Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Policy Discourses and the Illusion of Best Practice

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There have been growing concerns from international scholars and relevant stakeholders over enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in higher education (HE) owing to its remarkable boom and to educational reforms across the globe (Ye et al., 2023). However, we are still in need of research that can delineate the rationale behind assessment and teaching practice in HE and the role of policy. To this end, Sarah Horrod’s book offers a potent response. The prime purpose of the book is threefold: (i) to scrutinize learning and teaching policy discourses at a UK university, (ii) to explore the recontextualisation of these discourses at the institutional level, and (iii) to identify the disparities between policy discourses and students’ and teachers’ experiences. Given these foci, the book is pertinent as it addresses urgent debates which are of interest to HE students, teachers, educators, policymakers, and researchers.

One of the book’s distinct features is that it adopts a clear problem-approach-answer-reflection structure that is easy for readers to understand and helpful for future researchers to emulate in practice. The book begins with a detailed introduction which describes the global and UK landscapes of HE. In Chapter 2, Horrod elaborates on her guiding approaches and research design, providing readers with insights into how her chosen methodologies align with her research questions and facilitate the achievement of her research objectives. Moreover, Horrod organizes the research findings into thematic chapters, spanning four main aspects: the critical stakeholders in HE (Chapter 3), the content of learning and teaching in HE (Chapter 4), the ways of learning and teaching in HE (Chapter 5) and the implementation of learning and teaching policies in HE (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 offers a conclusion that motivates readers to reflect on the book’s content and reconsider their own encounters with learning and teaching across diverse HE contexts. Such reflection prompts deep contemplation in relation to potential changes in policies and improvements to learning and teaching practices within HE.

Horrod provides a paradigm that can be harnessed to examine the interplay between policy and practice in actual contexts. For example, recontextualisation emerges as the book’s primary line of inquiry. Horrod intends to ‘trace intertextual and interdiscursive relations between different texts from the national level to the institution’ (48). By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, she combines the discourse-historical approach (DHA) (Reisigl and Wodak, 2016) within critical discourse studies (CDS) and Bernstein’s (1990, 2000) sociology of pedagogy to delineate the recontextualisation of policy ideas in the field of practice in HE. The Higher Education Academy (HEA) policy documents and interviews with students and lecturers are collected as the principal empirical data used to enmesh the relationship between policy and practice within HE. Horrod encourages stakeholders, including lecturers and students, to articulate their perspectives on their engagement with higher education policies and the impact of various factors on their teaching and learning experiences at the university.

The fourth feature lies in its thorough and in-depth investigation of the intricate and dynamic landscape of policy discourses within HE, alongside a critical examination of the notion of ‘best practice’ in HE teaching and learning. Horrod delves into the underlying ideologies and assumptions embedded within higher education policies across institutional, national and international levels. She also sheds light on how these policies influence the teaching practices of lecturers and the learning experiences of students while discussing the implications for relevant stakeholders. Horrod anchors her central argument throughout the book, asserting that ‘higher education policy on learning & teaching needs to be seen not as an example of best practice but, at least in part, as an ideological response to the supposed need for a radical transformation of higher education’ (27). She recognizes the diverse needs of university students and advocates for more flexible pedagogical approaches in HE.

While Horrod has attempted to offer a comprehensive picture of the intersection of policy, practice and pedagogy via a variety of sources, such as policy documents and interviews with students and lecturers, had she also incorporated more perspectives from policymakers and administrators and observed lecturers’ classroom practices this could have enriched the depth and robustness of the findings. There can of course be ethical dilemmas in how you bring those other perspectives in. The book does make an incisive critique of the ‘Best Practice’ in HE but holds back from offering alternatives to address the complexities of educational policy and practice. In this regard, including more specific cases and practical suggestions might have helped meet the needs of students, lecturers and educators seeking feasible guidance in real-world contexts. The book predominantly draws on specific cases from a single UK university and readers are aware that the issues discussed actually reverberate wider than a single university.

Overall, despite these minor limitations, the openness of the author in exploring the multifaceted and dynamic landscape of higher education policies in UK universities allows practitioners across a wide range of HE contexts to interrogate the misalignment between their prescribed practices (teaching and learning) outlined in HE policies and the varied needs and experiences of students and lecturers in reality. Additionally, given its well-designed format and interdisciplinary approach, the book holds particular appeal for prospective researchers seeking to adopt related frameworks or methodologies in their studies on issues pertaining to learning and teaching in HE.