This study explores and examines the perceptions of students and tutors of the utilisation and purpose of student voice in higher education. It is conducted in a higher education department within a further education college. Literature form a range of secondary sources explores how student voice is visible in higher education and draws on the drivers behind its increased focus. Specific emphasis is seen in the views of student voice in terms of rights, participation and inclusivity whilst also recognising the challenges this brings. The value of the student-tutor relationship is highlighted as vital in the successful utilisation of student voice. The distribution and impact of power on the use of student voice is fundamental to the examination of literature and is further clearly reflected in the subsequent findings of my study. I have taken a critical ethnographic approach to the study and drawn on feminist research theory and auto-ethnography to collect and analyse qualitative data, using semi structured interviews, focus groups and a research journal. Demonstrated within the emerging themes, was a clear indication of the growing attention to collecting student voice and the problems this raises for students and tutors in terms of rights, participation and power inequalities. Research within the literature review supports these notions and also highlights gaps which have been explored within this study as students and tutors raise concerns regarding their position within the classroom, their unease of accountability and the value of relationships in addressing these issues. Contribution to knowledge is clearly shown in the examination of power issues within student voice work and indeed in everyday practice. This is evidenced through examination of the relationship and the examples of power inequalities raised by tutors and students. Significant findings are demonstrated in the unexpected revelation that tutors and students both feel disciplined by the other and believe the other to be the holder of the power. Whilst existing literature reports on the benefits and challenges of student voice work, my study goes further to examine the role of power in the relationship and the significance of this in terms of transformational practice. I conclude the study by presenting an action plan to outline my recommendations for transformative practice which combines literature relating to existing studies, key theory in the field of power, and emerging ideas in relation to the perceptions of students and tutors in order to establish an inclusive conclusion to the study.

While the internationalisation of higher education (IHE) is often treated as a single global phenomenon by those who evaluate its effectiveness, internationalisation means different things in different contexts. Due to the limited number of Chinese-context-based studies and literature of IHE, this research aims to set up an empirical and contextual study of Chinese IHE considering the following points of concern: how the meaning, interpretation and evaluation of IHE are constructed in practice in a Chinese university; how these three points of concern shape IHE in specific local contexts; and whether we can understand this process through using evaluation tools developed in ‘western’ contexts of IHE. This makes it possible to understand the specific qualities of internationalisation from a Chinese perspective, which are not well represented in the English-language or Chinese language academic literature, as well as to understand its similarities (institutional functions) with western models. This research found multiple perceptions of the meaning of IHE in the Chinese context – learning for self-improvement, nationalism, platform perceptions and other marginal perceptions – which differentiate Chinese models of IHE from those in the West. Moreover, the dominant motivation for internationalisation in the Chinese university is academic development, which is different from the Western universities’ more economic rationales. These differences can be attributed to the history of the II modernisation of higher education in China, the impact of nationalist revolution on higher education and dual-managerial systems in higher education institutions (HEIs) which involve the Communist Party Committee and the university president. Finally, based on the findings of this research, the thesis also identifies national and international barriers which prevent the case university from being internationalised and introduces context-sensitive, institutional-level recommendations for the case university in China.

This thesis aims to explore how student learning in higher education may be improved. It builds upon research which links perception of assessment tasks to approaches to learning. The thesis therefore investigates how messages about assessment are conveyed by staff and how students' interpret them. In doing so, it embraces a humanistic approach to learning that stresses the interrelation of context, individual orientation and approach to learning. The thesis documents the findings of qualitative interviews conducted with staff and students at one UK university. As such, it is a study of perceptions about teaching, learning and assessment in the ethnographic tradition. Data analysis is concerned with representing the values and conceptions of learning held by individuals, therefore by unveiling the social world the thesis identifies with interpretive and naturalistic approaches to education research. Demands made of assessment by staff, student and government result in a tension between the facilitation of learning and the maintenance of standards. It is argued that this tension results in the use of two separate and discreet discourse; of assessment and learning. Therefore, a case is made for the conceptualisation of a discourse of development conditioned by improved communication about assessment and learning. Based on empirical research the thesis calls for a deconstruction of existing assessment paradigms in favour of a negotiated learning. This would enable students to acquire skills in critical judgement and decision-making necessary for contribution to a learning society. It is this theoretical rationale for self assessment which distinguishes it from other research and represents an original contribution to the field of education research.

