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Articulating and aligning the curriculum is a complex and time-consuming endeavour, requiring the cooperation and collaboration of teachers, educational managers and regulators. Synergies of this sort may however not always be forthcoming or can be problematized by issues of individual autonomy—or its disappearance—and issues of capacity and infrastructure. For example, schools as the micro centres of learning are increasingly outmoded where in a globalized age the school community is heterogeneous and made up of myriad identities and cultural, social and economic backgrounds. Learner toolkits may be massively inconsistent, and no matter how much teachers plan, their capacity to steer or facilitate learning may be hindered by factors external to the learning environment. For the IB, as an international provider of education, an awareness of the different social, cultural, economic and political contexts is preconditional to the shaping of curriculum, not least in ensuring that what is taught matches the requirements for national requirements and that what is "written" as curriculum is transferable as a "taught" curriculum. It is essential to appreciate that curriculum is never static nor immutable but is a process of constant evolution in response to an ever-changing world. The principal educational offerings of the IB—the Primary Years Programme, the Middle Years Programme, the Diploma Programme and the IB Career-related Certificate (IBCC)—serve to respond to the interconnectedness of a globalized world. The IB stresses an emphasis on the acculturation of the individual as a cohesive whole or as a learning citizen and this comes from a seamless learning trajectory or interweaving of learners within the fabric of the learning experience. Elucidating learners' social, cultural, economic and political relationship to the world comes most effectively where the learning space facilitates smooth learning transitions, where the powers of cognition are reinforced and expanded by being able to look reflectively at the knowledge and skills that have brought him/her thus far. In the IB vision of the holistic learner, the self-recognition of the learner as an active agent within a knowledge continuum is key. The cultivation of a positive learner identity, the building of self-efficacy, legitimacy and mobility comes from the enlargement of learning capital. Crucially, learning capital is not the exclusive entitlement of the socio-economically advantageous but is something realistically attainable for those whose experience of education is of learning as focused, meaningful and relevant. Learners ought therefore to be not only inhabitants but authors of the learning experience. They must be cognizant of the roadmap plotting their educational journeys. In so doing, learners may be more suitably equipped to tackle the multiple challenges of the labour market and their role as knowledge workers within a knowledge economy. To promote better understanding of theoretical and practical aspects of curriculum articulation and alignment, this literature review report, Curriculum alignment, articulation and the formative development of the learner by Dr Richard Watermeyer initially examines various definitions of curriculum alignment and articulation; analyzes possible impacts of credentialism, assessment and marketization of education on the development of varied and involved curriculums; explores initiatives and approaches of articulating and aligning in international contexts, at the school level and also beyond the classroom, and identifies issues related to curriculum articulation and alignment such as inequality, misalignment, social diversity, equality and mobility. Consequently, implications for the development of the IB education and programmes are drawn from the review.

The institutional form and conception of Higher Education have changed through the growth of mass higher education, which in many national systems now operates on market logics. Drawing on theories of credentialism, this article provides a critical analysis of the inter-relationship between massification and marketization and examines a range of consequences this has for institutional relations and dynamics. A central feature of credential inflation in mass systems has been the growing competition for scarce status goods and the reproduction of structural inequalities in accessing sought-after occupational outcomes. The policy context of marketization has concurrently reinforced the pressures on institutions to fulfil the promise held by governments, employers and graduates of enhancing human capital and Higher Education institutions' economic value. Accompanying New Public Management policy levers have further established institutional conditions based on competitive accountability and performative evaluation. We show how these pressures are manifested in new forms of instrumental rationality that valorize the commodification of academic credentials, and relatedly, studentship and academic scholarship. We finally consider the possible ways forward in appraising the goals of HE beyond credential inflation.

Public participation is ubiquitous in many contemporary democratic societies – used for many purposes, and in many contexts, with particular and growing relevance for policy-making on science and technology issues. However, there is a dearth of evidence as to its qualities and benefits. We contend that the implementation and interpretation of participation faces a number of dilemmas that – together –undermine its successful adoption. In this paper, we identify and discuss six specific dilemmas that – together – may militate against the practice and development of good quality participation in science and technology policy, notably dilemmas of Timing; of Relevance; of Representation; of Evaluation; of Criticism; and of Impact. We theoretically account for these dilemmas and discuss their likely impacts. Finally, we provide some suggestions as to how the participation community might attempt to pre-empt difficulties due to these dilemmas and demonstrate participation effectiveness.

