Paul Trowler

Video about the book/resources here:
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/759455432

NOW WITH INTEGRATED AI PROMPTS FOR INDIVIDUALISED ADVICE.
These blended resources are for social science doctoral researchers. They blend a book with online multimedia resources and AI prompts. Visit Paul Trowler's Amazon Author Page for a video about this. It targets key areas every thesis must address, frequent mistakes, and the significant characteristics for success. AI prompts enable you to tailor the advice to your own research project.

The online resources: deliver key messages; offer frameworks for reflection on your own work (whatever stage it's at) and help you to see how to lift it to the next level. Videos, audio files, screencasts, interactive questions and other techniques are deployed to deepen your understanding.

Chapter 1 introduces the book and the linked discussion forum and social space.

Chapter 2 assists in developing a workable project from an initial idea. The online space helps you to reflect on your own ideas, and to develop them

Chapter 3 is about asking good research questions, and mistakes to avoid. The online resource space helps hone your skills in developing good questions.

Chapter 4 concerns questions doctoral examiners ask about your research design. The online space asks you to consider the appropriate research design for a sample project. You can also respond to common questions examiners ask on this topic.

Chapter 5 addresses your ontological and epistemological positioning. There is video on this online, more information and a reflective activity.

Chapter 6 is about engaging with the literature. It offers guidelines on how you should discuss the literature, and choosing relevant literature. Online, there is a video, an audio narrative about the 7 deadly sins of literature use and other resources.

Chapter 7 concerns theory in doctoral research: what theory is, what it can do for you and how you choose an appropriate theory. The online space is extensive, with videos, examples and audio narrative about the 7 deadly sins and an opportunity to reflect.

Chapter 8 is about writing your introductory chapter, its structure and content. Online, there is an audio file about questions examiners ask about the introduction and an opportunity to reflect.

Chapter 9 concerns your contextualisation chapter and how to navigate different possibilities. Online, there are similar resources to the above.

Chapter 10 concerns your research design chapter, its structure and contents. The assistance online with this follows the pattern above.

Chapter 11 concerns writing the concluding chapter of a doctoral thesis and follows a similar structure to the previous chapter-related topics. Again, 2 audio files are offered in the online resource space helping you to reflect on your own concluding comments.

Chapter 12 helps you to think about the significance of your research: your answer to the “so what?” question. The online resource space is extensive because this is such an important issue. There are videos, a screencast, and audio slideshow and other components in this online resource.

Chapter 13 concerns getting alignment across your thesis. The online resource helps you to apply these ideas in the chapter.

Chapter 14 is about writing an abstract, its contents and an evaluation of an example. The online resource space evaluates, through video, two doctoral abstracts.

Chapter 15 discusses great titles for your thesis. The online resource elaborates on this and offers an exercise to help reflect on the quality of titles, so that you can improve your own.

Chapter 16 suggests likely questions that examiners will ask you, or ask themselves about your thesis. The online resource offers resources about an examiner’s approach to examining, discussion of questions and meeting examiners’ criteria.

Finally, other helpful resources are indicated.

Publisher’s back cover information (Book available from December 2019)
This book offers a new perspective on the professional world of higher education. Using social practice theory, it presents a practice sensibility rooted in concepts which illuminate teaching and learning contexts. The book takes the reader through the social processes occurring within higher education institutions which shape contexts and influence the direction of change. For leaders and managers, educational developers, change agents, and academics, this sensibility will help to identify the successful paths to changes for enhancement and the patterns of policy implementation likely to occur as teaching and learning is enhanced. For researchers of higher education, the practice sensibility offers new possibilities for meaningful research into teaching and learning issues.
Teaching and learning regimes are a key focus of the book. As a family of practices performed by a workgroup in higher education over extended periods, they comprise a number of “moments”; characteristics derived from structural foundations which shape the workgroup’s practices and frameworks of meaning. These moments condition how teaching and learning is fundamentally understood, what its aims are thought to be, what is considered “normal” practice, how individuals see themselves and others, and how power operates within the workgroup. The material context is significant in this, as are the backstories, personal histories, and institutional sagas.
This book develops a completely new approach to Trowler’s concept of teaching and learning regimes. Using both his research and that of others in the field, it presents a more nuanced, fully-developed, and sophisticated version of the concept which has great traction for empirical research, the management of change, and the enhancement of the student experience and learning outcomes.
To be published by Oxford University Press, December 2019

This book is designed to be as helpful as possible for anyone who needs to write a doctoral research proposal in the area of higher education research. It is concise, while still being comprehensive and useful. Its audience is prospective doctoral students who have to write a project proposal which will be assessed for admission and perhaps for a scholarship to do their doctoral research, as well as those who have already been admitted to university but now need to have a full proposal approved.

