Capturing the shifting work of teaching in higher education through postcards of practice

ABSTRACT

Amongst the rapid and continual changes occurring in higher education is a heightened emphasis on teaching and the emergence of a quality teaching discourse. In tandem, we are living through a time where not only circumstances, but also new, more complex technologies continue to disrupt and challenge the ways teaching occurs. Despite various initiatives and compliance mechanisms, trust in notions of quality, accountability and scholarship related to teaching in higher education has been questioned. Tensions emerge between the consistency required by institutions and the creativity academics may want to employ in their teaching. Similarly, opportunities for academics to interrogate, discuss and reflect on their teaching can be problematic. In this article, we examine the perspectives of those working amidst these challenges to explore how learning and teaching approaches are changing in the current higher education climate. We draw on data from academic staff working in a faculty of education who shared their understandings through both text and visual responses about their prior, current and imagined future approaches to learning and teaching. We show how academics affectively and reflexively respond to uncertainty and disruption in ways that contribute to understanding and adapting to the challenges of our increasingly digital world.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching in higher education
• supercomplexity
• Bourdieu
• affect
• arts-based methods
• reflexive praxis
• digital pedagogies

Introduction

As universities compete for students and status, they not only rely on generating world class research, the quality of teaching to meet student expectations now also plays a crucial role in the higher education sector (Dall’Alba, 2023; Sadler et al., 2017). Academics who teach in universities, while having expertise in their discipline, have diverse understandings or skills in relation to their approaches to teaching or levels of familiarity with digital pedagogies. This digital divide (Marinoni et al., 2020) became more apparent when teaching shifted online due to the pandemic when many academics were confronted with how their existing skills needed to be adapted to suit this new and unfamiliar situation (Green et al., 2020; Moore, 2020).

Leading up to the pandemic, universities were understood to be in a state of supercomplexity characterised by ‘contestability, challengeability, uncertainty and unpredictability’ (Barnett, 2000, p. 415), where the patterns of academic life are impacted by massification, marketisation and bureaucratisation (Hil, 2014). Further, new technologies in education challenge the relationships between knowledge and learning (Barnett, 2023). In this article, we examine the perspectives of those working amidst these challenges and shifts to explore how learning and teaching approaches are changing in the current higher education climate, defined by its supercomplexity. We draw on data from academic staff working in a faculty of education during the pandemic. They shared their understandings through both text and visual responses about their prior, current and imagined future approaches to learning and teaching.

Higher education and teaching entanglements

It is crucial for those who teach in higher education to engage in reflective and reflexive practices, enabling them to critique their pedagogical approaches and assumptions (Ryan & Murphy, 2018; Selkrig & Keamy, 2015). However, there is a tension related to university teaching (Eka Putri et al., 2023; Jarvis, 2019) between certainty and risk. Institutions on one hand want consistent outputs, using various compliance and monitoring regulations (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, 2015; Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, 2021) that include standardisation and a focus on outcomes as part of the quality teaching discourse; whereas academics, whilst upholding scholarly rigour, look for creativity and freedom in their approaches to teaching.

Entangled in narratives of quality teaching there is increased emphasis on student engagement or learning-centred models compared with previous teacher-centred or transmission models of content delivery. In practice, new technologies allow educators to design and monitor learning in ways oriented more towards skills and attributes, beyond the conveyance of concepts and knowledge (Núñez-Canal et al., 2022). The way knowledge is constructed, distributed and transmitted through multiple media has changed (Turkle, 2015) and with these changes there are new structures of power and legitimisation. Despite initiatives to improve teaching (Bormann et al., 2021), we have seen trust related to quality, accountability and scholarship within educational institutions suffer (Dulfer et al., 2023; Manathunga et al., 2017; Núñez-Canal et al., 2022). These are just some of the details that outline universities as supercomplex worlds.

