Sighting horizons of teaching in higher education

Abstract

This conceptual paper tackles the matter of teaching in higher education andproposes a concept of ‘horizons of teaching’. It firstly offers an overview of the consid-erable empirical literature around teaching—especially conceptions of teaching, approa-ches to teaching and teaching practices—and goes on to pose some philosophical andsocial theoretical considerations that open further the territory around teaching in uni-versity. Against this background, we propose the concept of ‘horizons of teaching’.Horizons of teaching provide a context in which it makes sense for teachers to givethemselves to the teaching enterprise and to go on giving themselves to teaching. Horizonsinclude diverse and intricate layers at both micro- and macro-levels that interact in apermanent and dynamic way; they involve persons and collectivities; and they concernstructures and agency. The paper concludes by proposing that horizons of teaching con-figure and delineate curricula and the pedagogical relationship in a way that might containa revolutionary potentiality in recasting teaching in higher education.