This thesis explores the precarious position of educational development units (EDUs) in the modern university. EDUs face the challenge of bringing about government inspired change, particularly, though not exclusively, with regard to exploiting new technologies in the practice of professionals trained to be critical of external demands, and whose practice is informed more by their disciplines than by their employers, their universities. The thesis therefore explores, using five case studies of EDUs, how those working in such units see the ways to meet the challenge of change, conceptualise the purpose of the university, the practice of university teaching, and the introduction of new technologies into the curriculum with a view to establishing a narrative of educational development from those working in the field. Using data from interviews and documents, the case studies suggest that in order to survive, EDUs do draw largely on their own institutions for their narrative, with the result that each EDU tends to reflect the focus of its own university, rather than draw inspiration from an external common view of universities. Rather than a factory based model of change based on high levels of power and resources, EDUs appear to have more in common with the pre-industrial household, in that they offer small, highly specialised services to relatively small groups of people, where necessary employing additional faculty based colleagues to pursue specific projects. This, along with the relationship building in which EDUs engage, enables units to break down barriers between disciplines through the sharing of practice between colleagues in different faculties. Thus the EDU, despite its small size, plays an important role in unifying the university, and in building an institutional brand.

This project considers the relationship between the theory and practice of art as a historical narrative of conflict and contradiction, beginning over four hundred years ago in Renaissance Italy, with the emergence of the first art academies, concluding, in the British context, with a number of battles in art education after the Coldstream report of 1960. Nicholas Pevsner’s Academies of Art Past and Present (CUP 1940) is the starting point of this research, a text which has proven of continual importance for enquiries into art education. Immediately relevant are feminist art history, (Nochlin 1973, Parker & Pollock 1983), and a number of American academics’ accounts of art education in America. (Goldstein 1996, Singerman 1999, Elkins 2001). Guided by Pevsner’s Academies, my project develops through site visits to European Art Academies, where I photograph life drawing and anatomy rooms and collect historical imagery from archives. No longer the height of art theory, the life room is the historical object of this thesis, analysed as the remains of a previous fine art system, and as a space of fantasy. Juxtaposing original material gathered on site visits with their reproduction in Pevsner’s book I offer a re-reading which considers the tradition of copying in the academy with that of the mechanisms of reproduction in modernity. My use of photography in the life room abuts one system with the other, while image maps follow each chapter using the convention of the image essay and Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. My chapters prepare a context in which my photographs can be read as traces of a much older tradition of observation, representation and pedagogy. I consider the anatomy theatre in relation to the life room and questions of feminism, representation and the female body. I move on to the Bauhaus and the rejection of academic art and finally to of the Hornsey Sit-in of 1968 and the Coldstream Report, where the relationship of theory to practice, and to the ‘academic’ in art education is fiercely debated.

The work submitted for examination consists of ten items, with the key sole-authored components comprising a book chapter (Winn, 2012) and four peer-reviewed journal articles (Winn, 2013; 2014; 2015a; 2015b). Other, joint-authored work is intended to be supplementary and to provide further evidence of the two persistent themes of inquiry which my work has been concerned with over the last six years: the role and character of labour and property in higher education, or rather, ‘academic labour’ and the ‘academic commons’. Six of the ten publications discuss these themes through a critique of the role of technology in higher education, in particular the way networked technology forms the practical, ideological and legal premise for the idea and forms of ‘openness’ in higher education. Throughout my work, I treat ‘technology’ as a reified and fetishized concept which masks the more fundamental categories of labour, value and the commodity-form that are concealed in the idea and form of the ‘public university’. I start from the observation that advocates of ‘open education’ tend to envision an alternative form of higher education that is based on a novel form of academic commons but neglect to go further and critically consider the underlying form of academic labour. As such, the product is set free but not the producer. In response, through my publications I develop the theoretical basis for an alternative social and institutional form of co-operative higher education; one in which openness is constituted through a categorial critique aimed at the existing commodity-form of knowledge production.

The purpose of this research was to explore and gain insight into year 1 undergraduate Physical Education student experiences of learning and develop understanding of the means by which students are supported in the transition to university. It explores the perceived cognitive, affective and social demands on learning; and the challenges and barriers faced by students in becoming academic learners in Higher Education. A qualitative phenomenological approach was adopted. Interpretative phenomenological Analysis (IPA) provides a methodological framework and analytical approach that enables an exploration of the individual [and shared] lived experience of the six research participants. The research is idiographic starting with a detailed exploration of individual experience and perspectives, followed by an interpretative analysis that preserves the participant voice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three key points during the first year of study and transcripts were analysed using an iterative, hermeneutic approach. A process of abstraction identified four recurrent master themes that capture the student experience of learning. It is by presenting a holistic understanding of the role that ‘Self’, ‘Becoming’, ‘Belonging’ and ‘Motivation’ play in defining student experiences of learning that this research makes its contribution to knowledge. The findings of this research show that student experiences of learning are individually unique and illustrates the importance of re-evaluating transition. Participants were self-aware but held compound self-concepts that are emotionally and socially defined. Situated and meaningful interaction is critical in fostering resilience and a sense of control over learning and tensions between the relational and connected nature of experience are brought into view. Participants encountered disconnection between certain pedagogies and learning, self-determination and the regulation of study. The conclusion identifies a series of developmental themes that can inform understanding and contribute to further research where the agenda for change seeks to respond to student needs through improvements in teaching and learning; student-centred pedagogy, connectedness, emotional coping, inclusion or exclusion, and mastery oriented learning.

