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1.
Despite ongoing equity initiatives, there is still a clear discrepancy in regards to access to higher education for potential students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. This paper reports on an action research initiative that has developed a model of engaged outreach as an alternative approach to traditional university outreach. Engaged outreach uses the principles of higher education community engagement to develop stronger relationships between universities and their local communities for the purposes of increasing aspiration and access to higher education. The project was designed using a reflective, collaborative process with local Pacific Island immigrant communities living in an area of high social deprivation in southeast Queensland, Australia. Research progressed in three key stages, which together form the basis of the proposed model of engaged outreach. While it is acknowledged that the success of engaged outreach will depend on its implementation as a long‐term strategy, preliminary results from this pilot project suggest that it demonstrates real potential to address this important but seemingly entrenched issue in Australian higher education.  相似文献   

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3.
In 2017 Universities Australia (UA), the peak body representing Australian universities released its Indigenous Strategy 2017–2020. The document unites universities together in common goals for Indigenous achievement, filling a notable gap in the Australian higher education landscape. The Strategy outlines a comprehensive plan for enhanced Indigenous outcomes in critical areas of higher education including student access and success, graduate research, and community engagement. This paper focuses on the implementation of Indigenous curriculum for all Australian university graduates which is a key aspect of the Strategy. The changing Indigenous higher education landscape invites the nuanced analysis that critical examination of universities, as organisations, might elicit. Drawing on de Certeau’s notion of tactics and strategies, the paper examines the policy and cultural climate of an Australian university which supports an Indigenous Graduate Attribute curriculum project.  相似文献   

4.
In October 2008, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council released the final report for the commissioned project ‘ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: Informing excellence in policy and practice’. The Australian ePortfolio Project represented the first attempt to examine the breadth and depth of ePortfolio practice in the Australian higher education sector. The research activities included: surveys of stakeholder groups in learning and teaching, academic management and human resource management, with respondents representing all Australian universities; a series of focus groups and semi‐structured interviews that sought to explore key issues in greater depth; and surveys designed to capture students’ pre‐course expectations and their post‐course experiences of ePortfolio learning. Further qualitative data was collected through interviews with ‘mature users’ of ePortfolios. Project findings revealed that, while there was a high level of interest in the use of ePortfolios in terms of the potential to help students become reflective learners who were conscious of their personal and professional strengths and weaknesses, the state of play in Australian universities was very fragmented. The project investigation identified four individual, yet interrelated, contexts where strategies may be employed to support and foster effective ePortfolio practice in higher education: government policy; technical standards; academic policy; and learning and teaching. Four scenarios for the future were also presented with the goal of stimulating discussion about opportunities for stakeholder engagement. It is argued that the effective use of ePortfolios requires open dialogue and collaboration between the different stakeholders across this range of contexts.  相似文献   

5.
International students have continued to be the focus of simplistic stereotyping in media discourse where they are frequently identified as one of the forces behind declining academic standards in Australian universities. Their English language skills, in particular, have continued to be the focus of debate both in the mainstream media and in higher education research and policy. It is argued in this paper, however, that such debates do not sufficiently acknowledge the moral and affective complexity of the so-called ‘English problem’ amongst international students in Australian universities. Drawing from an analysis of small group interviews with international students, domestic students and university staff, the beliefs and experiences of various parties about the English language skills of international students are examined. A key finding from this analysis is that the English language skills of international students, and their concomitant interactions with others, can be the object of both complaints and troubles talk. These complaints or troubles can be either ratified or resisted by those participants. The difficulties international students may experience in using English thus have complex moral and affective consequences. The way in which the so-called English problem in Australian universities is generally couched as one of objective, measurable deficiency on the part of international students arguably neglects the moral and affective complexity of the difficulties facing international students. This neglect leads, in turn, to an impoverished understanding of the English language capabilities of international students.  相似文献   

6.
Twenty-four university students with disabilities were interviewed about their experiences studying at Czech universities. The interviews were analysed using the grounded theory approach. The most commonly experienced barriers faced by these students were institutional barriers, attitudinal barriers, and disability-specific barriers. The types of support mentioned by the students included family support, peer support, and support provided by assistants. The participants also shared strategies they used to deal with the barriers they faced. These were assertiveness, self-determination, metacognition, efforts to ‘fit in’, optimism, and career planning. The implications for policy and universities are discussed.  相似文献   

7.
Students’ perceptions during their first semester at university may be critical in the decision to continue or discontinue studies. In this study we consider students’ perceptions of what factors enable successful transition to university. Using qualitative research, students’ perceptions are obtained by in-depth interviews and focus groups that capture the first- and second-order perspectives of existing students at the end of first-year studies. Interview and focus-group themes are used to develop an 80-item questionnaire that is then used to collect data from first-year students (n?=?771) at an Australian university. Key findings from the research are the identification of seven enabling factors that fall into two main groups, student-centred and university-led. Identifying enablers of transition provides universities with the opportunity to assist students in the successful transition to higher education.  相似文献   

