Margaret Bearman
Biographic Data
| ID | 307247 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Margaret Bearman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Margaret |
| FAMILY NAME | Bearman |
| SIGNATURE | BEARMAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Deakin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6862-9871 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 78 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 78 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Unveiling disparities: Exploring the gender gap in digital literacy among faculty in a higher educational medical institute (Digi-GAP), a mixed-methods study
BACKGROUND: Digital literacy is increasingly integral to medical education, yet gender disparities may affect faculty engagement. This exploratory study examined gender-based differences in digital literacy among non-clinical faculty at a premier Indian medical institution, aiming to identify disparities and inform targeted interventions. METHODS: A mixed-methods exploratory design was employed, integrating a structured online survey and in-depth…
Feeling higher education futures: Affective imaginaries of online teaching for higher education leaders
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…
The question of efficiency: Teaching and technology in higher education
In this article, we examine the notion of efficiency and the discourses that surround its use in higher education. In recent years, the call for digitally enhanced efficiency has begun to dominate conversations around teaching and learning; educational technology in its various forms is framed as having the capacity to relieve the labour of teaching. We consider what might be lost through this conception of education, how efficiency versus relati…
Time, emotions and moral judgements: How university students position GenAI within their study
The emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) in higher education has prompted considerable discussion within the research community. Despite their centrality, students’ perspectives remain underexplored. We investigated how students position GenAI in relation to their studies, conducting focus groups with 79 students across four Australian universities. Taking a sociotechnical stance and employing reflexive thematic analysis, we identified three primar…
Narrative candour: Learning from diverse stories of imperfect medical practice
Grading in an age of assessment reform: The elephant in the room
Higher education sectors worldwide have largely adopted a rhetoric of assessment redesign, calling for fundamental ‘rethinking’, ‘reforming’ and ‘reimagining’ of assessment. This rhetoric is particularly evident in the so-called age of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). But what about grades? In this conceptual study, we address the elephant in the room, grading: a large looming presence that is nonetheless absent from conversation about…
The wicked problem of AI and assessment
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has created significant assessment challenges in higher education. Universities and teachers have responded to these in various ways, including by way of new policies, revised assessment formats, and technological safeguards. These responses are typically predicated on an assumption that AI in assessment is a problem that can be solved if only the right approach can be found. However, in this paper we ar…
The care-full craft of feedback in an age of generative AI
The disruptive and transformative presence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly reshaping education and learning. In this paper, we consider how GenAI is redefining what it means for students and educators to engage in feedback encounters, raising questions not only about what matters in feedback, but also about the very values that underpin meaningful learning. Taking stock of this significant shift, we examine what we know a…
Feeling AI: Circulating emotions, institutional climates, and moral boundaries in student use of AI
This study investigates how students emotionally and morally engage with artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education (HE). Through a sociotechnical lens of AI and drawing on a Sara Ahmed’s frame of affective economies, we report on a national survey ( n = 8021) with qualitative focus groups ( n = 79) to explore the emotional textures of student experiences. Quantitative findings reveal strong co-occurrences of optimism with excitement, refle…
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…
A Sociology of Artefacts in Academic Practice: Everyday Encounters of Technologies in Use
Digital technologies now pervade all areas of education, and EdTech actors increasingly configure society and educational practices in ways that are political, practical, and ideological. There is a need to understand digitalisation in critical ways, including how technologies reshape both educational practices and educators themselves. In this article, we examine how technologies act as more than mundane tools: pushing back, shaping action, and …
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…
Characteristics of productive feedback encounters in online learning
Understanding how students engage with feedback is often reduced to a study of feedback messages that sheds little light on effects. Using the emerging notion of feedback encounters as an analytical lens, this study examines what characterizes productive feedback encounters when learning online. Drawing from a cross-national digital ethnographic dataset, a qualitative analysis categorized feedback encounters within this dataset: While most encoun…
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: Equity-group students’ experiences of structural inequity in higher education
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…
Integrating digital technologies into teaching embodied knowledge in the context of physical examination
Artificial intelligence and gender equity: An integrated approach for health professional education
Feedback, learning and becoming: Narratives of feedback in complex performance challenges
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…
Navigating the discomfort dilemma in work-based assessment
This conceptual paper reflects on the role of discomfort in work-based assessment based on a joint keynote address at the 2025 MedEd on the Edge conference. The authors draw together findings from several of their own qualitative studies and locate this integration in the broader literature. They consider when and how discomfort can be either productive or unproductive during work-based assessment and how supervisors and trainees contribute to it…
