Challenging Pedagogic Norms: Engaging First-year Undergraduates in an Intensive Research Informed Learning Programme

Abstract

The University of Exeter introduced a co-curricular, intensive, interdisciplinary summer programme for first-year undergraduates across three University campuses. Students work with teams of research academics and postgraduates to explore one of twelve global social, economic and environmental challenges the world faces in the early twenty-first Century.

This chapter identifies some of the key features of the programme’s format and delivery, considers the challenges these features present to academics, professional staff and students, and reports on the outcomes of the programme.

To situate the case study more broadly, the role of structure and agency as influences on the evolution of the (informal) curriculum in research-rich contexts are discussed. In particular, the analysis considers the epistemological pressures that underlie curriculum change in Higher Education and influenced the development of this intervention at Exeter. Finally, the chapter reflects on the unstated ideologies and values that underpin this curriculum intervention with reference to the wider research literature. The author addresses the question of whether intensive co-curricular interventions, such as the one described in this chapter, provide a context which liberates teachers from the constraints imposed by the positivist, neoliberal epistemologies that widely influence the university experience of contemporary undergraduate students.