A supercomplex world is one in which the very frameworks by which we orient ourselves to the world are themselves contested. Supercomplexity denotes a fragile world but it is a fragility brought on not merely by social and technological change; it is a fragility in the way that we understand the world, in the way in which we understand ourselves and in how we feel secure about acting in the world. (Barnett, 2000, p. 257)

When one feels insecurity within their professional practices, there can be various pressures to develop new practices. One way to develop practice in a school or faculty is to provide opportunities for academics to discuss and reflect on praxis (practices related to teaching and theoretical aspects that inform these) but finding space to do this amongst competing demands along with heightened distrust can be problematic (Mackay & Tymon, 2013). Prompting moments of reflection with our participants has allowed us to examine the ways teaching academics were experiencing the additional digital disruptions in a supercomplex environment.

Methodology

Participants in our project included contract and permanent academics with different levels of experience, who teach within a faculty of education where we the authors also work. The university is situated in Melbourne, Australia and experienced six sustained lockdown periods involving 242 days in total. During lockdowns people in Melbourne were unable to leave their homes for more than one hour per day, physically socialise or undertake anything that was not deemed essential. Ethics approval (#22927) was obtained from the university before participant involvement. Personalised emails, and strategically placed posters, were used to invite academic colleagues to be involved. Participants’ willingness to participate was obtained through an initial online survey using Qualtrics, which collected basic information such as their duration of teaching in the faculty. Approximately three weeks later, a follow-up online survey was conducted, prompting participants to provide short text-based responses (up to 50 words) accompanied by self-made or sourced images related to three stem prompts. The prompts focused on their teaching and learning approaches: (a) pre-COVID (about two years ago), (b) current approaches and (c) anticipated approaches in three years. A total of 27 responded to the prompts including two of the authors of this article.

We incorporated both textual and visual imagery responses as data sources. This approach is supported by established practices in areas such as arts-based research (Leavy, 2015), visual phenomenology and photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997). Bourdieu (1990) suggests including images offers additional meanings about participants’ practices and their symbolic representations. The data (both image and text) were downloaded from Qualtrics and analysed by the three researchers. Each type of data was considered separately to ascertain if there were themes within the text only, as well as sorting images by content and form to identify groupings and then together, with images and text collated in the form of a poster, to explore relationships between text and images. Some of the prompts used in our analysis included ‘the text states … In the image related to the text I see … and when combined we understand this as … .’.

Working with visual materials as part of a research project can raise issues related to ethics; anonymity and copyright (Rose, 2012). To address these, we asked participants to gain written consent from anyone who may appear in photographs or, where consent was not obtained, images were de-identified. If participants intended to source imagery from the web, links were provided to public image banks, allowing for unrestricted or attributed use, avoiding copyright issues. In the following sections we include either photos taken by the participants or imagery sourced online that does not breach copyright. Our participants, as part of the consent process, had the opportunity to use their given name or provide a pseudonym. We have also elected to provide pseudonyms for all the participants mentioned in this article.

Theoretical and analytical framework

Building on Barnett’s (2000, 2023) concept of supercomplexity to highlight how uncertainty, unpredictability and emotional insecurity are now commonplace in universities, Ling and Ling (2019) propose a supercomplexity research paradigm where traditional frames of reference are conflicted and shifting. In this project we operated within a supercomplexity paradigm, acknowledging reality as dynamic and fraught, while also recognising a need to embrace insecurity, fragility, the unknown and strangeness (Ling & Ling, 2019). The reflexive approach we adopted acknowledges the unique experiences and worldviews of participants that inform their pedagogical priorities and values. Bourdieu's (1990, 2000; also Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) concepts of field, habitus and capital within a supercomplexity paradigm offer a way to examine how power relations shape individuals’ dispositions and social positioning within specific fields, providing insight into the complex dynamics at play.

Our social world from Bourdieu’s perspective is a system of somewhat autonomous fields each with their own unique set of rules and knowledge. They are spaces for social interaction, competition and conflict, that also operate in relationship to each other. For our participants, they are operating in the field of higher education with a particular focus on teaching practices. The concept of habitus as structures that inform practice through past experience and emotions (Bourdieu, 2000) provides an analytic frame to understand ways affective atmosphere-specific settings can bring forth emotions that are ‘feeling the past in the present’ (Skourtes, 2016, p. 392). Habitus provides a way of defining consistency of practice across settings, such as the physical classroom settings and digital settings described by our participants. Habitus is seen as durable but not permanent (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) and depending on the situation, for example during times of crisis, a person's habitus may feel out of sync with their environment.

