The Local, National and Global in Higher Education
A One Day Research Conference
Friday 13 February 2015
Kenwood Hall Hotel, Kenwood Road, Sheffield S7 1NQ
Keynote Address
Drawing Room – 09.15 – 10.00
Professor Paul Ashwin (Lancaster University)
Title: Why would going to university change anyone?
Parallel Paper Session One 10.15 – 11.15
Drawing Room (Chair: Professor Gareth Parry)
Samantha Drobinski
Title: Policy success and failure in English higher education: some dilemmas
Abstract:
My thesis looks at policy success and failure in higher education since the inception of HECFE in
1992, by using the ‘three dimensions for policy success’ framework developed by Allen McConnell.
The thesis will sit at an intersection of several theoretical studies and models in understanding
public policy, and policy success and failure, and uses McConnell’s framework for success as a
vehicle for addressing larger questions in relation to the contextualisation of Government policies
in higher education, and their likely success. My main research questions are: can policy analysis
models be applied to higher education? And, what does policy success and failure look like in the
context of higher education? This presentation focuses on some of the dilemmas faced in the
course of conducting this research, such as: what policies and whose policies? Should the study be
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evaluative or predictive? How can you identify policy success or failure at any point in time of a
policy lifecycle? Can existing frameworks of policy analysis be applied to higher education?
Rhiannon Birch
Title: Types of policy inquiry process in English higher education: situating the Dearing
inquiry
Abstract:
What instruments, processes and methods are used by Governments in England to inform
development of public policy? Which of these have been applied to higher education in the postwar period? The Robbins Inquiry (1961-63) and the Dearing Inquiry (1996-97) were examples of
major independent reviews into the future of UK higher education. They made significant
recommendations for the future of HE based on the collection, consideration and analysis of large
bodies of evidence. What similarities and differences were there between Robbins and
Dearing? In what respects was the role and work of the Dearing Inquiry distinctive?
Terrace Room (Chair: Professor Kathryn Ecclestone)
Elizabeth Parkin
Title: Maltesers, toffees and chocolate oranges: the creative sweet spot in course design
Abstract:
In reflecting on the curriculum design process for a UK business school’s undergraduate course
portfolio, this paper considers how radical it is possible to be in higher education and what the
constraints are on innovative developments. Building on considerations of whether standard
processes arising from the Bologna process might impede innovation (Barman, Bolander-Laksov, &
Silen, 2014) or whether managerialism mediates or exacerbate this standardising process in
relation to curriculum design and other areas (Teelken, 2012), we consider how sector-wide
pressures and the approach of an individual institution impact directly on curriculum design and
are also indirectly expressed in the attitudes of individual academics towards innovation. The
paper reflects on the experience of two key members of the curriculum design team in the wider
context of innovation in higher education.
Deanna Meth
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Title: ‘Shoot me down for saying this’: problems and paradoxes in HE learning and teaching
Abstract:
Discourses around the marketisation of higher education, in particular, ‘learning and teaching’ and
the ‘student experience’ can appear overly simplistic. They are often littered with either-or
scenarios which in today’s complex world are not helpful in recognising let alone resolving
tensions, and therefore perpetuate a deepening ideological chasm. Academics are seen as critically
placed in understanding and negotiating tensions in this environment, and there is a growing
realisation of the need to step back from these arguably worn out polarities, and focus more
deeply on their experiences. Interviews undertaken to explore the concept of ‘transformation’ in
undergraduate student learning with academics at a research-intensive university in England reveal
not only some predictable tensions within this environment, but also some potentially
uncomfortable contradictions that should compel us to think more deeply around this agenda.
