Much Ado About Something: The effects of the National Student Survey on Higher Education

This report describes how the National Student Survey (NSS) is currently impacting on the environment into which it was introduced a decade ago. It is based on interviews with thirty-four academics working in the humanities in the North West of England, and these data are used here to develop a narrative account of the NSS. The report describe academics’ working lives in respect of the NSS and foregrounds some of the contradictions, tensions and consequences of the survey. Volunteers to be interviewed included heads of department, programme leaders, module leaders and staff with responsibility (at different levels) for overseeing the NSS. The report begins with a section ‘Through a glass darkly’ in which I summarise academics’ perceptions of how students respond to the survey. The section describes the relative disinterest academics perceive students have in the survey and its consequences. This is followed by a section ‘Through the looking glass’ in which I describe the effects of the NSS on academics’ working lives. The survey – which appears relatively insignificant to students – is described as hugely significant when viewed through the lens of academic workload and experience. ‘Illuminations’ focuses on the issues that the NSS brings to the surface and that academics are responding to, as a consequence. The term ‘illuminations’ is employed in order to underline the sometimes distorting effects that shining a light on something can have. ‘Mirror, Mirror on the wall’ describes how the NSS has encouraged the adoption of other surveys and feedback mechanisms throughout undergraduate degree programmes and the effects of this proliferation. The report ends with ‘People in glass houses not throwing stones’. This section considers how continuing use of the survey may diminish educational possibilities. The use of this series of metaphors associated with glass and mirrors is a response to the claim that the NSS increases ‘transparency’ in terms of the accountability of public services. The report problematises such a notion

Employability and higher education: the follies of the ‘Productivity Challenge’ in the Teaching Excellence Framework

This article considers questions of ‘employability’, a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives concerning employability and suggests a series of mismatches that are evident in the rhetorics in this area. This summary opens up elements of what I am calling the first ‘folly’ in the field. The second section of the paper considers recent research with individual academics engaged in employability activity. This research suggests another series of mismatches in the aims and outcomes of ‘employability initiatives’ and opens up a further series of ‘follies’ in the day-to-day practices of academics and students’ responses to them. The third section of the paper turns to academics’ reports of student behaviour in relation to the outcomes of their degree. This section develops an argument that relates to the final ‘folly’ associated with the current focus on employability. I argue that students’ focus on outcomes (which at face value suggests they have internalized the importance of employment) is contributing to the production of graduates who do not have the dispositions that employers – when interviewed – say that they want. The highly performative culture of higher education, encouraged by the same metrics that will be extended through the TEF, is implicated then in not preparing students for the workplace. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Grou

'Fundamental British Values': What's fundamental? What's value? And what's (now) British?

We hope to give shallow answers to that first ‘deep’ question; to slight the question of ‘value’ as mainly ‘interested commodities’, and to throw darkness rather than light on the now increasingly troubled question of ‘British’ identity. Our approach is not to define ‘fundamental British values’ (as we will show, that proved impossible) but to represent the multiplicity of contradictory contents that invest its form. In such a ‘performative agonistics’ (Blyth, Chapman, Stronach, 2016; Toscano, 2016; Frankham and Tracy, 2012), we anticipate a dissemination rather than an insemination of meaning, in contrast with the ongoing neoliberal ‘rage for certainty’ (MacLure, 2005; Badiou, 2013). ‘Fundamental British Values’ in Badiou’s terms, is a polysemous ‘event’, whose performances and contexts should be regarded within a series of theatrical metaphors – an ‘amphitheatre’ of meanings, perhaps, in a ‘post-truth’ world (Trapido, 2016: 57). Thus these deconstructions should be seen as part of a more generic critique of neoliberal enclosures that seek for definitions, essences, identities and quantifications (Zuboff, 2019)

Northern Steamship Company: The depreciation problem in the nineteenth century

In 1889 a New Zealand company had to write down its paid-up capital by 27 percent, because, the Chairman stated, previous management had failed to allow for depreciation as an expense. An investigation was conducted to see if this capital reduction could have been avoided had the company followed modern depreciation policy. This revealed that the failure to depreciate adequately was not the main cause of the capital reduction, other firms followed the same practice and contemporary English legislation did not permit depreciation as a tax deductible item, while United States courts were rejecting depreciation as a valid expense

