Teacher Educators' Perception-Practice Tensions in the Enactment of Intellectual Virtues Pedagogy

Overview & Synopsis

Higher education faces the challenge of preparing graduates who need to keep pace with ever-evolving discipline expertise with the capacity to pivot, adapt and innovate through uncertainty and change. Teachers in higher education in Australia and internationally, however, are simultaneously responding to program accountabilities that may serve to distract them from this critical purpose. Drawing on intellectual virtues as a means of conceptualising these graduate attributes, this study uses an online survey to explore how 18 Australian higher education teachers from the School of Education in one university perceived they taught the nine intellectual virtues in their courses. Using simple descriptive statistics and thematic analysis, findings indicated that their largely positive perceptions were not necessarily matched by their practice. This perception-practice tension has implications for graduate preparedness and, by association, program development and delivery in education and other disciplines similarly impacted by neoliberal pressures and changing graduate needs.