Introduction: For academics in UK Higher Education (HE), professional learning (PL) is a complex endeavour involving a multitude of (in)formal learning encounters. However, these PL encounters are at risk as academics prioritised conflicting knowledge domains and negotiate various social and material engagements that can enable or encumber these encounters. This thesis reports on research that attempts to illuminate these sociomaterial entanglements using Actor-Network Theory and Non-Representational Theory as a theoretical framework. Methods: A transformative mixed method case study of a single UK university using content analysis, questionnaire, interview and photovoice methods were undertaken. Twelve academic staff, with module leader responsibilities, were selected from the academic staff questionnaire (n:182) to be interviewed and photograph their PL experiences. Unique to sociomaterial investigation was the photovoice method, enabling the participants to become empowered as co-researchers. Results The analysis of the data suggests that academics tend to be strategic in prioritising conflicting knowledge domains. In the case of knowledge not related to their subject discipline, academics will often fast-track information from a "knowledgeable other". Furthermore, academics will construct "surrogate" or "transient" spaces in which to seek refuge from the various disruptions and interruptions generated by their institution. Academics will use these spaces for uninterrupted learning or work and as a means for promoting self-care. Discussion: The study identified four interrelated spatial properties (transient, affective, controlled and immersive), which provides an explanation why some spaces were more conducive to PL than other spaces. Furthermore, space is composed of multiple and interconnected spatial configurations that coalesce into a single spatial configuration, which I call coalescent space. The study also proposes a number of future research directions involving the PL of early career academics and academics on sessional contracts.

The focus of this thesis is the case study of a single, selective school aiming to challenge students to engage in what it has called research-based learning, a pedagogy framed as an alternative to traditional approaches common in most secondary schools. Using a critical realist lens, the thesis aims to develop an understanding of how sixth form students at the school conceptualise their learning in challenging real-world research projects. It presents rich descriptions of practices within the school, based mainly on the intrinsic case study approach of Stake and the open evaluative approach of Bassey, revealing four key outcomes around areas related to student autonomy, the efficacy of different kinds of learner support, student motivation and the achievement of real-world professionalism. First, it reveals that student autonomy can be liberating but also highly challenging and disorientating. Second, it shows that students in autonomous roles generally conceptualise the minimal scaffolding of the school as positive, but also that some students from less open learning environments may need extra support. Third, it demonstrates that students’ motivations are often blends of extrinsic and intrinsic elements, showing subtle understandings of their roles as learners inside and outside conventional curricula. Fourth, it reveals that students vary in their achievement of real-world professionalism within communities of practice, but that some appear to carry out genuinely innovative work that goes beyond merely peripheral involvement. Emerging from these outcomes, the study finds successes in the school’s resistance to conventional pedagogy, but argues there are also ambiguities within its cultural context. It also contributes to the literature on transformative learning, revealing how the transformation at the core of Bhaskar’s critical realism can be seen alongside Mezirow’s idea of personal growth to indicate ways in which learners undergo change and simultaneously generate change in institutions.

This thesis argues that the primary importance placed on skills as a panacea for economic growth is a misplaced emphasis, situated within an employability and skills narrative that has so far failed to deliver on its claims. Furthermore, the failure to acknowledge and give equal weighting to notions of personal formation and human flourishing, in other than financial terms, has resulted in a one-dimensional dominant political discourse that depicts a reductionist view of higher education and impoverishes the concept of employability. The government-commissioned reviews and reports examined for this study chart the changing nature of this discourse over a fifty year period (1963-2013), as it moves away from the holistic vision for higher education set out in the Robbins Report (Robbins, 1963), towards a dominant discourse of 'economically valuable skills' (Leitch, 2006, p.44) and the assertion that universities 'should assume an explicit responsibility for facilitating economic growth.' (Witty, 2013, p.6). The philosophical lens through which the concept of employability is examined focuses primarily on the work of David Carr, whose thinking on moral and virtue education serves as the central voice around which other voices and perspectives can be identified and heard, and to show how a virtue ethical approach can form the basis of a credible, alternative employability and skills narrative. By bringing a case study approach into the conceptual analysis of employability, I have been able to interrogate how a particular university perceives and engages with the concept and this has provided unique insights into how universities, through key stakeholders, engage with employability in ways that are complex and negotiated. The term 'nostalgic pragmatism' has been coined in an attempt to convey what I have found to be a sense of yearning for the pre-expansion period of higher education, balanced by recognition of the relative importance of the concept of employability in an era of mass participation.