In the field of higher education, there are two dominant strands of interpretation of criticality, either as a decontextualized skill of logical reasoning, or a sense of action within larger contexts more than mere cognition. This research offers a reclaiming and reimagining of criticality in universities as an affective process, highlighting the…

This report investigates the progression of students from GCSE to A level in the same (or related) subject. That is, for a range of subjects, the proportion of GCSE students who continue to study the subject at A level is calculated. To understand possible sources of variation progression rates are broken down by GCSE grade and student gender.…

Providing evidence that can inform awarding is an important application of Comparative Judgement (CJ) methods in high-stakes qualifications. The process of marking scripts is not changed, but CJ methods can assist in the maintenance of standards from one series to another by informing decisions about where to place grade boundaries or cut scores.…

In the context of the distinction between normative and descriptive approaches to the relationship between science and religion, this article discusses the recent work of the sociologist Elaine Ecklund. It reviews four of her published outputs, summarising her data concerning the views of religious people and professional scientists, including…

Religious education was established as a compulsory curriculum requirement in all schools by the 1944 Education Act. It was intended to provide instruction to all pupils in the basic tenets of the Christian faith and ensure that every successive generation of pupils understood the role of Christianity in British history and the national sense of…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to discuss the "Q-Step in the Community" programme, part of the Q-Step Centre based in the Sociology Department at Manchester Metropolitan University, designed to help address the skills gap in quantitative methods (QM) that is evident across parts of the UK higher-education sector. "Q-Step in…

This essay suggests an alternative accountability process on the basis of critiques of current evaluation practice in higher education. Using cases in the British university system, with some international commentary and thinking through experience in Asian universities in four countries in the wake of 'audit culture', the work of Thorstein Bunde…

This paper reflects on a teaching problem highlighted as part of a second-year undergraduate module in sociology, taught at a UK based institution of higher education. The specific teaching problem -- that of student learning as encountered and revealed in seminars -- was nested within other issues; some of which related to the characteristics of…

Dissertations are positioned as the capstone of an undergraduate degree, bringing together what students have previously learned from their programmes through a piece of independent research. However, there is limited research into the ways in which engaging in a dissertation has an impact on students' understandings of disciplinary knowledge. In…

This book examines the structural and cultural factors that explain the persistence of an attainment gap between white and Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students in UK universities. So-called 'deficit' approaches have long represented the orthodoxy in higher education strategy-making, yet they overlook the structural and institutional…

This essay offers a broken narrative concerning the early history of anti-oppressive practice as an approach in the U.K. to youth and community work and the struggles over this in the context of UK higher education between the 1960's and the early 2000's. Educating informal educators as youth and community workers in the UK has been a site of…

Drawing on the experiences of a novel collaborative project between sociologists and computer scientists, this paper identifies a set of challenges for fieldwork that are generated by this "wild interdisciplinarity. Public Access Wi-Fi Service" was a project funded by an 'in-the-wild' research programme, involving the study of digital…

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…

Using data from 15 semi-structured interviews with UK-based early/mid-career academics, this paper offers an empirically informed assessment of how lecturers teaching/researching the sociology of sport are managing their careers in a changing higher education landscape. Those interviewed were involved in the delivery of sociological content to a…

This paper presents a research-based, theoretically-informed contribution to the debate on "impact" in educational research, and specifically a response to Gardner's 2011 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. It begins by discussing the development of the research "impact" agenda as a global…