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This paper explores the relationships between a number of different developments in higher education pedagogy, which are subsumed under the broad heading of progress files. The overall concern of the paper is to explore the ways in which personal reflection and learning is enhanced through dialogue. The paper explores the ways learners engage in dialogue in two environments that use different aspects of digital technologies to support the development of portfolios. The findings from the case studies point to the ways in which different technologies facilitated personal reflection mediated through sharing and dialogue. We develop the idea of affordances as a relationship whereby the learner is involved in a purposeful engagement with the possibilities created by their environment. The affordance of digitised technologies in supporting dialogue is, therefore, conceptualised in relation to the characteristics of the learner, not as a simple technology relation. (Contains 1 figure.)

The paper argues that powerful regional knowledge is necessary and possible and that there are historical precedents supporting these claims. Regional knowledge is being used in a double sense: the first Bernsteinian, the second in relation to knowledge generated outside the academy. Both are important if the debate is not to be confined solely to the global north and if the curriculum is to be responsive to geo-political realities. In order to think critically about access to higher education, we need to consider the sorts of knowledge, engagement, and opportunities that are open to newer actors. This includes recognising the contextual nature of professional practice and also that social movements beyond the academy can and do challenge academic knowledge. The paper concludes that many of issues addressed are not capable of theoretical resolution alone and that we need more empirical work to inform curriculum change and renewal.

This article aims to deconstruct the underpinning tenets of the term "newer researcher into higher education." In recognition of the ambiguities of the term, we begin by questioning the nature of the field(s) of research into higher education (HE). Secondly, we critique the policy discourses associated with the term "newer researcher." Then, with a view to illustrating the over-linear assumptions of such discourses, the article articulates the biographies of practising researchers in this field through narrative reconstructions of the five authors' own routes as researchers into HE, openly acknowledging their temporalities and serendipitous conditionalities. Finally, we consider the nature of a career in the context of the professionalisation of routes into HE research. Our concluding remarks return us to the question of the status of HE research and to suggestions of positive ways to embrace the dilemmas we face.

This paper discusses the ways in which mature students orientate themselves towards the future in making decisions to access higher education (HE). Their narratives connect their past, often difficult, educational and personal lives to their future aspirations and to their current experiences in further education (FE) and HE. The research was part of a larger project undertaken for the UK Higher Education Academy Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) exploring FE and HE mature learners' future "possible selves" including those selves that are desired and those that are not. Students were asked to reflect on both their past journeys as well as on what their possible future(s) might look like. In this paper, we focus on the mature learners in our study as they emerged as having distinctive orientations towards their futures. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)

This paper explores the under-researched area of extracurricular activity undertaken by students through the lens of the possible selves literature, which has largely been developed in the North American context. In the UK the employability agenda assumes an orientation towards the future and employers are increasingly expecting students to display capacities beyond those of simply achieving a degree. Extracurricular activity is one site where students might be able to develop these additional capacities towards their future imagined selves. Our case study, based on in-depth interviews with 61 students, found different orientations towards the future, with only some displaying future selves attuned to employability. Other students were more firmly orientated to the present and developing student identities or unable to elaborate or act on imaged futures because of the contingencies of the present. We conclude that paying attention to differing temporalities and to the insights derived from the possible selves literature are likely to be fruitful for further research on extracurricular activity. (Contains 1 note and 1 table.)

This paper explores some of the unresolved tensions in higher education systems and the contradiction between widening participation and the consolidation of social position. It shows how concepts of capital derived from Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam provide a powerful basis for critique, but risk a deficit view of students from less privileged backgrounds. These students are more likely to attend lower-status institutions and engage with an externally focused curriculum. The paper argues for greater attention to agency, and community and familial capital, in conceptualising the resilience of those from less privileged backgrounds. While the recognition of "voice" is important, a curriculum that acknowledges the context independence of knowledge is essential if these students are not to be further disadvantaged.

