As I go through individual chapters, I celebrate and become inspired by the relevance and timeliness, the level of innovation and the creative responses to current debates on Higher Education teaching and learning.  This, in a nutshell, is the core characteristic of the entire book. 

Not only does each chapter challenge university teachers to revisit the approach to thinking, conceptualising, and designing teaching and learning opportunities, the authors have also, re-directed conversations at institutional leadership on the ‘universities we need’. Individual chapters are penned with precision, theorised sufficiently, and data generation strategies used demonstrate high-level scholarly repertoire fitting respectability from peers. The auto-reflexive tone embedded in the book, accompanied by a deliberate commitment to self-critique, warrants attention from researchers committed to addressing epistemic access, academics dedicated to inducting the next generation into their disciplines, academic developers leading research and innovation in design of responsive curricula and participatory pedagogies, postgraduate students producing new knowledge, and teaching and learning leadership in higher education.

The high-level conceptual and theoretical engagement characteristic of each chapter, with simultaneous illustrative applications to ‘day-to-day’ teaching and learning engagements, both attest to each author’s reputable standing in their fields of study and intellectual stature.  Moreover, it is encouraging to note the level of passion, commitment, and zeal to matters of teaching and learning as well as assessment by authors from academic disciplines. In addition to being established researchers and postgraduate supervisors, academics whose work is already making ‘an in-road’ in the international arena, these contributors to the book demonstrate an outstanding commitment to the teaching and scholarship of their disciplines. To have professors and senior academics from various disciplines across faculties as well as senior academic developers reporting on outstanding research findings on teaching and learning in one book is a rare occurrence within the academy.  In this book there are even instances where both senior academics and academic developers are co-authoring a chapter, enabling disciplinary expertise and higher education studies cooperation in enhancing insight into teaching and learning for access, success and throughput. 

In my capacity as an NRF rated researcher and one of the directors at the Center for Teaching and Learning who opened the NWU Teaching and Learning Conference in 2021 (where most of the chapters in this book were presented), I had the privilege to review some of the chapters.  Drawing from the time I spent reviewing these chapters, I can safely say that the effort put forward by the authors indicates their clear commitment to the scholarship of teaching and learning.  One outstanding fascination for me is the way slide presentations delivered at the Conference were developed into extended, well-thought-out chapters worthy, not only of readership by colleagues at the North-West University but all university teachers, academic developers, researchers, and postgraduate students within and outside the borders of South Africa. Each chapter sets the context for further and deeper reflection on current teaching and learning practices in Higher Education. Among other things, these include conceptualisations of transformation and decolonisation of the curriculum, the contextualisation of assessment practices, complexities with online-hybrid teaching and learning design, and epistemic access issues as they relate to embedding disciplinary ethos into mainstream undergraduate pedagogy and postgraduate supervision.

While the NWU T&L Conference created an opportunity for academics and academic developers to present ideas towards developing insight, share learning and work towards consensus-based approaches to teaching and learning best-practice, the commitment evinced in each chapter leaves the reader with a coherent discourse core to the academic project.  Each chapter enables rich knowledge exchange, making it possible for changes in our thinking about teaching and learning to occur and revises attitudes towards students. My ‘one take-away’ from the book is commitment by each author to critical self-reflection, a ‘way of being’ we all continue to develop into as we navigate the ever-changing knowledge construction terrain.

Prof Emmanuel M. Mgqwashu, Director: Faculty Teaching and Learning Support, Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), North West University