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1.
During its time in office, the UK’s Labour government gave a strong message that having caring responsibilities for a young child should not be seen as a barrier to engaging in education and training. Its widening participation strategy included a specific commitment to increasing the number of mature students in higher education (HE) – students who are more likely than their younger peers to have caring responsibilities for dependent children. Furthermore, considerable resources were devoted to encouraging teenage mothers to return to education and training soon after the birth of their child. Nevertheless, despite this policy focus, there have been relatively few studies of the experiences of ‘student-parents’ within HE. This paper draws on findings from a cross-national study (funded by the Nuffield Foundation) to explore the support currently offered by UK universities to students who have parental responsibilities for one or more children under the age of 16. It compares this support to that offered by Danish institutions, to assess whether differences in ‘welfare regime’, the structure of the HE system and pervasive assumptions about gender relations have any discernible impact on the way in which student-parents are both constructed within institutional cultures and assisted by institutional practices.  相似文献   

2.
This paper outlines the findings of a study that examined the conceptions of academics regarding the nature of ‘leading’ and ‘managing’ learning and teaching in six Australian universities. These data were considered in the light of institutional systems and documentation regarding the leadership and management of learning and teaching and the contemporary literature on leadership and management, particularly in higher education. The research found that there was congruence between academic conceptions of the roles of leaders and managers in HE and those found in other contexts. In contrast, there was considerable variance and significant gaps between these conceptions and HR and professional development practices. The paper reports findings that have significant implications for more systematic and explicit professional development for University leaders and managers of teaching and learning. In addition, it argues that changes are required to the prevailing approaches in the current HR systems and policies in order to effectively develop, support and recognize effective leadership and management practices as they relate to learning and teaching.  相似文献   

3.
How can universities build ongoing, committed relationships with students, able to withstand the financial and emotional challenges of studying in higher education? The research proposes that students’ ongoing attachment to their university, based on positive feelings towards the university, is an important aspect of the student experience. This ongoing attachment is conceptualised here as students’ affective commitment towards their institution. Using an online survey-method and a research sample comprising undergraduate students studying in the UK, this research identifies three factors which drive students’ affective commitment towards their institution. These factors include students’ affective commitment towards academics and students’ calculative commitment towards the institution; factors which draw from the relational literature. A third factor, commitment balance, was developed within this research. Commitment balance occurs when a student’s commitment to their university is perceived to be reciprocated by the university’s commitment to the student. The study found that commitment balance was the most important driver of students’ ongoing attachment to their institution. The paper proposes that commitment balance is a key idea to consider within relational studies generally, but has a particular relevance in the higher education context for understanding the student experience. Commitment balance reflects the pulse of reciprocity which energises relational exchanges between students and institution. The findings of this research reinforce how critically important it is for universities and academics to build relationships with students. The desired outcome is to enhance the student experience, create positive attachment between students and university and ultimately improve student retention.  相似文献   

4.
Abstract

Since 1980 the staff student ratio in the UK has halved. This has been contributed to, amongst other factors, by the massification policy of the UK government. The requirement to publish, the view of students as consumers, an increase in managerialism, and reduction in real pay levels as well as the threat of compulsory redundancies have also been changes which have affected the attitudes of staff. As a result of these factors, the experience of both academics and students has deteriorated, and this is likely to continue. This paper uses survey data from three higher education institutions, which indicates a reduction in the satisfaction of staff over a number of years. Interviews with key informants and a literature review also support the view that levels of stress are increasing amongst academic staff within UK Higher Education institutions.  相似文献   

5.
The purpose of this paper is to report on who creates branding within institutions of higher learning, and what impact branding has on core institutional activities such as student recruitment and fundraising, as well as on socio‐psychological factors such as community respect and national prestige. Eighty‐nine tertiary education experts covering three world regions were surveyed in order to gather information to fulfil the paper’s objectives. The nature and extent of involvement of enrolled students, alumni, higher management, external consultants, civic leaders and the business community were investigated to identify the part each plays, if any, in the development of an institutional brand. Findings indicate that institutions have a tendency to brand from the top down rather than from the bottom up.  相似文献   

