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The paper develops the metaphorical concept of the "concertina" career to describe ways in which academic staff, across a diversifying workforce, modulate their interactions with institutional career frameworks, which tend to be unilinear and to be characterised by detailed progression criteria and milestones. In doing this, they are guided by Internal career scripts, providing an additional dimension to the dichotomy of boundaried and boundaryless careers found in the literature. Drawing on a longitudinal study between 2017 and 2020, of forty-nine mid-career academic staff across eight UK universities, consideration is given to individuals' spatial movements, for instance, between academic activities, and professional and personal commitments; and the manipulation of timescales to accelerate or decelerate career progress in relation to opportunities and constraints. The study shows ways in which the spatial parameters of a career are being stretched in order to accommodate new forms of academic work supplementing disciplinary activity, such as online learning, employability initiatives and public engagement, as well as work-life considerations. In addition, individuals are adapting timescales to accommodate professional activities such as health practice or community outreach, as well as personal commitments such as caring responsibilities. Thus, in the concertina career, individuals expand and contract activity, as well as extending and compressing timescales. As a result, it is concluded that institutional career models do not entirely reflect the reality of career-making by individuals, which is likely to involve detours (therefore a spatial dimension) and a disruption of assumed timelines (therefore a temporal dimension).

This paper outlines clear signs of market-led instrumentalisation for HE cultures in Britain, before critiquing the "ontological turn" in HE theory and its intrinsic political abdication from those signs. It focuses on a paper by Ronald Barnett to both diagnose the problem, which is a "precarité" that is ghosted in his work, rather than explicitly posited, before identifying a possible new approach to the problems of the ontological turn in post-foundational humanism. This paper also critiques the philosophical use of the ontological turn per se, particularly in the face of a conservative political shift in Britain. It both agrees and differs with Barnett's advocacy, but ultimately uses his paper as a springboard to an alternative set of philosophical and ethical frameworks that might be offered to replace the ontological turn, along with a full justification. To make that case, this paper outlines the emerging work of Marcus Morgan and the possibility of a neo-humanist, post-foundational turn. This paper ultimately critiques a large philosophical trend within current HE pedagogy, and therefore is of relevance to international HE practitioners of all subjects.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the Triple-V model of experiential learning, when applied to Higher Education (HE), can transform the student-learning experience by integrating the model's three elements of Vision, Value and Vocation into delivery, assessment and beyond. Design/methodology/approach: The paper sets out how the Triple-V model was introduced in three case studies. Feedback data were gathered through formal and informal surveys with students and other respondents. Findings: The Triple-V model expounds the virtues of integrating Vision, Value and Vocation into HE to engage students in deep learning and to provide an external employability reference framework, which is particularly vital for students leaving HE with concerns about securing suitable employment to service soaring levels of student debt. The implementation of the model, based on measured outcomes, met with positive feedback from respondents. Research limitations/implications: The Triple-V model was tested across three scenarios, using different respondents, within a School of Management. A Twitter account has been established (#triple_v_model) to invite wider participation and feedback to hone the model further, in particular its suitability for more esoteric, and less exoteric, subjects. Originality/value: The Triple-V model is entirely original, devised by the present author, and is intended to enhance the HE student learning experience, contextualising for students their studies within a wider employability framework.

There is much debate in the literature concerning the changes necessary for university accounting education to meet the needs of the business environment and broader society. In the USA the Pathways Commission has responded by implementing a programme of evaluation and improvement. In the UK there is no formal agenda for change. This paper compares the situation in the UK to that set out in the Pathways Commission. Two research questions are asked. (1) What should be included in a programme of change in the UK? (2) What are the impediments to the change? The questions are answered by reviewing the literature to firstly consolidate the calls for change and secondly to analyse the circumstances affecting UK accounting degrees. The paper calls on the accountancy profession, universities and academics in the UK to embark on a programme of change similar to the USA to agree a core curriculum, an appropriate academic resourcing strategy and a revised pedagogy. It argues that for significant and lasting change to emerge impediments in three areas need to be addressed. (1) The interface between professional accountancy bodies (PABs) and university academics. (2) The impact of institutional policies on accounting degrees. (3) The identity of UK university accounting academics.