Power (or lack of power) is felt by habitus in position to others in a social field through different forms of capital such as: economic (wealth and material assets), cultural (knowledge, skills, education) and social (networks, connections). Capital can be symbolic (prestige, recognition) and embodied, which gives one a feel for their position in a field. Forms of capital can also shift and change. One feels comfortable in a field where they have the capital that is valued in the field. During upheavals defined by changes in the value of certain capitals (such as particular ‘know-how’, knowledge or cultural capital), position and power change and are corporally and emotionally affective through habitus.

Drawing on Bourdieu, Threadgold (2020, pp. 40–41) states that ‘(a)ffective encounters are simultaneously sensed, recognised, categorised and communicated, all of which rely upon habitus, which is one’s history rolled up into an affective reservoir of immanent embodied dispositions’. By asking our participants to reflect on their practice in the past, in the now and into the future, we can draw out dispositions in practice and identify how the affective plays a role in changing practice.

According to Bourdieu's ‘brand of reflexivity’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 36), when we gain some distance we can be reflexive through ‘systematic exploration’ (p. 40), allowing unconscious dispositions that comprise the habitus in practice to be bound to the level of consciousness. We join scholars using Bourdieu’s works on reflexivity, while also considering the affective dimensions (Aarseth, 2016; Ingram & Abrahams, 2015; Threadgold, 2020) to consider the experiences of multifaceted disruptions on our participants’ practice. Conflicts within the habitus are now a part of the emotionally intense contemporary supercomplex times. Reflexivity, in such times, is part of the practices of every day (Aarseth, 2016; Threadgold, 2020). As authors of this article, we were also ‘insiders’ entwined in the practice of everyday described here though our own experiences. While two of us provided data about our practice, by working as a team of three, both individually and collaboratively we have been able to critically interrogate assumptions, biases, contradictions and paradoxes that form our own lives (Finlay, 2002).

Findings and interpretations

From the responses participants provided about their teaching approaches over three time periods (then, now, next), we were able to identify three key influences on power and position that we refer to as spheres. The first sphere pertains to ways aspects of social capital inform academic teaching practice. The second sphere considers how facets of cultural capital shape the participants' teaching. The third sphere emphasises how reflexivity and the re-positioning of teaching practice are also occurring for academics within a changing field. In the following sections, we provide examples of the combined text and image responses in the form of postcards along with additional text and image descriptions from other participants to consider each of these spheres.

Social capital informing teaching practice

The suite of responses in this section captures some of the transitions or reaffirmations of our participants. Here, connectedness can be seen as a form of social capital, the resources embedded within social relationships, networks and communities. These resources can include access to information, support, opportunities and social influence. Participants identify positive connections, such as supportive relationships, belonging to a community or place, or feeling connected to others, can have a positive impact on an individual's affective experiences. These connections can provide emotional support, a sense of belonging and a feeling of security.

In the top postcard in Figure 1 about how teaching was, we see silhouettes of a human and dog overshadowing the sand and shallow water, and there is also a vista to more open waters and sky. Jackie’s (P-19) text also captures the importance of connection and experience, underpinning aspects of experiential or authentic learning, which many participants called social constructivism. Learning is constructed through relationships, where social capital can be converted into cultural capital in the community where everyone feels they belong. Evan (P-8), another participant, provided a photo by Daniel Biber titled ‘The murmuration of starlings took the form of a giant bird’ that represents a flock of birds working in unison, while their text describes how their pedagogy involved a ‘lot of small group activities followed by whole class reflective discussions. I was able to observe students a lot more, listening without interrupting the group’. Evan (P-8) also mentioned the image represented how ‘teaching onsite was much more an interaction between me and the social dynamic of the class’, which can be understood as a site of easier conversion of social capital. Another participant, Naomi (P-21), also offered an image of a murmuration of birds, with their text response also referring to constructivist perspectives with the terms ‘curated, international, scaffolded, collaborative’. Along with silhouettes and groups of animals, there was a prevalence of imagery of people congregated together either around a table or interacting in other ways, at times making it difficult to ascertain who the teacher or students were. These images also have accompanying text that talks about including ‘more examples, hands-on experiences’ (Jess, P-4). In these responses we see how the physical or corporal plays a role in teaching and learning along with the social interactions.

