Holiploigy – Navigating the complexity of teaching in Higher Education

The processes involved in teaching in higher education, as with schools, have on occasion become simplified to a dichotomy of being either 'transmission' or 'discovery' led. Such characterisations of teaching fail to engage with the context driven complexities of teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment. This opinion piece reflects upon the complexities involved and how they might be characterised and explained without reducing teaching and allied processes to simplistic frameworks. I argue that we need to develop holistic, process-led models of teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment, and associated systems for module and programme development and execution, a combined set of processes and principles that I refer to here as holiploigy.