A qualitative exploration of postgraduate students’ and lecturers’ perspectives on whether their experiences of higher education reflect an ‘Intellectually Humble Dialogic Space’

Thesis

My dissertation explores whether self-reported experiences of higher education from lecturers and postgraduate students reflect an ‘intellectually humble dialogic space’; this is a conceptual space representing a disposition to rigorously consider opposing ideas to beliefs held, where ideas are presented in a manner where they are rigorously considered to be true relative to alternatives; finally, it is a space where participants incorporate the most truthful ideas in developing their deeply held beliefs.

Utilising a pragmatic, qualitative approach, ten lecturers and ten postgraduate students in the social sciences participated in semi-structured interviews centred on whether their experiences of higher education reflected an intellectually humble dialogic space. Through a comparative thematic analysis inspired by Braun and Clarke (2007), results showed that lecturers are less certain of the positive epistemic status (or truth) of their beliefs compared to students. Students’ beliefs were mainly confirmed resulting in an increased motivation to act on their beliefs because of their experiences of higher education. Lecturers were also more favourable to disagreement, with students being described as intolerant towards differing views. Experiences reflected that higher education encouraged a harsh treatment of lecturers’ deeply held beliefs when they were students, but now (due to factors such as fear of complaint and precarity of employment) students deeply held beliefs are not challenged. Overall, the experiences of both lecturers and students did not reflect an intellectually humble dialogic space.

Suggestions for future research are made. The themes identified in this small scale, exploratory study could be used as a framework for investigating differing contexts of higher education in terms of their reflection of an intellectually humble dialogic space (or related concepts).

Authors: Godfrey, H

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-qmje6v0no
• Type of award: MSc taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: self-formation; dialogue; dialogic education; intellectual humility; higher education; intellectual freedom; humility
• Subjects: self-formation; dialogic education; intellectual humility; moral purpose of higher education