The Practices of Using and Integrating Practice-Based Learning in Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter commences the discussion that then continues across the contributions of this monograph regarding how practice-based learning experiences (i.e. those in the circumstances of practice and usually outside of university settings) can be utilised and integrated within higher education courses in effective and sustainable ways. This discussion acknowledges that students’ learning through engagement in practice-based experiences is now and increasingly seen as being an essential component of higher education programs that are preparing graduates for entry into targeted occupations. The need for informed bases of teaching and learning to meet this demand grows as many of the existing concepts and practices within educational science cannot adequately inform the effective utilisation of students’ learning experiences outside of educational programs and institutions, nor their integration. Hence, teachers in universities have to develop and reflexively advance the capacities (i.e. understandings, procedures and dispositions) required for effectively utilising and integrating such experiences. Through doing so, these teachers and their practices can inform others and, in turn, educational science. This proposition, its premises and case is advanced here through a discussion about the nature and contributions of learning through practice, how they might best be aligned with higher education provisions and in ways that are sustainable and effective. It does this by drawing upon the processes and findings of a recent national teaching fellowship that comprised 20 projects that focused on the integration of practice experiences within higher education programmes across a range of disciplines within six Australian universities.