Performance management systems have been an inevitable consequence of the development of government research evaluations (GREs) of university research, and have also inevitably affected the working life of academics. The aim of this paper is to track the development of GREs over the past 25 years, by critically evaluating their adoption in the UK and Australian higher education sector and their contribution to the commodification of academic labour, and to highlight the resultant tensions between GREs and academic freedom. The paper employs a literature-based analysis, relying on publicly available policy documents and academic studies over the period 1985-2010. GREs are a global phenomenon emanating from new public management reforms and while assessments of university research have been welcomed, they have attracted critique based on their design, the manner in which they have been applied, and the unintended consequences of their implementation on academic freedom in particular. Consistent with international research on the impact of GREs, Australian research assessments appear to be undoing the academic freedom that is central to successful research. Further empirical research on the impact of GREs on academics is urgently needed.

Over the last two decades, education privatization has become a widespread phenomenon, affecting most education systems and giving place to a consistent increase in private school enrolment globally. However, far from being a monolithic phenomenon, privatization advances through a variety of context-sensitive policy processes that translate into multiple policy outcomes. This paper aims at understanding why and how education privatization unfolds in a broad variety of settings and, to this purpose, examines the different manifestations of education privatization on the light of Cultural Political Economy (CPE). The conceptual and analytical tools provided by CPE prove to be particularly well suited to explore such a multi-faceted and multi-scalar phenomenon. CPE has helped us to capture the intersect and tension between different drivers (global and local, material and ideational) of education privatization through the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention. On the basis of a systematic literature review methodology, encompassing 227 research papers, the article identifies and systematizes six different paths towards education privatization--understood as groups of frequently associated circumstances, mechanisms and courses of action leading to privatization. Conceived as ideal types, these different paths ultimately allow for a richer understanding of education privatization and show that the international diffusion of education privatization norms and discourses is far from producing policy convergence at a global scale.

Purpose: Increased school autonomy and accountability have been a common denominator of national reforms in otherwise heterogeneous governance systems in Europe and the USA. The paper argues that because schools serving disadvantaged communities (SSDCs) often have lower average performance, they are more often sanctioned or under closer scrutiny, but might also receive more additional resources. The purpose of this paper is to therefore analyze whether SSDCs have more or less autonomy than schools with a more advantageous context in four countries with heterogeneous autonomy and accountability policies. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on the data from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 school and student questionnaires from Finland, Germany, the UK, and the USA. The choice of countries is based on different governance models described by Glatter "et al." (2003). The data are used to identify SSDCs and analyze the reported autonomy in resource allocation and curriculum and assessment. Using regression analyses, patterns are analyzed for each country individually. They are then juxtaposed and compared. Differences are related back to the governance models of the respective countries. Findings: The results indicate an association between the communities the schools are serving and the autonomy either in the allocation of resources, or the curriculum and assessment. SSDCs appeared to have a little more autonomy than schools with a more advantageous context in Finland, Germany, and the UK, but less autonomy in the USA. The comparison suggests that in the USA, autonomy is rather a reward for schools that have the least amount of need, whereas in the other three countries it could be a result of strategies to improve schools in need. The paper discusses possible explanations in the policies and support structures for SSDCs. Originality/value: The effects of increased school autonomy and accountability on student achievement have been discussed at length. How different accountability policies affect the autonomy of schools with the highest needs has so far not been studied. The study can be understood as a first step to unravel this association. Following steps should include in-depth investigations of the mechanisms underlying increased or diminished autonomy for SSDCs, and the consequences for school improvement in these schools.

