Character and Impact of Social Innovation in Higher Education.

This article offers a strategic multi-layered model for assessing the character and impact of social innovation in higher education connecting social and economic benefit. Whilst research to date has recognised the varying importance of the social and economic benefit of social and technological innovation, the literature is mostly silent on the contribution of purpose and strategy in achieving effective social innovation or how a regionally embedded university can maximise its impact in its community and the wider society. Whilst technological innovation is a critical component of future economic growth, social innovation is equally important in building social capital and in improving life chances. Governments have widely recognised that a university provides economic, environmental and cultural benefits to its community and, critically, should play a central role in re-balancing the economy of a community under stress and promoting growth in one that is prosperous. In the absence of well-documented, convincing examples of such re-balancing, this article offers a case study of The Hive, the first combined University and Public Library in Europe, an example of a strategic approach to social innovation in higher education that is bringing current and potential social and economic benefit to the community in which it is located. A measure of impact is proposed that is multi-layered and reflects the range of qualitative and quantitative impacts of social innovation. This paper has value to all those concerned to identify, plan and maximise the beneficial impact of social innovation in higher education institutions both on their economies and their communities

Critical Practice Leadership in Post-compulsory Education

This article questions why leaders in post-compulsory education tend not to view leadership research positively or utilise it in improving their practice. Drawing on the theoretical literature of educational management and leadership, and the current political and economic context of post-compulsory education, it proposes a new direction of critical practice leadership informed by advanced practitioner research. Challenging assumptions about leadership practice and leadership research creates opportunity for an ethical and practical perspective for leadership practitioners, and a distinctive contribution to the field of leadership theory and research by resisting the false dualism between theory and practice

Chess, Contest and English

This article reports on an ethnographic analysis of students who play chess at a mixed Comprehensive school in England. We explore how children learn when playing chess and speculate about how the appeal of the game could be utilised by secondary teachers to improve English lessons

Why is Research Still Invisible in Further Education?

This article takes as its starting point earlier research reported by Geoffrey Elliott in 1996. That study found that research was consistantly marginalised in the FE sector, and identified a number of structural factors that contributed to this ‘invisibility’. This new study draws upon a small sample of lecturers who belong to a Further and Higher Education Early Years Partnership. Through the participants’ voices and perspectives, the authors identify continuing dissonance and issues of research marginalisation. The discussion also highlights contemporary educational discourse, with its predominant focus upon measurable value at the expense of values, as a key factor in sustaining a culture that is antithetic to thoughtful reflection and research. The authors identify the development of a ‘collaborative centralised’ research community as critical to an alternative possibility for research in further education

Global simulations of magnetorotational turbulence - I. Convergence and the quasi-steady state

Magnetorotational turbulence provides a viable mechanism for angular momentum transport in accretion discs. We present global, three-dimensional (3D), magnetohydrodynamic accretion disc simulations that investigate the dependence of the turbulent stresse

Equilibrium disks, magnetorotational instability mode excitation, and steady-state turbulence in global accretion disk simulations

Global three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of turbulent accretion disks are presented which start from fully equilibrium initial conditions in which the magnetic forces are accounted for and the induction equation is satisfied. The local linear theory of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) is used as a predictor of the growth of magnetic field perturbations in the global simulations. The linear growth estimates and global simulations diverge when nonlinear motions-perhaps triggered by the onset of turbulence-upset the velocity perturbations used to excite the MRI. The saturated state is found to be independent of the initially excited MRI mode, showing that once the disk has expelled the initially net flux field and settled into quasiperiodic oscillations in the toroidal magnetic flux, the dynamo cycle regulates the global saturation stress level. Furthermore, time-averaged measures of converged turbulence, such as the ratio of magnetic energies, are found to be in agreement with previous works. In particular, the globally averaged stress normalized to the gas pressure (αP) = 0.034, with notably higher values achieved for simulations with higher azimuthal resolution. Supplementary tests are performed using different numerical algorithms and resolutions. Convergence with resolution during the initial linear MRI growth phase is found for 23-35 cells per scale height (in the vertical direction)

Appraising and Reconfiguring HE in FE Through Research and Critical Perspectives

Educational research is famously ‘systematic enquiry made public’ (Stenhouse 1975: 142), but we now know it is also a public and political exercise in which groups come to share their values and beliefs in trying to understand what is happening and what actions can be taken (Shipman, 1997). We are going through a war on epistemology, as well as on ideology (Apple 2015) and in that sense, the group of scholars populating this special issue with research articles are exploring and challenging the ways in which HE in FE could be better viewed, defined and imagined in the present and in the future. In this introduction we maintain that HE in FE is a contested zone, however for clarity we need to explain that the focus of this special issue is higher education partly or wholly taught away from universities in further education colleges and their equivalent outside of England

Diversity, Dilemmas and Transformation in Post-Compulsory Education: an Introduction to the Special Issue on Work Based Research

As governments recognize the central place of post-compulsory education in regenerating and modernizing the economic and social fabric of society (BIS 2008), it is appropriate for us as educational researchers to question whether this recognition beckons a different role for research in post-compulsory education. Much of this research is work based, using a broad interpretation of this term, and the majority of articles received by this journal (though the proportion published is a lower one) reflect this balance. Work based research in education poses particular challenges for the researcher and the practitioner, whether the focus is practitioner research, in which case the dilemmas can centre on potential role conflict between practitioner and researcher roles, or whether the work based research is observational – analyzing others’ professional practice, in which case the dilemmas can centre on power relations between researcher and researched, the politics of research, and ethical questions around care for participants and the degree of their involvement or non-involvement in the total research enterprise. This article reviews the prospects for work based research in post-compulsory education and introduces the articles in this special issue

Widening Participation, Student Identity and Agentic Capital in Coastal, Rural and Isolated Communities in South-West England

This contribution arises from a qualitative case study of mature students on a Foundation degree in Teaching and Learning developed through a partnership between a not-for-profit college and a university. The educational provision was designed to address under-participation in HE in one of the most isolated regions of the country. The focus of this study is firmly upon the lived experience of the students, as revealed in qualitative semi-structured interviews carried out over a fifteen-month period. The data reveal an array of ways in which the students’ experience of HE participation is pivotal in their lives. The paper draws upon Bourdieu’s idea of human capital to help to understand the interaction between the fields of higher education, the home and the workplace in the lives of the students, and the contribution of their agentic capital as revealed in the participants’ own accounts