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Disciplinarity: a barrier to quality assurance? The UK experience of area studies

Disciplinarity: a barrier to quality assurance? The UK experience of area studies
Disciplinarity: a barrier to quality assurance? The UK experience of area studies
Quality assurance in UK higher education has maintained a very strong disciplinary bias. This brings about important challenges in assessing the quality of multidisciplinary courses as well as assessing the quality of the student experience of joint honours and combined honours degree courses. Area studies is a critical case of multi/interdisciplinarity. The area studies benchmarking statement delegates assessment (and thereby disciplinary conventions) to its constituent disciplines, but offers little guidance about the quality implications of this process. The paper concludes that quality assurance in higher education needs to develop a greater sensitivity to the disciplinary nature of the identity of academics, whilst at the same time assessing teaching and learning from a perspective that reflects the multidisciplinary experience of the student, rather than the disciplinary identity of teaching staff.
area studies, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, benchmarking, student experience
1353-8322
37-46
Canning, John
d37d6079-97b7-4de2-8321-1ad2274c505f
Canning, John
d37d6079-97b7-4de2-8321-1ad2274c505f

Canning, John (2005) Disciplinarity: a barrier to quality assurance? The UK experience of area studies. Quality in Higher Education, 11 (1), 37-46. (doi:10.1080/13538320500074931).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Quality assurance in UK higher education has maintained a very strong disciplinary bias. This brings about important challenges in assessing the quality of multidisciplinary courses as well as assessing the quality of the student experience of joint honours and combined honours degree courses. Area studies is a critical case of multi/interdisciplinarity. The area studies benchmarking statement delegates assessment (and thereby disciplinary conventions) to its constituent disciplines, but offers little guidance about the quality implications of this process. The paper concludes that quality assurance in higher education needs to develop a greater sensitivity to the disciplinary nature of the identity of academics, whilst at the same time assessing teaching and learning from a perspective that reflects the multidisciplinary experience of the student, rather than the disciplinary identity of teaching staff.

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Published date: 2005
Keywords: area studies, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, benchmarking, student experience

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 37908
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/37908
ISSN: 1353-8322
PURE UUID: 83a0c237-26b4-4c08-a4da-c2e135ee4907

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Date deposited: 26 May 2006
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 08:02

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Author: John Canning

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