Learning to think together

In this paper I reflect on my experience as a member of the editorial executive board of Teaching in Higher Education between 1996 and 2005, during which period I was first reviews editor and then editor. The paper begins by outlining the editorial procedures established in the first 10 years of the journal and highlighting two major priorities in establishing pedagogy as a major field within higher education policy and practice: interdisciplinarity and internationality. The paper then opens up into a discussion of the challenges and opportunities posed by, on the one hand, successive research assessment regimes within higher education and, on the other, the corporatisation of the publishing industry. I argue that the combination of these two factors has had a significant effect on the opportunities open to academic workers for thinking together not only about their own pedagogic practice but about the implications of that practice for the wider social and political sphere. Teaching in Higher Education opens up potentially important spaces for thinking together about the nature and purpose of teaching and learning. But these remain highly contested spaces that academic workers are positioned both within and against. That positioning – as I suggest by way of conclusion – raises important questions for both academics and publishers. Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis.