I’m pleased to share that my article, “Constraining Innovation: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Power and Assessment Policy in Higher Education,” is now published in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education.
The paper started life as an assignment on the doctoral programme at Lancaster University and became something I kept returning to, because the argument felt unfinished. At its centre is a question that matters practically as well as theoretically: when assessment policies claim to protect standards, what else are they doing? Using Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis across policy documents from five UK universities, the paper traces how discourses of efficiency, surveillance, standardisation, and pastoral power collectively construct an institutional environment that is structurally resistant to pedagogical innovation.
The revision process pushed the argument further than I expected, particularly around AI. Not as a technology to evaluate, but as a discursive object being shaped, permitted, and frustrated by the policy environments we have already built.
You can access the full article here: https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1667
Structured Creativity 
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