The arrival of the term Geographical Information System (GIS) in the 1960s soon created a demand for training and education in the use of this specialist hardware and software. Initially the main focus was on training people to use GIS, formal named degree programmes leading to postgraduate and undergraduate qualifications arrived later. This paper explores the changing landscape of U.K. degree level GIS education drawing on contemporary information from Higher Education Institution websites and a case study of the first single honours degree in GIS in Europe. The paper identifies a rise and fall in the number of named undergraduate "GIS" degrees since the late 1980s sandwiched between the continuation and development of postgraduate qualifications. In parallel with this trend the teaching and learning of GIS skills has emerged as a core component of undergraduate degree programmes with "Geography" in their title and in national school and degree level benchmarking statements for the discipline.

This article considers questions of "employability," a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives concerning employability and suggests a series of mismatches that are evident in the rhetorics in this area. This summary opens up elements of what I am calling the first 'folly' in the field. The second section of the paper considers recent research with individual academics engaged in employability activity. This research suggests another series of mismatches in the aims and outcomes of "employability initiatives" and opens up a further series of "follies" in the day-to-day practices of academics and students' responses to them. The third section of the paper turns to academics' reports of student behaviour in relation to the outcomes of their degree. This section develops an argument that relates to the final "folly" associated with the current focus on employability. I argue that students' focus on outcomes (which at face value suggests they have internalized the importance of employment) is contributing to the production of graduates who do not have the dispositions that employers--when interviewed--say that they want. The highly performative culture of higher education, encouraged by the same metrics that will be extended through the TEF, is implicated then in "not" preparing students for the workplace.

This paper draws on material generated from a qualitative study of educational impacts of a British welfare reform affecting housing rent subsidy, size and location commonly known as "the bedroom tax" (Bragg et al., 2015), which was partly taken as a topic for study specifically because of its iconic status as a controversial and unpopular welfare "reform" (or cut). The analysis draws on Foucauldian understandings of subjectification or subject-formation--as elaborated both from within and in relation to the social (Foucault, 1970; 1983; Ball, 1990; Olssen, 2006; Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998), read through new and newly available perspectives (Allen, 2015; Pêcheux, 2014). This approach is applied to discuss how those addressed by educational policy, and also as research participants, are both subject to prevailing political and practice-oriented discourses (of educational "problems", and of the neoliberal frameworks by which poverty and welfare cuts are discussed), but also--at times--how they can become the subject of--in the sense of reformulating--these discourses in their accounts of everyday activities. After outlining our approach and the context for the study, we focus on four examples drawn from the narratives of the various stakeholders in the study--parents/carers, school staff and other community-based organisations as illustrations of how this discursive approach can provide rich readings of relevance to educational policy debates. From these we not only take further discussions of the production and regulation of subjectivities via social and educational policy practices, but also offer indicative glimpses of resistance to this as expressed by those who are its primary subjects, and where in one case such resistance brings our own research commitments under critical scrutiny. As such, the contribution of this article is both topic-related (concerning the educational impacts of policy) but, crucially, also conceptual and methodological, in motivating for a Foucauldian-influenced discursive approach that is sensitive to struggle and resistance.

The mounting wealth of open and readily available information and the accelerated evolution of social, mobile and creative technologies call for a re-conceptualisation of the role of educators: from providers of knowledge to designers of learning. This call is reverberated by the rising trend of research in learning design (LD). Addressing this, the Art and Science of Learning Design workshop brought together leading voices in the field, and provided a forum for discussing its key issues. It focused on three major themes: (1) practices, methods and methodologies, (2) tools and resources and (3) theoretical frameworks. This paper proposes a definition of LD, reviews the main contributions from the workshop, and suggests some challenges for future research. (Contains 5 notes.) [This paper was published in the ALT-C 2012 Conference Proceedings.]