This paper takes as its focus the contradictory discourse of widening participation (WP). We argue that given the conflicting accounts of WP it is highly unlikely that higher education staff will be able articulate a coherent definition of WP practice. We illustrate our thesis with an institutional case study which analysed policy documents and was based on in-depth interviews with staff. We found that not only did staff have contradictory definitions of WP, but that those who saw themselves as committed questioned the commitment of others. Thus despite institutional rhetoric our participants fell back on personal values when implementing WP activity. (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper explores conceptions of curricular and extracurricular in UK higher education. Reporting on a case study of staff understandings of the extracurricular we argue that our data highlight the lack of debate about curricular matters. We found that there was considerable blurring of boundaries in conceptions of the curricular and extracurricular and argue that this is related to the lack of any stable or explicit conception of the curriculum in UK higher education. The paper highlights issues of recognition and non-recognition of the sorts of cultural capital which flow from traditional and other forms of extracurricular activities (ECA) and points to the continued gendering of caring and its valuing. Recognition of capital from within diverse communities and derived from activities which have not been traditionally conceptualised as ECA might contribute to graduate outcomes, but there are limitations to a politics of recognition. We argue that account also needs to be taken of the materiality of student lives and the constraints they face.

This paper presents an analysis of ethnographic data collected by researchers as part of the process of rewriting an institutional learning and teaching strategy in an English university. The research was driven by a desire to understand what work a learning and teaching strategy might accomplish, and the form/s of address in strategy documents. The data for the study comprised in-depth interviews with staff, focus groups with staff and students, documentary analysis of the existing institutional strategy documents from equivalent higher education institutions, and data from notes, memos, minutes and a personal reflective diary of events. These data did not provide the basis for an evaluation of the effectiveness of the strategy, rather they played a role in informing the development of the strategy, interrogating the limitations of strategy and exploring the ways in which such strategies discursively position pedagogic and academic identity. We conclude that strategy is non-linear and the site of multiple contradictions, and that the work of strategy documents is accomplished through rhetorical forms in which desiring is as important as rational argument. How academics are discursively positioned, therefore, becomes a matter of power. Tensions between different approaches to teacher improvement, in the name of improving student learning, are acted out in the process of authoring strategy documents.

Academic development has emerged as an important new site of practice in higher education internationally over the past 40 years, and has been influential in shaping the terms of debate about teaching and learning in higher education. Academic development has shifted its focus from the individual teacher to strategic interventions at institutional and national levels. This article argues that much of the writing by academic developers has a rhetorical function in legitimising academic development's role. The article explores the sorts of accounts academic developers produce about themselves, and argues that academic development practice is a form of artistry and a "concrete science". The article asks questions, therefore, about the contexts within which academic development has emerged, the stakes both for academic developers and the wider academic community, the sorts of knowledge being produced by academic developers about themselves and others, and the relationship between theory and practice and the possibilities of critique.

More than 40 years after its beginnings, academic development stands uncertainly on the threshold of becoming a profession or discipline in its own right. While it remains marginal to the dominant stories of the university, it has become central to the institution's contemporary business. This Research Note describes an enquiry that uses a multiple histories approach to explore the emergence of academic development in three national sites. Our intention is to provoke a more critical engagement with academic development's current forms and future possibilities.

Academic development has played a significant role in creating university "learning and teaching" as an object of policy scrutiny and intervention. While academic development is a new field, its practices have been productive of new learning and teaching regimes in both the global "north" and "south". This paper explores the emergence of academic development as a practice and the agentic understandings of its actors in creating the academic development project in the face of global unevenness. The paper offers a critical account of the emergence of academic development practice in both the global "north", drawing on the intertwined histories of the UK and Australia, and in the global "south", drawing on the example of South Africa. In looking at the ongoing debates about academic development the paper argues that in constituting teaching and learning as its object, other more radical, feminist and critical pedagogies, which are capable of dealing with the power and curricula, were marginalised. (Contains 1 note.)

In this paper, in keeping with developing feminist methodologies, we reflect on how we became second-wave feminists in the 1970s. We consider how the theories and practices that we were involved in have been changed as the global socio-political context has transformed higher education practices. Second-wave feminism originated as a political project around "the personal". As it entered the academy, feminism developed and drew on emerging concepts in the social sciences and humanities to develop more sophisticated conceptualizations of the personal. Personalization and the personal have now become ubiquitous in the pedagogical discourses of higher education. As higher education has expanded in the context of globalization and itself become global, it has both elided and incorporated questions of diversity, difference, inequality and power. Concepts such as the personal, love of learning and knowledge, have entered the new literatures of learning and teaching in global higher education. However, in some of these versions concepts of the personal appear to be based upon an impersonal and disembodied subject. New forms of global higher education have built upon feminist theories and yet, at the same time, they have done so by the marginalization and occlusion of feminist critiques. This is evident both within the mainstream neo-liberalism and also within the critical and post-structuralist literatures. In this paper, we offer an alternative critical feminist reading of some of these tendencies and speculate on the lack of personal reflexivity which allows some British authors to expunge feminist analysis from their texts. This leaves a denuded and a-historical concept of the personal, a pale shadow of the agentic political subject of second-wave feminism. The personal as a political project forms the basis of our critique of global higher education practices. It allows for a re-imagining of universities not as disembodied sites of masculine freedom but as socially situated spaces for creative thinking for the twenty-first century.