8.
A common theme in higher education research is the factors that affect university funding. Studies frequently examine how universities cope with funding cuts and the changes that have stemmed from operating in a neoliberal age, a period that now sees institutions commonly functioning on a cost/benefit basis. This paper offers an original contribution by using the Australian Federal Government Department of Education and Training’s document, Finance 2015: Financial Reports of Higher Education Providers, to problematise the financial assistance individual Australian public universities received from the federal government. The paper acknowledges the factors that can account for some institutions receiving more funding than others but nonetheless highlights the substantial discrepancies concerning government financial contributions that exist between Australia’s highest and lowest funded universities. At a time when a performative culture has increasingly become part of higher education, and an institution’s research performance is calculable and rankable, it is crucial to Australia’s long-term research success that all its universities remain competitive in the race for research and government funding.  相似文献   

9.
While student parents now represent a significant proportion of the higher education population in England, this group has been given limited consideration in policy circles. Using a social constructivist and feminist theoretical framework, this paper draws on a research project investigating the role of higher education policies in supporting student parents in England. It focuses on findings from 40 interviews conducted with student parents enrolled on university programmes. It shows that, in the context of the default construction of the university student as carefree, student parents often describe their experience of navigating academia as a struggle, in which time-related, financial, health and emotional problems prevail. However, the stories they tell also emphasise the benefits associated with their dual status. By doing so, they resist the discourse of deficit typically applied to ‘non traditional’ students and produce a counter-discourse that disturbs the long-lived binary opposition between care and academia.  相似文献   

10.
In common with universities in the United Kingdom, Canada and NewZealand, increasing numbers of Australian universities have established offshore education partnerships, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. More than one-third of international students currently enrolled in Australian university courses study at a campus in their home country or somewhere other than in Australia (IDP 2002). Suchpartnerships, also assumed under the rubric of ‘transnational education’ and ‘franchising’, add additional challenges, complexities and risks to the roles of international education managers and administrators. Using convergent interviews and case studies, this paper identifies and examines the critical success factors for the successful establishment and development of relationships between Australian universities and their international partners. Critical among these are the development of effective communication structures and frameworks, the building of mutual trust, and the encouragement and demonstration of commitment between relationship partners.  相似文献   

11.
ABSTRACT

Facebook is social media that is ubiquitously used in higher education contexts by both staff and students. It provides a platform for student networking and expression. The authors illuminate how pre-service teachers in an Australian university, undertaking undergraduate units, use Facebook as a student-initiated social media community. Although an increasing number of research studies have investigated student use of social media in higher education, this is an under-theorised area. In particular, little has been written about the student-initiated use of Facebook as a commentary on the activities running simultaneously to formal online learning programmes in universities. Data drawn from 15 semi-structured interviews support an investigation into student Facebook use. Findings highlight that student-driven Facebook sites have a range of purposes and offer ever-present access to a relational community online, although this can sometimes be problematic. When emotional support is not forthcoming from academics or there is disenfranchisement in formal learning spaces, membership in student-initiated learning communities can afford immediacy, informality, influence and shared emotional connections.  相似文献   

12.
The transition from an elitisthigher education system to mass education hascreated a number of concerns in this sector.Among these are fears for the quality of theprovision; the rise in the unemployment rate ofgraduate university leavers; and the increasedfinancial burden on the government.This paper examines the transition periodover the last fifty years in Taiwan, in orderto promote an understanding of the problemscurrently being faced, and to give an insightinto the political and cultural background inwhich they have arisen. The USA and Japan arecompared, as these countries are seen to beadvanced in the provision of mass education.The paper has three main objectives. Firstly todetermine whether or not Taiwan can be said tohave developed a mass higher education systemby international comparison. Secondly, todetermine which factors have influencedgovernment policy to achieve mass highereducation, and thirdly to identify the problemswhich remains as barriers to the success ofthis system.Conclusions are drawn relating to the aboveobjectives and it is noted that similarproblems to those experiences by Westerncountries can be identified.  相似文献   

13.
This paper reports on an interpretivist research study that sought to articulate the strategies being adopted by selected universities to recruit, teach and retain students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. The literature is clear that these students face more barriers and fewer encouragers than their peers to engage with higher education and that the institutional habitus of universities, including their pedagogies, does not always work in their favour – creating an impression that they do not belong. Using a naturalistic inquiry approach, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers and leaders from 12 Australian universities with a regional focus. Findings suggest that while these universities have successfully developed initiatives to recruit and support students from low SES backgrounds, less attention is being directed to the teaching and learning challenges and opportunities created by increased student diversity. New thinking, effective curricula and pedagogies, and transformative staff-development programmes are needed to capitalise on the potential benefits of a more socially diverse cohort.  相似文献   

