Real-World Learning in Higher Education

Autorentext

Charlie Watts is Associate Professor of Industry-Integrated Media Education and Associate Head for Global Engagement and Educational Partnerships at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He has over two decades of experience in designing, delivering, and researching real-world learning in higher education, with a particular interest in authenticity, professional practice, and the conditions that shape student learning.

Klappentext

Examining real-world learning as high-stakes pedagogy in higher education, this must-read title argues that real, authentic projects with real authentic clients, differ fundamentally from in-class simulated learning because they involve trust, uncertainty, and reputational consequence.

Drawing on sustained teaching practice, the book reframes professionalism as endurance rather than performance, and failure as something that must remain intelligible and survivable within education. It explores trust, ethical boundaries, invisible labour, and the quiet reliance on goodwill that underpins much real-world pedagogy. It provides a reflective, ethically grounded account of learning that reshapes identity and judgement long after assessment has ended. Ideal reading for higher education educators who design, deliver, or support learning that involves real-world projects, live briefs, external partners, or authentic assessment.

It will be of particular relevance to academics working in practice-based, professional, vocational, creative, and applied disciplines, where learning involves responsibility, uncertainty, and outcomes beyond the lecture theatre. The book provides these readers with insight into the lived realities of real-world pedagogy, helping to inform policy, workload, and support structures.

Inhalt

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of figures

1. Why Real-World Learning Now: The Problem of Assumption

2. What We Mean by Real: Credibility, Condition, and the Limits of Existing Frameworks

3. Designing for Uncertainty: Structure, Positioning, and the Limits of Control

4. Institutional Structures and Constraint

5. Professionalism, Effort, and Completion

6. Experiencing Real-World Learning: Disruption, Ownership, and the Gap Between Action and Understanding

7. Clients, Ethics, and External Partners: Condition, Containment, and the Negotiated Space of Real-World Learning

8. Labour and Visibility: Who Does the Work, and Who Is Seen

9. Employability, Capability, and the Limits of Visible Learning

10. Failure, Repair, and Limits: When Real-World Learning Does Not Go to Plan

11. Staying with the Work

Afterword

Index