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This article addresses the question of the role and function of contemporary higher education in western industrialised nations through a focus on the participation of undergraduate students. The discussion examines some of the dramatic changes brought about by neo-liberal educational policy, in particular the hierarchical division of teaching and research and the negative construction of students as consumers. Drawing on critical debates within the fields of art and education, what it means to participate--in both theory and practice--is interrogated. Research-based learning is then presented as a participatory form of pedagogy. Combining evidence from the wider literature with that provided by the recent activities of a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in the UK, it is suggested that research-based learning has the potential to reconfigure students as intellectual producers through their active engagement with research and their participation in the research cultures of their departments and disciplines. In so doing, such pedagogies present scope for critical and constructive intervention in relation to some of the damaging trajectories of educational reform in the UK and elsewhere. (Contains 6 notes.)

This article presents an analysis of the way in which a group of students at one UK university mobilised their interest in and commitment to pro/feminist values and ideals through the establishment of a student society geared towards combating anti-sexism. Placing the students at the centre of the discussion, the article describes the various strategies adopted by the group to proselytise their views and how, through the utilisation of a range of resources, they sustained a programme of political activism around issues of gender inequalities. Highlighting the possible connections between pedagogic practice, classroom experience and extra-curricular activity, the article demonstrates the ways in which the teaching and learning process might facilitate student engagement with a broader set of ideas about life both inside and outside of the university setting. Within the context of ongoing change surrounding UK higher education, and the heavily gendered institutional climate which this supports, the article provides evidence to suggest that curricular design and delivery can impact upon student motivations towards a contemporary and, it is argued, transgressive and transformative, reworking of feminist principles and ideals.

Transformational leadership is widely recognised as being central to the implementation of educational reform. In this paper I draw on selected educational speeches made by New Labour politicians in order to locate shifting discourses of leadership within the broader accountability framework through which the terms of the relationship between central government and head teachers have been re/configured in the United Kingdom. The gendered politics of transformation are examined, highlighting new and renewed forms of masculinity embedded within new leadership ideals. It is suggested that a gendered critique of transformational leadership offers an important contribution to critical analyses of the neo-liberal and managerialist educational project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]