Visualising Powerful Knowledge to Develop the Expert Student

Book excerpt: This book puts the structure and function of knowledge firmly in the driving seat of university curriculum development and teaching practice. Through the application of concept mapping, the structure of knowledge can be visualised to offer an explicit perspective on key issues such as curriculum design, student learning and assessment feedback. Structural visualisation allows a greater scrutiny of the qualitative characteristics of knowledge so that we can analyse students’ patterns of learning and match them to expert practice. Based on nearly two decades of research and direct observations of university teaching by the author, this book aims to offer a scholarly account of teacher development. It focusses on elements that will be of immediate utility to academics who want to develop their teaching to a level of adaptive experts, offering them greater autonomy in their role and a powerful understanding of teaching to escape the repressive routines of the traditional classroom. Rather than providing a comprehensive review of educational research, this book provides a route through selected theories that can be explored in practice by university teachers on their own or in groups. The book will help academics to identify the nature of powerful knowledge within their disciplines and consider ways that this may be used by students to become active and engaged learners through the manipulation and transformation of knowledge, and so become expert students.