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In 2016 the Government invited English local authority employers of social workers and university providers of social work qualifying programmes to apply jointly for funding to become social work teaching partnerships. This was in response to its concerns about the limited engagement of local authorities with qualifying training programmes. It was also part of the Government's strategy to ensure that students qualified as social workers with what it considered to be the right knowledge and skills and to improve their recruitment, retention and development and overall quality of practice. Following an evaluation of one partnership, this discussion paper addresses the evolution of these arrangements as found in consultations with representatives of 10 social work teaching partnerships (held 2017–18), the four original pilots and the six others that were subsequently funded. Drawing on a synthesis of the partnerships' reported experiences, this paper reports the variations in their approaches and sets out the challenges they faced and addressed, contextualising this in the policy landscape in which they were introduced and operated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair access and widening participation currently occupy a prominent position in the UK higher education agenda, but these terms remain ambiguous. In this paper we identify two prominent strands of policy in the government's approach to access and the widening of participation and contrast these with a third, more progressive perspective. The academic strand seeks to attract 'gifted and talented' young people into an unreformed higher education system. The second strand, which we term the utilitarian approach, posits a need for reform. However, this is undertaken largely to meet the requirements of employers and the economy. In contrast, a transformative approach values diversity and focuses on creating a system of higher education that does not place the burden of change upon potential entrants. This framework is used to explore some of the implications of the government's White Paper The future of higher education. First, the purpose of higher education is discussed, with particular reference to the distinction between economic and social objectives. Second, the government's view of the structure of the higher education sector is examined, by scrutinizing the notion of institutional differentiation and the role of the access regulator. We conclude that within a more differentiated higher education sector different aspects of the access discourse will become dominant in different types of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines staff perspectives on institutional representations of a range of areas of diversity and inclusion in a key post-compulsory education sector: that of UK Higher Education (HE). The paper focuses on comparing representational statements made by institutions with the reality of their lived experiences as perceived by staff. The paper first reviews literature around key issues of promoting and progressing in these areas, and how these areas are represented by institutions and the sector as a whole. It presents and discusses data from a survey (n = 300) to show strong agreement with representational statements as mirroring those of institutions, yet statistically significant differences between representations and the reality of lived experiences, particularly in relation to the lived experiences of staff. These data are discussed in the light of progress made by institutions, and the challenges faced in translating representations into real lived experience. Suggestions for institutions and policy makers are made to help better align reality with these representations in the UK Higher Education sector and, theoretically, for post-compulsory education sectors elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student feedback can be used to enable institutions to achieve the best possible outcomes for students through informing changes which enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Following the introduction of an online survey platform to gather student feedback at a top-performing UK university, anecdotal concerns raised by academics suggested students were being more critical. This exploratory study investigated the effects of switching from a paper to an online survey by comparing the open-ended responses between the two methods of collection. The main contribution of this study is the development of an analytical framework which can be used by other institutions to evaluate student comments, in order to understand and improve the student experience. Three key findings in this study were uncovered. Firstly, the quality of student feedback is not undermined by a switch to a more efficient online collection. Secondly, student comments via both methods of collection predominantly continue to focus on fulfilling basic needs, such as study resources. Finally, a small number of comments online revealed a lack of behavioural constraint and were considered to be inappropriate. These findings have important policy implications for the global higher education sector, highlighting the need for students to be given guidance on providing constructive feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article synthesizes ideas that emerged over the course of a 10-week symposium titled "Teaching Reproducible Research: Educational Outcomes" https://www.projecttier.org/fellowships-and-workshops/2021-spring-symposium that took place in the spring of 2021. The speakers included one linguist, three political scientists, seven psychologists, and three statisticians; about half of them were based in the United States and about half in the United Kingdom. The symposium focused on a particular form of reproducibility--namely computational reproducibility--and the paper begins with an exposition of what computational reproducibility is and how it can be achieved. Drawing on talks by the speakers and comments from participants, the paper then enumerates several reasons for which learning reproducible research methods enhance the education of college and university students; the benefits have partly to do with developing computational skills that prepare students for future education and employment, but they also have to do with their intellectual development more broadly. The article also distills insights from the symposium about practical