Montgomery Room (Chair: Dr Vassiliki Papatsiba)
Sandrine Soubes
Title: Meanders toward research independence for post-doctoral researchers in science
Abstract:
This paper will present the exploration of conceptions of researcher development held by
postdoctoral researchers in scientific disciplines. We will focus this presentation on the key
concept of research independence and how such notion is framed under the gaze of an analytical
framework focused on structure and agency (Archer, 2003). This research is set in the context of
the neoliberal university where postdoctoral researchers’ employment relies on temporary research
contracts, making research careers temporary and unstable mode of employment. The articulation
of embedding and delivering “transferable skills” needed for the knowledge economy is at the
crux of policy documents shaping the discourse of researcher development not only in
postgraduate education, but also in policy documents related to the management of the research
workforce. This work results from an empirical qualitative study and attempts to build critical
scholarly engagement of our understandings of researcher development (Evans, 2011).
Vivien Sheard
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Title: The challenge of Alvesson and Skoldberg’s reflexive methodology for the novice
researcher
Abstract:
This presentation will explain and explore the potential value and the unresolved problems of
adopting Alvesson and Skoldberg’s reflexive methodology for an exploratory study. Alvesson and
Skoldberg position reflexive methodology as a meta-theory within which multiple interpretive
perspectives can be adopted and the interplay between these explored reflexively to generate
insightful outcomes. This approach resonates with the aim of an exploratory study to produce
potential explanations and avenues for further exploration: reflexively adopting a variety of
perspectives suggests an openness and recognises the conditionality of any conclusions drawn. At
a personal level the unresolved problems lie in how to do this and whether the novice researcher
should tackle an approach that requires a depth of understanding and application of multiple
perspectives. At a broader level is this meta-theory that cuts across different ways of knowing
acceptable and defendable?
Parallel Paper Session Two – 11.20 – 12.50
Drawing Room (Chair: Dr Vassiliki Papatsiba)
Sylvie Lomer
Title: International students as global diplomats: increasing the UK’s soft power
Abstract:
Over the last 15 years, the recruitment of international students has become increasingly
important to the UK higher education sector, and has been actively encouraged by national policy
(Findlay, 2010). While the primary rationale has been to increase income through education
exports, the idea of international students’ increasing the UK’s influence in global diplomacy is an
important secondary line of reasoning. Through Tony Blair’s Prime Minister’s Initiative to the
Coalition Government’s International Education Strategy, the idea emerges that higher education
can influence the UK’s ‘soft power’ (Nye, 2004) through developing international students’
knowledge of ‘British values’ and increasing their exposure to British culture and institutions. Using
Carol Bacchi’s ‘what is the problem represented to be’, I deconstruct this rationale by identifying
key assumptions and subject representations, and their effects. By drawing on literature from the
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USA, these assumptions are challenged and an alternative representation of international students
is proposed.
Cordula Peters
Title: How students studying on the Arabian Peninsula rate their graphic design education
Abstract:
Undergraduate degree programs in graphic design began to exist only within the last 15 years in
the countries that occupy the Arabian Peninsula. The majority of existing undergraduate graphic
design programs have either been designed by or modelled after universities located in North
America and Western Europe following a long tradition of design education that is based on the
theories and aesthetics defined by European design movements such as the Bauhaus and the
Swiss Style. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of satisfaction recent graduates of
different graphic design programs in Arabia have and how well prepared they feel for the local
design industry. The focus will be on their experience with their mostly expatriate faculty and
curricula based on North American or Western European models.
Salim Al-Abry
Title: Transnational higher education: academic programmes in Omani private colleges
Abstract:
Since 1996 the Omani Government encouraged the promotion and development of private higher
education institutions (HEIs) in order to meet the demand for higher education from increasing
numbers of high school leavers and the labour market. As a result, 26 private HEIs were
established by 2012, representing 51% of higher education provision in the country and enrolling
57% of the total number of students in the higher education sector. All private HEIs offer a wide
range of courses in collaboration with foreign HEIs from countries such as the US, the UK,
Australia and Germany. The Omani Government made these collaborative partnerships a
requirement for the accreditation of private HEIs, arguing that transnational education (TNE) is a
mechanism for promoting the provision of good quality education in the country. Despite the
scale and history of TNE in the private HE sector in Oman, its implementation has not been the
object of evaluations or research studies. A number of questions regarding the implementation of
the international programmes in private HEIs in Oman have been raised and still remain, including
issues of quality, relevance to the local labour market and resources for the effective delivery of
the programmes. This qualitative study seeks to develop an understanding of implementation
issues in TNE, focusing on the roles of local and foreign HEIs in the delivery of TNE in Oman.
