Education

Are British research universities losing their way or are they finding a new way?

Nigel Thrift, a well-known academic and a former Vice-Chancellor, explores recent changes in the British research university that threaten to erode the quality of these higher education institutions. He considers what a research university has now become by examining the quandaries that have arisen from a succession of misplaced strategies and false expectations.

Challenging both higher education policy and leadership, he argues that the focus on student number growth and a series of research policy missteps has upset research universities’ priorities just at a point in the history of planetary breakdown when their research is most needed.

How is your institution enabling Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff and students to thrive? Is your institution effectively tackling racism?

Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, the higher education sector has started making bold commitments to dismantling structural racism. However, big questions remain about how higher education can combat institutional racism and achieve real change.

This book disrupts the higher education sector through ambitious actions and collective, participatory and evidence-informed responses to racism. It offers a roadmap for senior leaders, staff and students to build strategies, programmes and interventions that effectively tackle racism.

Arising from current staff and recent student experiences, this book supports institutions driving equality, diversity, inclusion and intersectional programmes in higher education.

Based on the Transforming Lives research project, this book explores the transformative power of further education.

The book outlines a timely and critical approach to educational research and practice, and draws extensively on the testimonies of students and teachers to construct a model of transformative teaching and learning. It critiques reductive ‘skills’ policies in further education and illuminates the impact colleges and lifelong learning have on social justice outcomes for individuals, their families and communities.

For trainee teachers, teachers, leaders, researchers and policy makers alike, the book presents a persuasive argument for transformative approaches to teaching and learning, and highlights the often unmeasured and under-appreciated holistic social benefits of further education.

Over recent decades, national Higher Education sectors across the world have experienced a gradual process of marketisation.

This book offers a new interpretation on why and how marketisation has taken place within England. It explores distinct assumptions on the nature of graduate work and how the graduate labour market drives the argumentation for more market and choice. Demonstrating the flaws in these assumptions – which are based on an idealised relationship between Higher Education and high-skilled work – this book fills an important need by questioning the current rationale for further marketisation.

Are British research universities losing their way or are they finding a new way?

Nigel Thrift, a well-known academic and a former Vice-Chancellor, explores recent changes in the British research university that threaten to erode the quality of these higher education institutions. He considers what a research university has now become by examining the quandaries that have arisen from a succession of misplaced strategies and false expectations.

Challenging both higher education policy and leadership, he argues that the focus on student number growth and a series of research policy missteps has upset research universities’ priorities just at a point in the history of planetary breakdown when their research is most needed.

The field of digital technology in education has long been under-theorised.

This book will enable the reader to reflect on the use of theory when explaining technology use and set out ways in which we can theorise better. It explores the concept of theory and looks at how teaching, learning and technology itself have been theorised. With relatable international case studies, it shows how theories underpin optimistic and pessimistic accounts of technology in education.

This innovative book will help readers to understand more deeply the use of digital technology in education, as well as the idea of theory and how to develop a distinctly educational approach to theorising.

Transitions to upper secondary education are crucial to understanding social inequalities. In most European countries, it is at this moment when students are separated into different tracks and faced with a ‘real choice’ in relation to their educational trajectory.

Based on a qualitative driven approach with multiple research techniques, including documentary analysis, questionnaires and over 100 interviews with policymakers, teachers and young people in Barcelona and Madrid, this book offers a holistic account of upper secondary educational transitions in urban contexts. Contributors explore the political, institutional and subjective dimensions of these transitions and the multiple mechanisms of inequality that traverse them.

Providing vital insights for policy and practice that are internationally relevant, this book will guarantee greater equity and social justice for young people regarding their educational trajectories and opportunities.

Robust university–industry partnerships are vital to achieve the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and create a better world for everyone.

Developing the theory and practice of the ‘5th Generation University’, this book shows how cross-sector collaboration and innovation are crucial to maximising the societal benefits of research, education and knowledge exchange, while also driving economic growth and productivity.

The authors bring extensive experience in working at the interface between academia, industry and government to demonstrate how universities can effectively combine transdisciplinary programmatic activities and strategic corporate philanthropy. They explain how long-term alliances can be forged to have a transformational impact on the greatest challenges facing our world such as climate change.

The field of digital technology in education has long been under-theorised.

This book will enable the reader to reflect on the use of theory when explaining technology use and set out ways in which we can theorise better. It explores the concept of theory and looks at how teaching, learning and technology itself have been theorised. With relatable international case studies, it shows how theories underpin optimistic and pessimistic accounts of technology in education.