Generative AI and higher education: A review of claims from the first months of ChatGPT
The release of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT renewed discussions about how AI would upend higher education. This paper presents a critical analysis of “grey literature” claims made in the first months after ChatGPT was made public, exploring what these discussions might mobilise in practice. We identified articles for inclusion through a systematic search of five prominent higher education sector outlets. The included articles …
Academics’ intention to sustain new teaching practices after the Covid-19 pandemic: Examined through the theory of planned behaviour
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education teachers, having transitioned to new teaching methodologies, including online learning and modified assessment strategies, face the question: Do they intend to revert to pre-pandemic ways of operating or retain their new practices? A university-wide invitation with an incentive resulted in 63 academics from all four faculties of the university participating in this study. Using the Theory of Plann…
Authentic assessment: From panacea to criticality
Authentic assessment is often positioned as an educational panacea, invoked in response to a broad range of complex problems. This paper considers authentic assessment in relation to three key challenges: preparing graduates for the future, cheating, and inclusion. Despite literature supporting its potential benefits, there is limited evidence on the relationship between authentic assessment and these challenges. Through an uncritical blending of…
Comparing Generative AI and teacher feedback: Student perceptions of usefulness and trustworthiness
The rapid integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) into educational contexts has presented both opportunities and challenges for students seeking and using feedback. While AI-generated feedback can offer increased access, timely responses and personalised insights, concerns about the quality of AI-generated feedback still persist, including issues of bias, factual inaccuracies, and homogenisation. This study investigates how stud…
Discourses of artificial intelligence in higher education: A critical literature review
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…
Clinical Psychology Students’ Experiences of a Pilot Objective Structured Clinical Examination
There is a need to improve methods used to assess students’ clinical skills in postgraduate clinical psychology training, but research into the use of new competency‐based assessments are sparse. The current study examines the potential application of the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) to clinical psychology training. Commonly used in medical training, the OSCE requires students to demonstrate clinical skills across a number of …
Belonging as flickering and in flux in academic work: A collective biography
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…
Reframing assessment research: Through a Practice Perspective
Assessment as a field of investigation has been influenced by a limited number of perspectives. These have focused assessment research in particular ways that have emphasised measurement, or student learning or institutional policies. The aim of this paper is to view the phenomenon of assessment from a practice perspective drawing upon ideas from practice theory. Such a view places assessment practices as central. This perspective is illustrated …
The assessment challenge of social and collaborative learning in higher education
There is a general tension between the individualised nature of current assessment practices in higher education and a collaborative approach to learning. This results in many dilemmas for educators as they try to balance academic integrity concerns and student preferences with social or collaborative assessment practices, including peer assessment, group assignments and direct assessment of teamwork or collaboration. This paper argues that focus…
Clinical Psychology Students’ Experiences of a Pilot Objective Structured Clinical Examination
There is a need to improve methods used to assess students’ clinical skills in postgraduate clinical psychology training, but research into the use of new competency‐based assessments are sparse. The current study examines the potential application of the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) to clinical psychology training. Commonly used in medical training, the OSCE requires students to demonstrate clinical skills across a number of …
Qualitative synthesis and systematic review in health professions education
Context Formal qualitative synthesis is the process of pooling qualitative and mixed‐method research data, and then drawing conclusions regarding the collective meaning of the research. Qualitative synthesis is regularly used within systematic reviews in the health professions literature, although such use has been heavily debated in the general literature. This controversy arises in part from the inherent tensions found when generalisations are …
Prefigurement, identities and agency
Evaluative judgements take place in a specific assessment context; they are not generic approaches to learning. Making an evaluative judgement should therefore allow students to engage with criteria of disciplinary quality. In doing so, students may grasp what Shulman terms the surface, deep and implicit structures of a discipline. This chapter explores the role of agency and disciplinary identity with respect to evaluative judgements. Practical …
Reframing assessment research: Through a Practice Perspective
Assessment as a field of investigation has been influenced by a limited number of perspectives. These have focused assessment research in particular ways that have emphasised measurement, or student learning or institutional policies. The aim of this paper is to view the phenomenon of assessment from a practice perspective drawing upon ideas from practice theory. Such a view places assessment practices as central. This perspective is illustrated …
Embracing the tension between vulnerability and credibility: ‘Intellectual Candour’ in Health Professions Education
The tension between expressing vulnerability and seeking credibility creates challenges for learning and teaching. This is particularly true in health care, in which practitioners are regarded as highly credible and making errors can often lead to dire consequences and blame. From a transformative learning perspective, expressing vulnerability may help individuals to access different ways of knowing. By contrast, from a sociological perspective, …