For readability, terms which may need a fuller explanation are linked from the text to a glossary at the end of the book. Terms in the text that are described in the glossary are printed in bold.

This second edition adds new material and offers examples of proposals for doctoral research projects together with a commentary on them suggesting improvements. The aim is to help the reader develop an ‘eye’ for a persuasive argument and a good feel for a well-integrated proposal.

This book helps doctoral candidates design and write a thesis that hangs together with well-integrated components. In the social sciences doctoral research design has 10 key components which work together dynamically as the research is being done to create a whole finished thesis. They are:
1. The research questions addressed
2. The ontological position adopted
3. The epistemological position adopted
4. The domains of literature chosen for review
5. The context/s of study selected
6. The ‘sample’ selected from within the context or contexts
7. The types and extent of data ‘collected’ and analysed
8. The theoretical lens through which the data are viewed
9. How the outcomes of data analysis are presented
10. The conclusions drawn and claims made

These form part of an empirically-based thesis and are carefully scrutinized by examiners. So, making a thesis “hang together” properly involves planning and implementing a research project which has internal coherence and congruence between the different components. They operate together to achieve the goal of a strong, low-risk thesis. There is a clear chain of evidence and argument which is assembled and deployed to answer the research questions, making claims which are robust and sustainable. A design which doesn’t hang together has internal disconnections; there are components which don’t mesh properly. This means that conclusions and claims are shaky, the research questions are not fully or convincingly answered and that that there is a failure in the logic connecting two or more of the components. That situation can be a disaster because when the thesis is examined and these flaws are identified there will be major changes needed to the very structure of the work: perhaps more and different data will be required; different research questions may need to be formulated and a fundamental reshaping of the claims made may be needed. In writing a research proposal and in planning research design generally, many doctoral candidates zoom in too quickly on the detail. They start writing parts of the literature review, or they get tied up in details of ‘sample’ selection. This rush to the ground level of detail is dangerous because it can blind candidates (and their supervisors/advisors) to internal dislocations in the logic of the overall design, approach and claims.

This little book gives an overview of my module on Policy and Change Processes in Higher Education, part of an entirely online PhD programme. Its aim is to give readers some feel for the content but especially the kinds of processes we engage in during that module. The module runs for 28 weeks, of which 15 are actively taught and the remaining 13 are devoted to research and writing the large assignment (which is, effectively, a journal article – participants often do subsequently publish their papers in academic journals). The detail of the module content and activities will change from year to year and from module to module, and of course tutors may change. Readers should though get a feel of what it is like to study for this PhD.

While it is easy to depict the structure and content of a syllabus, it is far harder to describe (and understand) the processes to facilitate learning that go on within it, and how they fit together. This can be particularly true of an online programme. Someone recently said that following an online programme deploying a suite of sometimes unfamiliar technologies sequentially was like “doing a jigsaw without having the picture on the box.” That problem is immediately recognisable: programme and module handbooks describe the syllabus and assessment details but don’t have space to depict online learning processes. This booklet helps to paint that picture on the box cover.

This short book is designed to be helpful for anyone who wants to create a good structure for their doctoral thesis; one in which they can be confident that they have covered all the bases. It is part of Paul Trowler’s series, originally written for the Kindle, Doctoral Research into Higher Education. The book is not designed to create a template for thesis structure to be followed slavishly, rather it offers suggestions and advice as well as indications of where some options are low risk and others high risk when it comes to examination of the thesis. The book is concise, while still being comprehensive and useful, at around 12,000 words (about 40 printed pages). It gives guidance on the contents of thesis chapters and subsections of those chapters, indicating what needs to be covered and how to prepare the content in the best way. An appendix points to sections in the book that are useful for those who are at the beginning of the doctoral journey and need to construct a research proposal. There are sections indicating the “deadly sins” that experienced examiners and supervisors frequently see in doctoral theses, and which can seriously damage their quality. But this is balanced this with a discussion of “valuable virtues”, giving a description of what qualities characterise a good thesis based on higher education research. The book’s audience is doctoral students doing research into higher education, including those who are just starting out, as well as people further along in the process. Each section covers one of the chapters that an Education doctorate which uses primary data normally contains, but also points out those areas where a non-standard approach might be better, and why.