This innovative book will help readers to understand more deeply the use of digital technology in education, as well as the idea of theory and how to develop a distinctly educational approach to theorising.

Critical education policy research has a long tradition of political sociology. Drawing on data and analysis from the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity (EPKP) project, supported by funders such as the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council, this book presents a new political sociology for framing, conducting and presenting critical education policy research.

In doing so, it will be the first in the field to interconnect political thinking from Arendt with sociological thinking from Bourdieu, producing innovative analysis for and about educational reform.

What are the challenges for the current generation of graduate millennials? The role of universities and the changing nature of the graduate labour market are constantly in the news, but less is known about the experiences of those going through it.

This book traces the transition to the graduate labour market of a cohort of middle-class and working-class young people who were tracked through seven years of their undergraduate and post-graduation lives.

Using personal stories and voices, the book provides fascinating insights into the group’s experience of graduate employment and how their life-course transitions are shaped by their social backgrounds and education. Critically evaluating current government and university policies, it shows the attitudes and values of this generation towards their hopes and aspirations on employment, political attitudes and cultural practices.

The liberal arts approach to higher education is a growing trend globally. We are told that the mental dexterity and independent, questioning spirit cultivated by such interdisciplinary degrees are the best preparation for the as-yet unknown executive jobs of tomorrow.

This book explores the significant recent growth of these degrees in England in order to address an enduring problem for higher education: the relationship between meritocracy and elitism.

Against the view that the former is a myth providing rhetorical cover for the latter, it argues that these are two entangled, but discrete, value systems. Sociology must now pay attention to how students and academics attempt to disentangle them.

Democracy should enable citizens to play an informed role in determining how power is exercised for their common wellbeing, but this only works if people have the understanding, skills and confidence to engage effectively in public affairs. Otherwise, any voting system can be subverted to serve the interests of propagandists and demagogues.

This book brings together leading experts on learning for democracy to explore why and how the gap in civic competence should be bridged.

Drawing on research findings and case examples from the UK, the US and elsewhere, it will set out why change is necessary, what could be taught differently to ensure effective political engagement, and how a lasting impact in improving citizens’ learning for democratic participation can be made.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left inequalities in schools wider and uncertainty about the future greater. Now seems an appropriate time to think about the contribution schooling makes to the communities it serves and the country generally.

However, drawing on his recent research, Richard Riddell argues that the increasingly narrow focus of Education governance after 20 years of reform has made new thinking impossible and has degraded public life.

Nevertheless, he highlights new possibilities for democratic behaviour and the opening up of schooling to all it serves.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left inequalities in schools wider and uncertainty about the future greater. Now seems an appropriate time to think about the contribution schooling makes to the communities it serves and the country generally.

However, drawing on his recent research, Richard Riddell argues that the increasingly narrow focus of Education governance after 20 years of reform has made new thinking impossible and has degraded public life.

Nevertheless, he highlights new possibilities for democratic behaviour and the opening up of schooling to all it serves.

Bringing together the perspectives of researchers, policy makers, activists, educators and practitioners, this book critically interrogates the Western-centric assumptions underpinning education and development agendas and the colonial legacies of violence they often uphold.

The book considers the crucial connection between the idea of sustainable futures and the demand to decolonize education. Containing an innovative mixture of text, stories and poetry, it explores how decolonized futures can be conceived and enacted, offering theoretical and practical examples, including from practice in educational and cultural organizations. In doing so, the book highlights education’s potential role in facilitating processes of reparative justice that can contribute to decolonized futures.

Rooted in an international political economy theoretical framework, this book provides unique insights into the global forces and local responses that are shaping education systems in Central America and the Latin Caribbean (CALC).

The book covers all Spanish-speaking countries of the CALC region and examines the effects of macro-economic pressures, geopolitical intervention, neo-colonial relationships, global pandemics, transnational gang networks, and the influence of international organizations. Chapters analyse the challenges and opportunities these global forces present to education systems in the region as well as highlighting the local efforts to address, mitigate, and counteract them. In doing so, the book illuminates how education can contribute to either maintaining or challenging inequalities and exclusion in the face of pressures from the global to local levels.

The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organisations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed.

To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.

What are the challenges for the current generation of graduate millennials? The role of universities and the changing nature of the graduate labour market are constantly in the news, but less is known about the experiences of those going through it.

This book traces the transition to the graduate labour market of a cohort of middle-class and working-class young people who were tracked through seven years of their undergraduate and post-graduation lives.