Figure 1. Postcards of social capital informing teaching practice.

With the second (middle) postcard in Figure 1 Alexis (P-9) talks about being ‘more reflective, exploratory, experimental and sometimes chaotic’ while also being ‘much more student-centred in [their] thinking than previously’. It is noticeable in the image that there is no hint of ‘animate’ objects. We see an entanglement of cables under the desk, perhaps reflecting a level of chaos, but also the reliance on technologies at that time. With many of the images for the ‘now’ response (at a time when we were still very much in a COVID lockdown circumstance), there is a marked difference in how people are portrayed; computer screens become prevalent and the familiar pattern of numerous squares on the screen. There is also less explicit naming of educational theories such as social constructivism. Responses that discussed constructivist approaches spoke for example of being ‘constructivist, collaborative and interactive’. A shift to concern for students rather than content is also captured by Arlo’s (P-22) image of a person fishing as the sun sets and the comments they make about their teaching being ‘more patient, caring and understanding’. Naomi’s (P-21) image of a rectangle containing various coloured shapes, reminiscent of a woven quilt, could be seen as a contrast to the familiar black screens many chose to use during remote online teaching. The words accompanying the image talk of still being ‘curated and collaborative’ but also states more scaffolding and personal interaction to support students’ pathways are possible in digital spaces. It seems that as bodies become less present, collaboration and construction does dissipate, although it is less associated with knowledge and more related with student wellbeing, connecting to them more individually.

In speculating future approaches to teaching and learning, participants rarely mention specific educational theory. The bottom postcard in Figure 1 from Rosie (P-27) highlights a return to people interacting in real physical space. Materials such as markers and butcher paper suggest collaborative interactions. The only hint of technology is a headset around the neck of one young person. We are not able to ascertain who or if a teacher is present. The text also reflects a common sentiment reconciling a place for using technology as part of teaching but also a firm conviction that ‘nothing can replace the social, the shared experiences, the conversations, the silence, the contemplation, the interruptions and challenges and learning that occurs through physical and social interaction’. For Rosie (P-27) the future will look very like the past. Similarly, Allison’s (P-24) image of the moment the sun sets across an expanse of water, states that:

building positive relationships will always be key to my pedagogy. Teaching has become kinder, which is needed. Acknowledging diversity and building inclusive practices are paramount. Improve my BSL [blended synchronous learning] tech skills. I’ll make time for stories and sharing of diverse experiences, and improve my inclusive practices, and build connections.

There is also a sense digital technology will continue to be part of their teaching, although they need to make connections and be more aware of the cohort they are working with.

Within this sphere, we see a sense of loss and a sense of gain. The loss of the familiar, the known and even a hint at the loss of expertise. Moving through the different temporal prompts, we begin to see how academics were able to adapt, build on their existing expertise and work with new technologies. A sense of belonging was highly valued by these academics who sought to find ways to maintain relationships with their students in an enforced online environment. Within this sphere, participants viewed the affective components of the teaching as important but more individualised in digital spaces. Participants who positioned predominantly through social capital centred their practice affectively in the past, in the now and in their imaged future but could be seen to see less distribution of social capital and conversion of the students’ social capital through peer interaction in the digital space.

