Carnival of youth: the dramaturgy of the sixties counterculture

This thesis is a study of anti-hegemonic, youth counterculture. It uses a retro-sampling of four aspects of the 1960s hippie counterculture, namely the Beats, Hippies, the Diggers and the Yippies. These are used as a case-study of a culture of resistance that are reapplied as signifiers of cultural and commercial distinction, fashioning a notion and ideal of youth. The thesis uses the theory of Bakhtinian carnivalesque to interpret the performance of dissident youth culture. It examines one fragment of subversive counterculture best described as performative. The performance of counterculture, its street happenings, Acid-Tests, Be-Ins, rock concerts and media pranks, are shown to be assimilated and transformed into commercial entities which are used to frame what it is loosely defined as a 'post-modern' cultural subjectivity. This study provides a reminder of the paradoxes of cultural endeavour, such as the local and global, commercial and cultural, and how anti-hegemonic counterculture is an explicit portrayal of this. The performance of the hippie counterculture is shown as a process of constant reinvention and bricolage enriching and challenging social perceptions and ways of living. The carnival of the American counterculture is a case-study of cultural antagonisms, which demonstrates how performance is infinitely adaptable and replicable for different user groups. Its music, which forms a central part of the thesis, is its legacy, a cultural landmark and recurrent means of expression channelling the voice of carnival, youth and the potential of an inverted world

The International Impact of COVID-19 and "Emergency Remote Teaching" on Computer Science Education Practitioners

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed "emergency remote teaching" across education globally, leading to the closure of institutions across all settings, from schools through to universities. This paper looks specifically at the impact of these disruptive changes to those teaching the discipline of computer science. Drawing on the quantitative and qualitative findings from a large-scale international survey (N=2,483) conducted in the immediate aftermath of closures, implementation of lockdown measures, and the shift to online delivery in March 2020, we report how those teaching computer science across all educational levels (n=327) show significantly more positive attitudes towards the move to online learning, teaching and assessment (LT&A) than those working in other disciplines. When comparing educational setting, computer science practitioners in schools felt more prepared and confident than those in higher education; however, they expressed greater concern around equity and whether students would be able to access the teaching made available online. Furthermore, while practitioners across all sectors consistently noted the potential opportunities of these changes, they also raised a number of wider concerns on the impact of this shift to online, especially on workload and job precarity. More specifically for computer science practitioners, there were concerns raised regarding the ability to effectively deliver technical topics online, as well as the impact on various types of formal examinations and assessment. We also offer informed commentary from this rapid response international survey on emerging LT&A strategies that will likely continue to be constrained by coronavirus into 2021 and possibly beyond

Vice-chancellor narcissism and university performance

Universities hold a prominent role in knowledge creation through research and education. In this study, we examine the effects of VC narcissism on university performance. We measure VC narcissism based on the size of the signature, in line with a methodological approach which has been widely used in the recent literature and repeatedly validated in laboratory experiments. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment of VC changes and employ a Difference-in-Difference research design, which alleviates concerns related to endogeneity and identification bias. We show that the appointment of a highly narcissistic VC leads to an overall deterioration in research and teaching performance and concomitantly league table performance. We further identify excessive financial risk taking and empire-building as possible mechanisms explaining the main results and provide evidence on the moderating role of university governance. Our findings are consistent with the view that narcissism is one of the most prominent traits of destructive leadership; they also have practical implications for leadership recruitment and the monitoring of leadership practices in the higher education sector. The results of this study extend prior research in several ways. Extant literature on executive leadership and narcissism yields inconclusive findings; this literature has mainly focused on for-profit organisations and has not considered universities. In addition, prior research in higher education on the determinants of university performance has not yet examined the role of leadership personality traits

‘Pandemia’: a reckoning of UK universities’ corporate response to COVID-19 and its academic fallout:A reckoning of UK universities’ corporate response to COVID-19 and its academic fallout.