Using personal stories and voices, the book provides fascinating insights into the group’s experience of graduate employment and how their life-course transitions are shaped by their social backgrounds and education. Critically evaluating current government and university policies, it shows the attitudes and values of this generation towards their hopes and aspirations on employment, political attitudes and cultural practices.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Today’s academic and research institutions recognise the importance of diverse research teams in health and biomedical science, in terms of the business case, social justice and the common good.

This ‘go-to’ book familiarises readers with the key equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) issues in relation to research careers and researcher development. Bringing together the challenges and solutions to EDI matters with an evidence-based approach in one volume, the book offers practical strategies and interventions for academic and research settings.

This is an essential guide for equality planning team members, researchers, HRM officers and managers across academia and research.

The field of education policy research is a dense, crowded space owing to its complicated relationship to different intellectual histories and the influence of various ontologies or ‘turns’. To aid comprehension and clarity, this book describes the history, contribution and application of over 90 keywords in the field of education policy research. It is designed as a reference, learning and teaching tool to assist students, educators and researchers with:

• complex learning and teaching;

• wider and background reading and knowledge building;

• critical scholarship and research;

• interdisciplinary thinking and writing; and

• theory development and application.

The field of education policy research is a dense, crowded space owing to its complicated relationship to different intellectual histories and the influence of various ontologies or ‘turns’. To aid comprehension and clarity, this book describes the history, contribution and application of over 90 keywords in the field of education policy research. It is designed as a reference, learning and teaching tool to assist students, educators and researchers with:

• complex learning and teaching;

• wider and background reading and knowledge building;

• critical scholarship and research;

• interdisciplinary thinking and writing; and

• theory development and application.

Critical education policy research has a long tradition of political sociology. Drawing on data and analysis from the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity (EPKP) project, supported by funders such as the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council, this book presents a new political sociology for framing, conducting and presenting critical education policy research.

In doing so, it will be the first in the field to interconnect political thinking from Arendt with sociological thinking from Bourdieu, producing innovative analysis for and about educational reform.

Increasing numbers of researchers are using arts-based, embodied or creative methods. They promote rapport and connection, facilitating research that reaches beyond surface understanding to expose authentic stories and hidden, richer truths. Whilst powerful, these methods can have unintended consequences and the potential for harm.

Drawing on case studies and lessons learned from programmes and work across research, therapy, education, art and science, this engaging book explores and demonstrates the porous borders of research.

It invites researchers to reflect and consider the boundaries and consequences of their work in order to deepen and widen its applicability and impact across science, art, education and therapy.

Increasing numbers of researchers are using arts-based, embodied or creative methods. They promote rapport and connection, facilitating research that reaches beyond surface understanding to expose authentic stories and hidden, richer truths. Whilst powerful, these methods can have unintended consequences and the potential for harm.

Drawing on case studies and lessons learned from programmes and work across research, therapy, education, art and science, this engaging book explores and demonstrates the porous borders of research.

It invites researchers to reflect and consider the boundaries and consequences of their work in order to deepen and widen its applicability and impact across science, art, education and therapy.

Despite a mass expansion of the higher education sector in the UK since the 1960s, young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds remain less likely to enter university than their advantaged counterparts.

Drawing on unique new research gathered from three contrasting secondary schools in England, including interviews with children from three year groups and careers advisors, this book explores the aspirations, opportunities and experiences of young people from different social-class backgrounds against a backdrop of continuing inequalities in education.

By focusing both on the stories of young people and the schools themselves, the book sheds light on the institutional structures and practices that render young people more, or less, able to pursue their aspirations.

This collection pinpoints the intersecting concerns of higher education studies and island studies. It argues for the value of the small island for exploring research and practice in

higher education. Presenting analysis of higher education provision in a range of island contexts from across the globe, the book explores the challenges and opportunities of small island higher education and sheds light on the practices and experiences of those involved. It also demonstrates how the small island offers a valuable context from which to explore the scalar dynamics of higher education provision more widely and how these contexts can disrupt normative discourses, understandings and practices in education policy, curricula and experiences.

This book combines assemblage theory and policy mobilities to inform the study of comparative and international education (CIE), focusing on education policy and how such policy moves are enacted.

These approaches challenge taken-for granted and universalizing concepts in policy research and policy work in CIE – such as the nation-state, policy making/policy enactment, global/local, Global North/Global South – and highlight how policy is contingent on emerging through complex relations between people and places.