Cultural capital and knowledge informing teaching practice

In framing ways in which they teach, some participants were focused through the lens of ‘providing knowledge content’ or ‘ensuring the content was delivered’. In disciplines that teach psychology, wellbeing and communication, this is a subtle shift. We conceptualise this in terms of positioning oneself in the field largely in terms of cultural capital, or knowledge – both practical (phronesis) and theoretical (theoria). This theoretical and practical knowledge in teaching is reflected in some images of a large lecture hall, a standard classroom with the teacher at the front, and another depicting conceptual representations like those used in textbook and PowerPoint teaching where the text response spoke about ‘knowledge content filled delivery to all students based on course requirements’. Relationships are still centred for some participants as can be seen in the top postcard in Figure 2. The image of people outside, being active with each other and as stated by Leah (P-16), a scholar in psychological sciences, describes their previous approaches to teaching in their text response. Practical knowledge of ‘psychological needs strategies’ is used to ‘design interactive and collaborative activities’. Paul, a scholar in pedagogy, echoed similar sentiments when he modelled practical pedagogical strategies to ‘develop and sustain relationships of trust and respect’ (Paul P-2). This relationship skills focus runs through to most of the images in this category which are groups of people interacting. Maggie (P-10), a well-being scholar, included a picture of a semi-arid Australian landscape, stating ‘I chose this image because while it is empty, for me it is about possibility and potential. Teaching is all about possibility’. The accompanying text response outlines how they were as ‘focussed on being relational … building a strong, positive classroom culture as I was on teaching content. I was focused on active learning and rarely used PowerPoints, with a real aversion to using tech’. Previous expertise positioned these participants as masters of ‘know-how’ or cultural capital that comfortably or uncomfortably are transitioned into the digital teaching space. For these participants, relationships are less a form of social capital but a result of the cultural capital position in the field that arises from practical engagement ‘know-how’ – strategies, discussion, roleplaying, excursions and interactive tasks as key pre-COVID teaching practices. The images attached to these ideas drew on classroom artefacts, digital and hands-on. Another group of responses related to teaching ‘then’ in this sphere emphasised ‘playful improvisations … inspiration’ (Martin P-18) and ‘fun’ (Adrian P-7). The accompanying images for these types of responses were figurative and gestural in nature such as a young man leaping in the air or the contemplative stance of Rodin’s (P-22) sculpture, The Thinker.

Figure 2. Postcards of cultural capital informing teaching practices.

One of the significant shifts identified by many participants between ‘then’ and ‘now’ was the struggle to move their masterful practical skills into digital teaching spaces. In the middle postcard in Figure 2 Maggie (P-10) indicates she has to try and create a sense of personal relationships and being human behind the screen; the image signifies her replacement strategies. She writes ‘I tried to make myself more human by sharing pictures of my pets, this is one I chose especially for the international students. I worried a lot about them being lonely’.

Other participants described a loss of skills to create a ‘sense of belongingness’ (Leah, P-16) online and replacement strategies involved ‘privileging individuals’ (Alice, P-28) and engaging in ‘one-on-one interaction’ (Evan, P-8). The lack of social connections within the community of learning created new boundaries in the field and teaching became personalised. Some of the participants' language suggests this is a change in their practice, whereas for others it was more of an intensified focus. The ‘now’ images are absent of people and woven patterns, or a chain of safety pins are shared as metaphors to represent connections. Within the ‘now’ postcards we also see technology emerging in teaching practices. Academics write of a ‘more integrated approach to teaching and technology’ (Rosie, P-27), digital teaching vocabulary such as ‘asynchronous, synchronous, zoom, and virtual excursions’ indicate new theoretical knowledge in digital technology. The ‘now’ images are dominated by representations of computer screens as the location of teaching.

The bottom ‘next’ postcard from Max (P-11) in Figure 2 offers one emerging subtheme about future teaching. The image of various intersecting and overlayed footprints in the sand is complemented in the text with the words ‘continu[ing] to work at ways to reduce reliance and focus on my intrusion into the encounter.’ Similarly, Martin (P-18) provided an image of ‘rain shadow’, an environmental work by the artist Andy Goldsworthy, writing,

if I am courageous enough - refining the clumsiness of the task described above. I suspect it will be characterised by simplifying ‘things’, but more likely will lead to more silence in the space of teaching – and hopefully to the point where learning and teaching will give the appearance of having ceased (Martin, P-18).

