Bones of contention: using self and story in the quest to professionalize higher education teaching—an interdisciplinary approach

Abstract

Initiatives encouraging the professionalization of teachers in the UK Higher Education sector should employ pedagogies that support the idea of discipline‐based interdependence. Such initiatives with pedagogies cultivating a critical professionalism capable of challenging the marketization of Higher Education, presume adequate consideration of three questions: the nature of ‘disciplinarity’, the significance of the academic ‘self’ and the deposition of, or rather, the decentering of that academic self. Talking about learning and teaching across the disciplines is a useful way to begin to do this, especially when such conversations challenge the assumptions of disciplinary cultures, without violating either their uniqueness or cultural integrity. This paper makes metaphorical use of the current legal battle over repatriation to the North American ancestral home of Kennewick Man, to illustrate epistemological differences. It raises the question of whether or not there is a meta‐discipline by which interdisciplinary conversations can take place, and attempts to clarify the conditions under which these may take place.

Notes

* Staff and Educational Development Unit, University of Nottingham, Lenton Lodge, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. Email: [email protected].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Davidson *

* Staff and Educational Development Unit, University of Nottingham, Lenton Lodge, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. Email: [email protected].