This book is designed to be as helpful as possible for anyone who wants to research the higher education institution (HEI) or university in which they are employed or enrolled. It is concise, while still being comprehensive and useful, at 16,800 words (about 50 pages in Word format), recognising that people appreciate concision.

The book offers guidance on the issues which are specific to insider research in universities as particular types of organizations. Its audience is newcomers to insider research within universities considering doing such a project for professional reasons, for a PhD, or as part of a funded research project.

The book points the reader to key issues they need to consider and to the best literature resources to explore these further, where they need to. It covers areas such as: good research design; avoiding potential problems; taking best advantage of insider research designs; guaranteeing robustness and value; and dealing with especially problematic issues in insider research, such as ethical and political ones. There is a chapter based on the author’s own research work which suggests fruitful theoretical approaches and related insider research agendas. The final chapter suggests further resources for insider research.

Paul Trowler is uniquely qualified to write on this topic. He is Professor of Higher Education at Lancaster University, UK. His PhD thesis was an insider study of a university. He has supervised many ‘insider’ PhD theses to successful completion. Paul has previously written 19 books, 21 articles, 20 chapters (all in conventional, physical, format). He has BA, MA, Cert. Ed. and PhD degrees and is an elected Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Overview
What is ‘insider’ research?
Challenges & opportunities
Chapter 2: Researching universities
Universities as organizations
Researching professional knowledge
Chapter 3: Research design
Questions and answers
Single & multi-site studies
Action research
Evaluative research
Institutional ethnography
Hypothesis testing
Theory & insider research
An example of research design
Chapter 4: Value & robustness
Beyond the particular
Questions for the insider researcher
Chapter 5: Ethical & political issues
Ethics
Politics
Chapter 6: Social practice theory applied
Researching social practices
Ontological & epistemological implications
Research design & topics
Chapter 7: Resources for insider research
Literature
Online resources
About the author
References
Glossary

This book asks, and answers, questions that doctoral researchers into higher education frequently have. It covers different aspects of the research process, from formulating research questions to convincing examiners of the robustness of the study. Founded in Paul's long experience teaching, supervising and examining at the doctoral level, both face-to-face and online, the book will be of value to anyone doing a doctorate in this area.

This book is designed to be as helpful as possible for anyone who needs to write a doctoral research proposal in the area of higher education research. It is concise, while still being comprehensive and useful. Its audience is prospective doctoral students who have to write a project proposal which will be assessed for admission and perhaps for a scholarship to do their doctoral research, as well as those who have already been admitted to university but now need to have a full proposal approved.

This book originated in the Society for Research into Higher Education annual conference at Leicester University in 2000. Papers were selected for publication around the theme of the implementation of policy at different levels of higher education. The book as a whole is structured around the notion of the ‘implementation staircase’, as the first chapter explains. It was originally published 2002 by Open University Press/SRHE.

Because the book went out of print copyright reverted to me, Paul Trowler, Professor of Higher Education at Lancaster University, UK. I wanted to make it available to researchers, managers and others for whom the content remains important and relevant.

The chapters are as follows:

1 Introduction: Higher Education Policy, Institutional Change.
Paul Trowler.

2 Explaining Change in Higher Education Policy.
Ivar Bleiklie.

3 The Role of Different Groups in Policy-Making and Implementation: Institutional politics and policy-making.
Maurice Kogan.

4 Access and Recruitment: Institutional Policy in Widening Participation.
Brenda Morgan-Klein and Mark Murphy.

5 Resources in the Management of Change in Higher Education.
Rachel Johnson.

6 The Unintended Consequences of Deregulation: Australian Higher Education in the Market Place.
Di Adams.

7 A Comedy of Manners: Quality and Power in Higher Education.
Louise Morley.

8 Exploring the implementation gap: theory and practices in change interventions.
Paul Trowler and Peter Knight.

As its title suggests, the subject matter of this edited collection is higher education policy, institutional change and the ways in which they inter-relate. It does not, however, see policy and policy-making as distinct from or 'above' processes of implementation and change, located only in formal settings of policy design or strategy formulation. Instead it draws on a model of policy-making and implementation which acknowledges that policy is made in ways other than in formal settings of government or Vice-Chancellors’ offices and which sees 'implementation' processes as essentially creative – and therefore also part of the policy-making process. Implementation of formal policy initiatives is also seen as contextually contingent in this model, taking different forms in different institutional and departmental contexts.

OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE.
ABSTRACT: The literature on doctoral supervision is heavily informed by a focus on the individual and dyad, together with a self-help ethic of supervisory improvement. On the margins is a disparate literature taking a ‘practice’ perspective on doctoral supervision. But this literature is disconnected and lacking in some important features. This article’s intention is to sharpen the focus and so to enhance the utility of a social practice theory lens. It refutes the idea that the practice perspective is inherently conservative, showing how a sharply focused lens can challenge assimilationism. The article first elaborates on the individualist approach and highlights differences with the practice approaches as already developed. It then sets out a social practice approach which builds on that existing literature. Finally, it applies this to the issue of colonialist assimilationism in doctoral supervision. The article is not directly based on empirical research, but instead uses existing literature to indicate ways in which a social practice approach might more effectively address the enhancement of doctoral supervision.

Trowler, P. (2015) Academic Tribes and Territories: the theoretical trajectory. Oesterreichische Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaften (Austrian Journal of Historical Studies). 25, 3, 17-26.

This paper describes and reflects upon the Academic Tribes and Territories thesis as it has developed over 25 years and set out in two separate editions and a third book. The paper evaluates each of these books, setting out the developing thesis and in so doing describing a shift away from epistemological essentialism towards a more nuanced understanding of academic disciplines and their power. This is an understanding influenced by social practice theory and one which sees individual disciplines as constructed as well as enacted, with that construction influenced by contextual factors in academic departments, universities and more broadly.

Social practice theory addresses both theoretical and method/ological agendas. To date priority has been given to the former, with writing on the latter tending often to be an afterthought to theoretical expositions or fieldwork accounts. This paper gives sustained attention to the method/ological corollaries of a social practice perspective. It both describes method/ological approaches that have already been deployed and makes some suggestions for a fully practice-focused ethnographic research style.

This paper considers how the idea of ‘discipline’ can best be conceptualised, both in general and particular terms. Much previous research has employed a strong essentialist approach, a model of disciplines which exaggerates the homogeneity of specific disciplinary features and accords disciplines generative powers which they rarely possess. That approach is disabling because it closes down the appreciation of the heterogeneity within disciplines, as well as occluding the reasons for that heterogeneity. However, for researchers this oversimplified model offers the attractions of simple research questions and research designs. The consequence of using such a model is, though, that its distortions threaten the robustness of higher education research. The paper argues for a more sophisticated conceptualisation of disciplines, one which deploys a moderate form of essentialism. It applies Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances to the task of depicting disciplines and explores the implications for research of this more nuanced model.

This paper takes up issues raised in two articles by Nick Zepke and portrayed here as ‘the Zepke thesis’. This thesis argues that the literature on, interest in and practices around student engagement in higher education have an elective affinity with neo-liberal ideology. At one level this paper counters many of the assertions that underpin the Zepke thesis, challenging them as being based on a selective and tendentious interpretation of that literature. It also points out the misuse of the concept of ‘elective affinity’ within the thesis. However, more significantly the paper argues that an understanding of how ideas are taken up and used requires a more sophisticated ontological understanding than the Zepke thesis exhibits. That thesis has strayed into the territory of the sociology of knowledge while ignoring the accounts and debates in that area developed over more than a century.

This paper focuses on the implementation of systems of recording achievement in higher education. We start by examining the main claims made by the proponents of records of achievement. We then address a number of questions related specifically to implementing change, which first involves subjecting some of those claims to critical scrutiny. We consider the case of records of achievement as an instance of policy implementation, applying to it concepts and precepts from the implementation literature. We conclude by considering the implications of the discussion for the successful implementation of records of achievement in institutions of higher education. The discussion is informed by three sources: the relevant literature; participation in the North West Project on Recording Achievement and Higher Education with associated workshops and conferences; and the experience of a number of institutions as revealed by a series of in-depth interviews with key respondents which took place between March and June 1993.

This paper argues that there is an urgent need to emphasise the role of the academic as an important actor in the study of policy implementation in higher education. It asserts that research into higher education is distinctive in adopting an ‘over-socialised’ conception of men and women. To demonstrate the actor’s importance in the understanding of change the paper draws on the results of an ethnographic single-site case study of NewU, a post-1992 university. The locus of the study was the developing ‘mass’ model of higher education and curricular characteristics associated with that, particularly the credit framework: the constellation of features related to and facilitated by the assignment of credit to assessed learning, considered in a context of relative resource decline and increasing student numbers. The study highlighted the different ways in which academics respond to changing contexts and in many cases take actions which have the effect, intentionally and otherwise, of changing policy outcomes. The paper argues, finally, that a greater understanding of academics’ behaviour can be achieved by moving beyond the essentialist position adopted by many higher education researchers which gives explanatory priority to the epistemological characteristics of disciplines. Researchers also need to take account of the organisational, cultural and ideological characteristics of particular contexts and the specific interests and understandings of actors in them.

