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This study explores the impact of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) on academic identity within the context of a UK-based research-intensive higher education institution. TEF is the latest in a series of changes that have impacted upon the UK's HE sector and it is highly likely to have a significant impact upon academic identity. Collecting evidence through sixteen qualitative interviews, findings show that while TEF may not alter the broad substance of what it means to be an academic in terms of engagement with research, education and citizenship activities, it has the potential to have profound implications in terms of exacerbating conflicts within identity. This paper argues that negative work outcomes result where role conflicts, and mismatches between expectation and reward, create difficulties in realising our desired versions of ourselves. Theoretical contributions relevant to debates around identity conflict are discussed, with practical contributions exploring the importance of resource allocations and the need to align expectations and rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about changing concepts of equity in UK higher education. In particular, it charts the moves from concepts about gender equality as about women's education as a key issue in twentieth century higher education to questions of men's education in the twenty-first century. These changing concepts of equity are linked to wider social and economic transformations, the expansion of higher education and the growth in the knowledge economy, or what has been called 'academic capitalism'. Feminist theorists and activists, often called second wave feminists, developed concepts of gender equality in education, including higher education in the twentieth century, and these have been incorporated into higher education and policies with the expansions of higher education, especially around notions of widening participation. Notions of widening participation in policy and practice arenas focus on equity as about social class, socio-economic disadvantage, ethnicity and race, rather than specifically on gender questions. Equity is now twinned with diversity and where gender is now invoked it is largely about young and working class men's disadvantage in relation to higher education. In this paper, I will also provide research evidence from the UK's Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) which has been the UK's biggest ever initiative in education research about equity and diversity as currently conceived in UK higher education. I will show how gender has been incorporated with diversity questions and has lost its critical and feminist edge. I conclude with addressing questions about the future of higher education policies and practices to address questions of equity and diversity, attempting to counter the systemic inequalities in current forms of UK higher education. There are opportunities for developing new, critical and feminist pedagogies. More inclusive or 'connectionist' approaches, rather than 'teaching to the test', would engage socially diverse men and women students in a range of higher education subjects and settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions in the UK are required, by law, to make anticipatory reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities. Inclusive teaching practice, if adopted across the sector, would ensure that the needs of students with disabilities are considered and provided for, before they even arrive on campus. This paper sets out the background and key findings from an institutional research project at a UK university that aimed to discover if academic staff's attitudes would be problematic or conducive to the implementation of inclusive teaching practice. The paper concludes that there is little evidence of widespread “resistance” but rather, the research discovered a prevailing belief in the rights of students with disabilities to education, albeit a belief which is limited in its practical application in the classroom. The paper also reports on a number of recommendations made to the case study university as a result of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports and discusses some of the practical and contextual difficulties facing the teaching of Islamic studies within the British higher education environment. The main problems in the author's view stem from the haziness surrounding the discipline definition and the methodology employed in teaching it. This is particularly observed when 'Islamic Studies' is taught within an academic environment which does not recognise the fusion that Islam holds between the spiritual and material. The paper also examines contrasting voices debating the subject and its methodology. Finally the paper provides suggestions for how Islamic Studies could be more effective in the West and particularly in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the current assumptions behind vocational training for graduate teaching assistants at a large, urban, research-led UK university. Through qualitative evaluation it reflects on the perceptions of participants on a graduate teaching assistant 'learning and teaching module' in terms of an interpretation of their views on pedagogic practice. These reflections suggest that three of the assumptions upon which GTA training has been, and still is, predicated view the process in a relatively simplistic manner. The paper suggests that the pedagogic socialization process has been inaccurately homogenized as a postgraduate issue, ignoring the possibility that relatively sophisticated perceptions of good teaching practice are already firmly in place when a graduate enters a doctoral programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the ways in which UK higher education (HE) has become increasingly commercialised and commodified in the post-1980s. It critiques the strategies adopted by successive UK governments to reinvigorate the relationship between educational and economic life, and to facilitate a more corporate and entrepreneurial spirit within the academy in line with the pressures of a 'knowledge-based economy'. Arguing for a more critical exploration of teaching and learning within HE, the paper presents evidence from work carried out by the Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching in Learning (CETL) which adopts a research-based learning approach to teaching and learning at undergraduate level.1 Within the context of ongoing debates surrounding the relationship between teaching, learning and research in UK HE, the paper advocates a reinvention of curriculum design through an engagement with the broader principles of critical pedagogy, and in so doing, presents a critical engagement with the commercialisation of HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is inspired by, and constructed around, a number of fundamental questions that are relevant to teacher educators working within the context of the government policy initiatives and implementations that are influencing Higher Education in the UK at the present time. Using teacher education practices as sites of inquiry, and a number of figures from the work of Deleuze, the paper investigates approaches to teaching and learning that are described as having an aesthetic and ethically sensitive character. Mindful of such approaches and of the pervasiveness of policy influences, the paper also encourages a careful and thorough re-thinking of the theory and practice of teacher education as a terrain of complexity, multiplicity and interconnectedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines aspects of the relationship between teaching and research in higher education in social science research methods, with particular reference to the subject area of Education. There are three main themes: reflections on how social science research methods should be (or are) taught; a review of current debates about the relationship between teaching and research, both in higher education and for school teachers; and finally, reporting how a group of educational practitioners (mainly school teachers) studying at Masters level experience learned about research methods. The paper is illustrated by qualitative data from a case study of student experiences of research methods teaching on a Masters degree in Education in a research-intensive UK university. It is suggested that studying the journey embarked upon by taught postgraduate students inexperienced in research is helpful in understanding how learning about research methods takes place, which in turn can assist future research methods teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of the paper "Is Personal Tutoring Sustainable? Comparing the Trajectory of the Personal Tutor With That of the Residential Warden." It analyzes the varying roles being played by academics in terms of giving aid to students. It specifically presents a comparison of the functions performed by residential wardens and personal tutors in higher education in Great Britain.