Organised by the Teaching and Learning Innovation Centre (TALIC)
Details of the Event:
Date : 27 June 2024 (Thursday)
Time : 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Venue : Learning Lab, Room 321, 3/F Run Run Shaw Building, Main Campus, HKU
Speaker : Prof. Tai Peseta, Associate Professor, Western Sydney University, Australia
Facilitator : Dr. Peter Lau, Lecturer, TALIC, HKU
Abstract
From 2017-2022, Prof. Tai Peseta led a university-wide strategic curriculum transformation project called 21C Transforming Curriculum (21C TC) which involved hundreds of staff, at least fifty student partners, and ten or so external partners, all engaged in curriculum co-creation together. Framed by the concept of Partnership Pedagogy (Barrie & Pizzica, 2019), like many strategic projects of this kind, when the funding nears an end, the frenzy of activity to evaluate its outcomes and outputs against a set of metrics, becomes especially heightened. Witness the scene: the search for data and evidence to anchor claims; countless presentations to stakeholders and partners; an expectation that the learning from the project becomes seamlessly embedded into the ‘business as usual’ habits, routines, rhythms, regularities of the university. Not only that, stories and whispers circulate about the depth of change and the extent of transformation; in some cases, artefacts find their way into the socio-material spaces of practice; and terms like ‘legacy’ haunt the project’s remains. For staff, these kinds of strategic projects are often par for the course (universities are constantly refreshing their curriculum in one way or another); for student partners however, there is a pedagogical task at hand to apprehend the process they have been part of. What does the process of contributing to strategic curriculum transformation look, and feel like, to students? What change do they experience, if any? What have they learned? What ought to be done differently next time from their perspective? In this seminar, Prof. Peseta focuses on the experiences of her colleagues – the team of student partners who have worked alongside her – to ask critical questions about partnership, identity, relationality, judgement, quality, and the University.
About the Speaker
Prof. Tai Peseta is an associate professor at Western Sydney University (WSU) in Australia, and she is Academic Lead, Student-Staff Partnership currently located in the Educational Partnerships and Quality Portfolio. She joined WSU in 2017 to lead the university’s 21C Transforming Curriculum Project following appointments at the universities of Sydney, Melbourne, and La Trobe in a range of teaching and learning centres. She is a higher education researcher with grants and publications in doctoral education and supervision development, academic development, curriculum renewal and transformation, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Her recent research and practice is in the intersection between the field of critical university studies and student-staff partnership, and their capacity to support students to cultivate a critical idea of the university.
For information, please contact:
Ms. Canice Mok, TALIC
Phone: 3917 6069; Email: tsmok@hku.hk