This paper draws on the theoretical resources offered by feminist scholarship to enquire into the discourse of the intellectual and how women do being an academic. My starting points are threefold: Val Hey's interrogation of Butler's work and her emphasis on the importance of sociality; Carrie Paechter's exploration of the available personal sets of masculinities and femininities that modify the "person who is me"; and my own attempts to draw on other traditions in theorising agency and a sense of self. Drawing on these resources I re-read some data on academic identities to explore the potentialities of academic personhood and the discourses associated with the idea of the intellectual as a site of gendered personhood. The position of woman as intellectual is analysed in terms of Beauvoir's assertion "I am a woman" and the paradox of a universal voice and the female sex. (Contains 4 notes.)

This article argues that we need richer conceptions of students as affective and embodied selves and a clearer theorisation of the role of emotion in educational encounters. These areas are currently under-researched and under-theorised in higher education. The first part of the article explores the literature on emotion. The second reports on a case study which aimed to map students' emotional journeys over their first year at university. These data highlight the importance of relationships, students' changing emotions over the year, their perceptions of their academic studies and understandings of life at university. The article concludes that it is important to understand the affective dimension in pedagogic encounters and the lifeworld of students, and that it is possible to do so without a collapse into therapeutic discourses. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper argues that the recent debate about plagiarism has taken on aspects of a moral panic, which reflects underlying anxieties about the state of higher education in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the moral absolutism of some commentators, we argue for the significance of posing the phenomenological question of "what is plagiarism in its appearing?" We present a detailed idiographic analysis of two cases taken from a wider study of staff perceptions of plagiarism looking at the multiple meanings of plagiarism in the life-world of individual staff. Our approach does not entail judgemental relativism; rather, it involves a proper recognition of the limitations of rule-bound approaches to complex ethical matters. We argue for a virtues-based approach to plagiarism, which recognises complexity, and for a more measured and collegial debate.

Progress files, involving personal development planning (PDP), are becoming a feature of many higher education systems internationally. In the UK they will become mandatory for all undergraduate students from 2005. This presents a major implementation challenge, because while reflection has been a cornerstone of practice in some areas of higher education for a considerable time, its generalisation as national policy changes its discursive location. The paper presents findings from a case study of the implementation of PF in one UK Higher Education Institution (HEI). It reports on how staff in one institution understand PF in the context of national policy, and on how they interpret the challenges they face in facilitating reflection for all students. The paper argues that pedagogical innovations take on a different meaning when applied to the system as a whole.

This article presents an analysis of case study data from a project evaluating Personal Development Planning (PDP) at a large post-1992 university in England. The study was undertaken as part of a strategy of encouraging schools to build on existing experience while at the same time ensuring consistency with new national guidelines for the implementation of PDP across the whole sector. The aim of the research was to understand the models already available for supporting and developing PDP, and the views of different stakeholders about the place of PDP in the curriculum. The research was designed to engage with teacher beliefs in order to provide models of practice that could inform innovation. The study was based on interviews with staff and data were analysed on the basis of clusters of features to create models of different practices and approaches. Three ideal types of PDP emerged: professional, employment and academic. Each of the modes was associated with particular disciplinary domains, although none of them existed in pure form. The data suggest that pedagogic identities based on introjection and strong boundary maintenance displayed greater tension in relation to PDP than those areas already constructed on projection. UK moves towards PDP are part of an international trend. The great advantage of case study data, however, is that they allow insight into the dynamics of implementation at the local level and in this case the potential of generic initiatives based on projection to destabilise aspects of academic identity. New initiatives are more likely to succeed if they engage positively with teacher beliefs rather than being posed in contra-distinction to them; the first step, however, is to understand and theorise them.

