In this paper, we consider the intensifying pressures on critical research and academic integrity in a research policy context that has come to be increasingly dominated by an instrumentalist mind-set. Using sensitising resources drawn from Geoff Whitty's critique of the 'what works' agenda, we reflect on the current conditions of academic labour…

Critical museological perspectives have in recent years opened up new conceptual spaces for emerging forms of art museum practice. This article addresses the theme of changing ideologies and methodologies in art museums by offering an anecdote shaped by art museum practices, then theorizing potential responses from object-based, visitor-centered,…

This mixed methods paper considers whether or not invisible forms of morally resistant collegial leadership are progressively challenging policy and managerial quasi-market instrumentalism in a minority of low trust dysfunctional situations in a stratified United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education system. A theoretical model of stoical critical…

There is a growing impetus, from university students and administrations, to decolonise the curriculum and develop diverse reading lists. Yet, there is limited theoretical or empirical analysis of the authorship of current reading lists to justify this imperative. The present study developed and applied a method for auditing the authorship on…

In this paper, we offer a critique of neoliberal power from the perspective of the gendered, sexualised, raced and classed politics of motherhood in English universities. By using dialogical auto-ethnographic methods to examine our own past experiences as full-time employed mother-academics, we demonstrate how feminist academic praxis can not only…

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…

Bringing philosophical work on friendship to bear on the growing body of critique about the state of the neoliberal academy, this paper defends academic friendship. Initially a vignette illustrates the key features of academic friendship and the multiple demands on academics to account for themselves in the neoliberal university. We locate…

In 2004, Ray Land produced extensive literature on the 12 orientations of academic developers. These orientations provided academic developers with a useful tool through which they have been able to better articulate their roles and their place in academia. We have used the orientations model to establish, compare, and contrast the identity of…

This article reports on the design and implementation of an alternative form of writing assessment in a UK English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pre-sessional course. The assessment, termed processfolio, was a response to research inquiry into how writing assessment in a local context negated student agency and inculcated disempowering models of…

One notable "disruptive" impact of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has been an increased public discussion of online education. While much debate over the potential and challenges of MOOCs has taken place online confined largely to niche communities of practitioners and advocates, the rise of corporate "xMOOC" ventures such…

The early days of non-confessional, multi-faith religious education in Britain benefitted from close collaboration between academics in universities, teacher educators and teachers. This article attempts to initiate a revival of such a dialogue, by summarizing some developments in religious studies at university level and suggesting possible…

Report writing is an important employability skill for Engineers and Technologists, and this case study describes how a Technology degree module took a novel approach to developing students' report writing skills. Students learned how to use a criterion-referenced critical evaluation framework for reports and other technological documents. They…

The movement towards "openness" in education has tended to position itself as inherently democratising, radical, egalitarian and critical of powerful gatekeepers to learning. While "openness" is often positioned as a critique, I will argue that its mainstream discourses--while appearing to oppose large-scale operations of…

Corpus linguistics, or the gathering together of language into a body for analysis and development of materials, is claimed to be an assured, established method (or field) that valuably informs pedagogical materials and knowledge of language (e.g. Ädel 2010; Gardner & Nesi, 2013). The fundamental validity of corpus linguistics is rarely, if…

Purpose: The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to engage with the definition of quality as "excellence" and to show why this could be regarded as unhelpful and misleading; and, second, to suggest some factors which contribute to a "cultural divide" between quality assurance specialists in universities and their colleagues…