strategies instructors can adopt to integrate reproducibility into their teaching, as well as to promote the practice among colleagues and throughout departmental curricula. The conceptual framework about the meaning and purposes of teaching reproducibility, and the practical guidance about how to get started, add up to an invitation to instructors to explore the potential for introducing reproducibility in their classes and research supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pursuit of greater research 'impact' has become embedded within Higher Education, through links to perceived value for money, and reified through institutional auditing processes. Academics are frequently encouraged to use social media to facilitate public engagement and enhance research impact, as it offers the potential to connect with more diverse, non-academic audiences. However, little is known about the relationship between the use of social media and academics' own perceptions of research impact and public engagement in practice. In this paper, an analysis of text responses from a survey of academics (n = 107) is presented. This includes what academics perceive to be examples of high-impact interactions through social media, and how this is mediated by different platforms. The findings have practical implications for social media training for academics and also suggest that institutional definitions of research impact may not account for the range of scholarly engagement social media platforms can facilitate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a Foucauldian theorisation and an in-depth study with eight disabled student activists in England, this paper explores how persistent marginalisation and ableism in higher education has triggered a wave of activism among disabled students, who, just before the advent of the pandemic, had organised a structured movement, Disabled Students UK. We employ Foucault's ideas of the care of the self and others to discuss the formation of disabled students as activist subjects fighting discrimination in English higher education, in a moment in which the intersection between inclusive policies and austerity measures exposed the ableism rooted in academic practices. This paper promotes discussion on the nurturing relationship that exists between the individual and the community in constituting disability activism and disabled activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is a response to Cotton, Miller and Kneale's 2017 paper on the current state of higher education research within UK universities. It seeks to contribute to the debate surrounding the inclusion of pedagogic research (PedR) via SoTL in the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the context of researchers who reside within a disciplinary context. The inclusion of PedR in the REF continues to be contentious, despite recommendations in the Stern Report which could make its inclusion more feasible. This paper focuses on PedR which is conducted, published and disseminated by academics situated within Life Science departments, rather than Schools of Education. The twenty-one teaching-focused academics in this study discussed their commitment to PedR integral to their academic identity, the challenges they faced in carrying out PedR, and their thoughts on REF 2014. Their opinions and conclusions give food for thought on decisions regarding inclusion of PedR in REF 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positioning strategy and ranking are critical issues in an increasingly competitive higher education landscape. Unless there is conceptual congruence between positioning strategies and rankings, the signals may become diffused and confusing for prospective students. This paper seeks the congruence between positioning strategies and ranking. Since without a validated typology of positioning strategies, such congruence cannot be sought, this paper firstly aims to develop an empirically derived typology of positioning strategies for HEIs. The population consists of HEIs in the UK. Content analysis was used to analyze the WebPages of HEIs to identify positioning bases, and congruence and contradictions between those positioning bases and ranking were identified by correspondence analysis. As a result, a new positioning typology consisting of eight bases, which are top of the range, campus life experience, internationalization, teaching excellence, research quality, graduates prospects, location, and value for money, was identified. In conclusion, HEIs are categorized into three different groups as Leaders and Challengers, Followers, and Nichers and Cost Leaders, and recommendations about how to guarantee congruence between positioning strategy and ranking were made. HEIs should choose positioning bases in line with their rankings since congruence strengthens the position in the minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedback is a dialogic process in which diverse individuals are involved. In internationalised higher education, individuals with different feedback literacies are likely to participate in feedback dialogues and interactions across feedback cultures. Such intercultural interactions can be challenging; some degree of intercultural competence is needed for dialogues between cultures to be effective and appropriate for all involved. This paper brings together feedback and intercultural competence research, exploring whether developing intercultural competence specific to feedback contexts can support more effective dialogues. Narrative interviews and audio diary methods were employed over a 9-month period of time to explore the role of intercultural competence in feedback dialogues across feedback cultures. Changes over time were captured through the longitudinal design of the study. Findings show that knowledge and awareness of diverse feedback practices and cultures, intercultural critical reflection, intercultural emotional management, alongside a set of skills and attitudes towards diversity of feedback practices can impact on facilitating intercultural feedback dialogues. A framework of feedback intercultural competence is proposed, and further research is encouraged to expand upon this exploratory papers' initial contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on developments relevant to education in Great Britain as of October 1973. Nigel Grant, reader in education at the University of Edinburgh, joined the Editorial Board of "Comparative Education" magazine. The eight session of the Standing Conference of European Ministers of Education was held in June 1973, which focused on "The Educational Needs of the 16-19 Age Group." UNESCO released its latest publication "Present Problems in the Democratization of Secondary and Higher Education." The Schools Council and the Standing Conference on University Entrance published the Working Paper 46, entitled "16-19: Growth and Response, 2. Examination Structure" and Working Paper 47, "Preparation for Degree Courses."

