April 11, 2013, by Teaching at Nottingham

Finding common ground: a Humanities perspective

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Dr Neil Sinclair: “Too often academic disciplines are isolated in their own methodological approaches. This is a shame, since all academic work aims at increasing human understanding of the world, and insofar as different perspectives add to that understanding, talking multiple perspectives on a problem should be encouraged. But how is it best to integrate these perspectives? In this presentation I consider a number of possible (and compatible) ways for doing this in teaching, including a topic-based approach and a skills-based approach. I consider case studies (real and hypothetical) from the Humanities and challenges to subject integration (including maintaining subject-specific rigour and managing student expectations, particularly around assessment).”

Dr Neil Sinclair
School of Humanities

This presentation was given at the Curriculum Review conference: creating coherent programmes. It was part of a session addressing models of curriculum coherence where colleagues offered examples of the implementation of a range of approaches to coherence, and shared their experience of the process of curriculum design at programme level. The full programme is available on the Curriculum Review conference page.

The presentation was part of the Coherence across disciplines section where the sessions examined how common issues that resonate in more than one discipline can be embedded within their context, and how bringing perspectives from outside the discipline can add depth to study

Produced April 2013

Posted in Curriculum design