Theorising Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Research

Overview & Synopsis

This chapter explores the theorising practices of successful researchers in higher education. The biographical case studies use teaching and learning as their focus to provide four succinct accounts of how the researcher's thinking around their signature concepts evolved over time. They analyse the narrative that surrounds these signature concepts to understand what successful researchers do with their ideas to maximise their symbolic capital in the higher education research field. The researcher's experiences of theorising highlight the contextual factors that have influenced them as they tried to explain how they achieved the outcomes of their research. The chapter concludes with an overview of the beneficial strategies used in these four cases, so potential researchers can appreciate the approaches to theorising that are compatible with higher education research traditions. [For the complete volume, "Theory and Method in Higher Education Research II. International Perspectives on Higher Education Research. Volume 10," see ED600728.]