Arriving in the UK after exile from Nazi Germany, Karl Mannheim taught sociology at the London School of Economics and then also at the London Institute of Education, where he was awarded a chair just a year before his untimely death in 1947. In his later writings and teaching, Mannheim argued that the sociology of education could make a crucial…

In the teeth of the coronavirus crisis the British HE system has been thrown into chaos and the severe limitations of the market model have been cruelly exposed. After thirty years of expansion and increasing neoliberalization, the contradictions of the marketized system have been realized by the virus, pushing the entire sector to the edge of…

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), originally proposed in the UK government's Higher Education White Paper, now the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, is a national mechanism to assess teaching quality in universities. This article provides a critical account of the TEF, underpinned by an overview of the policy context and marketisation…

Building on existing critiques of contemporary arrangements in higher education, this paper focuses on the claim that the human capital model undermines the civic or public role of universities, restricts student engagement with learning and damages the capacity for critical thinking and empathy. Interviews with students studying either Business…

We use PIAAC data to study the relationship between parental education and educational success among adults from 23 advanced economies. We consider educational success in terms of both educational "attainment" (formal qualifications) and educational "achievement" (competencies) and in both "absolute" and…

This is a reply to six "Theory and Research in Education" commentators on views I expressed in a 2013 "Theory and Research in Education" piece about priorities in philosophy of education today. The first section is about a concession to my critics; the second, about various misconceptions in their views. The third section…

In 1916 John Dewey published "Democracy and Education: An introduction to the philosophy of education". In this book some of today's foremost historians, philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists of education mark the anniversary of Dewey's work by reviewing and reflecting, from a British perspective, on Dewey's contribution to our…

The UK's 2016 decision to exit the European Union and the discussion surrounding it indicate that public understanding of British identity has important consequences, one way or another. Defining British identity will be an important task in the years to come. The UK government not long ago provided some guidance on the matter of British identity…

In response to the subjection of universities in Britain and elsewhere to 'free market' ideology and the resulting narrow concern with claimed economic effects and benefits, this essay explores some of the processes of persuasion and justification as they are employed in debate and in resistance to this damaging orthodoxy. First, the short-term…

In this paper, we evaluate, and highlight the tensions between, radical, critical and Marxist education as they have played out in British education since the Enlightenment. Our argument has several parts. First, like other Marxists, we believe that consciousness is shifted as much through engagement with class struggle as through ideas. We…

The spread of examination throughout educational institutions is often viewed as an overly constraining influence, one that distorts pedagogic relationships and prevents more genuine educational activities from taking place. This critique of examination ignores the extent to which the structure of the school and the soul of the child are already…

In this article, the author explores these questions--from what position, with what focus, and through what methods can a history be produced that is sensible of the conflicts and passions of its own time, and that can illuminate those of the past?--estimating that the books under review in several ways invite such a demanding reading. Gary…

In this paper we express concerns that the marketisation of British higher education that has accompanied its expansion has resulted in some sections becoming pedagogically limited. We draw from Fromm's humanist philosophy based on "having" to argue that the current higher education (HE) market discourse promotes a mode of existence,…

These "Proceedings" derived from the Commission for International Adult Education's (CIAE) 2018 International Pre-Conference. They contain 23 papers from 32 authors. Eight of the lead authors are graduate students -- four are rounding up their Master's degrees while four are on their doctoral programs. The rest are a mix of seasoned and…

Universities are often enjoined to "get" with the "real world". In this article, Mary Evans gives an account of interpretations of literary realism in order to consider the "coercive realism" of the contemporary university. The prevailing assumptions that universities must contribute to the "real" world are…