In this paper we treat induction as a special case of socialisation, which we see as one form of professional learning. Induction is defined as professional practices designed to facilitate the entry of new recruits to an organisation and to equip them to operate effectively within it. Traditionally these have involved formal induction programmes, mentoring arrangements, the provision of handbooks and social events. Organisational socialisation is broader, covering the processes by which new entrants to an organisation construct ways of working within the organisation’s cultures. This socialiation is often tacit and unrecognised by those involved, yet it has important consequences for both the new entrant and the organisation. Here we develop the theme that the fact that professional practices associated with induction should be understood within the context of a strong, theoretically-elaborated understanding of organisational socialisation.

This paper derives from a study of organizational socialization and induction in
universities. It uses some of the data from that study to critique social practice theory and to
further develop a model to illuminate the characteristics of professional knowledgeability and
practices underpinning daily life in universities. This is done through the analysis of a case
study of one unusual sub-departmental workgroup in an unchartered English university: one
that comprises both Deaf and hearing academics. Using such a case study highlights factors
that are less evident in hearing-only situations, displaying important features in exaggerated
form which exist less palpably in most micro-social situations in universities. As a result it
offers a suitable locus for the modelling of the processes underlying much which is taken
for granted in universities’ daily life. The structure of the paper is as follows: it outlines the
broader study from which this is derived and makes some general comments about using
‘unusual’ case studies. It then goes on to describe the characteristics of workgroups in university
contexts through the case study example and to explore their theoretical corollaries.
Finally the paper considers the implications for aspects of the model developed, particularly
in terms of local leadership.

To different extents, academic development units (ADUs) face common problems the world over. Often situated
in an institutional environment which values research over teaching, they can find it difficult to integrate
their work into that of the university community generally. For them, policy imperatives such as the Bologna
accord present both challenges and opportunities. Thus perhaps the most fascinating aspect of these papers is
the insight they provide into the nature of the relationships between ADUs and their university contexts.
De par le monde, les centres de développement académique (CDA) sont confrontés à des problèmes
communs d’envergures différentes. Souvent situés dans un environnement qui privilégie la recherche plutôt
que l’enseignement, les CDA éprouvent certaines difficultés à intégrer leur travail dans celui de la communauté
universitaire en général. Pour les CDA, les impératifs politiques découlant de l’accord de Bologne
présentent aussi bien des défis que des opportunités. Ces articles sont particulièrement fascinants en raison de
leur éclairage au sujet de la nature des relations entre les CDA et le contexte universitaire.

This paper examines the research practices in Art and Design that are distinctively different from those common in research into higher education outside those fields. It considers whether and what benefit could be derived from their adaptation by the latter. The paper also examines the factors that are conducive and obstructive to adaptive transfer happening. Founded in the relevant literature, the paper uses 16 semi-structured interviews with academic staff in the disciplines of Graphic Design, Design for Performance, Fine Art and Fashion in an English Arts university. It concludes that there are features of Art and Design research that could be beneficial and that, in some cases, these also meet the necessary conditions for successful adaptation: salience to higher education researchers and profitability in relation to some of the goals of research in that field. However, such practices may not be congruent with dominant approaches in research into higher education, a further condition of successful adaptation, and there may be concerns in some cases around the issue of ‘rigour’. The overall conclusion, therefore, is a qualified one.

This paper offers a case study of a major university initiative to embed sustainability into practices in a number of ways, with a focus here on embedding the sustainability agenda across the curriculum. The purpose of this is to examine how far the concepts and axioms around change processes which run out of two theoretical traditions are borne out by this case. Those traditions are, first, social practice theory, an ontological perspective on the social world which has implications for how both stability and change are accomplished in organizations and beyond them. Second is an approach to the management of change specifically, a more immediately practical theory termed complex-adaptive systems theory. The paper’s intent is to consider how far such theories of change offer managers lenses for seeing the issues involved, while illuminating some of the key factors that the social practice and complex-adaptive systems theory viewpoints foreground.

Drawing on data from two recent empirical studies of universities conducted by the authors, this paper sets out a theoretical approach to understanding how values, attitudes, taken-for-granted assumptions and recurrent practices in universities are developed and played out. The paper focuses particularly on the significance of the theory in terms of the ‘work’ that has to be done by new academic appointees (NAA’s) entering novel contexts and, to a more limited degree, on the implications of this for arrangements made for the induction and professional socialization of new staff. The paper argues that a focus on activity systems, usually located within departments, is essential if a fuller understanding of the hermeneutics of daily life in higher education is to be achieved and if the management of induction is to be appropriate and successful.

