Year: 2002
Type: editorial
Abstract: I N O U R first Editorial we described the Journal's antecedents and tried to articulate our conception of its role in arts and humanities higher education.(And, we are delighted to say, the first issue of AHHE has been entered for the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers/Charlesworth Awards -win or lose, we are very pleased just to have been nominated.)In that Editorial we referred to certain formative features of contemporary higher education systems, including among other things a burgeoning of applications of computer-telephone technologies and of interest in innovative forms of student assessment.We wrote there:It is abundantly clear . . .that arts and humanities educators, despite a relative lack of resource and status within higher education are among its most imaginative innovatorsinvolved at the forefront of change in curriculum and teaching method . . .And so it has proved.This issue of the Journal offers major contributions to debate about the nature and practice of the Arts and Humanities, from Marshall Gregory's discussion of underlying humanities discourses of Difference and Affiliation through analyses of many aspects of pedagogy -creative approaches to essay writing, new methods of student assessment, the teaching of theory-inpractice, uses of web resources -to the new field of Humanities Computing.The background to our earlier analysis was of higher education systems increasingly modelled on technical and vocational subjects: a dominant pedagogic discourse of measurable 'learning outcome' and 'key skills' development -skills that can be exchanged for wealth-creating jobs in the global market place.In the face of demands from many governments for National Standards and regulated outcomes, the tendency has been towards standardization in all aspects of higher education.This has resulted in the regrettable imposition of 'generic' discourse and expectations: regrettable because overriding, ignoring the special values and real educative force of academic disciplines.By contrast, the articles and case studies in this issue of AHHE address developments in such subjects as Theatre Studies and the Performing Arts more widely, in Art/Architectural History and interdisciplinary Humanities Computing, from specifically humanities and arts perspectives.Jackie Smart and Steve Dixon
Authors: Ellie Chambers, Jan Parker, Marshall Gregory
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2029131999