Bringing reality to assessment: Lessons from clinical simulation
When simulation doesn't simulate: Bearman uses dissociations between clinical practice and simulation to argue we need constant criticality to prevent assessment from disguising, replacing and altering what it is supposed to represent
The conundrum of low achievement and feedback for learning
The literature on improving student engagement with assessment and feedback has a tendency to treat all students as if they are the same. Students with lower levels of attainment are generally under-represented within empirical studies and their feedback behaviours are less well understood. The recent drive to improve student assessment and feedback literacy and the move from ‘feedback’ being information about a task to being a process of underst…
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…
‘I’d struggle to see it as cheating’: The policy and regulatory environments of study drug use at universities
Students use various licit and illicit substances to enhance their academic performance. As yet, no study has explored whether this is an issue of concern for those working in the higher education sector. This study aimed to explore study drug policy, regulatory environments and responses within Australian universities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 participants from five Australian universities. Nine participants were based i…
How a centralised approach to learning design influences students: A mixed methods study
In online education, learning design has a significant role in mediating student experience. Centralised approaches to learning design provide students with a coherent teaching approach across online units but little is known about their impact on the student. Understanding the influence of these overarching learning design features may be a significant piece in improving online coursework at scale. In the context of this study, a central learnin…
Understanding feedback in online learning – A critical review and metaphor analysis
Technologies associated with online learning have led to many new feedback practices and expanded the meaning of feedback beyond the traditional focus on instructor comments, but conceptual work on online feedback has not followed. This paper investigates how online learning researchers understand feedback's role in teaching and learning, and discusses how these understandings influence what research questions are asked, and what online feedback …
Invoking culture in medical education research: A critical review and metaphor analysis
Longing for connection: University educators creating meaning through sharing experiences of teaching online
This paper presents a reflexive analysis of how university educators experience the shift to increasing online teaching in 2019. We explore what it means to be an online educator in contemporary higher education and aim to raise questions about how we approach online education and understand ourselves as educators, informed by a sociomaterial lens. The research utilised collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to facilitate meaning‐making and uncover …
How conceptualising respect can inform feedback pedagogies
Respect plays a crucial role in maintaining feedback interactions and sustaining student engagement with feedback. However, previous feedback literature has only mentioned respect in anecdotal accounts, and as a uni-dimensional notion. Drawing upon the philosophical distinctions among kinds of respect, this conceptual paper argues that respect is multi-faceted and constitutes an important aspect of student feedback literacy. We identify evaluativ…
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…
How Trainees Come to Trust Supervisors in Workplace-Based Assessment: A Grounded Theory Study
Trust, power and learning in workplace‐based assessment: The trainee perspective
For trainees to participate meaningfully in workplace‐based assessment (WBA), they must have trust in their assessor. However, the trainee's dependent position complicates such trust. Understanding how power and trust influence WBAs may help us make them more effective learning opportunities. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with 17 postgraduate anaesthesia trainees across Australia and New Zealand. Sensitised by notions of power, we used …
The influence of psychological safety on feedback conversations in general practice training
Digital ethnography in higher education teaching and learning—a methodological review
To understand how the digitalization of higher education influences the inter-relationship between students, teachers, and their broader contexts, research must account for the social, cultural, political, and embodied aspects of teaching and learning in digital environments. Digital ethnography is a research method that can generate rich contextual knowledge of online experiences. However, how this methodology translates to higher education is l…
Creating and sustaining collaborative connections: Tensions and enabling factors in joint international programme development
Feedback that works: A realist review of feedback interventions for written tasks
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: A critical literature review
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…
The assessment challenge of social and collaborative learning in higher education
There is a general tension between the individualised nature of current assessment practices in higher education and a collaborative approach to learning. This results in many dilemmas for educators as they try to balance academic integrity concerns and student preferences with social or collaborative assessment practices, including peer assessment, group assignments and direct assessment of teamwork or collaboration. This paper argues that focus…
Assessment for inclusion: Rethinking contemporary strategies in assessment design
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…
Meaning making about performance: A comparison of two specialty feedback cultures
Psychology (53 works) · Computer Science (36 works) · Higher education (36 works) · Pedagogy (36 works) · Sociology (33 works) · Political science (26 works) · Student Assessment and Feedback (25 works) · Mathematics education (23 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Engineering (16 works)