This paper argues that the theory and practice of induction and socialization of new academic staff in universities have been based on a partial, corporatist, perspective influenced by now defunct structural-functionalist theory. We develop a more sophisticated theoretical understanding of organizational socialization and explore its consequences for the practice of induction of new academic staff. These ideas are based on secondary data derived from a number of studies of new academic appointees (NAAs), 27 in-depth interviews we conducted with academics in ten Canadian and English universities, both chartered and unchartered, and a five year ethnographic study of academic staff in a single unchartered English university.

This paper argues that good practice in teaching and learning in the English-speaking world may be compromised by structural changes in the higher education system. The impact of these changes is, however, affected by leadership practices and working cultures at the departmental level. These can, it is argued, assist in the development of ‘deeper’ teaching and learning practices even in a context which may be seen as unfavourable to them. Rejecting over-simple notions of transformational leadership and organizational cultural engineering, the paper identifies activity systems at the local, departmental, level as the central loci of changes in approaches to and recurrent practices in teaching and learning. Desirable change is most likely to be achieved in collective and collaborative ways, which means that change processes are contingent and contextualised, and that outcomes are unpredictable and fuzzy. The data in this come from in-depth interviews with academics in England and Canada; from our previous studies; and from literatures on faculty’s work environments in English-speaking countries.

This article uses data from a five-year ethnographic study of a single higher education institution to assess aspects of the ‘realism’ of managerialist approaches articulated through the credit framework in higher education in the United Kingdom. By ‘credit framework’ is meant the constellation of more or less compatible features facilitated by the assignment of credit to assessed learning, including modularity, the semester system, franchising, the accreditation of work-based learning and of prior learning. From the perspective of managerialist ideology the framework as a whole and its individual components offer a number of attractions, including greater economy, efficiency, manageability and market responsiveness in higher education institutions. Data from the site of the study and a theoretical framework derived from policy sociology are used to show that managerialist ideology oversimplifies and occludes aspects of social reality in higher education, the effect of which is to undermine many of the benefits claimed for the credit framework by managerialists.

After a brief account of the background to the accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL) in higher education, this paper elaborates on what are usually seen as two contrasting approaches to it: the credit exchange and developmental models. The paper argues that these should be recognised as poles of a continuum rather than dichotomous approaches and subjects each end of this continuum to critical scrutiny. Practical, epistemological pedagogical and cultural impediments to successful implementation of APEL are explored, the potential of APEL for deepening surveillance of the individual is highlighted and claims made about APEL and equal opportunities are questioned. In particular the problems associated with taking inappropriate positions on the continuum and of being unclear about the position taken are emphasised. The paper concludes by mapping areas where further research is needed and identifying the limits of the potential of APEL to broaden access to a mass higher education system.

We rethink the concepts underlying the notion of the “teaching-research nexus”
based on a review of the literature, an analysis of a number of case studies and the
findings of an interview study of teaching, research and the links between them in
four creative subjects in the UK.

‘Wicked’ issues are one-off problems that have no algorithms to follow to solutions. They are ill-understood or understood in multiple, perhaps conflicting, ways and are fundamentally complex in character. This paper argues that the term is an apt one to describe many aspects of the relationship between theory and data in educational research, and the decisions that have to be made about theory and its role in relation to data. The paper explores these aspects, focusing on the theoretical choices researchers often need to make. It argues that while there is great benefit in making good, explicit, theoretical choices, there are several traps that lie in wait for the unwary and fundamental decisions about the role of theory in research. In clarifying the dimensions of wickedity in this regard, this paper offers assistance to researchers in thinking through the issues they face.

This paper uses evidence from a research project to test the competing propositions and conclusions of two viewpoints on the impact of computer aided qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS). One, the convergence model, suggests that CAQDAS contains inherent characteristics which drive data analysis approaches in a consistent direction. The effect of this is to create homogeneity in analytical approaches which is detrimental in a number of ways. The alternative viewpoint suggests that the development of CAQDAS is only one of a number of options for qualitative data analysis but one which offers unique advantages. I refer to this as the repertoire-enhancement model. The proponents of these contrasting models have so far presented little empirical evidence to support their claims. The project drawn on in this paper concerned the attitudes, values and practices of academics towards curriculum change in a single higher education institution and used a code-and-retrieve software package called HyperResearch as one of its analytical strategies. This experience is used to test the claims made at the level of the individual researcher by the competing positions.

