Sensoria Special Edition on The future of higher education: Exploring the students’ voice: Editorial

This Special Edition of Sensoria: A Journal of Mind, Brain, and Culture presents a collection of papers in which a relatively recent pedagogical direction for universities is explored – a focus on learners rather than on the ‘sage on the stage’ (King, 1993). Until the 1990s, learning and teaching in universities worldwide tended to follow the sage on the stage model in which an ‘expert’ would inform students what they ‘should’ know about a topic. This technique would be used regardless of who the student cohort might be or what discipline area was being examined. However, over the last twenty-five years there has been a profound shift endeavouring to make university pedagogy student-centric and concentrate on the learner, rather than the imparter, of knowledge. The current compilation of articles explores an essential element of this shift – the need to focus on what students desire to assist them with their learning. It then goes further by exploring and presenting techniques and strategies that may be used to tap this student ‘voice’. Reasons why this shift has occurred are considered below, followed by an introduction to the assorted articles.