This paper considers critical reflection as a pedagogical strategy in UK higher education at a moment of an amplification of populist, reactionary discourses. It draws on written reflections of foundation-level students in a case study cohort and offers insights into their lived learning experiences and perceptions of the value of reflection. This is situated within the UK 'Brexit' context, alongside a proliferation of far-right populist voices, emboldened supremacies and rising fascism. Accompanying this has been a normalisation of reactionary 'anti-social justice' discourses. It is vital that HE practitioners recognise, pre-empt and interrupt such discourses, developing pedagogies and curricula in response. Yet there are inherent challenges in a climate of 'post-truth' anti-intellectualism. This paper argues that critical reflection contributes a useful approach to learning, fostering development of students' personal, intellectual and political capacities to navigate this complex socio-political terrain and engage with social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the heterogeneous effect of student spending in UK NUTS-2 regions. Impact analyses of the more than £45 billion students spend each year have so far been agnostic of the regional absorptive capacity to benefit from this expenditure. Building a multi-regional input–output model for the UK and combining it with data on student expenditure, domicile and level of study, the paper finds significant regional heterogeneity in gross value added and employment multipliers as well as in interregional spillovers. The analysis shows how important student expenditure is for regional economies and the symbiotic relationship between student spending and regional industrial structures that produce varying impact outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critiques key international teaching excellence and higher education outcomes frameworks for their lack of attention to epistemic equality. It subsequently argues that adequate 'datafication' of these frameworks, to demonstrate the extent to which universities offer teaching experiences which promote intellectual equivalence of all 'knowers' could advance present understandings of teaching excellence beyond benchmarked performativity. The paper theorises the philosophical basis of a changed 'datafication' process under selected national and supra-national frameworks for measuring teaching excellence at universities and shows, by statistically modelling selected national data, how a 'metric' evaluating universities on epistemic equality could work in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Colleges of Advanced Technology (CATs), specialist providers of advance science and technology which existed in England and Wales for ten years after the 1956 White Paper Technical Education. Its central argument is that recasting the CATs as broader-based universities following the 1963 Robbins Report was a significant error which attenuated the progress of science and technology, and prevented the Colleges' development as viable providers of higher education (HE) outside the university sector. This decision, it is argued, was shaped by typically English views about the relative value of different forms of learning, the nature and purpose of HE, and particular beliefs about the primacy of the university. It also conflated the general desire to increase participation in higher education with the wish to promote science and technology in particular. A bolder option, it is proposed, would have been to build the CATs up as prestigious institutes of technology, along the lines of those found in the USA and continental Europe – although this, it is recognised, would have entailed a substantial shift in the role of the state and reduced the individual and collective autonomy of HE institutions in England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hospitality management provision in higher education in the UK is well established, though most courses are overly concerned with developing "how to do" skills in graduates. This paper argues that this "how to do" culture is reinforced by student learning needs, as well as the industrial experiences and learning preferences of staff. This "how to do" agenda is also reflected in much research output. The paper reports briefly on the 2018 Council for Hospitality Management Education (CHME) research conference, and confirms that much research is practitioner linked and overly reliant on a narrow band of research methods. A more research-active academic culture would lead to more critical thinking in research methods as well as in course delivery and assessment. The inclusion of increased social science content in hospitality management programmes would also create a scientific underpinning to these courses that engage critical thinking. Finally, the paper suggests that programmes might benefit from the deliberate inclusion of topics that are purposely not relevant to the vocational mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the form that academic freedom takes and how it can be maintained in the context of the internationalisation of universities has become prominent in the UK in recent years. Both governmental and societal voices have raised concerns about perceived threats; however, much of the existing evidence is scattered and anecdotal. In October 2020, we distributed a survey in order to assess these issues. In this paper we report three main findings. First, UK social scientists express high levels of concern across a number of dimensions, from the effects of funding on research, to teaching content, to freedom of expression, and risks created by the online environment. Second, these concerns are somewhat greater in Politics, IR and Area Studies, suggesting that those disciplines which are most international in their content report greater risk. Finally, there appears to be demand for greater support. A majority of