What happens when a sociologist writes about manipulation of the mass media by media moguls for a publishing house owned by Rupert Murdoch? The answer to that question is not only interesting in itself but can provide insights into the debate between the manipulative and pluralist models of media `bias' and effects. Any suggestion of unwarranted cutting or editing of the text can provide evidence for the manipulative model which argues for the editorial influence of individuals like Murdoch, while the `fair' articulation of the debate through one of the media owned by him might itself undermine it.

In July 2014 we ran the 7th Higher Education Close Up conference at Lancaster University. Started in the late 1990s by Paul Trowler, the conference provides a venue for researchers into higher education who adopt fine-grained method/ologies. Selected papers are published in a journal special number or as an edited book. For HECU7 the journal used was Higher Education Quarterly, in a special number called 'Close Up Higher Education Research: Making a Difference'.

Although Paul was nominally guest editor of that number, the journal editor involved himself in the detail of the editing process except for the original selection of the papers. This included Paul's introduction, parts of which were severely excised.

This document contains the excised parts. What remains as the version published in the journal can be read at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12073

This chapter concentrates on change in higher education, in particular the enhancement of teaching and learning there. The approach adopted is rooted in policy sociology, whose interests lie in looking at policy formation and policy “implementation”  and in exploring the relationship between them and any gaps between expectations and outcomes.  Underneath the specific discussion of the chapter lies one of the classic issues of sociology: the interplay between structural and agentic factors in social reality and social change.  On the structural side lies the power of disciplines to condition the behaviour of academics, their practices, values and attitudes.  On the agentic side lie questions of narrativity, identity construction and power plays. Social worlds are both constructed and enacted, both agentic and structural in character.  Janet Donald notes in her chapter that students bring their world to the lecture theatre. This chapter emphasises that academic staff bring their worlds to teaching contexts also. It is true that the epistemological differences between disciplines are important: they have different ways of thinking and practising, different tribes inhabiting the different disciplinary territories, and in this sense the structural power of discipline is important.  But so are other structural factors such as educational ideologies and the influences of early socialisation.  As well as structure though, agency is important too and for this reason we should be wary of making generalisations about the inhabitants of disciplinary territories: agency means that the regularities imposed by social structures are always provisional. This is especially true when we attempt to generalise about practices and attitudes less closely tied to  the knowledge characteristics of disciplines such as some of those associated with teaching  learning and assessment.

This chapter argues that initiatives designed to enhance student engagement in universities need to be underpinned by an explicit and workable theory of change and change management. It sets out a social practice approach to conceptualising the operation of workgroups in higher education and goes on to elaborate the corollaries of this in terms of the management of change. The chapter concludes with a vignette designed to illustrate how these concepts might be elaborated in a departmental situation.

Drawing on the relevant literature and primary data from two large mixed-method research and evaluation projects based at Lancaster University,  as well as my own research work (with smaller samples and more qualitative in nature), this chapter:

• identifies new managerialism as fundamentally ideological in nature;
• positions the very significant role of discourse in articulating and sustaining ideologies;
• asks whether new managerialist ideology and discourse have become hegemonic in UK higher education, exploring the reasons for any dominance they have achieved; and
• concludes with the observation that UK higher education has not been ‘captured’ by this ideology despite its apparent prevalence.

This chapter is divided into three linked sections. Each reflects on issues raised in the rest of the book in order to consider the trajectory of learning development over time. These sections are, firstly, challenges for learning developers as they work to enhance their role and effectiveness for the future. Secondly, lessons learned so far about the effects of learning development work, and their implications for future action. Finally, a longer-term look at the future of learning development work and its place in the academic enterprise.

Departmental Seminar 11/11/15: This talk builds on the here@lancaster report “The Role of HEFCE in Teaching and Learning Enhancement” (http://tinyurl.com/o3zgs6a). It summarises some of the key findings of that research and considers how a social practice approach to change processes might help in fulfilling the aims HEFCE had for its enhancement initiatives. As much as ever we need, as Alan Warde says (2004, p.3) “coherent meso-level concepts which can account for the mechanics of structural and institutional change.” This session makes a stab at addressing that challenge.

Centres of Excellence and the Dynamics of Change Processes in Higher Education.

