Editor’s Introduction 
 

 
Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 10, No 3, 2017 

 

This issue of Compass is delightfully varied in content and tone, living up well to the journal’s 

title. One of its opinion pieces considers how accelerated degrees need to evolve in a 

marketised Higher Education context; another takes a cynical stance to that very context; a 

contrasting third identifies an aspect of primary education policy and practice as the source 

of a possibly chronic failure by some students to use punctuation properly in their written 

submissions. Contrasting case studies demonstrate: the need for higher education 

institutions to understand better how to value those pursuing a doctorate and thus to 

engender in them identity and a true sense of belonging; the potency of play in transforming 

the way universities, their staff and their students interact, with correspondingly positive 

impact on teaching and learning, as well as on collaboration and morale. 

The implications for the expansion of accelerated degree courses in higher education are 

helpfully explored by Iain Kitchener in his opinion piece, ‘Are Accelerated Degrees the 

Future for Higher Education?’ Reduced costs for students and quicker access to the 

graduate job market are significant drivers for this to happen, but the Iain argues that a 

simple reduction of three years into two would be financially untenable in terms of staffing 

costs and, though accelerated, would not guarantee proportionate student learning gain. 

Fundamentally, the success of accelerated learning in the UK context is, Iain says, 

dependent upon adequate funding to support the well-researched creation of a relevant and 

appropriate pedagogy and thereby to ensure the development of academic skills, subject 

knowledge and effective learner transformation; furthermore, a compressed course must be 

achievable within the normal academic year and not impinge upon the summer period used 

by teachers for research and by students for earning money. To bring positive outcomes, a 

curriculum of this kind might well rely on such approaches as blended learning and 

transformative learning theory.  

In the market state, argues Patrick Ainley in ‘The management of business or the business 

of management?’, there is a gradual process of devaluation and deprofessionalising: 

traditional academic courses are being reduced to business-orientated activities; students 

choose Business as the means of acquiring the skill sets to meet employment requirements, 

but eventually lose out to growing numbers of managers in an increasingly automated 

environment. Patrick comments that Management degrees ought to provide access to a 

higher level in the hierarchy of management, business and administration, but, in reality, 

managers are likewise reduced to semi-professional roles, being less expert in the context of 

high-performing technology. The market state resolves itself into a ‘consolidation state’, run 

in the interests of capital investors where the only real managers are the ex-politicians and 

senior civil servants who use their positions to secure elite boardroom roles, for which they 

are arguably the least qualified.  

The deployment of the ‘punctuation pyramid’ as a means of encouraging primary school 

language learners to raise the ‘level’ (in National Curriculum terms) of their writing by 

choosing alternative punctuation marks from an artificial hierarchy of punctuation is regarded 

by Mark Betteney in as responsible over time for the subsequent inability of students in 

higher education to punctuate properly. In the opinion piece, ‘Where have all the full stops 

gone? The dangers of striving for ‘University-level’ punctuation’, it is noted that instead of 

using the marks most appropriate to the conveying of their meaning in written submissions, 

many students still retain their early-acquired belief that one punctuation mark is somehow 

superior to another, regardless of its real purpose, with consequent deleterious impact upon 



Editor’s Introduction 
 

 
Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 10, No 3, 2017 

 

their work. Mark’s piece draws on some examples of the attitudes of real students, who have 

been deluded by inappropriate primary education policy and practice into believing that the 

more complex the punctuation, the better the writing, despite their own intended meaning. 

Mark, as a marker of otherwise sound and perhaps insightful student work, is at pains to 

debunk the punctuation pyramid policy and to challenge the assumption of writers of books 

on academic literacy that students reach higher education in perfect command of 

punctuation skills. 

How do PhD ‘students’ see themselves? They are beyond taught undergraduate and 

postgraduate degrees but have yet (if this is indeed their aim) to take up a role as a full 

academic: is their self-perception one of ‘student’, ‘researcher’, ‘teacher’ or ‘member of 

staff’? A case study by Martin Compton and myself seeks, through the lens of self-identity, to 

discover how those in doctoral education – whether they be in unhelpful limbo or positive 

liminal space – really feel about their role/s and considers how an adequate understanding 

of their feelings about themselves can only help to improve institutional support for them and 

create greater consistency in the PhD experiences they have. Only then will their 

supervisors and their universities be able to ensure that they feel properly valued and have a 

true sense of belonging. Martin and I asked registered postgraduate researchers on the 

Postgraduate Teaching, Learning, and Assessment course at the University of Greenwich to 

create personal pie charts depicting the proportions of their roles as they saw them; the 

findings may have been raw impressions, but any reader will become absorbed in the 

messages they convey, which have serious implications for higher education institutions 

regarding identity and belonging amongst such colleagues. 

The University of Winchester’s ‘Play and Creativity Festival’ aimed to: celebrate and re-

energise teaching and learning; find alternative ways of communicating complex ideas and 

important messages; generate fresh perspectives and new ideas; build connections and 

community. Alison James, author of this lively, personal and absolutely compelling portrayal 

of the power of play to enthuse large numbers of disparate staff and students may feel that 

not everything worked perfectly, but the case study certainly confirms that the aims were 

more than fulfilled. ‘Why play matters in a world of REF, TEF and What the Jeff’ is a heart-

warming account of the process of planning for the event and of carrying out the various 

stages of preparation, giving insights into the astonishing range of activities eventually 

undertaken and providing some of the hugely positive reactions of participants. The interest 

generated beyond Winchester and the fact that the Festival is to run again, next time 

including the local community, are testament to how much play can transform professional 

practice, generate a sense of well-being (even at a very busy time of the academic year) and 

guarantee downright fun for all those involved. Readers of this case study will no doubt wish 

to access the blog and film records of the Festival. 

The coming together of such a wide range of opinions and topics covered in this issue of 

Compass underlines how conversations concerning teaching and learning continue to 

surprise us, engage us, and provoke critical debate. I hope you enjoy reading through the 

opinion pieces and case studies as much as we have enjoyed putting this issue together.  

 

Danielle Tran 

Editor