Playing Darwin. Part B. 20 years of domestication in Drosophila subobscura

Adaptation to a new environment (as well as its underlying mechanisms) is one of the most important topics in Evolutionary Biology. Understanding the adaptive process of natural populations to captivity is essential not only in general evolutionary studies but also in conservation programmes. Since 1990, the Group of Experimental Evolution (CBA/FCUL) has been performing long-term, real-time evolutionary studies, with the characterization of laboratory adaptation in populations of Drosophila subobscura founded in different times and from different locations. Initially, these experiments involved phenotypic assays and more recently were expanded to studies at the molecular level (microsatellite and chromosomal polymorphisms) and with different population sizes. Throughout these two decades, a clear pattern of evolutionary convergence to long-established laboratory populations has been consistently observed in several life-history traits. However, contingencies across foundations were also found during the adaptive process. In characters with complex evolutionary trajectories, the data suggested that the comparative method lacked predictive capacity relative to real-time evolutionary trajectories (experimental evolution). Microsatellite analysis revealed general similarity in gene diversity and allele number between studied populations, as well as an unclear association between genetic variability and evolutionary potential. Nevertheless, ongoing studies in all foundations are being carried out to further test this hypothesis. A comparison between recently introduced and long-term populations (founded from the same natural location) has shown higher degree of chromosomal polymorphism in recent ones. Finally, our findings suggest higher heterogeneity between small-sized populations, as well as a slower evolutionary rate in characters close to fitness (such as fecundity and mating behaviour). This comprehensive study is aimed at better understanding the processes and patterns underlying adaptation to captivity, as well as its genetic basis

A Reflexive Autoethnography of Doctoral Supervision: Lone Mother, Lone Researcher

This article traces elements of the learning of a doctoral student. It concerns attempts to bridge a number of gaps between supervisor and student in the process of studying for a Ph.D. In particular, it portrays differences in culture, gender, family, age and experience and how those differences influenced the thinking of the student. A layered discourse of readings, misreadings and re-readings is developed, drawing on the substantive literature on ‘lone motherhood’, on studies of doctoral supervision and on anthropological insights into the nature of cultural differences. It is a case study in finding the ‘missing’ (or not yet known) person who is the lone mother and the lone researcher who ‘reveals’ herself to herself through interaction with her supervisors. The supervisors are also ‘rewritten’ in their situated self-understanding during this process

Ecological and genetic effects of introduced species on their native competitors

Species introductions to new habitats can cause a decline in the population size of competing native species and consequently also in their genetic diversity. We are interested in why these adverse effects are weak in some cases whereas in others the native species declines to the point of extinction. While the introduction rate and the growth rate of the introduced species in the new environment clearly have a positive relationship with invasion success and impact, the influence of competition is poorly understood. Here, we investigate how the intensity of interspecific competition influences the persistence time of a native species in the face of repeated and ongoing introductions of the nonnative species. We analyze two stochastic models: a model for the population dynamics of both species and a model that additionally includes the population genetics of the native species at a locus involved in its adaptation to a changing environment. Counterintuitively, both models predict that the persistence time of the native species is lowest for an intermediate intensity of competition. This phenomenon results from the opposing effects of competition at different stages of the invasion process: With increasing competition intensity more introduction events are needed until a new species can establish, but increasing competition also speeds up the exclusion of the native species by an established nonnative competitor. By comparing the ecological and the eco-genetic model, we detect and quantify a synergistic feedback between ecological and genetic effects.Comment: version accepted at Theoretical Population Biolog

The hidden voices of children and young people with a parent in prison: What schools need to know about supporting these vulnerable pupils

This paper reports on a study with children and young people who have a parent in prison and identifies ways in which schools might better support these pupils. The paper is based on research and practice with 23 individuals from ten families. It first ‘sets the scene’ for these pupils’ lives by drawing on interviews with parents and carers. This helps to illuminate the context within which these children and young people are growing up. The paper then presents the views, and selected drawings, of the ten children and young people involved. The paper describes the forms of social isolation that families experience when a parent is sent to prison and the dilemmas and difficulties children and young people face at school. The recommendations focus on how individual teachers and schools might respond to the needs of this group