We interpret this as a possible new positioning in the field, recognising the supercomplexity of digital and physical learning spaces, the practical and theoretical knowledge of the educator who creates the space as a framework of values and understandings. We will return to this in the next section, to consider the ontological and epistemological risks and affordances that emerge in this imagined future. For other participants, the ‘next’ material continues to identify new practical and theoretical cultural capital in teaching technologies. Participants highlight their emerging skills in ‘intelligent motivation and use of technology’ (Vern, P-15), ‘us[ing] an omnichannel approach’ (Logan, P-25) and ‘recognising that synchronous and asynchronous learning are equally valuable and can be curated’ (Stacy, P-17). Participants position themselves in the field with cultural capital, with the practical knowledge to use technology using these skills to continue teaching with technology in the future. The images of technology such as laptops, zoom rooms and even Lego Technic provided in the ‘next’ responses are less central in many of the images. We interpret this as these participants positioning themselves in the field through their knowledge of, and know how to, use these tools.

Reflexivity and re-positioning of teaching practices within a changing field

In our final sphere, participants highlighted ‘feeling’ the need for change. Fields can be understood as collections of affects, drawing on structures, histories, norms and traditions (Threadgold, 2020, p. 18). With our participants’ changes in practice, feelings about power, control, understanding and/or knowledge in the field also emerge. Some participants used the ‘then’ prompt as a reflection mechanism that identifies these felt changes. Within the top postcard in Figure 3, from Kane (P-12), a collage of images is presented that show book covers, charts, graphs and people that could be a type of map to show aspects of someone’s teaching. Kane (P-12) writes that they felt that their teaching pre-COVID was ‘settled’, and while they were previously sceptical, having made a move to blended and online teaching some time ago, they were positioned to support others through changes in practice. Similarly, Alexis (P-9) offered an image of looking down a long straight country road and writes about being

settled and perhaps veering towards a settled complacency? I was knowledgeable in my content areas, used a range of pedagogical approaches that students consistently viewed favourably but overall, there was (in hindsight) a staleness to my teaching and an assumption that positive student feedback meant learning was as good as it needed to be.

These types of reflective responses on pre-COVID teaching appeared to enable academics' re-thinking of their past practice and identify a need for change. COVID and the move to online learning was a catalyst to get them to shake up their own teaching habits and beliefs – the dispositions in their habitus that have informed their previous practices.

Figure 3. Postcards of reflexivity and re-positioning of teaching practices within a changing field.

In providing responses to the ‘now’ prompt some participants saw this as an opportunity to reflect on their emotional or physical state, for example the middle postcard of Figure 3 where Adrian’s (P-7) provided an image of someone clasping their back with both hands and writes of the embodied feeling of being ‘bruised’ yet ‘still willing and eager to be better but I just feel like I haven’t caught my breath back yet’. Other participants spoke of their practices being ‘rattled’ and in some cases ‘anxious’ about the future. There was also a sense of feeling de-skilled, with participants identifying teaching in the ‘now’ as ‘a mixed bag filled with unfulfilled intentions’ (Jack, P-26) or something to be ‘suffered’ (Allison, P-24) alongside an image of a teacher talking to a screen of blank zoom profiles. Also associated with the need for change, participants had concerns for their students ‘heightened fragilities’ (Max, P-11) or of possible ‘abjection and destitution’ (Martin, P-18). There was also a recognition of different and competing student needs and staff needs where Miles (P-6) stated ‘the tension exists between those focused on social connection/networking vs those focused on getting over the line’. The image that linked to this statement represents two stick figures engaged in tug or war.

When participants focused on change and what comes next, most reflexively identify past practices using words that spoke to the before as well as the after, demonstrating how past and present actively informs future practices. Words and phrases such as ‘continue’, ‘better’, ‘reinvigorated’, ‘more’, ‘less’, ‘still’ and ‘as has always been the case’ demonstrate this reference to changing practices from the past when thinking about the future.

