Rola Ajjawi
Biographic Data
| ID | 1501807 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rola Ajjawi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rola |
| FAMILY NAME | Ajjawi |
| SIGNATURE | AJJAWI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Deakin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0651-3870 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 71 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 70 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Feeling higher education futures
Digitally enabled technologies and pedagogies, including the use of AI technologies, have become integral to higher education. Despite this, online teaching continues to give rise to particularly strong and variable affective responses, responses which orient the academics who feel them towards possible futures, whether desired or feared. In this paper, we consider what affective imaginaries might be informing the future of online teaching within…
An intersectional analysis of students with disabilities’ exam experiences
This study examined how Australian students with disabilities’ intersecting identity positions shaped and were shaped by their exam experiences. We conducted semi-structured interviews with twelve university students registered with disability services and sharing additional minoritised identities. These were analysed to explore structural, political, and representational intersectionality. Thinking with theory, we illustrated how students’ ident…
With coffee and curiosity
Hello. Welcome. Guten Tag. Bonjour. Editor‐in‐chief, Rola Ajjawi offers her thoughts on taking the reins at Medical Education
Pick me, pick me
Collaboration is a regular part of medical education research. There has been minimal formalised unpicking of features which may promote enjoyable and effective collaboration. This paper focuses on the social qualities of individuals to highlight important aspects to consider when assembling collaborative research teams. We draw on the concept of persona from celebrity studies research to formulate five Famousness Dimensions (FD). Then we use a b…
Labour upon labour
BACKGROUND: To date, advancing social justice in medical education has largely focused on recruitment and numerical representation of equity deserving groups. However, students recruited to diversify the profession often find themselves in an exclusionary environment that overlooks their multiple identities. The aim of this study was to illuminate underrepresented students' experiences of medical school to inform supports for these deserving stud…
Beyond a critique of grades
Grades have been criticised for as long as they have existed. For at least a century, scholars have claimed that grades are inaccurate and unreliable; they provide overly simplistic reductions of student achievement; and they orient students towards competition rather than learning. For these reasons and many others, academic research communities have argued that traditional grading practices hinder higher education institutions from achieving th…
What counts as quality in health professions education
This editorial reflects on health professions education research and its future potential
Reflections on the 2026 award‐winning papers
Celebrating the most downloaded papers in Medical Education for 2025! #MedEd
The politics of student belonging
Belonging is considered to be a positive foundation for students’ well-being and success at university; however, in this article, we argue that it is time to think about belonging more critically. This research highlights how students experience and create multiple belongings. Drawing upon empirical data from interviews and video blogs with students in the UK and Australia, we identify how calls for integrated, uniform, approaches to building bel…
The multiplicity of authenticity in higher education assessment
This special issue tackles the challenge of whether authentic assessment remains educationally valuable given its multiplicity, subjectivity and inherent contradictions. We sought to trouble the notion that authentic assessment is only a goal, a final product, or an adjective to describe an assessment task; rather, that it could also be framed as an emergent process, and a way in which learners engage with assessment and how it shapes their futur…
Caught in a loop? Investigating the interplay between time and emotions for university students
This article explores the significant yet under-researched relationship between students’ experiences of time and their emotions during university studies. We frame our study through two existing theoretical concepts of time, that of timescapes and time-as-affect, to illuminate the subjective, contextual nature of time and how students’ experiences of time can produce strong emotions, permeating both their memories and future behaviour towards th…
The house of cards
Globally, correlations are reported between lower academic attainment and university students being a member of an ‘equity’ or ‘historically under-represented’ group. We seek to illuminate how this so-called awarding gap might transpire. Taking a longitudinal qualitative approach, 35 undergraduate students from equity and diverse backgrounds at an Australian university participated in a series of interviews. Using a metaphorical framing, we liken…
Considerations of equity, diversity and inclusion in peer reviews conducted for Medical Education
What equity, diversity and inclusion issues are commented upon by Med Educ's reviewers? This commentary offers an analysis and recommendations for authors, reviewers and editors alike
Constructive dialogue