Using illustrative cases drawn from research and practice in CIE and education development, the book demonstrates how these ideas can be used in the analysis of policy and the application of this approach in real life.

Why do disadvantaged students continue to get a poor deal as they progress through England’s education system?

Challenging orthodox thinking about school exclusion, this book powerfully advocates for a fairer education system for disadvantaged students. It argues that the current conceptualisation of ‘exclusion’ – physically removing the student from the school – is insufficient. This approach fails to recognise the layers of exclusion that these students encounter. Students can be excluded within their schools (inner exclusion), not just from school (outer exclusion).

Drawing on student experiences of exclusion and the perspectives of senior leaders, including the author who is a Head of School, this book demonstrates how we can create a fairer education system for disadvantaged students.

Despite a mass expansion of the higher education sector in the UK since the 1960s, young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds remain less likely to enter university than their advantaged counterparts.

Drawing on unique new research gathered from three contrasting secondary schools in England, including interviews with children from three year groups and careers advisors, this book explores the aspirations, opportunities and experiences of young people from different social-class backgrounds against a backdrop of continuing inequalities in education.

By focusing both on the stories of young people and the schools themselves, the book sheds light on the institutional structures and practices that render young people more, or less, able to pursue their aspirations.

Democracy should enable citizens to play an informed role in determining how power is exercised for their common wellbeing, but this only works if people have the understanding, skills and confidence to engage effectively in public affairs. Otherwise, any voting system can be subverted to serve the interests of propagandists and demagogues.

This book brings together leading experts on learning for democracy to explore why and how the gap in civic competence should be bridged.

Drawing on research findings and case examples from the UK, the US and elsewhere, it will set out why change is necessary, what could be taught differently to ensure effective political engagement, and how a lasting impact in improving citizens’ learning for democratic participation can be made.

Bringing together the perspectives of researchers, policy makers, activists, educators and practitioners, this book critically interrogates the Western-centric assumptions underpinning education and development agendas and the colonial legacies of violence they often uphold.

The book considers the crucial connection between the idea of sustainable futures and the demand to decolonize education. Containing an innovative mixture of text, stories and poetry, it explores how decolonized futures can be conceived and enacted, offering theoretical and practical examples, including from practice in educational and cultural organizations. In doing so, the book highlights education’s potential role in facilitating processes of reparative justice that can contribute to decolonized futures.

This book traces the process of producing testimonio with the children of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), an insurgent group during Peru’s internal war (1980–2000). It examines how the group navigates post-war struggles over memory while dealing with the ‘children of terrorists’ stigma.

Drawing on a cycles of inquiry approach, the book theorizes three movements for memory work: a realist presentation of testimonial narratives, a ‘politics of memory’ engaging with the conditions of production and a ‘poetics of memory’ that troubles memory, voice and representation for qualitative inquiry in post-war contexts.

Challenging the notion of war-torn countries as pure devastation, the author invites readers to see them as sites of knowledge and creativity, with much to offer for education, peace studies and social justice research.

Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, this book examines the challenges youth and their teachers face in the post-conflict settings of Bougainville and Solomon Islands.

Youth in these places must reconcile with the violent past of their parents’ generation while also learning how to live with people once on opposing ‘sides'. This book traces how students and their teachers form connections to the past and each other that cut through the forces that might divide them. The findings illustrate novel ways to think about the potential for education to assist post-conflict recovery.

Rooted in an international political economy theoretical framework, this book provides unique insights into the global forces and local responses that are shaping education systems in Central America and the Latin Caribbean (CALC).

The book covers all Spanish-speaking countries of the CALC region and examines the effects of macro-economic pressures, geopolitical intervention, neo-colonial relationships, global pandemics, transnational gang networks, and the influence of international organizations. Chapters analyse the challenges and opportunities these global forces present to education systems in the region as well as highlighting the local efforts to address, mitigate, and counteract them. In doing so, the book illuminates how education can contribute to either maintaining or challenging inequalities and exclusion in the face of pressures from the global to local levels.

Education in India concentrates on exam performance and consequently the teacher in India often acts as a disseminator of textbook material, as well as maintaining class discipline and respect. This book explores low-income female teachers' speech and syntax as a crucial resource in which agency, freedom and empowerment is enacted within a strong oral tradition in India.

The book demonstrates how this socially and economically marginalised group overcome prejudices to develop relational agency and embed their authority. It shows how they establish their values and why their beliefs shape attitudes to aspiration, achievement and freedom of choice. It concludes with recommendations for policy and improvements to reflective practice in teaching.

