With the rapid expansion of online learning as a dominant pedagogical approach in higher education, significant research has been undertaken to explore the impacts of internet-based technologies to promote student engagement. Current advances in online learning have fostered innovative, and often nuanced approaches to teaching and learning that have the potential to promote rich and potentially transformative learning outcomes for higher education students. However, there is a growing body of evidence that clearly highlights that online learning may have a deleterious impact on a student's sense of connection, leading to experiences of isolation and disempowerment. Such experiences call for an ongoing reimagination of the online teaching space to ensure that students maintain a strong sense of identity within their virtual educational community. This paper emphasises an approach to online learning that serves to foster positive engagement across the student lifecycle. Using Noddings' (2010) framework of Moral Education, we engaged in the process of critical reflection on our own teaching over time, using student data to support analyses. Based upon the outcomes of this longitudinal process, we propose an online pedagogy of care: a teaching orientation that challenges the dominant, often reactively driven learning and teaching practices influenced by the commodification of higher education internationally.

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Many universities in Australia and internationally now offer education degrees entirely online, without any requirement for face-to-face learning on university campuses. The transition to online learning has occurred rapidly, and has had particularly strong uptake in Initial Teacher Education. This paper examines the perspectives and experiences of eight academics in Australian higher education who teach creative arts courses to pre-service teachers via online modes of delivery. Research indicates that insufficient opportunities have existed for some time in adequately providing opportunities to pre-service teachers to develop the arts teaching and learning skills, and these concerns are potentially compounded in online contexts which do not readily permit the interpersonal, kinaesthetic and collaborative engagement with arts-specific materials and processes that are usually central to creative arts learning. Using in-depth interviews and thematic analysis, the researcher sought to understand the individual perspectives and experiences of arts academics who now deliver creative arts learning in teacher education online. The research reveals that arts learning must be significantly reimagined for the online learner, that the potential to do this can be realised, but that additional support will be required to ensure this is a consistent reality.

Online learning has been widely adopted in higher education but there is a need to better understand the nature of student engagement with online courses. For example, there are questions about whether students engage with courses as educators intend and what features of online courses engage students to enhance learning. Bringing together student and educator perspectives, this article reports on a study that identified ‘pedagogical touchpoints’ – opportunities within online courses for student engagement – to ascertain whether a better understanding of these could improve online course design and student engagement. Data were collected across three undergraduate online courses. Data analysis produced three key findings: mapping pedagogical touchpoints against dimensions of engagement reveals patterns that may inform enhanced course design, students’ engagement with pedagogical touchpoints varies according to their learning needs and desires, and mapping pedagogical touchpoints can inform course design at both conceptual and practical levels. Discussion of the findings highlights that purposeful design of online courses, including strategic planning for pedagogical touchpoints, can maximise the potential for student engagement and consequent learning.

Recent legislation in England has encouraged the use of disagreement resolution and mediation and emphasised the need to involve pupils in their own schooling. These policies apply in the educational system generally, but are particularly significant in the area of special educational needs (SEN). Kirstie Soar, a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of East London; Katie Burke, a PhD student at Salford University, Manchester; Katia Herbst, an independent researcher offering research and development services to the not‐for‐ profit sector; and Professor Irvine Gersch, Director of the MSc educational psychology programme at the University of East London, set out to examine how pupil involvement in informal disagreement resolution has developed across 11 English regions since its introduction. The research consisted of 12 in‐depth interviews with local education authority (LEA) SEN officers, mediators and parent partnership officers (PPOs) involved in informal special educational needs disagreement resolution. The aims of the study were to determine how far children were actually involved in mediation and what, if any, barriers existed which were seen to restrict such pupil involvement. A thematic analysis of interview content was conducted. Four major themes emerged, including: the distinction between direct and indirect pupil involvement; the importance of the child's view and how it is elicited; the role of other agencies; and other barriers to pupil involvement in informal disagreement resolution. Direct pupil involvement was found to be limited and variable, but indirect pupil involvement was more prevalent. In this article, the authors note a series of recommendations concerning pupil involvement in the mediation process and, in conclusion, put forward the implications of their work for future policy, practice and research.