6.
Previous research has indicated significant variation between schools in the proportion of their students who go on to higher education. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the specific school characteristics influencing application and entry to tertiary education. This paper sets out to analyse the individual and school factors which influence the transition to higher education in the Irish context. The paper draws on a large‐scale study of 4,400 students within 108 secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland. Almost three‐quarters of the students in the sample applied for a higher education course. However, schools varied in the application rates of their students. These differences are found to be related to the background characteristics of students (in terms of gender, social class and prior ability) along with the institutional habitus of the school. It is found that school factors associated with increased college application rates do not necessarily appear to yield higher rates of college entry but rather that successful entry to tertiary education is related to general academic effectiveness in the school.  相似文献   

7.
This paper explores the potential for conducting collaborative and critical research in higher education which problematises the role and practices of the academy in maintaining exclusion. It begins with a brief discussion of UK government discourse on widening participation, and contrasts this with the research literature which indicates the persistence of exclusionary practices in higher education, particularly in relation to social class. It then utilises a retrospective account of a small‐scale participatory research study undertaken between 1996 and 2003 with a group of adult students from working class and minority ethnic backgrounds, to explore the possibilities for research which seeks the collaboration of those who, in other traditions, are constituted as research ‘objects’. The paper discusses some of the lessons from the research process and explores the challenges for academics conducting research within the academy – challenges arising from their social positioning and their location in the academic field, but also from the ‘scholarly gaze’ which they ‘cast upon the social world’. The paper advocates research which shifts the focus from deficit discourses around students, turns a critical and reflexive gaze towards academia and academics, and directs its efforts towards challenging existing power structures within higher education.  相似文献   

8.
Interest in quality is well established within higher education. This paper will critically review the most commonly used definitions of quality: fitness for purpose and value for money. It will point out that these two definitions are important but they ignore the emancipatory power of higher education and the development needs of academics and students. This paper will propose a new understanding of quality as a virtue of professional practice, which can be used as a useful force for individual academics and students to increase their commitment to learning and teaching. A new model of quality evaluation will be outlined as a supportive mechanism to enhance academics’ professionalism and to increase students’ capability to learn.  相似文献   

9.
The notion of students as consumers who exercise educational decisions based on economic self-interest leads to interesting questions about their perceptions of current higher education assessment practices. Guided by a Foucauldian theorisation and the findings from focus groups carried out with students from two European universities, one from the UK and another from Estonia, the article argues that globally dominant consumerist policy discourses have altered but not removed the student experience of constraint in assessment. I argue that students’ response to disciplinary power in assessment has become highly strategic and differs depending on the institutional assessment systems: students from Estonia recognise the powerful position of academics as assessors and find ways to create a good social impression of themselves; their counterparts from the UK, however, demonstrate a tactical approach to their learning and study processes.  相似文献   

10.
Policy changes in higher education internationally have led to greater institutional competition and performativity and a shift from academic to business management for institutional leaders. Major changes to tertiary education management in New Zealand, legislated in 1990, had a particularly marked impact on teacher education institutions, previously subject to Department of Education control over curriculum, student numbers, and budgeting. The role of college leaders was to provide professional leadership and to lobby the Department for resources. Post 1990, College Councils became financially accountable, principals became employers; institutions competed for students and were free to devise new programmes. This paper examines the impact of these changes on the leadership roles of college principals as they grappled with the new deregulated environment. It examines the results of these changes from five perspectives: managing change and new directions; the role as employers; financial management; competition, compliance and accountability; and relationships with universities.  相似文献   

11.
Visual images of students and academics in the UK have traditionally featured men, reflecting the historical predominance of men in these positions. When women were represented, sexist imagery and traditional constructions of femininity were not uncommon. This article explores the ways in which students and academics are constructed in a selection of visual representations in two contemporary UK sources: in two videos aimed at potential students and in the Times Higher Education, a magazine for higher education professionals. Following a discussion of dominant constructions of intellectual subjectivity, I draw upon a feminist post-structuralist approach in the analysis of these visual images. Although women are now entering universities in greater numbers than ever before, I suggest that this visual iconography continues to inscribe culturally dominant constructions of femininity and masculinity, reaffirms a gender binary and reconstructs the serious intellectual subject as a masculine one.  相似文献   

12.
Abstract

The article discusses the specific features characterizing the development of the market for commercial educational services under modern Russian conditions. The study finds that many parents have reacted negatively to the introduction of market forces to the education sector. Paid educational services provided by the school are not popular despite the fact that they offer a number of advantages. The results of the study have revealed a number of factors that have led to the expansion in the sector of informal education, includeing low teacher salaries, difficulties in registering a tutoring service business, the desire to reduce financial costs, and the fact that schools insufficiently prepare students to pass the Unified State Exam. The movement of students who seek assistance from the informal educational sector has placed a strain on the institutional relationships between students and teachers.  相似文献   

13.
This article argues that the individual academic is all but absent from the assumptive worlds of policymakers in UK higher education. It is taken for granted in research on academic identity that those who work in higher education as teachers and researchers refer to themselves as, and indeed are referred to by others as, ‘academics’. Evidence is drawn from a study of policymakers in the UK to demonstrate that the word ‘academic’ is not a part of the lexicon of higher education policymaking. Moreover, the concept of the academic is cast into shade by an overwhelming emphasis on ‘the student experience’, and, from another direction, by a location of professional academic accountability at the level of the higher education institution rather than the individual. The article concludes with an exploration of what work this absence of the academic in policy does in disrupting the possibilities for engagement between the worlds of academia and policymaking and in perpetuating the discourses of marketisation and new management in higher education. It also suggests understanding the assumptive worlds of policymakers is a crucial counterbalance to a growing body of literature on academic responses to change, some of which has tended towards the self‐referential.  相似文献   

14.
Students have begun to show interest in adopting active and participatory roles that allow them to interact and work collaboratively with educators. One important aspect of students as partners is a process known as value co-creation. Value co-creation is the process of students’ feedback, opinions, and other resources such as their intellectual capabilities and personalities, integrated alongside institutional resources, which can offer mutual value to both students and institutions. This paper presents the first conceptual model of value co-creation in higher education using a lens of co-creation cultivated through business and marketing literature. The model includes key components of value co-creation, co-production, and value-in-use as well as links to the anticipated benefits of value co-creation. The model can be used to inform and guide practice for the faculty and administration within higher education as well as to broaden the foundation of value co-creation literature.  相似文献   

15.
Guided by a Foucauldian theorisation, this article explores Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) experiences of their work and subjectivity in a neoliberalised higher education environment. By drawing on a research project with GTAs from one UK university, the article argues that GTA work is increasingly shaped by neoliberal reforms. The GTAs interviewed are critical of internationalisation, marketisation and client culture, and see these processes as acting on their subjectivity. The GTAs position themselves as mediators between demanding students and overworked academics: they have turned into much-needed ‘peacekeepers’ and ‘machine factories’. The findings also demonstrate that the subjectivity enforced by a dominant market ideology is further negotiated in the GTA experience. The discourses reveal that a lack of institutional control and coordination of graduate teaching provides the means for, and indeed enables, the GTAs to express some, but often limited, discontent with neoliberalism.  相似文献   

