Paul Ashwin - 51福利

Professor Paul Ashwin

Professor

Profile

I am a Professor of Higher Education. My research is focused on the educational role of higher education. I am interested in how curricula in higher education can be designed in ways that help to transform students' understanding of themselves and the world. I am also interested in the role of policies in shaping the education offered by higher education institutions. The kinds of questions that I explore in this research include: What counts as high quality teaching and learning in higher education? How is this positioned in policies and practices? How do we research and theorise these competing notions of quality? How do we enhance the quality of education in ways that also support greater societal equality?

Research Interests

My research interests are focused on understanding the education that is offered by higher education institutions. My work examines the international, national and local policies and practices that determine the quality of this education and how it shapes the lives of students and contributes to societies globally.

My latest co-authored, open-access, book, , addresses the current disillusionment with mass higher education and argues that it is based on a profound misunderstanding of its educational potential. It argues that the educational potential of higher education lies, not in graduate salaries or employability, but in the ways in which engaging with structured bodies of knowledge changes students' understanding of the world and what they can do in it. The book is based on two projects that I led as part of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), which together formed an international seven year longitudinal research project that studied the experiences of Chemistry, and of Chemical Engineering, students through their undergraduate degrees and into the first few years after graduation in England, South Africa and the United States. The project focused on their undergraduate experiences and the examined their experiences after completing their degrees. These projects involved researchers from Lancaster, University of Cape Town, Rhodes University, and Virginia Tech.

This work built on the ideas in my book, ‘, which was an impassioned argument that we need to focus on the educational, rather than economic, purposes of university degrees if they are to have a transformational impact on students and societies. You can watch the launch of this book . It also further developed the work from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project looking at quality and inequality in undergraduate Sociology degrees, which I worked on with Monica McLean, University of Nottingham and Andrea Abbas, University of Bath. We published a book based on the outcomes of this project entitled

I am the lead author of , which is now into its third edition, and is written by an international team to support the development of research-informed university teaching. I discuss transforming university teaching in this . With Margaret Blackie, I co-edit the book series that offers more in-depth discussions of particular issues related to Reflective Teaching in Higher Education.

I was Deputy Director of the (CGHE), an ESRC-funded Research Centre, from 2020-2024. CGHE was a partnership between seven UK and nine international universities with its headquarters at the University of Oxford. As part of CGHE, I led an ESRC/National Research Foundation funded International Centre Partnership with Jenni Case, University of Cape Town. This partnership brought together established and emerging researchers from South Africa, the UK and internationally to examine access to, students’ experiences of, and outcomes from South African undergraduate higher education. We edited an open access book based on the outcomes of the project called ‘

I am joint editor-in-chief of , the leading Higher Education research journal, and co-editor, with Manja Klemencic, of the Bloomsbury book series

Career Details

Before coming to Lancaster, I spent four years researching students' experiences of learning at the Institute for the Advancement of University Learning, University of Oxford and, before that, seven years implementing and researching peer learning at Newham College of Further Education.

Research Overview

I am interested in how curricula in higher education can be designed in ways that help to transform students' understanding of themselves and the world. I am also interested in the role of policies in shaping the education offered by higher education institutions. The kinds of questions that I explore in this research include: What counts as high quality teaching and learning in higher education? How is this positioned in policies and practices? How do we research and theorise these competing notions of quality? How do we enhance the quality of education in ways that also support greater societal equality?

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in receiving PhD proposals in most areas related to knowledge, curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment in higher education, particularly those relating to students' and academics' experiences of higher education.

Selected Publications

Ashwin, P., Agrawal, A., Blackie, M., McArthur, J., Pitterson, N., Smit, R. 27/05/2025 In: European Journal of Engineering Education.
Journal article

Ashwin, P. 2/01/2025 In: Policy Reviews in Higher Education. 9, 1, p. 32-46. 15 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P. 1/08/2025 In: Higher Education. 90, 2, p. 479-495. 17 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P., Goldschneider, B., Agrawal, A., Smit, R. 31/08/2024 In: Studies in Higher Education. 49, 8, p. 1439-1450. 12 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P. 31/12/2022 In: Higher Education. 84, 6, p. 1227-1244. 18 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P., Blackie, M., Pitterson, N., Smit, R. 5/11/2023 In: Higher Education. 86, 5, p. 1065-1080. 16 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P. 30/11/2022 In: Teaching in Higher Education. 27, 8, p. 979-991. 13 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P. 17/09/2020 London : Bloomsbury. 176 p. ISBN: 9781350157231.
Book

Ashwin, P., Boud, D., Calkins, S., Coate, K., Hallett, F., Light, G., Luckett, K., MacLaren, I., Martensson, K., McArthur, J., McCune, V., McLean, M., Tooher, M. 20/02/2020 Second Edition ed. London : Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9781350084667, 9781350084674.
Book

McArthur, J., Ashwin, P. 19/03/2020 London : Bloomsbury. 232 p. ISBN: 9781350086753.
Book

McLean, M., Abbas, A., Ashwin, P.W.H. 28/12/2017 London : Bloomsbury. 272 p. ISBN: 9781474214490. Electronic ISBN: 9781474214506.
Book

Ashwin, P.W.H., Abbas, A., McLean, M. 12/2016 In: British Educational Research Journal. 42, 6, p. 962-977. 16 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P.W.H., Abbas, A., McLean, M. 2017 In: Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 42, 4, p. 517-530. 14 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P., Smith, K. 06/2015 In: Higher Education. 69, 6, p. 1007-1018. 12 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P., Abbas, A., McLean, M. 02/2014 In: Higher Education. 67, 2, p. 219-234. 16 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P. 12/2012 In: Studies in Higher Education. 37, 8, p. 941-955. 15 p.
Journal article

Ashwin, P., Mcvitty, D. 2015 In: The European higher education area. Cham : Springer p. 343-359. 17 p. ISBN: 9783319187679. Electronic ISBN: 9783319208770.
Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Ashwin, P. 02/2009 London : Continuum. 174 p. ISBN: 9780826494184.
Book