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Terrace Room (Chair: Dr Caroline Hart)
Brian Gormley
Title: Commuting versus resident students: differences in student engagement and living
Abstract:
This study considered four different student cohorts to examine differences in their living and
social conditions and their levels of student engagement. The cohorts were differentiated by their
living arrangements: resident students; those living with their parents; renters; and home-owners.
The research indicates that, contrary to international research (primarily from the US and the UK),
students who live at home with their parents in Ireland are not from lower socio-economic
groups. Indeed, they rank highest on many socio-economic indicators. International research
would indicate that living in student halls has a positive impact on student engagement, which is
not supported by this research. Students living in student residences spend a lower amount of
time in educationally purposeful activities. Those in rented accommodation or living in their own
home spend the most time on these activities. However, students living in student halls do spend
the most amount of time on college activities (extra-curricular), which is positive for student
engagement. Students living in student halls were more likely to drink, and consumed more
alcohol than other cohorts, and were more likely to exceed safe limits for alcohol consumption on
a regular basis.
Aidan Tolland
Title: Institutional diversity in the English further education system
Abstract:
In contrast to research into higher education, there has been little investigation of the pattern of
institutional diversity in the English further education system. For official purposes, colleges are
classified into four main types: general further educations; sixth form colleges; specialist colleges; and
specialist designated institutions. Drawing on an analysis of administrative data sets, a comparison is
made of institutional diversity by size of college, by mode of study and by subject. The findings are
used to assess how well the four official types represent their member institutions.
Bill Esmond
Title: Systems, institutions and markets: theory and practice in ‘higher vocational education’
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Abstract:
A renewed impulse in OECD countries for tertiary diversification, rationalised in terms of higher-level
skills formation, has emphasised advanced vocational qualifications below the bachelor degree as
well as non-university institutions. Represented in England by the notion of ‘higher vocational
education,’ its explicit appeal to market rationality appears to represents a step-change from earlier
notions of diversified ‘mass’ higher education, which were theorised on the basis of functionalist
notions of diversity and took root during the long post-war economic boom. It also represents an
attempt to move beyond a countervailing process of convergence around the norms of older
universities, variously described as ‘academic drift’ or in terms of institutional isomorphism during a
period of greater uncertainty. Drawing on these theoretical approaches and on two embryonic
projects in English further and higher education, three substantial difficulties to this project may be
noted. Firstly, the ‘market’ in higher education revolves less around price than around the lifechances offered by institutions on the basis of academic prestige, threatening a new type of ‘marketled’ academic drift. Secondly, changes in employment patterns, with technological advances leading
to reduced discretion and an increased need for ‘soft skills’ from service sector employees, may even
imply fewer opportunities than previously at sub-professional and technician levels. Finally, these
employment changes appear to be reflected in educational practice within the very institutions
designated for diversity, severely constraining the space available for the teaching and research
activities associated with higher-level provision.
Montgomery Room (Chair: Dr Tony Strike)
David Hyatt
Title: The Critical Higher Education Policy Discourse Analysis Framework: uncloaking the hidden
through contextualisation and deconstruction.
Abstract:
This paper presents an analytical and heuristic framework for the critical analysis of higher education
policy texts (Hyatt 2013), and of the processes and motivations behind their articulations, grounded
in considerations of relationships and flows between language, power and discourse. Theoretically
the framework draws on critical discourse analysis, which provides a systematic framework for
exegesis, analysis and interpretation, uncloaking the ways in which language (and other semiotic
modes) work within discourse as agents and actors in the realisation, construction and perception of
relations of power. The framework itself comprises two elements: one concerned with contextualising
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and one with deconstructing. The contextualisation element of the frame comprises three parts:
temporal context, policy levers/drivers and warrant. The second element of deconstruction engages
with text and discourse using a number of analytical lenses and tools derived from critical discourse
analysis and critical literacy analysis.
