Lecturers’ curational behaviour in higher education

ABSTRACT

The demands on lecturers in higher education to select, structure, and contextualise relevant and up-to-date resources for their students have increased; behaviour that is often referred to as curation. Currently, systematic insight into lecturers’ curational behaviour is limited. This scoping literature review provides an overview of the existing body of knowledge regarding lecturers’ curational behaviour. Twenty-four articles were selected and analysed, using the framework of Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour). Findings show that although studies can be linked to elements of the TPB, current research does not approach curational behaviour as an interconnected process of behaviour and its intentions. Additionally, current research mainly focusses on selection of resources; other elements of curation such as structuring resources and providing context are overlooked. More knowledge of lecturers’ curational behaviour could lead to better understanding of how lecturers’ curation could be supported, which could improve the quality of higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Curation
• educational resources
• curriculum materials
• higher education
• lecturers

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Prof. Dr Ron Oostdam, of the Centre for Applied Research in Education at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, for his advice during the initial research design. Thanks to Jaroen Kuijper, information specialist at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, for his help with the database search.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, through means of an individual PhD funding scheme provided by the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries.