role for the discipline within the Higher Education sector and with Government;

Etienne Wenger and “Communities of Practice”

Wenger, E., (2007) Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity

(New York: Cambridge University Press)

After Standards Objectives

• 3. To model, demonstrate, evaluate and disseminate how TLOs and their national implementation can be used as a means of driving curriculum renewal and the adoption of best practice in teaching and learning across a discipline;

After Standards Objectives

• 4. To model, demonstrate, evaluate and disseminate how Australian engagement with national standards can benefit from the experience and expertise gained from the implementation of standards overseas;

Phillip Pecorino and Shannon Kincaid (2007)

“Why Should I care about SOTL? The Professional Responsibilities of Post-

Secondary Educators”,

Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 1(1): 1-6.

Booth, A. and P. Hyland (eds) (2000), The practice of university history teaching, (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress).

Calder, L,, Cutler, W., Kelly, T.M. & Pace, D. (2000) ‘PAST IMPERFECT: Historians and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’, paper presented at the American Association on Higher Education National Conference, Anahiem, March.

Calder, L. Cutler, W and Kelly, T.M., (2002) ‘History Lessons: Historians and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’ in Mary Taylor Huber and Sherwyn P. Morreale, eds., Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: ExploringCommon Ground (Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education and The Carnegie Foundation for theAdvancement of Teaching) 45-67.

They prefer to follow “haphazardlyshared folk wisdom … forming notions about teaching

in isolation, and … often totally ignorant of the pedagogical discoveries of colleagues teaching in the

next classroom”

David Pace, (2004) “The Amateur in the Operating Room: History and the Scholarship of Teaching and

Learning”, American Historical Review, 109 (4) October pp1171-1192.

Alan Booth, (2004) “Rethinking the Scholarly: Developing the the scholarship of teaching in history”, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 3(3), pp247-

266.

Internationalisation• David Pace and Keith Erekson, (2006)

“The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning History Comes of Age: A New International Organization and Web Site/Newsletter”, The History Teacher, 40(1): 75-78

• Sean Brawley, (2007) “The Internationalisation of the Scholarship of

Teaching and Learning: The Formation of HistorySOTL”,History Australia, 4 (2): 46.1-46.

• David Pace (2007)“The Internationalization of History Teaching through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning creating institutions to unite the efforts of a discipline”, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 6 (3): 329-335.

After Standards Objectives

• 5. To model, demonstrate, evaluate and disseminate how the resulting international connections can build collaborations for teaching and learning research that will enhance Australian scholarship and practice;

International Partners

Alan Booth: The Passion Project

Lendol Calder: The Stories We Tell: Moral Inquiry in History T&L

Keith Erekson: The History SOTL Companion

Paul Hyland: Transforming the Student Experience through Assessment

T. Mills Kelly: History, New Media and Learning

David Pace: Decoding the Disciplines beyond the United States

Sarah Richardson: Feedback and Dialogue

Geoff Timmins: Historical Numeracy and Teaching and Learning

After Standards Objectives

• 6. Continue the Standards process for the Discipline of History by finalising standards beyond the Bachelor/AQF 7 level.

http://www.afterstandards.org/