Hyatt, D. (2013) ‘The Critical Higher Education Policy Discourse Analysis Framework’ in J. Huisman &
M. Tight (Eds.) Theory and Method in Higher Education Research. London: Emerald.
Laura Dean
Title: Employability: the good, the bad or the ugly?
Abstract:
This session looks at the way in which employability has been presented in the academic literature
and considers which is closest to the reality of delivery in modern higher education institutions. This
session will be interactive and participants will be asked to consider their understandings of the term
and how it has been used. Links will also be drawn to key themes in the delivery of higher education
such as its functions in enhancing national economy and social justice.
Sharon Feeney
Title: Comparing two approaches of institutional quality review in higher education
Abstract:
This paper discusses a comparative study of two models of external institutional quality review in
higher education on the island of Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, higher education institutions
used the European University Association model of review for their inaugural process of institutional
review. In Northern Ireland, as for all parts of the United Kingdom, higher education institutions are
reviewed by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. The principles, approaches and
processes of the two agencies are compared to identify their distinctive features and to consider
their appropriateness as models that might be extended to both sides of the binary system of higher
education in the Republic of Ireland. The research was based on an analysis of documentary sources
relating to the cycle of reviews conducted in both jurisdictions during the period 2004-06. The
findings highlight commonality and convergence in the quality approaches taken by both agencies.
Keynote Address
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Drawing Room – 13.50 – 14.35
Professor Simon Marginson (UCL Institute of Education)
Title: Global, national, local?
Parallel Paper Session Three – 14.40 – 15.40
Drawing Room (Chair: Dr Alan Skelton)
Patricia Bowe-Deegan
Title: Once we finish the degree we can worry about how we learn and study
Abstract:
This presentation focuses on how students approach learning and studying in an Irish Higher
Education institute, and investigates whether these approaches are dependent on the learning
environment. Each approach – deep approach, surface approach, effort and organisation, and
monitoring studying - will be considered from the student perspective using data collected via
survey, classroom observations and focus group. The deep approach to learning and studying is
considered appropriate in higher education so the student perspective on this will be explored in
detail. Two different learning environments, assessment for learning (AfL) and non-AfL, underpin
this presentation, so the attributes of each will be explored from the students’ viewpoint. Finally,
my findings suggest that it is the assessment for learning environment that produces the higher
grade which may keep the student happy, but is it educationally worthwhile?
Anne-Louise Temple Clothier
Title: Question, questions and qualification: redefining the internal career
Abstract:
The ‘internal career’ can be defined as the subjective sense of where your working life will take
you. This presentation outlines the initial research that has resulted in the proposal thesis ‘An
exploration of professional learning, and revised ‘internal careers’ experienced by HE teaching
practitioners undertaking the journey of EdD’. The research is timely in that drivers for undertaking
Doctoral research are changing, and the requirements for certification is being adopted as a base
line qualification in many Higher Education institutions. The research aims to uncover the intended
and unintended learning that occurs on the EdD journey and identify any subsequent
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repositioning of the ‘internal career’. In addition it hopes to identify the skills and knowledge
development that institutions might accrue as a result of practitioners undertaking an EdD
programme.
Terrace Room (Chair: Dr Tony Strike)
Ann Conway
Title: The effects of change on culture and identities: a case of an HEI undergoing transition
Abstract:
The primary aim of the research was to identify drivers of change and mergers in higher
education. It was then reflected on how changes and mergers impact on cultures and
professional academic identities. The case study is based on review of government policies and
institutional strategy documents looking towards the future and determining how they are
affecting the current situation in the Institution. This was conducted via analysis of interviews and
observations at meetings and classes, and via use of discourse analysis of some policy and
strategy documents. The interviewees were asked about their views on which factors bring about
strategic change from both external and internal drivers and how these drivers impact on their
own culture and professional academic identities. They also discussed possible future mergers in
higher education.