Debates about middle management in higher education have been largely confined to the dominant discourse of managerialism. In this paper, we argue for an engagement with the broader management literature, with its multiple discourses of middle management. We present an analysis of middle management as a multifaceted phenomenon and review literature on middle managers as representing: core organisational values; as self-interested agent of control; as corporate bureaucrat; and as repositories of organisational wisdom. In considering each of these views, we reflect on the relevant debates within higher education. We conclude that a more productive discussion of the role of middle management in higher education is possible by breaking with the simple managerialism/collegiate duality found in the higher education literature.

This article reports on findings from a research project that investigated the experiences and perceptions of final-year social science undergraduates enrolled on a dissertation module in a post-1992 UK university. The dissertation was designed to provide students with the opportunity to function autonomously and determine the content and focus of a major part of their study and assessment. Using data from interviews and questionnaires, the article explores the students' lived experience of the dissertation as a form of independent learning and assessment, the challenges they encountered, and their perceptions of peer and tutor support. While students valued the autonomy, authenticity, and ownership they felt in relation to their dissertation, they also experienced considerable challenges, particularly in relation to "time". The following are appended: (1) Your Experience of the Applied Social Studies Programme Dissertation; and (2) Applied Social Studies Dissertation Research.

This article explores the meanings involved in the development and implementation of learning and teaching policies in higher education through a single institution case study in an English university. It draws on interview data collected from middle manager-academics, located in Schools, who are charged with implementing learning and teaching policies. Tensions and contradictions of practice emerged from a detailed analysis of the data identified through three closely related themes: centre/periphery, time and temporality, and disciplinary locations. The central theme, which frames the discussion of the other two, concerns relations between centre and periphery. The manager-academics identify themselves with the interests of their colleagues within Schools and use their position to mediate between central pressures and practice on the ground. Rather than identifying with managerialist practices, they rely on projected ideals of collegiality in their relationships with school colleagues. At the core of these experiences are differing conceptions of time in the centre/periphery relationship. Different experiences of temporality, tempo, and timing are explored from the manager-academics' perspective. There is considerable tension between time understood on the ground and the time-scales of central learning and teaching initiatives. The final theme concerns the organising role of disciplinary identities in articulating meaning at the periphery. Innovations appear rooted in disciplinary practice and some tensions exist between these and perceptions of educational theory and development. The article suggests that these contradictions and tensions might be a source of strength to the institution rather than having negative effects. It concludes with some reflections on the importance of time to the development of educational theory. (Contains 2 notes.)

Reports on an indepth evaluation of a Single Regeneration Fund Budget funded partnership based on individual and community education as a means of promoting the UK's social-inclusion agenda. Focuses on the dynamics of partnership itself at management level. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is drawn upon in thinking about some of the processes of facilitating or hindering partnership working. (Contains 57 references.) (Authors/PKP)

A project to encourage disadvantaged parents and child caregivers to participate in education incorporated a community development approach focused on the realities of women's lives in order to foster learning identities. Participants were encouraged to develop their own knowledge and skills in the process of identity formation, which enabled them to access learning opportunities. (Contains 38 references.) (SK)

Presents a case study about men and women on applied information technology courses using data from in-depth interviews. Finds that men and women were aware of gender in computing practice. Both sexes expressed intrinsic, as well as instrumental reasons, for studying and women were confident in their abilities. (CMK)

Reports findings from a case study of men and women taking information technology courses in one university in the United Kingdom. Observations of the coaching styles of male and female tutors in computer laboratories indicated that there were significant gender differences in coaching styles and student responses to coaching styles. Peer interaction was a key component in women's experiences. (SM)

Offers a critical perspective on American feminist Donald Schon and on reflective practice as a pedagogy. Reflexivity's scope in the U.K. has been constrained by its context--professions with large female workforces (nursing, teaching, and social work), where autonomy is limited and orthodoxy predominates. More research is needed. Contains 49 references. (MLH)

Explores the ways gender influences the pattern of recruitment into information technology (IT) and design courses using data from a study involving 26 design and 27 IT students. Instrumental reasons for course selection are balanced by intrinsic satisfaction, with satisfaction more evident in design-course selection, but both design and IT are seen to be gendered discourses. (SLD)