16.
Neoliberal higher education reforms in relation to quality assurance, managerialist practices, accountability and performativity are receiving increasing attention and criticism. In this article, I will address student assessment as part of the technologies that increasingly govern academics and their work in universities. I will draw on Foucault’s theories of governmentality and subjectification, and discourse analysis that have framed the research conducted with 16 academics in one university in the UK. While academics in the study expressed frustration with neoliberal reforms in general, and assessment policies in particular, they tended not to demonstrate overt resistance within their university systems. The reasons for this will be questioned and analysed in relation to a neoliberal mode of government where power relations shaping academic subjectivities are diffuse and pervasive. I will discuss the ways in which academics understand and act within these power relations, and I will also demonstrate a variety of covert practices that academics tend to apply when coping with the neoliberal technologies of government such as assessment.  相似文献   

17.
Part‐time study is one of the foci of the widening participation agenda in the UK. The experiences of part‐time students, however, have received remarkably little attention from scholars, especially in a comparative context. This paper explores existing historical data going back over a decade to identify the main themes of part‐time experience at a number of UK higher education institutions and how it compares and contrasts with the full‐time experience. The surveys use the Student Satisfaction Approach. The main themes emerging from institutional survey data over time are the work/family/study balance, assessment and feedback, access to learning and catering resources, and students' financial situation. There is sometimes a question of identity, but unlike many studies of part‐time student experience, which focus on aspects of disadvantage, social, and cultural capital, the data for this paper indicate that many part‐time students have a sense of themselves as being ignored or at worst marginalised in contemporary higher education.  相似文献   

18.
In the past few decades, the additional revenues available via higher education exports (through both relatively higher prices and increased enrolments) have attracted the attention of providers in many developed countries, not least in Anglophone countries like the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. However, while the revenue case is strong, the institutional cost structures underlying the provision of higher education services for international students remain relatively unknown at the sector level. Accordingly, we offer a comprehensive analysis of the cost economies underlying higher education provision for international students using a sample of 37 Australian public universities over the period from 2003 to 2012. The findings suggest that it is appealing to enrol additional overseas students given their lower average and marginal costs and the significant economies of scale prevailing in higher education generally. Further, while we find evidence of economies of scope for overseas students only in smaller institutions, there is no evidence of diseconomies of scope, implying the current number of overseas students and their joint production with domestic students at the least does not lead to unnecessarily higher overall costs.  相似文献   

19.
Business schools globally operate in a market-driven environment and rankings are very much part of that environment. Rankings have a significant impact on a school’s ability to attract the top scholars, the most able students and research funding. Schools use rankings to support claims of excellence and ‘world class’ status. The purpose of this study is to explore whether an analysis of the historical development of business schools and business/management education in the UK, supported by reference to institutional theory, can help explain trends in rankings and the positions of different types of school. The analysis is based on a selection of undergraduate, MBA and research rankings published between 1984 and 2010. The findings of the study fit with the expectations of institutional theory: particularly regulations and normative path dependencies determined the rankings of different categories of university, e.g., ancient, plateglass, technology and post-1992.  相似文献   

20.
Conventional student-led evaluation is now an orthodox feature of the North American, UK and Australian higher education landscape. Increasingly, it is guiding major institutional decisions around educational quality, academic promotion and more recently institutional funding by government. Yet significant research around student-led evaluation has demonstrated that this form of student opinion-based evaluation remains highly fragile and susceptible to multiple forms of influence. This paper argues that student-led evaluation of itself is not sufficiently robust to appropriately inform notions of educational quality or pedagogical capability of academics. An alternative approach to evaluation in higher education is proposed, broadly drawing on the conception of fourth generation evaluation. The model foregrounds academic collaboration in shaping a professional evaluative framework at an activity level (i.e. programme or sub-discipline level) based on an ongoing dialogue between peers and with students, as well as qualitative evaluation of student learning. The model attempts to make tensions and conflicts in the teaching and learning context more explicit and the active focus of evaluative efforts to devise appropriate and sustainable responses to improve the quality of learning and professional practice. This paper presents some preliminary research on the effectiveness of this model in its initial piloting in postgraduate programmes in an Australian university.  相似文献   

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