Teachers’ conceptions of knowledge structures and pedagogic practices in higher education

Research and writing on higher education (HE) curriculum has tended to lack general overview or approach (Tight, 2003) and has received relatively limited sociological attention (Kelly, 2004). Why this is the case is unclear, possibly reflecting either the inadequacy of established curriculum theory when applied to HE or a lack of coherent conceptions of curriculum in what may be regarded as a young field (Knight, 2002). It has rarely featured in policy analyses of higher education (Barnett, 1990; Barnett and Griffin, 1997; Gellert, 1999; Kogan et al., 2000). Given almost universal effort to align HE institutions with the needs of national economies in the hope of increasing international competitiveness (Ensor, 2004a; Karseth, 2005), this is an interesting absence. My aim was to explore the role of university teachers as curriculum developers, examining how their ideas about the curriculum affected the way they understood teaching and learning and how curriculum decisions were made (Geirsdóttir, 2008). I wanted to approach this task from a disciplinary and cultural standpoint in comparing how university teachers within different disciplinary fields made curriculum decisions and which factors or forces, external, disciplinary or institutional, were perceived by them as important for their curriculum planning. The study was conducted at the University of Iceland, which in 2010 had 643 teaching staff and 14, 139 students, spread across five academic schools and 25 faculties offering 165 lines of study at the undergraduate level and over 200 at the graduate level in all main disciplines. Despite its relatively small size, as the oldest, national university of Iceland, it has experienced much of the political, social and cultural change that has taken place in the global system of higher education (Jónasson, 2004).