Search

As the English Higher Education (HE) system becomes characterised by centralised regulation, many professional services staff increasingly occupy significant positions sitting between traditional administrative roles, academia and management with responsibility for interpreting and implementing key policies. This study presents findings from a nested institutional case study, in a research-intensive institution, of the experiences of professional services staff implementing the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Examining how policy 'landed' in two academic schools, the findings present staff acting as both operational and strategic drivers: experiencing the regulatory policy cycle as opportunities, subjugation and threat. On the one hand, the high-stakes nature of the TEF led to the development of policy-specific, third space-type roles with enhanced employment contracts, prestige, and agency and the reformulation of working relationships. On the other, the TEF, as but one feature of the regulatory burden on institutions, provided only a limited kind of agency -- a term referred to here as 'structured agency' to staff. Through analysis of the diversity of roles, experiences and skills within the professional services workforce, this paper highlights the critical importance of professional services staff in a complex regulatory policy process, and the ways in which policy enactment in this space both constrains some individuals while, given adequate resource, enables others to carve out new career spaces and career trajectories. As the Office for Students (OfS) continues to normalise its power in institutions, these insights have important implications for labour force management, in turn allowing for the meaningful enactment of central policy within universities.

In England, the Studio Schools model, focused on developing employability skills in young people, represents a disruptive attempt at educational innovation. Through a documentary analysis of foundational documents, interviews with the model's architects and case studies of five Studio Schools, we map the tensions between theoretical conceptualisations of the model and the messy realities of implementing it. We found that the schools faced a wide range of challenges related particularly to local inter-school competition, centralised accountability measures and structural assumptions about the 'gold educational standard'. When facing these challenges, the course of least resistance for the schools was an iterative abandonment of the distinctive aspects of the Studio Schools model and a move back towards mainstream approaches to schooling. This process of institutional homogenisation is discussed through the lens of neo-institutional theory, with the challenges schools faced and their trajectories framed in terms of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphism. We argue that the use of isomorphism as a heuristic device provides important insight into the process of educational innovation in an educational system that combines competition and the risk of market failure with coercive accountability measures and embedded assumptions about the 'gold standard' schooling pathway.

This article presents a cross-national exploration of responses to widening participation (WP), with a specific focus on the provision of foundation year (FY) programmes and the use of contextualised admissions (CA) in "selective" Irish and UK institutions. There remains a dearth of research on these routes, with little understanding of the characteristics of students who utilise them, of why students use these routes and little knowledge of their effect on students' experiences in university and their overall sense of belonging. A year-long longitudinal comparative case study design examined three alternative entry routes in two selective higher education institutions (HEIs) in England and Ireland: a well-established FY; a newly formed FY; and a CA pathway. Data were collected through a mixed-method approach. Questionnaires and in-depth focus groups were employed at fixed points with participating students in each route. Results indicated that FY students had lower levels of familial educational history and parental occupation. FY students' sense of belonging significantly increased over the year, with students reporting increased confidence and sense of belonging due to the relationships established during the FY. CA students' sense of belonging remained the same, with students reporting feeling different and isolated. Results indicate that while students utilising FYs may be 'more disadvantaged' than CA students, their experiences helped establish a sense of belonging; illustrating the need for diverse WP routes catering to a wide range of needs. Results highlight the importance of providing opportunities to develop social and bridging social capital for all non-traditional students.