Education is supposed to level the playing field, and yet for many working-class children inequalities in the classroom in fact deepen the divide. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are almost four times more likely to be excluded from school than their wealthier peers and many are struggling in an educational environment increasingly concerned with discipline. In this substantially revised and updated edition of her bestselling book, Diane Reay – herself working class turned Cambridge professor – investigates why we educate social classes so differently.

Drawing on extensive interviews with working class children and young people, Miseducation offers a sharp critique of how class identity, social mobility, and entrenched inequalities shape educational outcomes. It also examines the increasing focus on control and discipline in UK schools and charts the impact of policies like academies on working-class students. In a new chapter, Reay draws lessons from educational systems around the world, while a second presents clear recommendations for creating a system that supports every child’s potential.

Insightful and thought-provoking, this book is essential reading for anyone invested in the future of education and social equity.

Higher education is changing rapidly in response to the global challenges of the twenty-first century, but for disciplinarily trained lecturers interdisciplinary curriculum and course design is a time-consuming process fraught with difficult pedagogical choices.

This reader is the first book to bring together key texts on interdisciplinary teaching and learning, all drawn from a growing literature of peer-reviewed academic books and journals. As well as presenting extracts from these foundational texts, commentaries provide essential guidance on the relevant themes, helping lecturers to reflect on this fast-moving landscape.

This is an essential resource for those designing and teaching interdisciplinary courses.

This book provides an important lens for understanding how interlocking humanitarian crises caused by armed conflict, natural disasters, forced displacement and, more recently, a global health pandemic have adversely impacted teaching and learning.

It brings together evidence from multiple, diverse research-practice partnerships in seven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The authors provide a clear account of the key academic, policy and practice questions on education in crisis contexts and consider our capacity to develop just and resilient education systems.

Young people’s mental health is in crisis, with many – especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds – struggling academically and with the later transition to employment. Feeling excluded, many young people turn to harmful behaviours, such as vaping and alcohol use, for escape and a sense of belonging.

Schools are increasingly expected to address these issues but often lack the time and expertise to do so effectively. Based on the author’s research, including the successful ‘Learning Together’ trial – an innovative programme that improved mental health, reduced bullying and raised academic achievement – this book provides a blueprint for a fundamental shift in how schools support young people.

Essential reading for teachers, public health workers and policy makers tackling the health and educational inequalities affecting young people today.

Young people’s mental health is in crisis, with many – especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds – struggling academically and with the later transition to employment. Feeling excluded, many young people turn to harmful behaviours, such as vaping and alcohol use, for escape and a sense of belonging.

Schools are increasingly expected to address these issues but often lack the time and expertise to do so effectively. Based on the author’s research, including the successful ‘Learning Together’ trial – an innovative programme that improved mental health, reduced bullying and raised academic achievement – this book provides a blueprint for a fundamental shift in how schools support young people.

Essential reading for teachers, public health workers and policy makers tackling the health and educational inequalities affecting young people today.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This book explores the transformative potential of education in achieving Sustainable Development Goals 13 (climate action), 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) and 10 (reduced inequalities).

Examining case studies of secondary schooling in Nepal, Peru and Uganda, it critiques the established assumption of linear progress from education to social change. Instead, it argues for just-driven education and introduces an integrated justice framework encompassing environmental, epistemic, transitional and social justice. The authors reveal how connecting education to local contexts empowers young people to critically engage with justice and drive systemic reform, offering a visionary blueprint for sustainable development worldwide.

Traditional governance in education often struggles to accommodate the dynamic and evolving interactions between cognitive, emotional and socio-cultural factors that shape learning.

This book introduces Pragmatic Adaptive Leadership, a systems-based approach that equips leaders and researchers with the tools to develop adaptive models of educational change. Drawing on social theory and complexity science, the authors provide practical frameworks for shaping future-orientated decision-making and policy development that meets learners where they are.

Essential reading for school leaders, policy makers, educators and researchers of learning sciences, this book offers vital tools for complexity-informed leadership.

Universities have challenging times ahead: the demands of a global student, new technology, employers wanting work-ready graduates and shifting ideologies that influence who hold and create knowledge. The role of a university as a civic institution becomes increasingly contested. How can and should universities engage with communities to create lasting social impact?

This collection offers global perspectives on community–university engagement, highlighting innovative approaches to co-production, participatory research and collaboration with stakeholders beyond academia. The book explores the challenges and successes of partnership working, demystifying the university’s role beyond teaching, positioning it as an anchor institution that can drive social change.