The editors detail how Medical Education's 2025 State of the Science issue aimed to stimulate cross‐cultural dialogue for the betterment of our field
Breaking down binaries
Rola Ajjawi, incoming Editor‐in‐Chief, outlines how Medical Education celebrated International Women's Day by outlining how we can accelerate action by embracing an imperative of change
Artificial intelligence and gender equity
Feedback, learning and becoming
A critical review of psychological safety in clinical learning environments
BACKGROUND: In recent years the perceived need to ensure the psychological safety of learners has become an imperative. A range of conceptualisations appear to be in use, which could create confusion among medical educators and undermine the learning outcomes psychological safety is meant to improve. METHODS: In this critical literature review, we investigated how the concept of psychological safety is used, identifying the various appeals to the…
Feedback practices in clinical placement
Health clinicians are required to make use of feedback to form effective judgements and deliver efficacious health care. In health education, clinical placements provide an opportunity for students to translate knowledge to practise and develop expertise. During placements students are expected to engage with and act on feedback in order to improve and demonstrate competence. Increasingly, in the assessment literature, students’ ability to judge …
Coming to belong in the university through small acts of connection
Belonging is recognised as an important factor in student well-being, persistence and success at university, particularly for first-year students. Belonging is often described as an individual basic human need; to feel accepted, valued, and connected with peers, teaching staff, the curriculum, the university or places and communities. However, less is known about what students do to foster belonging for themselves. This paper adopts a relational …
Hero, survivor or stuck
Academic failure is commonplace in higher education. Some students persist and go on to complete their courses. However, some do not, and this can create problems for themselves and the institutions in which they are enrolled. If we could understand students’ lived experiences of academic failure and persistence, it may be possible to design strategies that assist others to more effectively navigate the demands of higher education. A narrative in…
Life-on-campus or my-time-and-screen
Numbers of online postgraduate coursework students are increasing within higher education and this raises questions of identity – what being a student means to this more mature cohort. This in-depth qualitative investigation explores postgraduate student identities within online learning. We conducted interviews (14) and collected completed longitudinal audio diaries from students (3) enrolled in a range of postgraduate programs. We interpreted t…
Work-integrated learning for students with disabilities
The global push towards widening participation for equity cohorts, including students with disabilities, is promising, but it is yet to translate into improved employment experiences. In this commentary, we highlight what higher education institutions must now do to drive meaningful change and better support students with disabilities’ workforce transitions. In doing so, we advocate for a much-needed change towards inclusive work-integrated learn…
When I say … artificial intelligence
AI is more than a technology, it's also an interaction, explain @margaret_bea and @r_ajjawi in the most recent "When I say ... "
Unravelling epistemic injustice in medical education
Discourses of artificial intelligence in higher education
Artificial intelligence (AI) holds significant implications for higher education; however, references to AI in the literature are often vague and open to debate. In order to understand how to progress AI-related research and analysis, this critical review systematically searched top higher education journals for references to the term ‘artificial intelligence’. We reviewed definitions and conducted a discourse analysis of included texts. Our find…
Using Hermeneutic Phenomenology to Investigate How Experienced Practitioners Lear n to Communicate Clinical Reasoning
This paper is primarily targeted at doctoral students and other researchers considering using hermeneutic phenomenology as a research strategy. We present interpretive paradigm research designed to investigate how experienced practitioners learn to communicate their clinical reasoning in professional practice. Twelve experienced physiotherapy practitioners participated in this research. Using hermeneutic phenomenology enabled access to a phenomen…
Belonging as situated practice
This article offers a rethinking of a fundamental area of higher education research and practice: the concept of belonging. Extending the considerable international research attending to belonging, we suggest that normative narratives often contain a number of omissions. Such omissions include a consideration of the experiences of those students who may not wish to, or who cannot, belong, as well as a questioning of the very boundaries of belongi…
Conceptualising responsibility and hostility within work-integrated learning placements for students with disabilities
The expectation for universities to support students’ employability through work-integrated learning placements demands investigation into how opportunities are inclusive to students from a diversity of backgrounds. In this paper, we explore the experiences of students with disabilities during work placements, drawing on qualitative data collected through six focus groups with students (n = 27). Analysed through the frame of stigma, the results s…
