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The last couple of decades have witnessed a great emphasis on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, with higher education institutions "demanding" innovation or claiming that innovation takes place (Gilbert et al., 2020). Research has seen a resurgence of interest in innovative teaching and learning in higher education. High-quality teaching in the tertiary sector has become essential in maximising student learning. University teacher identities are manufactured from what they do, their work, their practices, and the context they work in. This research focuses on how thirty-eight innovative university teachers who have been awarded a teaching prize at a local or national level, been commended for innovation, or have a genuine interest in innovation, in the academic year 2019-2020 develop their professional identities, perceive, interpret, and characterise themselves in their daily teaching lives at two English teaching and research-intensive universities, Millfield-U and Causeway-U. A qualitative case study using visualisations (drawings) was adopted as a lens for exploring the core narrative, representations, and manifestations of innovative university teacher identity bringing 'form to the formless' (Bauman, 2013, p.82); outwardly trapping self-evoking reflections, and revealing the narrative understanding of teacher professional identity showing the emerging complexity of university teachers and aspects of teacher thinking around identity. The data analysis used in this inquiry combines Braun & Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis for the textual data element and Jungian focal points for drawings. The findings underpin how visualisations (drawings) add value to the conversations with innovative university teachers. Drawings connect the sub-identities of the self and demonstrate agency. The use of pictorial representations uncovered the professional roles of teachers in a highly marketised sector and demonstrated that many participants felt detached from their institutions and academic disciplines. The innovative teachers in this inquiry were constrained by time pressures, student numbers, increased workloads, and the lack of recognition within the role and academic discipline, all of which are part of the neoliberal agenda (Taberner, 2018).

Over the 2002 to 2010 period of New Labour administration, a key strand of educational policy was the notion of 14-19 education. A key component of which was a belief that for this to be delivered most effectively, organisations needed to work in partnership. This research aimed to understand and explain the operation of a 14-19 partnership, of which I was a member, and to suggest possible ways in which its operation could be improved. It was carried out as the Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition was introducing significantly different accountability measures for the 14-16 age group. A critical realist methodology was used as the ontological and epistemological basis (Bhaskar 1998; Bhaskar 2008). Since such a methodology does not have a preferred underpinning theoretical framework, results were predominantly analysed through the lens of Bourdieu’s triad of sociological principles of habitus, field, and capital (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Where appropriate, results were also framed by performativity (Lyotard 1984) and partnership perspectives from education (Hodgson and Spours 2006) and organisational studies (Contractor and Lorange 2004). Two key data collection methods, both from the perspective of an insider researcher, were used. Participant observation was used to obtain in situ evidence of partnership operation. In addition, eleven senior managers from partnership organisations were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. An analysis of field positions and a reflexive self-analysis were also carried out. This study identified that, for this partnership, the introduction of ‘Progress Eight’ led to the partnership’s demise. Using empirical evidence, the study provides theorised explanations of factors that affected partner engagement within this particular ‘weakly-collaborative’ 14-19 partnership, thus providing a number of original contributions to knowledge. It extended conceptions of educational partnership based upon theories of social capital by linking partnership engagement to capital exchange, capital cost-benefit analysis and the influence of government statist capital. The study also provided an early indication of the likely influence of ‘Progress Eight’ on partnership behaviour and, more generally, on the 14-16 curriculum within schools. Finally, the research methodology is an operationalised example of how a Bourdieun theoretical framework could be combined with a critical realist ontology to research the educational organisation context.

Liturgical interpretation is the application of the methods of patristic and medieval biblical exegesis to public worship. This thesis examines for the first time its importance in the religious culture of Scotland during a period of renaissance and reformation. The first section defines the genres and method involved with reference to the most popular liturgical commentary of that time, the Rationale divinorum officiorum of William Durandus of Mende (c.1230-1296). The reasons for the decline of this genre and its neglect by modern scholarship are then explored. The central section of the thesis employs a wide variety of evidence, including material culture, to argue, firstly, that liturgical interpretation was a fundamental part of the culture of Catholic Scotland; secondly, that interest in it was a sign of commitment to Catholic reform. It is also argued that it had an important place in the education system and influenced the design and understanding of churches and their furnishings. Drawing upon inscriptions in liturgical commentaries, networks of clergy in Scotland committed to Catholic reform and the liturgy are identified. The ‘Aberdeen liturgists’ were the most significant group. Formed by Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen who was consecrated in 1488, it is shown that their influence lasted beyond 1560 and created a distinctive religious culture in the North-East. The final section examines what happened to this intellectual tradition during the period of the Scottish reformations, both the Catholic reform associated with Archbishop Hamilton in the 1550s and the Protestant reform which triumphed in 1559-60. While interest in liturgical interpretation survived in Aberdeen after 1560, its use by Catholic writers declined in the later sixteenth century. A Reformed version of liturgical interpretation did, however, emerge combining an anti-commentary on the Catholic liturgy with the use of aspects of the medieval method to interpret the liturgy of the Reformed church. This can be found in official Protestant texts and, in its fullest form, in the 1590 sermons on the Lord’s Supper by Robert Bruce. This hitherto unnoticed genre demonstrates an important continuity across the Reformation divide. It suggests that ‘the Scottish Reformation’ is best seen as a phenomenon which was both Catholic and Protestant and that the reformers on both sides had more in common than they or subsequent historians allow.