Special Interest Group
The transition from elite to mass higher education systems is a significant global development that forms the broader context for educational research that seeks to understand the experiences of Higher Education students, academics, teaching teams, change agents, leaders, departments, subject disciplines, professional fields, and institutions. There is a need for perspectives and analyses that not only critique but also challenge current policy frameworks and evolving practices within and across Higher Education. Within the universalising tendencies of the neoliberal regime, contradictions exist within – and between – the increasing dominance of managerialist principles, the standardisation of learning and practice (under the banner of ‘quality assurance’), consumer-based practices and expectations. The aim of the Higher Education special interest group is to contribute towards and enhance critical debates and perspectives on higher education policy, pedagogy and practice. This is a broad remit that embraces interdisciplinary research with critical research methodologies, theories and philosophies.
Recent research papers and symposia presented by SIG members have included the following themes:
The SIG aims to create a supportive network of educational researchers through building symposia for the main conference, through smaller scale activity during the year, by supporting new and early career researchers, and by building links with other higher education research networks.
Research Fellow at Birmingham City University
Dr Julia Everitt is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Birmingham City University (BCU) and has worked in higher education as a researcher since 2014. Julia was awarded her doctorate in 2018 and as a researcher has been involved in over 30 research...
Principal Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University
Dr Kate Mawson has significant teaching experience across a range of institutions and has worked in Secondary and higher Education institutions since 2002. Kate is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Founding Fellow of the...
The Practitioner Research SIG hosted an event on 20th April 2023 in which our speaker discussions centred around the idea that guiding ethical principles for education research need to be both...
The BERA Conference 2023 was held on the 12th-14th September 2023 at Conference Aston/Aston University. Keynote speakers included: Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith. The conference ended with three...
While artificial intelligence (AI), as an academic discipline, has been with us since the 1950s, knowledge of AI’s impact on formal education and all its stakeholders is in its infancy. To plug...
Finding friends as an adult is really difficult. As a child it’s easy to approach someone, state your name, and ask if they want to play: sorted. As an adult such an approach might be frowned...
Continue reading blog postThis blog post looks forward to the forthcoming symposium at BERA Conference 2023, which will present the findings from two studies that were developed to examine the problem of institutional...
Continue reading blog postBERA launched the Education: The State of the Discipline initiative in 2019 to offer a comprehensive account of the state of education as an academic discipline, as a field of practice, and as a...
An analysis of data from the Research Excellence Framework
Understanding what life is like for those studying and working within universities has been of increased interest to higher education research, policy and practice over the past 15 years....
Continue reading blog post