respondents did not know if guidelines existed in their department, and state that academic freedom was discussed infrequently or not at all. This suggests that institutional guidance and professional discourse have not kept pace with heightened concern. We find majority support for new legislation and even stronger support for a code of conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes, as it's starting point, the statements of solidarity with Black and non-White students in UK drama schools which were issued in the summer of 2020 and tracks the commitments made against the writers, directors and actors who took part in the graduation shows of the following academic year. It analyses how (or if) change of representation was established in the sector as a whole and also on an institution-by-institution basis. Suggestions are made as to further changes that could be made in the actor training sector, and, by implication, all higher educational establishments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper shows how Karen Barad's agential realism provides a powerful analytical framework for assessing higher education accountability. It takes the example of the UK 'National Student Survey' (NSS), a questionnaire, which purports to ascertain student course satisfaction in universities. The paper demonstrates how agential realism offers the opportunity to make visible (and theorise) three suggested effects of the NSS: (i) affective dimensions of lecturer experience; (ii) boundary creations between lecturers and students; and (iii) the marginalisation of experimental conceptualisations of practice. Analysing narrative data from six university lecturers, it will be shown how agential realism has a capacity to theorise the sociological realms of classroom encounters, institutional practices and national policy in their very entanglement. That is, university lecturers' practice is analysed as 'apparatuses of bodily production' that are enfolded into larger institutional and national apparatuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of neoliberalism affecting the higher education sector, critical research in marketing and management remains dominated by Western Eurocentric theories. As a result, non-Western researchers are expected to socialise with the Western theoretical discourse to succeed and progress in Western academia. In this paper, we reflected on our personal experiences as early career researchers from Southeast Asia who have studied and are currently working in the UK as we navigate around the structural expectations, challenges, and strategies in pursuing our research. We merged our voices with those of other doctoral students from non-Western backgrounds in the discipline to present some coping mechanisms that researchers like us adopt to avoid failure in academia. We argue that the conformity to Western academia and its hidden struggles produce risk-averse junior researchers; thus, limiting creativity, diversity, and potential growth in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a statistical model for a TEF metric that could liberate the "oppressed" (international students) and the "oppressors" (home students) from the influence of public policies which, through constructions of international students as "supplicants" and "beneficiaries" of the prestigious British education system, have created conditions for their exclusion in the classroom. It is argued in the paper that such representations have contributed to international students' subordination through coloniality and have also limited home students' agency to engage with their international peers on socially and politically equal terms. The paper conceptualises the design and philosophical nature of a supplementary TEF metric that could prevent such symptoms of public policies. It also shows how such a metric could work in practice by modelling the UK Engagement Survey (UKES) data from a case study university. The paper proposes ideas about how understandings and practice of internationalisation could be re-articulated through the proposed metric. As such, it also discusses new "standards" of internationalisation that could enter reputational rankings and ways in which they could be applied internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK Higher Education (HE) is going through a process of unprecedented change, where large numbers of its student body now come from internationally diverse contexts. These students come from different cultures, backgrounds and educational systems which influence the way they interact, learn and engage with UK HE. Key participants in this engagement and interaction are UK HE academics, who play a significant role in the development of the international student teaching and learning experience. This paper aims to investigate this role and investigate the academic expectations and perceptions of 22 academic tutors across 3 UK HE Business Schools. Within this context the paper will explore how academic knowledge and understanding of international students influence their pedagogical approaches; the participants in the research each had a minimum of three years' teaching experience. Data were analysed using template analysis through the lens of an interpretive approach. The findings indicate that more needs to be done to support the integration of international students in UK HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews issues about quality including the United Kingdom government's statements (White Papers of 2011 and 2016) and the development of audits. Institutional educational policies could provide the basis for quality enhancement centred around the White Papers. The development of a 'quality framework' or schema for the production of higher educational policies is presented and explored. Quality provision, of various types, reside in this schema that integrates aspects such as degree structures and educational components in an overall pedagogic framework. Ancillary provision, such as information and computer facilities and learning spaces, are also part of this structure. Academic subject areas are covered by benchmark statements but should be associated with principles for active learning and assessment as the Teaching Excellence Framework is extended in 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance assessment is permeating increasingly diverse domains of higher education, even in areas previously perceived to be too complex and idiosyncratic