The supervision of master's students at the dissertation stage of their taught programme is generally considered to be one of the privileges of an academic in higher education (Bacwayo, Nampala and Oteyo, 2017). Of concern to those who are less experienced or new to the supervisory role is knowing the best way to effectively support their…

Higher education researchers have paid little attention to postgraduate participation. This issue has become more prominent in England following the introduction of high undergraduate fees. Many predicted that master's participation would decline consequently, strengthening known inequalities in access by socio-economic background at master's…

All schools in England are required to have a SENCo. Although the DfE collects data relating to the demographics of this large population of teachers, this has not until now been analysed or published, meaning that much research relating to SENCos has had to proceed on the basis of estimates. A Freedom of Information request was made to the DfE,…

In this article, we address the questions: How is the purpose of higher education constructed within policy texts from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), England and Sweden? How does this position students in making the transition from Bachelor to Masters? We do this through analysis of two recent policy documents from each of the EHEA,…

A descendant of Chekhov's extended family, Darya Protopopova has always loved all things literary. When she found out that Chekhov was popular with British modernist writers, she decided to do a master's and then a doctorate in English modernism at the University of Oxford. Having completed both, she chose to spread her love for English literary…

The paper examines comparatively the curricula of six Physics MSc degrees from three countries (England, Portugal and Denmark) in the European policy context driven by the Bologna Process, which advocates degree comparability and student-centred learning. Degree programme descriptions were analysed and interviews were conducted with students and…

Many new graduates are finding it difficult to obtain graduate-level work and impossible to break into the sectors they were aiming at. In order to address this, higher education institutions are examining the methods they use to enhance student employability and deploying various measures to grow and strengthen this activity, with an increasing…

This article is based on findings from the evaluation of a project established to enhance learning and teaching in higher education. This project took place within the University of Hertfordshire School of Education in England through the Change Academy for Blended Learning Enhancement (CABLE) project, the university version of the UK Higher…

The complex nature of the work of a teacher in England was thrown into fresh relief in 2010 by the marked contrast between the outgoing New Labour administration and the incoming Coalition. The paper addresses the false dichotomy between views of teaching as craft and teaching as profession and proceeds to a consideration of the actuality of the…

If a programme were to be devised for the early-career development of science teachers, what might such a programme look like? This was the focus of a meeting of science educators interested in developing such a structure, from the start of initial teacher training onwards. The contributions, modified and written up here, include a suggested…

This research investigates aspirations for a master's-level teaching profession in England, providing key stakeholder perceptions in one densely populated region within a multiple case study. Although this intended move to a master's-level profession represented a major shift in teachers' professional development in England, only limited…

In this paper the authors suggest that teacher educators in higher education institutions (HEIs) in England are not fully convinced that teaching should be a Masters profession. The original engagement with Masters-level provision for student-teachers in England seems to have been founded on a technicality rather than a committed philosophical…

Student-centred learning has gradually come to the foreground of the Bologna Process. In parallel, learning outcomes have been advocated as key degree descriptors, illustrative of student-centred approaches. This paper examines learning outcomes in their diverse understandings and enactment in three European countries--England, Portugal and…

Collaborative assessment has well-recognised benefits in higher education and, in online distance learning, this type of assessment may be integral to collaborative e-learning and may have a strong influence on the student's relationship with learning. While there are known benefits associated with collaborative assessment, the main drawback is…

This article compares the national-level requirements for master degree provision in England, Denmark and Portugal following the implementation of the Bologna Process, and ponders upon the reconcilability of these requirements in cross-national initiatives (e.g. joint degrees). In all three countries, master degrees have to comply with the…