Belonging as flickering and in flux in academic work
In this article, we explore the concept of belonging and its utility as a means for understanding academics’ experiences of working in the academy. Transformative changes have reorientated academic work in recent years and continue to do so as we grapple with what it means to work and live in a post-digital, post-covid, world. We engage a collective biography methodology to highlight the embodied spatial-material assemblages in which belonging ca…
Exploring the experiences of students with disabilities in work-integrated learning
Work-integrated learning (WIL) or university placements are valuable opportunities for students to apply their knowledge in an authentic work setting and help support their transition from university to employment. However, as our study evidenced, students with disability face significant and unique barriers to securing and completing WIL placements. In this study, we surveyed students with disability at an Australian university (n = 132) to expl…
Measuring what matters
The increasing prominence of neoliberal agendas in international higher education has led to greater weight being ascribed to student satisfaction, and the national surveys through which students evaluate courses of study. In this article, we focus on the evaluation of feedback processes. Rather than the transmission of information from teacher to student, greater recognition of the fundamental role of the learner in seeking, generating, and usin…
Researching Practice
Researching practice: A discourse on qualitative methodologies explores issues, strategies and challenges associated with researching practice. The authors bring a wealth of research practice wisdom and experience to this task. The book provides critical and creative input to the discourse on qualitative research methodologies. It is divided into four sections. The first section explores the issues that frame qualitative research on practice in t…
The “Educational Alliance” as a Framework for Reconceptualizing Feedback in Medical Education
Feedback has long been considered a vital component of training in the health professions. Nonetheless, it remains difficult to enact the feedback process effectively. In part, this may be because, historically, feedback has been framed in the medical education literature as a unidirectional content-delivery process with a focus on ensuring the learner's acceptance of the content. Thus, proposed solutions have been organized around mechanistic, e…
Using Hermeneutic Phenomenology to Investigate How Experienced Practitioners Lear n to Communicate Clinical Reasoning
This paper is primarily targeted at doctoral students and other researchers considering using hermeneutic phenomenology as a research strategy. We present interpretive paradigm research designed to investigate how experienced practitioners learn to communicate their clinical reasoning in professional practice. Twelve experienced physiotherapy practitioners participated in this research. Using hermeneutic phenomenology enabled access to a phenomen…
Shedding the cobra effect
CONTEXT: Qualitative research is widely accepted as a legitimate approach to inquiry in health professions education (HPE). To secure this status, qualitative researchers have developed a variety of strategies (e.g. reliance on post-positivist qualitative methodologies, use of different rhetorical techniques, etc.) to facilitate the acceptance of their research methodologies and methods by the HPE community. Although these strategies have support…
Researching feedback dialogue
A variety of understandings of feedback exist in the literature, which can broadly be categorised as cognitivist information transmission and socio-constructivist. Understanding feedback as information transmission or ‘telling’ has until recently been dominant. However, a socio-constructivist perspective of feedback posits that feedback should be dialogic and help to develop students’ ability to monitor, evaluate and regulate their learning. This…
Developing evaluative judgement
Evaluative judgement is the capability to make decisions about the quality of work of oneself and others. In this paper, we propose that developing students’ evaluative judgement should be a goal of higher education, to enable students to improve their work and to meet their future learning needs: a necessary capability of graduates. We explore evaluative judgement within a discourse of pedagogy rather than primarily within an assessment discours…
Developing Evaluative Judgement in Higher Education
Examining the nature and effects of feedback dialogue
Research has conventionally viewed feedback from the point of view of the input, thus analysing only one side of the feedback relationship. More recently, there has been an increased interest in understanding feedback-as-talk. Feedback dialogue has been conceptualised as the dynamic interplay of three dimensions: the cognitive, the social-affective and the structural. We sought to explore the interactional features of each dimension and their int…
Using video‐reflexive ethnography to understand complexity and change practice
Ethnography, methodology
Although they share a common root, the words methodology and methods have distinct implications. Ajjawi and Monrouxe strive to clarify the words for the sake of enabling epistemological, ontological and axiological alignment in research
Aligning assessment with the needs of work-integrated learning
Work-integrated learning (WIL) is a feature of university courses, both in professional areas, where it is commonplace, but also across many different disciplines. Assessment of WIL can be complex as it involves parties and settings external to the university, and it can be problematic because of difficulties in aligning learning activities during placements with what is or can be assessed by the university. This paper explores the relationship b…