to quantify. The UK's attempts to assess 'research impact' within the Research Excellence Framework (REF) are illustrative of this trend and are being closely monitored by several other countries. A fundamental rationale for employing narrative case studies to assess impact within REF, rather than taking a (less resource intensive) quantified approach, was that this would allow for the variation, complexity and idiosyncrasy inherent in research impact. This paper considers whether this promise of narrative flexibility has been realised, by analysing a combination of REF impact case study reports and interviews and focus group discussions with actors involved in case study production. Informed by this analysis, our central argument is that the very quality which allows narratives to govern is their ability to standardise performance (albeit whilst retaining a degree of flexibility). The paper proposes that REF impact case studies position narratives of impact as technologies of governance in ways that restrict the 'plot line' and belie the far more complex accounts held by those working to achieve research impact. This is partly because, as research impact becomes institutionalised within universities' measurement infrastructures, higher education institutions become impact gatekeepers, filtering out narratives that are deemed overly complex or insufficiently persuasive, while perpetuating particular approaches to recounting tales of impact that are deemed likely to perform well. Crucially, these narratives not only describe impact but actively construct it as an auditable phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that current approaches used to assess and monitor student engagement in UK higher education are failing to fulfil their potential by superficially helping institutions to appear professional and innovative yet failing to accurately measure and improve engagement. Drawing on service management literature including (Public) Service Dominant theory, this paper argues that current strategies are failing to deliver for three main reasons. They do not capture the full value students derive from their engagement experience, they underplay the impact of peers within the ecosystem and they do not effectively engage employees. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these omissions for further research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the processes and outcomes of an action research project, which utilised action learning sets to explore the experiences of a community of academics, who promote pedagogical enhancement in a UK university. Five academics acted as participant action researchers in a longitudinal study exploring the issues they face within their community of practice. Action learning sets were used as the forum through which the participants could discuss the issues they face. The result is an interwoven fabric of action learning and action research, with participants utilizing their reflections on the action research process itself as a catalyst to achieve greater insight into the issues they sought to address through their action learning. This paper explores the themes that emerged from these reflections: choosing between seeking 'solutions' versus promoting discussion in the action learning sets, the complementarity of action research and action learning, the challenges of a collective mode of inquiry. Ultimately, we offer up the process of incorporating action learning sets within an action research project as a participatory approach that can engage colleagues in different roles to reflect on pedagogical practice. Our findings demonstrate both the potential benefits and challenges inherent in combining action learning and action research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The professionalization of occupations has led to the increased demand for specialized knowledge in many fields, in response to which Higher Education (HE) institutions have provided professional education programmes. The purpose of this paper is to address a need for research into the history and current position of professional education in Human Resource Development (HRD) in the UK and to consider the problem of the extent to which HRD can be regarded as a profession. The paper reports findings from a mixed methods study comprising an audit of the postgraduate HRD programme provision in UK universities and a symposium at which the perspectives of key informants were captured. There is evidence of declining use of the term 'HRD' in programme titles, and of contestation and conflict between the professional education of HRD and Human Resource Management (HRM). The paper argues for regarding HRD as symbiotic in relation to HRM, rather than as a distinct profession. It identifies the implications of this conceptualization for professional education in the field and discusses the relevance of experience in the UK for HRD internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about how best to support students' transition from school to university have re-emerged periodically since at least the 1970s. This paper focuses upon one aspect of this transition: how to develop the quantitative skills students acquire at school throughout the first year of their degree. We report on an attempt to inject pedagogic innovation into the teaching of quantitative methods to first-year geography undergraduates at a large Russell Group university in the UK. More specifically, we report on moving to a pedagogic approach of student-centred, inquiry-based learning, which uses quantitative methods to investigate the issue of air pollution. We explore whether "statistical anxiety" is still a common experience of undergraduate geographers and the extent to which pedagogical innovation can help to alleviate this. Although the focus is on UK Geography, the paper has wider relevance to anywhere geographical research methods are taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of the Transactions in 1923, exclusively for the publication of original scientific work, consolidated the standing of the Journal of the Textile Institute as a scholarly periodical, although the timing was fortuitous, reflecting the needs of the industrial research associations, then newly established in the UK following the 'neglect of science' controversy in 1916. The burgeoning output of papers from this source in turn acted as a major competitive stimulus for the transformation of textile technology in