The history of leadership in educational settings that has a principal focus on student learning is one dominated by Western cultures, particularly those in the USA; also, it has developed two near-identical models of leadership commonly known as "instructional" or "learning-centred". This paper explores the relevance of these models in the context of the twenty-first century. Arguments are put forward that in order to create communities of leadership and practice in educational contexts, the concept of learning-centred leadership needs to be examined, given that it is a limited model focusing on outputs and outcomes. The authors argue that the episteme of pedagogy is of greater relevance to leaders in education in an age where the promotion of effective learning involves more than merely ensuring that the relationship between teachers and learners is satisfactory or good. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first section a brief explanation of the historical developments in learning-centred leadership provides the foundation for the second section, which discusses the advantages and limitations of learning-centred leadership. The third section argues that in education leadership and management there is a need to consider pedagogy as an episteme, with the implications for pedagogical leadership being discussed in the final section.

Informed by Martin Buber's notions of "I-It" and "I-Thou" relationships, this paper examines the problematic and contested issues of emancipation and empowerment in schooling. Specifically, it explores what happens when teachers and students collaborate when observing lessons and commenting on teaching practice in the imagined space of the self-improving school system. Within this space, it examines the challenges and complexities of establishing "I-Thou" teacher-student relationships, and the potential for creative dissonance in such situations. Finally, it explores the idea that the self-improving school could become a place where teachers and students create a space for mutual dialogue about collaborative research in the classroom--in other words, a place where classroom practice is democratically "top-down" teacher-led and "bottom-up" student-informed.

In a previous paper, this author argued that the present governance arrangements for UK universities and colleges, and in particular the preferred official model for governing bodies, were no longer fit for purpose (if indeed they ever were), and that some fundamental reforms were needed. This paper sets out some reform proposals. The author goes on to put forward ideas for reform of university governance. [For Part I, see EJ925045.] (Contains 1 note.)

Further education (FE) has traditionally been a rather unspectacular activity. Lacking the visibility of schools or the prestige of universities, for the vast majority of its existence FE has had a relatively low profile on the margins of English education. Over recent years this situation has altered significantly and further education has undergone profound change. This paper argues that a combination of related factors--neo-liberalism, globalisation, and dominant discourses of the knowledge economy--has acted in synergy to transform FE into a highly performative and marketised sector. Against this backdrop, further education has been assigned a particular role based upon certain narrow and instrumental understandings of skill, employment and economic competitiveness. The paper argues that, although it has always been predominantly working class in nature, FE is now, more than ever, positioned firmly at the lower end of the institutional hierarchy in the highly class-stratified terrain of English education.

Previous research exploring how working-class women experience UK Higher Education (HE) work has made evident recurring themes around social segregation and corresponding difficulties with feeling they belong. This paper develops this work by exploring the ways in which UK, HE based working-class women lecturers talk about their sense of belonging. It was found that, in contemporary UK HE, lecturing work is located within a marketised space where caring for students is central and the deployment of emotional labour to seen to be a necessary requirement to meet those demands. In addition, this labour is understood to be work that working-class women can readily take up, and as one of the few vehicles to enable feelings of value and belonging. However, this work is also devalued, unaccounted for and potentially harmful to those who do engage in it, therefore shoring up/ reinforcing a class and gender stratified UK academy.

This paper revisits the scope of Catherine Malabou's thinking as a development of the ontological turn in continental philosophy. It puts this excursion of thinking alongside an account of education in modernity as the apotheosis of biopower. It aligns biopower, as manifest in education, as form of 'technological enframing'. In this it challenges the dominant assumption that education is somehow, ultimately, independently of its manifest form, a force for good. Foregoing the idealist addiction to education as redemption, then, it sees Malabou's contribution as significant in terms of a fundamental, ontological rethinking of education and the social politics of our time. It is argued that Malabou's contribution offers a significant contribution to rethinking education as biopower and clearing away the dominant, redemptive myths of modern and contemporary ontotheology. This is a position never entertained in the field of philosophy of education.