Feedback That Helps Trainees Learn to Practice Without Supervision
Feedback pedagogies and research tend to focus on immediate corrective actions rather than learning for the longer term. This approach means that feedback may not support trainees who are managing complex, competing, and ambiguous practice situations, often with limited supervision. There is an opportunity to consider how feedback can help medical trainees sustain their own development into the future, including when they have completed formal tr…
The applicability of generalisability and bias to health professions education's research
The problem with solutions
Ever wondered why academics make things so difficult? Ajjawi and Eva explain with their introduction of the 2021 State of the Science issue and this year's theme of Solution‐ism
Can a rubric do more than be transparent? Invitation as a new metaphor for assessment criteria
‘Transparency’ is frequently invoked when describing assessment criteria in higher education. However, there are limitations to the metaphor: ‘transparent’ representations give the illusion that everything can (and should) be explicated, and that students are ‘seeing through’ to the educators’ expectations. Drawing from sociomaterial perspectives on standards, an argument is made for a different way of conceptualising assessment criteria. ‘Invita…
Emotion as reflexive practice
Promoting inclusivity in health professions education publishing
A taskforce established by Medical Education asks readers to engage in discussion about how the journal and field can do better to ensure that health professional education publishing is inclusive of diverse knowledge and perspectives
The influence of psychological safety on feedback conversations in general practice training
Navigating feedback practices across learning contexts
Student feedback practices have been primarily discussed within a context of the particular course or unit of study. Little attention has been paid to how students navigate their feedback practices as they progress through different learning contexts and whether they apply known feedback strategies in new settings. To open exploration of this issue, case studies of five participants were studied over different courses – undergraduate, direct-entr…
An empirical study of student action from ipsative design of feedback processes
Feedback is justified when it has a positive influence on students’ subsequent performance. Opportunities for student action need therefore to be consciously designed if feedback is to influence learning. In this paper, we discuss how ipsative design of feedback processes, i.e. involving comparison of a student’s current performance with a previous similar task, can promote action from feedback. This design-based research was conducted with Engli…
Feedback that works
Despite feedback being considered important to learning, its potential is rarely fully realised. Promoting learning through feedback in open-ended written tasks (e.g. essays and reports) is a complex endeavour that requires students who are motivated to identify and utilise appropriate information. We set out to understand the mechanisms that enable feedback interventions to work, for whom and in what contexts. Using a realist review research met…
Discourses of artificial intelligence in higher education
Artificial intelligence (AI) holds significant implications for higher education; however, references to AI in the literature are often vague and open to debate. In order to understand how to progress AI-related research and analysis, this critical review systematically searched top higher education journals for references to the term ‘artificial intelligence’. We reviewed definitions and conducted a discourse analysis of included texts. Our find…
Belonging as situated practice
This article offers a rethinking of a fundamental area of higher education research and practice: the concept of belonging. Extending the considerable international research attending to belonging, we suggest that normative narratives often contain a number of omissions. Such omissions include a consideration of the experiences of those students who may not wish to, or who cannot, belong, as well as a questioning of the very boundaries of belongi…
Measuring what matters
The increasing prominence of neoliberal agendas in international higher education has led to greater weight being ascribed to student satisfaction, and the national surveys through which students evaluate courses of study. In this article, we focus on the evaluation of feedback processes. Rather than the transmission of information from teacher to student, greater recognition of the fundamental role of the learner in seeking, generating, and usin…
Assessment for inclusion
Assessment has multiple purposes, one of which is to judge if students have met outcomes at the requisite level. Underperformance in assessment is frequently positioned as a problem of the student and attributed to student diversity and/or background characteristics. However, the assessment might also be inequitable and therefore exclude students inappropriately. To be inclusive, assessment design needs to be reconsidered, and educators should lo…
Psychology (57 works) · Sociology (41 works) · Pedagogy (39 works) · Computer Science (26 works) · Political science (25 works) · Medicine (22 works) · Higher education (21 works) · Mathematics education (21 works) · Student Assessment and Feedback (21 works) · Innovations in Medical Education (20 works)