Graduate supervision is a puzzling pedagogy requiring a thoughtful response from its practitioners. In this article, I reflect upon teaching theories of supervision produced through my own research with the aim of galvanizing the imaginations and practices of supervisors. I address a curious reluctance to introduce those theories that require…

The article examines the outcomes of affirmative action policies aimed at improving access for women students to university education in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Different interpretations of affirmative action are found in the three countries. These include lower entry scores, remedial pre-university programmes and financial assistance. There…

Global social justice is often portrayed as a project of either developing appropriate dispositions or of amending the rules that govern global interaction. Despite policy pronouncements by many university vice chancellors on the significance of higher education in contributing to learning about global social justice, there is very little…

The concept of the internationalisation of university curricula is being developed with more complex and critical views emphasising the cultural and social aspects of globalisation as well as its economic and political aspects. Putting these ideas into practice however, is a challenge to institutions, since that requires fundamental educational…

The inherent opportunities for communication, collaboration and experiential learning in an online and global network create the impetus for the new network paradigm in higher education. A strategic knowledge network in education was designed and developed to build "Mode 2" knowledge capabilities; create new knowledge for innovative application;…

Contemporary universities in the developed world face a plethora of increased--and changing--responsibilities. We are the global university, responsible for the production of worker citizens who will be "prepared" for an extraordinarily diverse set of challenges across all facets of their lives. Much of our research concentration in the academy…

Following the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994, there has been a strong drive towards democratising education at all levels, primary, secondary and tertiary. The present paper examines some of the key ideas in the debate around transformation in higher education in South Africa, namely the notions of an African essence, culture…

This article examines how recent changes, leading to a diversified supply in Kenya's university education system, is reflected in prospective students' aspirations, perceptions and preferences to undertake university education. The results, based on a combination of a convenience and snowball sampling of settings, within which random samples of…

This paper reports on the work of a six-month review project commissioned by the Higher Education Academy which aimed at mapping the research base around the student learning experience in higher education (HE). The project aimed to: (1) provide an overview of the ways in which the student learning experience in HE has been and is conceptualised;…

This review sought to locate key themes in the literature on teaching and learning thinking and practices, by examining areas of influence and mapping ideas about the themes of practice, transfer and communities in higher education or related contexts. The findings indicate that issues of pedagogical stance, disjunction, learning spaces, agency,…

The connections between the design and use of space in higher education, and the production of teaching and learning, and of research, are not well understood. This paper reports on a literature review on these topics, and shows that higher education spaces can be considered in various ways: in terms of campus design, in terms of how space can…

The new English system of student finance seeks to resolve a higher education policy trilemma created by government's desire to switch more of the costs on to students, whilst seeking to promote both increased and widening participation. The rationale for this new funding system is based upon orthodox economic analysis which, the authors argue,…

The "New Humanities" has called for new ways of engaging with Humanities texts; the European Science Foundation is just one major research funder to demand that the Humanities contribute to interdisciplinary collaborations. Meanwhile, traditionally trained disciplinary academics have resisted bringing traditional texts into interdisciplinary…

This paper proposes that widening participation in higher education might distinctively be conceptualised beyond economically driven human capital outcomes, as a matter of widening capability. Specifically, the paper proposes forming the capability of students to become and to be "strong evaluators", able to make reflexive and informed choices…

Although problem-based learning is being adopted by many institutions around the world as an effective model of learning in higher education, there is a surprising lack of critique in the problem-based learning literature in relation to its philosophical characteristics. This paper explores epistemology as a starting point for investigating the…