As universities are undergoing transformations produced by trends towards marketisation, massification, new public management, and 'third mission' of socio-economic impact, higher education (HE) researchers are increasingly concerned with the implications of the HE sector change on academic practice, professional identities, and even wellbeing. This paper is situated within the complex interplay of policy incentives and governance mechanisms that appear to be resulting in the rising bifurcation and precariousness of academic careers and identities. In this context, drawing on a pilot study of 'third space' academic identities, and the methodology that combines work diaries and narrative interviews, it discusses the use(fulness) of (inter)action-, positionality-, and affect-driven methods in studying the academic identity construction. It argues that diverse methods that go beyond the usual interview- and questionnaire-based approaches are needed to better understand and support the existing and emergent academic practices and communities.

The coronavirus pandemic activated an emergency shift to remote supervision which is now shaping longer term changes to our supervision practice. Through a narrative lens on experience, this paper shares the perspectives of two doctoral supervisors who have different relationships with remote supervision. Our means towards similar ends present interesting contrasts in practice and attitudes to online learning. Our experiences during this transition have been different, which may resonate with challenges facing other supervisors across the Higher Education sector. The informal 'corridor conversations' with our doctoral students are seemingly a thing of the past, so we explore the strategies we have put in place, or, re-evaluate the online opportunities which were already in place, that now form a critical lifeline to build and maintain those relationships. Through our stories, it is hoped useful lessons may be learned, with the aim of improving the supervisory experience for doctoral students.

Over the last 30 years higher education has seen a rise in new managerialism across all its activity, driven by neoliberal economic policy. Professional doctorates (PDs) have been part of this rise, increasing in number considerably and spawning a related interest in researching doctoral work. However, there have been few studies focused on how students develop an understanding of theory/theorisation and how supervision supports it. This paper reports on a research project involving interviews with supervisors from professional doctorate in education programmes in the UK, as a particular example of PDs in general, to explore the process of theorisation. Drawing on Bernstein, it shows how supervision, and wider programme design, are mediated by the increasingly managerial context of doctoral study. The study raises questions about the ways in which students and supervisors engage with both methodology and theory/theorisation in working together and subsequent implications for the quality of doctoral work.

As universities embrace widening participation, we are starting to observe sector-wide awarding gaps, and with student continuation within Engineering & Technology as one of the lowest in Higher Education (HE), it would appear that our current curricular is not always effective for the attainment of a diverse student body. This paper highlights the external driving forces related to the widening participation within HE and how this is influencing STEM education. It describes the current practice that has positively influenced diversity awareness and how HE can use the student voice more effectively to drive forward both institutional change and programme curricula design to ensure positive outcomes for all students.

In this third and final paper from the Delphi study One Direction, we report on participants' responses to four secondary school music curriculum scenarios. These scenarios present four possible directions for a C21 secondary school music curriculum. The scenarios were devised from a combination of ideas derived from the data from the earlier stages of the study (McPhail, G., and J. McNeill. 2019. "One Direction: A Future for Secondary School Music Education?" "Music Education Research" 21 (4): 359-370; McNeill, J., and G. McPhail. 2020. "One Direction: Strategic Challenges for Twenty-first Century Secondary School Music." "Music Education Research" 22 (4): 432-446) and the concept of specialisation from Maton's Legitimation Code Theory. By asking an international panel of leading music education researchers and teachers to respond to the scenarios, we are able to argue that 'one direction' is unlikely to emerge for secondary school music education, but we discuss the responses, and the scenario dimensions regarded as most likely and desirable. What appears certain is that there will be a continuing weakening of the boundaries between types of knowledge and stylistic arenas suggesting a dialectic relationship between the legitimating principles most valued.