The talk has  5 parts:

1. “Excellence”

2. Evaluative comments on(a) UK Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and (b) Learning and Teaching Support Network – Subject Centres

3. The tyranny of individualism

4. Social practice approach to understanding higher education contexts

5. Corollaries of social practice theory for change initiatives – beyond individualism

Part 1 of a keynote lecture to the Higher Education Close Up Conference, July 12-14 2012. Discusses the essentialist nature of previous theorising about disciplines and proposes an approach to conceptualising disciplines based on moderate essentialism.
Part 2 is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz-zTf...
The article from this talk is here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/HQj6dKg9QSgbisYJr37E/full


These arguments relate to the book I edited with colleagues:
Trowler, P., Saunders, M. and Bamber, R. (Eds) (Jan 2012).Tribes and territories in the 21st-century: Rethinking the significance of disciplines in higher education. London: Routledge.

There is a further video, which sets the background to this discussion, at:

http://youtu.be/8j7MeMxsoo0

See my CV at http://paul-trowler.weebly.com/

In this video I:

• Say some things about conceptualising disciplines and their power
• Briefly think about how social practice theory (stemming from Giddens, Bernstein and others) can help us with reconceptualising this
• Think about some of the drivers, vectors or catalysts of practices which to some extent may be displacing disciplinary power
• Consider the implications of this for those charged with enhancement efforts.

These arguments relate to the book I edited with colleagues:
Trowler, P., Saunders, M. and Bamber, R. (Eds) (Jan 2012).Tribes and territories in the 21st-century: Rethinking the significance of disciplines in higher education. London: Routledge.

See my follow-up argument at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPZQtP...

Professor Paul Trowler, Research Director at the University of Lancaster, gives his keynote presentation 'Great Expectations in Hard Times (with apologies to Dickens)' at the Learning, Teaching and Assessment conference at the University of Derby.

Keynote Speech to Blackburn College's Learning and Teaching Conference, University Centre, Blackburn College. September 2012.

Drawing on research funded by the Higher Education Academy and Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, unpicks the concept of student engagement, looks at some of the evidence about it and discusses implementation issues around attempts to enhance engagement in higher education.

See my CV website for slides associated with this talk:

http://paul-trowler.weebly.com/

Keynote lecture to Swedish educational developers, lecturers, managers and policy makers. Lund, Sweden, 2004. The paper from this talk is at: http://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/725/1/725.pdf


At that time Sweden was investigating whether to make teacher education compulsory for new university lecturers. The keynote considers this policy in the light of relevant research.

Chapter 7 sets out synoptically the conceptual, analytical, and theoretical contribution of the book. Readers who want a concise summary of the theoretical position set out here can turn to the first few pages of this chapter. The contribution to research and for professional action is summarized, and some suggestions for research with a practice sensibility are offered. The chapter shows how the characteristics and functions of theory in general are specifically addressed in the approach taken here. It summarizes what this approach offers and outlines the areas that need supplementary theories and designs—those less amenable to the social practice approach.

This paper analyses pedagogic practices in four fields in art and design higher education. Its purpose is to identify the characteristics that might be called signature pedagogies in these subjects and to identify their role in student centred learning. In a time of growing economic pressure on higher education and in the face of tendencies for normative practices brought about

A number of countries, including Sweden and the UK, are considering the introduction of compulsory teacher training for higher education (HE) lecturers. This paper assesses whether such a policy is likely to achieve its aims, and the issues that may arise as the policy is implemented. ...

... I will elaborate four. First, if theory informs research design, then there is the danger that the findings simply confirm the theory. This is a point Paul Ashwin (2009b) makes about the dangers of circularity in the relationship between theory and data. ...

... Trowler, Paul R. and Saunders, M. and Knight, PT (2002) Change thinking, change practices : a guide to change for heads of department, subject centres and others who work "middle-out". LYSN Generic Centre, York. ... ID Code: 13479. Deposited By: Mr Richard Ingham. ...

... (2009) Enhancing Learning, Teaching ... The aim is to base innovation and change on the probabilities of desired outcomes materializing, rather than on ... a theoretical introduction to these ideas, there are case studies (from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Norway ...

Open University Press, 325 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106 (paperback: ISBN-0-335-20675-1, 22.50 British pounds; hardback: ISBN-0-335-20676-X, 65 British pounds). Web site: http://www.openup.co.uk. ... Society for Research into Higher ...

... It is made too as practitioners go about their daily business, whether they are ... Johnson's chapter in this volume derives concludes that the extent of new managerialist discursive capture ... other relations to the self - that is individualized identities, which variably resist and subvert ...

... hero and places more stress than many other writers on negotiation, dialogue and trust ... in recurrent practices of managed change, including change in teaching and learning practices, passes ... They introduce changes without providing a means to identify and confront the situa ...