Learning and Teaching (LATISS)

In this issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, authors from New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Australia write about women as doctoral supervisors, white academics as anti-racist allies, what creates a sense of belonging amongst distance education students and the experiences of students and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The traditional master–apprentice architecture of doctoral supervision is undoubtedly undergoing change. In the anglophone world, the father's house of supervision with its almost exclusively male occupants was first established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It persisted, largely undisputed, until the final decades of the twentieth century, when doctoral numbers bloomed throughout the West and more and more women (and others) took occupancy of the house as students and supervisors (advisors). In this article, I sketch the gendered origins of doctoral supervision in the West and then review the extant (anglophone) literature on women doctoral supervisors. In examining that small body of work, I ask two questions: What are women doing to supervision? And is the woman supervisor really ‘just a man’? My conclusions underscore the complexity of ongoing efforts to dismantle the father's house of supervision.

Racism in higher education continues to harm Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) students, so white faculty need to be good allies in anti-racism by decentring whiteness to better support BIPOC individuals. To increase self-awareness, white faculty should reflect on how they benefit from white privilege and then use this privilege to better support BIPOC students at both the interpersonal and institutional level, to centre BIPOC voices, to advocate for social justice, to condemn racism privately and publicly, to create teachable moments to better inform white students on the harms of prejudice and to intervene if BIPOC students are discriminated against. By being good allies, white faculty can show other white individuals how to use one's privilege to take action in anti-racism.

The purpose of this article is to describe adult learners’ sense of belonging when studying remotely in Malaysia. The methodology of the research involved carrying out in-depth interviews with twelve adult learners studying in a distance education institution to uncover their sense of belonging. The collected data was then analysed with Nvivo Version Twelve. The results showed that the annual campus meeting, the e-Learning platform and peer support all contributed significantly to the learners’ feeling of belonging in their distance-learning programmes. Nevertheless, these findings do not imply absolute belongingness, because their sense of belonging was observed alongside their sense of isolation amongst their peers in distance-education programmes.

In early 2020, universities across the world ceased face-to-face teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article explores the experiences of first-year UK university students during this time. Four main themes were identified in the data. Regarding course delivery, students valued the flexibility of blended learning, which involved attending some live sessions while working on others in their own time. Student interaction was mentioned to be critical for learning and how the use of webcams and breakout rooms can facilitate or hinder it. Regarding staff, continuous communication, availability and online drop-ins were highly valued and had a positive impact on satisfaction. Finally, while students benefitted from a coherent use of online tools provided by the university, they also valued the flexibility of using less-regulated tools, including social media.

In the wake of COVID-19, enthusiasm is growing for hybrid and other blended forms of teaching. Before celebrating the hybrid future of education, however, it is instructive to interrogate its hybrid presence. Accordingly, this article explores pedagogical challenges prompted by the pandemic pivot to online teaching. Analysing qualitative survey data from Danish university teachers (n = 488), we identify five critical stances towards educational technology: (1) technologies are fine when used correctly; (2) technical issues are a major obstacle; (3) hybrid teaching is overwhelming; (4) one's sense of students suffers online; and (5) students hide behind their screens. Based on these results, this article identifies two challenges for the hybrid future of education: the problem of presence and the webcam-related tension between surveillance and care.

Matt Brim (2020), Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 264 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4780-0914-6