Philip Chan
Title: Funding of undergraduate medical education in the NHS: principles and effects
Abstract:
Undergraduate medical education in the UK is dually funded. There is University funding through
the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) or the devolved governments of the
UK, and a second line of funding for the teaching of medical undergraduates in National Health
Service (NHS) facilities, known as the service increment for teaching (SIFT). The allocation plans for
these funds within the NHS show how SIFT is actually spent. Most of this money is not actually
spent on undergraduate medical education, but instead used as a kind of general subsidy for elite
institutions, the central “teaching” hospitals. I propose the argument that both funders and
providers of medical education realized, and indeed intended, that SIFT was used for purposes
peripheral to undergraduate education, by examining the reporting systems for SIFT spending, and
the minimal nature of accountability for these large sums of money. The effects of this funding on
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undergraduate medical education are substantially negative. Although large sums are committed
to this activity, most of the money is used for other purposes, leaving the core activity essentially
unfunded, and relying on volunteerism to actually happen. This is explored in review of the
literature and government documents, as well as fieldwork, interviewing clinical teachers in the
NHS and senior figures in both University and NHS who are in charge of teaching or of funding
allocation.
Montgomery Room (Chair: Dr Caroline Hart)
Julian Crockford and Kimberley Simms
Title: Student finance and widening participation through the lens of institutional stakeholders
Abstract:
The two papers will form one presentation and are the basis of those which will be presented as
part of a symposium at BERA in September. The first paper will set the national context for
changes as a result of the 2012 increase in tuition fees and explore how they were negotiated at
the institutional level and the impact they had on the notion of widening participation. Through
this institutional lens, the distribution of different pressure points across student numbers,
recruitment and admissions will be exposed, and discussion will focus on how these were
distributed between, and served to highlight the differences between academic departments. The
second paper uses data from a repeated survey of first year undergraduates who started their
studies in 2013 and 2014. This survey looks at the factors which influenced the decisions of
students who were eligible for a ‘National Scholarship Programme Award’ to attend the University.
It considers the financial knowledge they reported gaining and the information sources they
accessed. The paper also reports on the findings of another survey completed with level 2 and 3
students in December 2014. This survey illuminated student perspectives on finance and money
management strategies.
Rita Hordosy
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Title: Student experiences with finance in the transition to University
Abstract:
This paper uses interview data from a longitudinal panel of students who started their
undergraduate studies in 2013. Building on the first year interviews with 40 students, the issue of
student finance is viewed through the lens of transitioning into independence. Exposing student
views on the new fee regime, taking on a higher amount of student loan as well as managing
money will help us understand the impact of change at the individual student’s level. This research
oversamples students who gained substantial financial support from the university due to their low
family income and compares it to those who did not get high volumes of bursaries.
Library Room (Chair: Professor Kathryn Ecclestone)
Pauline Madigan
Title: Caught in a liminal space: trying to put meaning and perspective into the research process
Abstract:
As an EdD student, attempts are ongoing to gain a sense of stability and direction in relation to
methodological approaches, theoretical perspectives behind methodologies and what
epistemology informs these theoretical perspectives. In this paper, I question if it is ever possible
to move beyond this liminal space I find myself in. For example, shall I ever decide on whether or
not my research approach fits into any neat ‘ism’ such as constructionism or interpretivism; or
feminism or post-modernism ... This paper will relay the research process journey of the presenter
to date.
Corinne Power O’Mahony
Title: Observing the development of a ‘true collaborative learning’ process within an Irish higher
education classroom
Abstract:
This presentation defines ‘true collaborative learning’ identifying the group under study and
situating it contextually in an Irish higher education classroom. The insider researcher approach is
acknowledged and discussed and the implications of this study explained. The development of
this learning process is viewed holistically by the researcher over a semester, with the emerging
insights presented through three key elements, that of the task, the tutor and the student. The
importance of verbal, non-verbal and other interaction are considered. Finally, the views of the
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students under study, that were gathered through a focus group are presented and compared
with the researchers observations.
Keynote address
Drawing Room – 15.45 – 16.25
Dr Jane Mulderrig (University of Sheffield)
Title: Soft power and neoliberal change in policy discourse
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