Universities in the UK, and in other countries like Australia and the USA, have responded to the operational and financial challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic by prioritising institutional solvency and enforcing changes to the work-practices and profiles of their staff. For academics, an adjustment to institutional life under COVID-19 has been dramatic and resulted in the overwhelming majority making a transition to prolonged remote-working. Many have endured significant work intensification; others have lost — or may soon lose — their jobs. The impact of the pandemic appears transformational and for the most part negative. This article reports the experiences of n=1,099 UK academics specific to the corporate response of institutional leadership to the COVID-19 crisis. We find articulated a story of universities in the grip of 'pandemia' and COVID-19 emboldening processes and protagonists of neoliberal governmentality and market-reform that pay little heed to considerations of human health and wellbeing

Writing impact case studies: a comparative study of high-scoring and low-scoring case studies from REF2014

This paper reports on two studies that used qualitative thematic and quantitative linguistic analysis, respectively, to assess the content and language of the largest ever sample of graded research impact case studies, from the UK Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF). The paper provides the first empirical evidence across disciplinary main panels of statistically significant linguistic differences between high- versus low-scoring case studies, suggesting that implicit rules linked to written style may have contributed to scores alongside the published criteria on the significance, reach and attribution of impact. High-scoring case studies were more likely to provide specific and high-magnitude articulations of significance and reach than low-scoring cases. High-scoring case studies contained attributional phrases which were more likely to attribute research and/or pathways to impact, and they were written more coherently (containing more explicit causal connections between ideas and more logical connectives) than low-scoring cases. High-scoring case studies appear to have conformed to a distinctive new genre of writing, which was clear and direct, and often simplified in its representation of causality between research and impact, and less likely to contain expressions of uncertainty than typically associated with academic writing. High-scoring case studies in two Main Panels were significantly easier to read than low-scoring cases on the Flesch Reading Ease measure, although both high-scoring and low-scoring cases tended to be of “graduate” reading difficulty. The findings of our work enable impact case study authors to better understand the genre and make content and language choices that communicate their impact as effectively as possible. While directly relevant to the assessment of impact in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework, the work also provides insights of relevance to institutions internationally who are designing evaluation frameworks for research impact

Rationalising "for" and "against" a policy of school-led careers guidance in STEM in the U.K. : a teacher perspective

This paper reports on teacher attitudes to changes in the provision of careers guidance in the U.K., particularly as it relates to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It draws on survey data of n = 94 secondary-school teachers operating in STEM domains and their attitudes towards a U.K. and devolved policy of internalising careers guidance within schools. The survey presents a mixed message of teachers recognising the significance of their unique position in providing learners with careers guidance yet concern that their ‘relational proximity’ to students and ‘informational distance’ from higher education and STEM industry may produce bias and misinformation that is harmful to their educational and occupational futures

Mapping Public Engagement with Research in a UK University

Notwithstanding that ‘public engagement’ is conceptualised differently internationally and in different academic disciplines, higher education institutions largely accept the importance of public engagement with research. However, there is limited evidence on how researchers conceptualise engagement, their views on what constitutes engagement and the communities they would (or would not) like to engage with. This paper presents the results of a survey of researchers in the Open University that sought to gather data to fill these gaps. This research was part of an action research project designed to embed engagement in the routine practices of researchers at all levels. The findings indicate that researchers have a relatively narrow view of public engagement with research and the communities with which they interact. It also identified that very few strategically evaluate their public engagement activities. We conclude by discussing some of the interventions we have introduced with the aim of broadening and deepening future researcher engagement

Three Perspectives of Leadership in Higher Education:Traditionalist, reformist, pragmatist

There is a fragmented and complex literature about higher education leadership representing a diversity of ideological perspectives about its nature and purposes. Internationally, the literature has been strongly shaped by the importation of concepts and theories from management studies and a tradition of scholarship led by university leader-researchers. Drawing on an extensive literature review - drawing on over 250 books, book chapters, reports and journal articles - this paper identifies three key perspectives. The Traditionalist perspective is concerned with the cultural context, arguing that the import of neoliberal business practices into university leadership and management has undermined academic self-governance. The Reformist perspective focuses on values from a social justice perspective arguing for a more democratic and inclusive style of leadership including participation from historically under-represented groups. Finally, the Pragmatist perspective is more functionally focused in identifying the capabilities, skills and competences needed for effective leadership in universities at all levels. These three perspectives provide important insights into the culture, values, and competences of university leadership reflecting the distinctive culture of higher education (traditionalist), its values as a reflection of wider society (reformist) and how best to practically manage and achieve positive change in such an environment (pragmatist). An appreciation of these perspectives and the skills, values and knowledge embedded in the literature will facilitate the evolution of leadership development and practice in alignment with contemporary organisational needs and societal expectations