Bedford Way Papers: Professional Life in Modern British Higher Education (PDF)

This is a 'problem-focused' book, dealing with significantly changing aspects of higher education - including professional identities, academic values, pedagogies, and quality assurance - and exploring the effects of these changes upon professional life in universities. It offers a range of perspectives on the ways in which societal, legislative, and educational trends and 'events' have transformed, and are further significantly transforming, the work of the professional higher education academic. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the continuing evolution of the academic profession, and the inter-war elite image of university academics owed something to the self-constructed notion of 'academic freedom'. But this image was persistently reconstructed after the Second World War, time and again transforming the professional identity, autonomy, duties, and expectations of academic life in higher education. The historical thread running through the book serves to remind the reader that academic life in the university has never been static, and that new times have brought forth new professional conditions, expectations, identities, and paradigms. Drawing on contributions from specialist areas of professionally oriented university work, including teacher education and clinical education, as well as ranging more broadly over professional work in higher education, Professional Life in Modern British Higher Education will appeal to and resonate with a UK and international readership of university teachers and administrators, as well as students taking courses with a focus on higher and professional education.