This paper explores the historical relationship between the expansion of the UK HE system through sectorial diversification, processes of differentiation/convergence and (in)equalities since the 1960s. It examines the extent to which the connections and tensions between three stories of resource, mission and social differentiations might be influenced (alongside other forces) by the emergence and crisis of successive socio-economic regimes. The empirical analysis of the three types of differentiation compares and contrasts new historical data on funding, enrolment and qualifications for the whole system and its institutional segments. The analysis shows that the ongoing tensions between resource, mission and social differentiations were exacerbated by the effect of the crises of 1973 and 2008 which provoked their misalignment and the destabilisation of the phases of expansion started in the 1960s and the 1990s. This pleads for a new social compromise to overcome the 2008 crisis to which a new HE expansion based on a realignment of, rather than a trade-off between the three dimensions of differentiation might contribute. This realignment requires a reversal of the public/private substitution of funding ensuring that a less unequal resource differentiation reflects and drives fairer processes of mission differentiation or convergence rather than stratifying social inequalities.

This study aimed to investigate English language lecturers' perceptions on the transition of classroom teaching to online education because of the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 15 lecturers who were teaching in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey and UK volunteered to take part in the study between March and July 2020. Data were collected through semi-structured interview asking their views on this transition, its benefits and challenges on both their teaching and students' learning. Findings showed that lecturers who had proper training in online teaching by their institutions had more positive views on Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). Although all of the participants believed that online teaching could promote learner autonomy and flexible learning, they agreed that the benefits of ERT diminished without a well-designed and supported technology tool, and the pandemic, in turn, posed more challenges. Accordingly, the paper suggests institutions to set up an institutionally designed pedagogical framework for remote online education and train lecturers within a stipulated time and the framework.

The paper raises concerns about entry-level positions within large organisations as corporate accounting tasks are re-engineered, automated and relocated. Reduced opportunities for accounting graduates to start their careers are but one factor in a confluence of challenges to accounting education; not least, that in England and Wales study debt is around £50,000 for a typical degree programme. Drawing on discussions from an education/employer stakeholder group, the enquiry finds that longstanding tensions about the optimal mix of intellectual, technical and generic skills in accounting education might be better framed within a broader process of helping students to develop a social identity relevant to their work context. A key proposal is that educators should play a pivotal role in mentoring students so that they develop their own sense of preprofessional identity and thus, become work-ready on graduation.

This paper provides a critical analysis of the Chartered Institute for Management of Sport and Physical Activity's (CIMSPA) transformative aspirations for UK Higher Education (HE) based Sport and Physical Activity Vocational Education and Training (SPAVET) provision. In doing so, we apply selected elements of Giddens' Structuration theory to offer an analysis of CIMSPA's structural properties (as rules and resources) and dimensions (signification, domination and legitimation). Illustration of CIMSPA's structural properties and dimensions was developed through adopting an institutional analysis strategy alongside a document analysis method. Publicly available strategic documents and web-based resources (N = 18) were selected and analysed using open-coding techniques. Our analysis shows how continued state-sanctioned decentralisation of the UK HE sector has led to CIMSPA becoming an increasingly influential transformative structure; attempting to use its structural dimensions and resources as a medium to gain and exercise power, to promote (signification) -- market-orientated discourses, practices and pedagogies in HEI provision, (domination) -- in an attempt to significantly influence regulatory control over UK SPAVET provision and (Legitimation) -- create partnerships which normalise its position and message within selected UK HEIs. We conclude that whilst the transformative aspirations of CIMSPA offer a number of possibilities for the HE SPAVET sector, they also raise critical questions. The central issue requiring debate is how these aspirations shift dialectical control towards vocationally focused, market-orientated principles and away from the liberal educational, research-led principles of some current UK HE SPAVET provision.

Recent decades have seen the evolution of UK business schools into international mass education providers. This transformation has developed against a background of institutional changes that jeopardise work conditions in academia. As few studies have examined the relationships between organisational, social and psychological aspects of academic work life, this paper employs the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model to explore empirically the interplay between business school workplace conditions, burnout and retention rates, based on a national sample. We show that higher demands and lower resources are significant in increasing burnout and turnover, whereas the 'metrics' culture has done much to increase workloads and reduce academic freedom and workplace support. These negative impacts can be offset by creating a collegiate and engaged work environment that promotes greater skills utilisation, autonomy and recognition. Such findings are reported for the first time in the literature with important implications for higher education and the academic community.

