Learning and Teaching Conference 2024

“Beyond Economics: The Societal Value of Higher Education” 

12 – 4.30pm Wednesday November 13th 2024 

The 2024 Learning and Teaching Conference offers you an opportunity to come together with colleagues to debate, discuss and share your on-the-ground, research-informed practice and experiences. Together, we aim to collectively articulate the value our work brings to the individual students we encounter and, through them, wider society. 

As professionals working in a Higher Education institution, we understand that the value of University extends far beyond the economic impact on the individual graduate and the national and global economy. Yet we, as a sector, are repeatedly defined in myopic economic terms. In this year's CCCU Learning and Teaching Conference we invite you to bring your experiences, hopes, plans and ‘if money was no object’ thoughts on the value of our collective endeavour. Whether you value a pragmatic, holistic, ontological, or other approach to the educational process, come along and share your reflections on learning and teaching practice. 

What are the impacts of a quality education for the individual, their families, community and society? What makes a learning experience valuable? How can we engender and sustain the intellectual lives of our students in creative, collaborative and interesting ways? How do we help students navigate the liminal spaces between being and becoming? How do we balance the needs and relationship of the individual with the group? In the limited time we have with our students, how do we focus our efforts to achieve the best possible outcomes for them and our society?   

The Keynote Speaker: Professor Paul Ashwin, Lancaster University

Keynote theme: "What are we educating students for?"

Recording available here.

As government policies increasingly focus on graduates’ employment outcomes as the most important measure of the quality of undergraduate degrees, there is a danger that we will lose sight of the educational purposes of engaging students in higher education. In this keynote, I will argue that, in order to reinvigorate our understanding of what we are educating students for, we need to focus on how we develop curricula that support students to develop transformational relationships with disciplinary and professional knowledge. These relationships change students’ understanding of themselves and the world and are central to the many ways in which engaging in higher education can transform students' lives and contribute to societal well-being. I will explore the implications of this argument for our educational practices. 

About Paul:

I am a Professor of Higher Education. My research is focused on the educational role of higher education. I am interested in how curricula in higher education can be designed in ways that help to transform students' understanding of themselves and the world. I am also interested in the role of policies in shaping the education offered by higher education institutions. The kinds of questions that I explore in this research include: What counts as high quality teaching and learning in higher education? How is this positioned in policies and practices? How do we research and theorise these competing notions of quality? How do we enhance the quality of education in ways that also support greater societal equality?

Recordings from the day:

Previous Learning and Teaching Conferences

Summer 2018, Summer 2019, Summer 2020, Summer 2021, November 2022, November 2023