Learning from the first year of the Transformative Education/al Studies (TES) project

Abstract

The Transformative Education/al Studies project (TES) is a three-year, funded project led by researchers from three universities: a University of Technology, a Research-Intensive university, and a rural Comprehensive University. The project participants are academic staff members who are pursuing Masters and Doctoral studies and their supervisors. These participants, all engaged in self-study of their practice in Higher Education, form an inter-institutional, trans-disciplinary learning community. TES aims to enhance and study the development of self-reflexive pedagogic, research and supervision capacity among these participants. In this article, we make public our learning thus far about supporting an emerging postgraduate research learning community involving academic staff working and studying in three very different university contexts. The data sources comprise digital logbooks kept by participants, workshop evaluations, and the researchers' personal reflections and communications. Our analysis contributes to a body of academic work that explores how collaborative and social approaches to scholarship can enhance research capacity, productivity and quality in Higher Education. The conceptual underpinning of the article is that of reflexive ubuntu, which demands a consciousness of our developing "selves" as researchers and supervisors and of our interrelationships with other people.