The bottom postcard in Figure 3 from Polly (P-5) shows an image of people with question marks and lightbulbs above their heads and the text states ‘it is an unknown space … it’s hard but exciting to imagine what will come next’, which also captures another dimension where several participants reflected on the unknown positively. Others described it might be ‘much the same’ (Naomi, P-21) having to adjust to continual change which was represented by an image of harmonious undulating light beams, whereas others were hopeful that it would not be the same as where they currently were: Adrian (P-7) stated he ‘hoped’ to be ‘invigorated … stay[ing] in the profession and be better, not still feeling like I’m treading water and struggling with workload’. The image linked to this response is an outstretched hand directed to the horizon. Many participants also spoke about the need for specific affectively informed practices such as ‘being courageous’, ‘more understanding’ and ‘kinder’.

Most participants identified the importance of affect and relationships in their teaching practices. In the ‘next’ category, images of recognisable classroom activity were sparse, and the images were abstract or metaphorical. Here, as signposted earlier, we juxtapose contributions from Max and Martin, those academics who were knowledge focused but projected an imagined future where as teachers, they would be less ‘intrusive’ in their students' learning and create spaces where ‘teaching and learning will give the appearance of having ceased’. These ideas align with supercomplexity, which Barnett (2019, p. 285) defines as ‘the higher-level complexity, in which the very categories through which humans try to gain a grip on the world in which they are placed are disputable’. As Barnett (2019) argues, and as our participants have shared, regardless of how academics are positioned in the field, and how they centre around change, they readily engage in reflexive practices that refocus their social, practical and theoretical strengths to understand and help their students understand the ontological and epistemological risks and challenges that define our changing times.

Conclusions

There are many issues and problematics associated with encouraging academics to share, critically discuss and reflect on their teaching, while also considering the fluid and fragile aspects of working inside higher education settings. In our study we adopted an innovative approach, whereby working through three temporal prompts (then, now, next), academics were asked to think about their teaching and respond with both image and text that was used to generate postcards. They were encouraged to look at their own practice with some distance. By allowing participants to consider things across time they were provided with a situation to reflect on what potentially sits at the core of their approaches to teaching. What we found is that relationships and knowledge expertise are central in most of the postcards our participants generated.

In discussions about relationship, we are mindful that the data were gathered when participants were largely socially isolated due to lockdown conditions. We see this as part of an explanation about a focus on students and why little reference is made to collegial relationships. This absence is an opportunity for further research, while noting Barnett’s (2019) call for universities as ideal locations to work with their existing resources, including their collegial human resources, to educate wider society in the face of persistent uncertainty.

Providing opportunities for participants to convey their perspectives about the complex and changing nature of teaching with a university through both text and imagery was valuable. Imagery was used in various ways such as providing literal representations of their text response or with metaphorical depictions to capture or represent the ‘bundles of relations’ and disruptions in practice of temporal moments in ways that are not so easily captured in words. In many of the responses, we also see representations shift from images of togetherness, often represented by interaction either of human or non-human objects, to the present where the machine, screen and tensions were depicted, while in considering the future participants emphasised aspects of growth, reconciliation and integration of past practices with technologies to lead in grappling with supercomplexity.

The participant responses traverse a spectrum of perspectives capturing the nuances involved in teaching, while also providing opportunities for academics to develop reflexive practice and agency in relation to their own and their colleagues’ praxis. For some of our participants they have realised new vistas of expertise and agency seeing shifts in the types of cultural or social capitals they possess, for others the process has involved something of a grieving process as they grappled with a sense of loss, the field in which they were comfortable has shifted and the need to adapt to different circumstances.

What has become apparent with this group of participants and their ways of teaching is that there is much to be hopeful about. We can see that academics in this study are navigating the uncertainties, strangeness and unpredictabilities that are inherent in supercomplex environments. They seemed to be able to manage the different contextual, personal and social elements of both themselves and their students. Whilst there was a vulnerable tone (or maybe COVID fatigue) in some of the postcards, there was no sense of ‘giving up’. Rather academics were cognisant and capable of the need to adapt to the changing landscape.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).