In the teaching and learning of literacy, descriptions of text have a problematic status as a result of the growing understanding of literacy as both a cognitive process and a social practice. In the teaching of academic subjects at university, student text is not usually an object of study. The research in this thesis draws on a language based theory oflearning to place textual description at the centre of the teaching and learning of both literacy and academic subjects at university. Participant observation and practice-based research methods were used to implement a form of text-oriented literacy teaching and to explore its compatibility with processes and practices orientations to literacy. Over an eighteen month period, systemic functional grammar was used to investigate and describe the texts of a film studies classroom and the descriptions were used in genre based literacy pedagogy. The effects of the pedagogy are measured in terms of students' performance in an end of course assignment, students' accounts of their writing processes, and student and subject-tutor perception of the text description and the pedagogy. In the thesis, a linguistic description of a key curriculum genre -a Taxonomic Film Analysis -is presented. An account is given of the pedagogy by means of which this essay genre was represented in the film studies classroom as a realisation of choices from linguistic, conceptual and activity systems. Systemic functional grammar-based text description is seen to have provided a means whereby a literacy tutor could collaborate with a subject tutor to provide a subject-specific form of literacy teaching which was evaluated as relevant by students and tutors. The account and the evaluation help to clarify the role that description of text can play in relation to processes and practices ofliteracy use in the teaching and learning of literacy in a film studies classroom and have implications for the teaching and learning of literacy at university more generally.

Constructing a Reflective Site is a fine art practice-based research project, which considers the relationship between art practice and teaching. It does this through a critical examination of reflection in art, in pedagogy and in philosophy. Contemporary art forms, like relational practice, discursive practice and artists appropriating education as their medium, raise new questions regarding the mechanisms by which practice informs or can inform teaching within Higher Education. Reflection can be one way to elucidate and question this interrelationship towards an understanding of how notions of knowledge can be seen to operate across practice and teaching. This research is undertaken from within a dual position on practice: art practice and teaching as practice. The concept of practice-based research has been adopted from emerging positions in relation to artistic practice and artistic research, and this position has also been employed in the study of teaching as practice. This is thus a dual study, which has employed an indisciplinary approach towards an examination of subject specificity in fine art teaching. Notions of site have been used both as an artistic position in relation to the research, and as a theoretical framework, drawing on Miwon Kwon’s genealogy of site-specific practice. The research sought to explore the relationship between reflection in teaching and learning and reflection within an artistic practice and has found that, in epistemological, cognitive, social and historical terms, reflection does not necessarily constitute the same experience across pedagogy and art practice. This has consequences both for art students when asked to critically reflect on their work and also for developing the field of artistic research and concepts of artistic knowledge. Furthermore, these differences highlight the need to continually examine contemporary arts practices for models contributing to subject specific pedagogies in fine art, in order to keep the relationship between the subject and the academy critical and productive.

UK higher education has seen unprecedented fluctuations, particularly within the last decade. Policy developments and government strategies are dramatically altering the sector and irreversibly changing the student-university relationship. Of particular note, a consumerist ethos has become the prevalent mind-set amongst the student body and, consequently, students have developed clear expectations about what they want from their university experience. In order to begin to explore these perceptions and needs, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of first year undergraduate students from across three programmes of study at the University of Central Lancashire: Business Administration, Business and Management, and Business Studies. The structure and content of the interview questions were derived from the results of an earlier focus group meeting held with students from a local 'feeder institution' who were studying Business and who were considering entering university in 2017-2018 (although not necessarily UCLan). The findings from these interviews, along with those from a set of follow up meetings, are in line with the results of other, earlier studies described within the literature which suggest that students enter university with a specific set of expectations, that are, in many cases, unfulfilled. However, the empirical research presented here makes a distinctive contribution to the field in several respects: first, that psychological contract theory is employed as a useful lens through which to investigate the student-university relationship; second, the behavioural responses to dissatisfaction are examined using the Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect (EVLN) framework as a mechanism for exploring these reactions; and third, previous studies employing the EVLN framework in the context of higher education have all taken place overseas and largely used quantitative methods of investigation. Therefore, this research is distinctive in that it takes place in a UK setting and employs qualitative methods. The use of qualitative methods has added to our understanding of the student experience by highlighting some of the underlying causes of dissatisfaction and the ways in which students might respond to the breach of perceived promises. The EVLN framework has demonstrated its value as a conceptual tool in exploring students' reactions and reveals that the expectation-reality mismatch can lead to feelings of entrapment and hopelessness amongst the student body. The outcomes uncovered in this thesis have real-world implications for management practice, not only at UCLan, but for other universities that may be facing similar issues.