Despite evidence of quality teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subject domains (ACME 2007, Pollard et al. 2003) and insistence on the part of many national governments on the economic value of STEM, education, recruitment and retention into STEM subject fields and occupations is said to be continually blighted by a 'leaky pipeline'. In the UK context, schools are seen to benefit from a multitude of external STEM engagement and enrichment providers and STEM engagement initiatives, the contribution of which is to increase pupil interest, enthusiasm and awareness of STEM. However, despite evidence of the positive impacts of STEM engagement on learners, there exists a dearth of understanding related to how principles of STEM engagement can facilitate STEM teachers in becoming more pedagogically innovative and relevant and, therefore, engaging of their learners in the classroom context. Teachers are also at the nexus of tensions between STEM engagement and the pressures of the curriculum, the assessment system and other aspects of formal schooling. In this article, we employ a secondary data analysis of two prominent cases of public engagement in science and technology (PEST) in the UK to elicit combined lessons for STEM engagement and the pedagogical development of teachers. We consider the successes of science dialogue, which as one iteration of PEST, may be a fertile site for learning, in establishing principles of best practice that might be transposed to the development of teachers as more able and effective in the engagement of learners in STEM.

A performance-based funding system like the United Kingdom's 'Research Excellence Framework' (REF) symbolizes the re-rationalization of higher education according to neoliberal ideology and New Public Management technologies. The REF is also significant for disclosing the kinds of behaviour that characterize universities' response to government demands for research auditability. In this paper, we consider the casualties of what Henry Giroux (2014) calls "neoliberalism's war on higher education" or more precisely the deleterious consequences of non-participation in the REF. We also discuss the ways with which higher education's competition fetish, embodied within the REF, affects the instrumentalization of academic research and the diminution of academic freedom, autonomy and criticality.

A performance-based funding system like the United Kingdom's 'Research Excellence Framework' (REF) symbolizes the re-rationalization of higher education according to neoliberal ideology and New Public Management technologies. The REF is also significant for disclosing the kinds of behaviour that characterize universities' response to government demands for research auditability. In this paper, we consider the casualties of what Henry Giroux (2014) calls "neoliberalism's war on higher education" or more precisely the deleterious consequences of non-participation in the REF. We also discuss the ways with which higher education's competition fetish, embodied within the REF, affects the instrumentalization of academic research and the diminution of academic freedom, autonomy and criticality.

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 1099 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 well-being. ; World Universities Network ; 18 month embargo removed due to COVID-19 subject matter - JG ; Update citation details during checkdate report - AC

AbstractThe neoliberal transformation of higher education in the UK and an intertwined focus on the productive efficiency and prestige value of universities has led to an epidemic of overwork and precarity among academics. Many are found to be struggling with lofty performance expectations and an insistence that all dimensions of their work consistently achieve positional gains despite ferocious competition and the omnipresent threat of failure. Working under the current audit culture present across education, academics are thus found to overwork or commit to accelerated labour as pre-emptive compensation for the habitual inclemency of peer-review and vagaries of student evaluation, in accommodating the copiousness of 'invisible' tasks, and in eluding the myriad crevasses of their precarious labour. The proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools and more specifically, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, offers potential relief for academics and a means to offset intensive demands and discover more of a work-based equilibrium. Through a recent survey of n = 284 UK academics and their use of GAI, we discover, however, that the digitalisation of higher education through GAI tools no more alleviates than extends the dysfunctions of neoliberal logic and deepens academia's malaise. Notwithstanding, we argue that the proliferating use of GAI tools by academics may be harnessed as a source of positive disruption to the industrialisation of their labour and catalyst of (re)engagement with scholarly craftsmanship.

This set of articles discusses and investigates the conditions and situation of Public Universities in 14 countries around the globe. It analyzes the productivist model created for the public university in an era of withdrawal and lack of political and institutional support. It discusses the loss of self-assessment criteria of the academics and their universities, their submission to the quantometric evaluation system that is inadequate d unfair, and it proposes the organization of a global academical joint action to defend and restore in their position the public university and higher education, fighting for its essential role in social development. ; Peer reviewed