Convenors

John Pryor
j.pryor@sussex.ac.uk

Barbara Crossouard
b.crossouard@sussex.ac.uk

Paul Ashwin
p.ashwin@lancaster.ac.uk

Increasingly, Higher Education is prominent in policy debates concerning democracy and an educated citizenry, the knowledge economy, and teaching and learning. At the same time, the dominant discourses in Higher Education have tended to focus around somewhat narrow conceptions of teaching and learning, and an instrumental political agenda. This has led to a technicist perspective on professional development and pedagogy in the field.

The aim of this Special Interest Group is to address these issues by gathering together BERA members who share an active research interest in higher education and who are concerned to generate critical and comparative perspectives on higher education policy and practice.

In addition to stimulating debate amongst academics and the wider public, the SIG works to identify key issues for research and create and sustain a significant network for research and development in the field. These activities try to contribute to conceptualising higher education within the field of educational studies and generate an interdisciplinary and cross sectional educational forum.

The following themes are amongst those addressed at BERA symposia:

• - the relationships between teaching and research;
• - the changing circumstances and conditions of learning;
• - the changing roles of ‘the academic’ in higher education; and
• - academic disciplines as the sites of pedagogic practice.