higher education from craft-based empiricism to scientific discipline, albeit incrementally. In the background was the apparent dichotomy between the industrial practitioner and the academic scientist. Higher education sought to bridge this gap while simultaneously adopting the ethos and practices of the applied science model for textile technology, thereby creating tensions internally which took many years to resolve. The paper reviews the emergence of textile technology as a scientific discipline during the inter-war years and acknowledges the defining role of the Transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the UK Higher Education sector has experienced a significant change to its funding base with a shift away from government funding, to operating within a highly competitive marketised environment. This shift has impacted the governance and management structures within the sector, with universities encouraged to adopt a more corporate and managerial style. Moreover, over this period, universities have evolved and adapted to social, economic, environmental and technological changes, necessitating a change in dialogue with the large number of internal and external stakeholders who influence Higher Education policy as well as university practices and operations. Adopting a Stakeholder and Resource Dependency Theory perspective, this paper seeks to calibrate the changing influence and importance of these stakeholders. The paper analyses a survey of 22 university secretaries (In the UK Higher Education setting, the university secretary is responsible for the effective governance of the university and for its professional services. In recent years, several UK universities have changed the title of this role from university secretary to Chief Operating Officer (COO), or to University Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, which is more common internationally.) conducted in mid-2020, and the results show that academic staff and students are seen as the most influential internal stakeholders as the quality of teaching and research is vital to the reputation and attractiveness of the university in a global market. Undergraduate home students are seen as the most influential student group due largely to the numbers enrolled, followed by international postgraduate taught students, an outcome consistent with resource dependency theory. UK and devolved governments (Devolution occurs when a central government delegates power to a region, providing it with autonomy to make legislation relevant to the area, whilst keeping it under national control. In the UK, devolved powers were granted to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from the UK Westminster Government following referenda in each region in the late 1990s. The devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have control over a wide range of policy areas and have the authority to pass their own legislation in relation to them. One such devolved policy area is education. Other devolved policy areas include health services, law, and the environment.) are seen as the most influential external stakeholder reflecting their role in university funding and in setting Higher Education policy and regulation, an influence that has increased over the past two decades. The influence of financial stakeholders has also grown over the past two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurrent narrative in the recent literature on international student mobility is that overseas study is motivated by a desire for onward international mobility or oriented towards specific goals such as an international career. However, the way in which transnational mobility after graduation is perceived and experienced by international students is largely unexplored. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 55 current and graduated international students from three UK universities, this paper employs Bourdieu's central concepts of habitus and capital to explore differentiated mobility aspirations and experiences. In so doing, this article nuances, and calls for a need to problematise, the meaning and power associated with post-study mobility across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic conferences have a central role in shaping career trajectories, reproducing or resisting exclusions and moulding relations in and to academia, thus shaping academic networks. In this paper, we consider how precarious academics subvert and navigate conference spaces, including emerging online forms. Particularly, we explore how academic conferences generate and nurture friendship as an enduring political practice that undermines neoliberal economic, political and social structures. This is contextualised in UK higher education amidst mass job losses, increased precarity and the subsequent breaking of academic bonds. In interviews with academics and our own auto/ethnographical experiences, we explore how friendship emerges in and resists the exclusions of the conference space for precarious researchers. Finally, we explore how the nurture of friendship by precarious scholars at academic conferences promotes collective action to resist neoliberalism within the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature reviews are a genre that many graduate students do not fully understand and find difficult to write. While the genre, language and rhetorical moves of literature reviews are widely researched, less research focuses on citation use in literature reviews. Teaching students 'how-to' write the literature review through explicit genre awareness is not enough. What is needed, is a focus on the discursive nature of citations since citations are a core ingredient in literature reviews. The complexity of citing, referencing and using sources is difficult to teach in university classrooms, especially in courses that focus on content knowledge. When it is taught, it is often imparted to students as conventions with particular organisational features around citation styles. Or it is taught within the discourse of morality and academic dishonesty that surrounds plagiarism. What is lacking is a pedagogy that relates citing to the more complex discursive practices that are implicit and deeply embedded in particular time-bound contexts. The purpose of this research was to explore citation patterns in 23 draft and final masters' student literature review papers to better understand the ways in which students use sources in literature