The following two articles are taken from the FORUM archive. First published in the autumn of 1981, they offer a restatement of comprehensive principles in the context of the educational policies of the incoming Conservative government from 1979. The first thing Margaret Thatcher's education secretary, Mark Carlisle, did was to repeal Labour legislation that required non-selective planning. Bolton, Essex, Kent and Kingston upon Thames withdrew proposals to go comprehensive immediately. For reasons of ideology -- the 1977 green paper Education in Schools made it clear that there was no evidence that education standards had fallen and that more children were better educated than before comprehensive education became national policy -- the 1980 Education Act reflected right-wing desires to return to selective education, to support private education, to introduce market forces into education, via parental choice. It also removed the obligation on local authorities to provide free school milk and meals for children, except for those from families on supplementary benefit, in order to save money. In the face of present realities, the FORUM editorial board felt clarity was needed to provide direction and purpose. This was the backdrop against which Clyde Chitty and Roger Seckington wrote and their words reflect the language of the time. Unequal opportunities and the underachievement of children from racial and ethnic minorities had become a serious policy issue, partly due to race riots, or urban disorders as they were termed, in various parts of Britain, notably Brixton in London and Toxteth in Liverpool in April 1981. [The two articles included in this article: (1) "Why comprehensive schools?" (Clyde Chitty); and (2) "The comprehensive movement" (Roger Seckington).]

Higher education (HE) in the United Kingdom (UK) has been on a trajectory of marketisation for much of the 21st Century (see Marginson, 2018). These developments reflect international policy trends toward a more pervasive neoliberal ideology that has sought to transform the global HE sector into a capitalist market subject to buyer-seller relations (Antonucci, 2016). In the UK, however, these policy directions have not yet led to a 'free market' in the way that might have otherwise been envisioned. At the same time, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have also seen wide ranging developments in the use of information communication technologies (ICTs). This has, as Flavin notes, been most notable in respect to the almost universal imposition of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to support learning and teaching, increase access and retention, and reduce costs. Within all of this 'cost-sharing' and 'digital development', it would be difficult to argue against Flavin's suggestion that digital technology has, at best, enhanced rather than disrupted HE markets -- and certainly VLEs have tended to be subsumed into practice rather than necessarily changing it. As his paper highlights, this has often meant that VLEs are little more than facilities for storage rather than a sustained multimedia means for delivery, interaction, and assessment. But Flavin's discussion of 'disruptive innovation' also raises the interesting possibility that this might not be the case following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the idea that the crisis will create opportunities for existing universities to rethink teaching delivery in relation to digital technologies is a provocative one -- and it is one that has already been mooted by universities themselves (Jisc, 2020). Of course, there is a well established literature on the use of VLEs within Higher Education Institutions and it would be impossible to cover all of that material in this response (see Davies et al., 2017 for a brief review). But it is worth further exploring one particular reason why VLEs often fail to fulfil their promise, because it might help better assess whether the pandemic could provoke the Disruption that is imagined by Flavin and others: and that one reason is the issue of digital literacy. [This article reflects on Michael Flavin's article, "Disruptive Innovation and Technology Enhanced Learning" (EJ1288163).]

This is an edited transcript of the Caroline Benn Memorial Lecture, given by Ken Jones, at the request of the Socialist Education Association, in November 2020. The lecture situates Caroline's work in the context of the 'Long Revolution' of twentieth century Britain. The lecture discusses the meaning of that revolution for education; it charts the course of the right-wing reaction to it from 1976 onwards, and the growth of managerial cultures at the level of the school which have blocked its further development. The effects within education of the Black Lives Matter and the COVID pandemic have revived, in both practical and ideational ways, some of the themes of the Long Revolution. The lecture argues that this is a change of historical significance. The possibility of change as a collective democratic project has been reawakened.

