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…

The paper presents the argument that kindness in teaching is both commonplace yet unremarked and that, moreover, it is subversive of neo-liberal values. In arguing for the value of attending to kindness, we reject the dichotomy between emotion and reason and the associated gendered binaries. We distinguish kindness from "due care" and acts that…

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…

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…

The paper argues that a critical realist perspective can contribute to a critique of evidence-based practice, while at the same time not abandoning the idea of evidence altogether. The paper is structured around a number of related themes: the sociopolitics of "evidence-based"; epistemological roots and a critical realist critique; the debate in…

In this article I argue that qualitative research that focuses attention on how change is being understood and experienced on the ground can contribute to broader theoretical insights. In recent research I have been exploring how lecturers apply their understandings of learning outcomes and personal development planning. At one level, these…