reviews with the aim of informing pedagogy. Findings indicate that the concept of intertextuality, specifically, transgressive intertextuality, intertextual engagement and discursive intertextuality can help with the teaching and learning of literature reviews and citation use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2014, Professor Mike Collins – one of the four founding members of the Leisure Studies (LS) Association – submitted a paper to LS that offered a retrospective review of the first 30 years of the journal (1982–2012). Sadly, whilst the paper was under review, Professor Collins passed away. Mike’s commentaries have always been significant; we include this piece in this particular issue of the journal because it underpins the range of articles we have selected that we feel address some of the central tenets of ‘leisure’. Held alongside the Editors introduction, this article speaks as much as anything else to the state of the field, its futures and its potentialities. Serving as a companion piece that looks to the multiple pasts, genealogies and histories of leisure (and indeed LS), we, the Editors, offer below a necessarily abridged and posthumous version of Professor Collins’ original submission to the journal. Any omissions, errors, mis-representations and mis-understandings are the result of our own editorial hand for which we unreservedly apologise. We hope we have been able to keep the spirit, critique and engaging style that, no doubt, Mike would have presented in a final version of this manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on how female academics in UK universities use dress to construct their professional identity. The paper draws on the current literature on dress, body and academic identity and uses a theoretical framework of Goffman's work of performance and Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and habitus to explore these women's attempts to construct themselves as professionals. The aim of this paper is to give insights into these women's perceptions of 'what it takes to dress to impress' for the 'professional project' within a constantly shifting university workplace environment. The themes of analysis include issues such as the challenges of being a female academic and establishing yourself in the class, using dress to establish a feeling of belonging in the department and institution as a whole and a critique of how the various aspects of dress are incorporated in this idea of visual gratification of the 'consuming' students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the document about disabled students with relevance to fieldworks in Great Britain. Exclusion of disabled students from fieldworks; Promotion and development of pedagogic research; Improvement of professional practice and students' experiences of learning and teaching in higher education.

This paper proposes a framework of support for reducing barriers to curriculum access for students with disabilities in higher education (HE), by drawing upon findings from a unique longitudinal qualitative study. The 'Longitudinal Transitions Study' commenced in 2010 and followed the transition experiences of a group of 80 young people since they left compulsory education, 32 of whom went into HE. Interviews were conducted with participants at several key stages of their time in HE and supplemented by focused case study work with seven of the participants. The analysis provides original examination of how appropriate balance can be achieved between broad inclusive practice and individual adjustments meeting specific needs. Key curriculum access issues identified in the study are outlined with examples of how these were overcome through 'inclusive practice', 'individual adjustments' and 'individual agency' of the student. Drawing upon a Bioecological Model of Inclusive HE, a framework of support is proposed for achieving appropriate balance through the notion of progressive and mutual accommodations to facilitate learning environments which enable students with disabilities to become independent learners. The paper has broader significance for educators and researchers concerned with promoting inclusive teaching in HE and ensuring equality of opportunity for all students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining academics 'engagement with non-academics in industry, public agencies and charities, this paper examines gender gaps between men and women. Using a large-scale survey of UK academics, we find that although there is difference between women and men in the commercial areas of engagement, with men being more active in this domain than their women colleagues of a similar age and experience and of the same rank, discipline, and university, this pattern is reversed for academic engagement with the third sector, with women more likely to engage with charities, regardless of career stage and research field. We explore the gendered nature of academic engagement, and discuss policy implications arising from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, teachers in Poland have observed an increase in the number of primary school children with bi/multilingual and culturally diverse backgrounds. Regardless of their complex experiences, they face many cultural, social, linguistic and educational challenges upon entering primary school. English teachers are often at the forefront, helping them navigate through the intricacy of their seemingly 'dual lives' (Li and Zhu. 2013. "Translanguaging Identities and Ideologies: Creating Transnational Space Through Flexible Multilingual Practices Amongst Chinese University Students in the UK." Applied Linguistics 34 (5): 516–535, 531). The paper presents the results of an interview study among 23 Polish EFL teachers with a view towards investigating Polish EFL teachers' experiences and ways of working with bi/multilingual children directed at child integration and socialization into the new environment. The collected data was coded following the content analysis approach (Krippendorff. 2003. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) and analysed from the ecological perspective (see Bronfenbrenner. 1979. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; van Lier. 2004. The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers), whereby successful child socialization was observed to be dependent on an intricate network of interrelated factors. The role of the exosystem, i.e. the school system, has been found the least supportive due to the absence of a comprehensive multilingual policy, and lack of teacher support via teacher training, all of which have been concluded to be of urgent need in the emergent multilingual setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blended learning (BL) has been widely adopted across the higher education (HE) sector, with a growing body of literature exploring its impact on both students and faculty. However, to date, few studies have examined how students with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs) experience BL. This paper presents the results of a qualitative case study investigating the BL experiences of students with SpLDs in a British HE institution. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with six participants revealed five major themes regarding the BL experience of students with SpLDs: (1) clarity of purpose and instruction; (2) ease of use; (3) accessibility; (4) fear of 'getting it wrong' in online spaces and (5) interaction and staff engagement. The findings underscore the significance of addressing these areas in order to increase the efficacy of BL to meet the learning needs of students with SpLDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality in students' degree outcomes has been a concern for the higher education sector and the UK government for more than a decade. Since its inception in 2018, the Office for Students in England has prioritised the need for evidence of causality through requiring institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of their initiatives as set out in Access and Participation Plans. This policy development responds to several reports which identify a dearth of evidence-based interventions and scant knowledge of 'what works'. This paper traces the interplay between policy and research, focusing on the assumptions they make about causality. It concludes that unwarranted positions are taken in both spheres of practice, making progress unlikely. A conception of causality situated in extant formal theory on evidential pluralism and that draws on current practices would help us address inequality more effectively. Alternative framings of the problem of inequality in students' degree outcomes is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report on the outcomes of a survey of students across 12 higher education institutions in Ireland and the UK. Participants were asked to give their views on what tutors should do and not do when they are providing Mathematics Learning Support to students. We present the categories that emerged from an analysis of student responses, including tutor behaviour, teaching methods, content knowledge and management items. We discuss the implications that these responses have for tutor selection and training, how they relate to mathematical pedagogy and we consider the high expectations that students appear to have for tutors, who are providing this supplemental support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pursuit of inclusion in elite universities has been widely explored from a structural lens concerned with issues of access faced by traditionally underrepresented students and staff. Building from a sociological institutionalist approach, this paper proposes the concept of 'agentic inclusion' to capture the growing valorisation of universities' agency in the pursuit of inclusion, and the underlying shift from inclusion as 'structural pursuit' to inclusion as 'organisational commitment'. Drawing on primary data mapping the presence of inclusion offices, units and teams across 124 UK universities as of 2018, and secondary data such as student and staff inclusion statistics, I show that elite universities are leading in the organisational display of inclusion, irrespective of the actual levels of inclusion across traditionally underrepresented students and staff. The findings call for further research into the gap between universities' organisational commitments to inclusion and inclusion at the structural level and inform several policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cumulative tale ‘the house that Jack built’ is used as an analogy for flawed theories. This paper considers how the marketisation of higher education in neoliberal countries like England is affecting teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions. Neoliberal policy approaches resulting in the marketisation of higher education may also be considered as a ‘house that Jack built’. The policies are cumulative and they can be interpreted as being flawed due to their contradictory nature. The paper presents research findings revealing the impact of neoliberal agendas on teaching and learning in higher education in the UK. The content of the paper is relevant to other neoliberal contexts including the USA and Australia. The commodification of higher education has implications for the teaching relationship between academics and students as ‘student satisfaction’, ‘value for money’ and ‘critical pedagogy’ form part of the interplaying discourse in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In newspapers and blogs, on Twitter, and in academic papers, stories of struggling academics abound. Substance abuse, depression, failed relationships, and chronic illness are the casualties of a neoliberal university sector that values quantity over quality and demands ever more for ever less. Within the academic literature a growing counter-movement has called for resistance, collective action, and slow scholarship. Much of this work, however, has focused on strategies that can be applied within academia. Little has been written about the activities that academics do outside the university; activities that have no purpose other than enjoyment, rest, and renewal; activities that represent the valuing of the self as a human being, rather than a means of production; activities that could best be defined as self-care. Using reflective practice to construct a poem comprising three voices, this paper explores those activities. This poetic representation is an effort to create time and space for the authors, and a manifesto to encourage other academics to demand and protect the time, space, and reflective practice that are essential to both personal wellbeing and quality research and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 innotpreparing students for the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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