"Excellence" has been a prevalent term in New Labour rhetoric on education, most notably in the stated goal of "excellence for all" in education. Despite that, the meaning of the term has remained imprecise, and the implications of universal excellence unclear. In this paper, three distinct definitions of excellence are identified and the practicality considered of each as a universal goal for public sector education. The paper also suggests that the emphasis on excellence can be seen, both currently and historically, as a response to "crisis narratives" in official discourse. In further accounting for the word's current ubiquity, its links to Total Quality Management theory are outlined, exposing its essential neo-liberal roots in the world of the market, and in ill-founded attempts to evaluate schools with the tools of the private sector. Taking account of recent work on New Labour rhetoric, and discourse analysis, the paper concludes that ambiguity of meaning and strong connotative power, mark "excellence" as a "keyword" and "condensation symbol" in public discourse rather than as a genuine political goal.

This paper explores the leadership of education for sustainability (EfS) in higher education, focusing specifically on the key role students can play as internal catalysts for change. It presents a case study of Plymouth University, a higher education institution with an international reputation for EfS leadership. The paper outlines the importance of seeking cultural transformation in the leadership of sustainability, highlighting the benefits of an integrated approach that encompasses teaching and learning, research, and campus and operations. This manifold and coordinated approach requires top-down strategic support in order for EfS to take root and gather momentum. However, in this paper it is argued that the bottom up empowerment of "students as change agents" is just as important. Reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of a number of student leadership initiatives at Plymouth University, this paper argues that EfS reform in HE has significant implications for staff training and the design of participatory learning spaces in order for students to have their voices heard and to be partnered with as leaders.

This paper focuses on the role of research in the improvement of educational practice. I use the "10 Principles for Effective Pedagogy," which were formulated on the basis of research conducted in the UK's Teacher and Learning Research Programme as an example to highlight some common problems in the discussion about research and educational improvement. In the paper I explore three issues. The first concerns the idea that the improvement of education is identical to increasing the effectiveness of educational action. Here I suggest that in education the question is never whether something is effective or not, but what something is supposed to be effective for, which is the question of educational purpose. The second issue concerns the prevalence of quasi-causal thinking about educational practice and its improvement. Here I suggest that complexity theory and the idea of complexity reduction provides a much more meaningful educational ontology that makes it possible to think very differently about the drivers for educational change and improvement. Third, I make a distinction between two ways in which research knowledge can be meaningful and useful for educational practice--a technical way where research is supposed to generate knowledge about how to do things and a cultural way which has to do with generating different ways to make sense of education. Seeing that research can engage with educational practice in these two different registers, opens up a different way to think about what research might aim to achieve in order to contribute to educational improvement.

The part of the higher education sector in the United Kingdom in which providers are not publicly-funded (including for-profit, not-for-profit and charitable) has been expanding considerably under Government encouragement. This paper aims to clarify the practical and public policy issues now emerging, by tracing the history of the emergence of this policy in the wider context of trends in higher education policy in the United Kingdom, and with reference to the changes brought about by devolving higher education to the "devolved administrations" of Scotland and Wales. It examines the claims made by alternative provider lobbyists that they will be able to provide something for students which would be different and better. It looks at the mounting evidence, including the findings of the Quality Assurance Agency, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, that a number of alternative providers were guilty of bad practice and even fraud in taking advantage of the availability of Student Loan Company funding for their students. The penultimate section describes the attempt by a small group of alternative providers to form an organisation for leaders of the sector and to dissociate themselves from these trends and emerging problems. The article concludes with the implications of the White Paper, "Success as a Knowledge Economy," and the Higher Education and Research Bill, both published in May 2016 for the risks and implications of this significant proposed reconstruction of the system of United Kingdom higher education.