14.
This research contributes to the booming literature on the mobility of international students in higher education. We analyse university-level factors that affect the sorting of Chinese international students across British universities. We produced a unique data-set merging university-level data from the 2014 UK Higher Education Statistics Agency and the Higher Expectations Survey, supplemented by qualitative evidence from six focus groups for illustrative purposes. Our results, using nationally representative evidence for the first time, confirmed that university prestige is the most important driver for the sorting of Chinese students across British universities, together with further effects of the broader social and cultural offerings that the universities provide. Interestingly, the cost of study and marketing strategies deployed by universities do not seem to drive the Chinese students’ university choices. Our findings underline the importance of diffuse institutional factors such as university rankings and their taken-for-granted status by students themselves.  相似文献   

15.
Chinese higher education has gained outstanding achievement in expanding its access to the mass population since 1999. However, the mismatch between university curricula and job market requirements leads to increasing unemployment and underemployment of Chinese graduates. In recent years, the central and local governments and universities have viewed entrepreneurship as an efficient means to solve the unemployment and underemployment issues of university graduates. They issued many policies to promote innovation and entrepreneurship among young people. However, university graduates are still facing barriers in deciding to start their entrepreneurial journey. In this qualitative study, we interviewed 37 young entrepreneurs in Shenzen. Results show that the respondents encountered barriers from three aspects: personal traits, resources, and culture. With the empirical data collected from the interviews, we aim to enable higher education professionals and innovation policymakers to develop an advanced understanding of the experiences of the new generation of entrepreneurs while reflecting the efforts in coping with the negative effects of the massification of higher education.  相似文献   

16.
Abstract

Chinese universities are increasingly entering into transnational higher education partnerships with institutions in primarily English-speaking countries. With this increase in programmes, there is a growing body of research investigating both policy and practice. Our study contributes insight into how students in a China–Australia programme experienced assessment drawing on theorisations of sustainable assessment. We present findings from interviews with 10 Chinese students who shared stories and reflections of their experiences of assessment and learning that reveal the complex ways students negotiated qualitatively different assessment experiences, while displaying sophisticated levels of agency, between Chinese and Australian universities. In making sense of the interviews in relation to sustainable assessment, we evoke notions of cultural ignorance to illuminate aspects of a cross-cultural ignorance in teaching and learning practices. In doing so, we argue that conversations about cultural ignorance combined with principles of sustainable assessment can create space to support partners to better plan and coordinate for meaningful assessment and learning experiences for students in cross-cultural articulation programmes.  相似文献   

17.
This study explored the factors that facilitate and complicate the higher education process for students with visual impairments (VI). The participants were six university students with VI and eight academics/faculty members who instruct these students together with other students. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and were analysed using content analysis methods. The students with VI stated that they face barriers related to lack of materials, difficulty obtaining lecture notes, poor academic support, reader-related problems, insufficient library sources, and access to and within the university. Positive facilitators reported by the students were mainly related to personal factors, as well as peer and academic support. The academics demonstrated limited awareness of the barriers faced by students with VI, and the academic support available to these students was found to be insufficient as well. The results indicate that there are considerable barriers to university education for students with VI.  相似文献   

18.
This paper identifies and analyzes factors that influence international student selection of universities and the role that education marketing plays in the process. The research for the paper was inspired by work done by Canterbury on education marketing, published in the Journal of Marketing for Higher Education. The study empirically tests key constructs in service marketing. According to Canterbury it is time that higher education marketing theoreticians and practitioners alike looked beyond our similarities to other applications of service marketing to understand how some of our markets and our services might differ. To this end, the current study examines the views of international students undertaking their studies in two universities, one on the east coast and the other on the west coast of Australia. It reports the findings of international students’ choice factors in selecting an Australian university environment.  相似文献   

19.
The Bourdieuian concept of ‘position-taking’ is applied in this analysis of recognition of prior learning (RPL) policy and practice in Australian higher education. Data from institutional documents and participant interviews indicate that, within RPL policy, the universities selectively employ prevailing discourses of ‘quality’ and ‘equity’ to reinforce or potentially improve their reputation and symbolic power in the field of higher education. There is no common consensus about either equity or quality across the sector, as each university interprets the two concepts for its own benefit. The evidence suggests that, despite rhetoric in government policy implying that both are equally important, quality is a far stronger discourse and policy imperative than equity in RPL policy and practice. Also, RPL policies and practices provide an insight into how the key policy priorities of equity and quality are addressed by universities, when applied to a specific educational process or practice.  相似文献   

20.
This study draws from interviews of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965) enrolled in a traditional university programme. Interviews focussed on the mental, social and physical benefits of university education, exploring the aspirations of baby boomers as well as the social and academic barriers and costs they encountered. This qualitative phenomenological study investigated the perceptions, understandings and beliefs of 15 baby boomers from South-East Queensland who were returning to or commencing university level education. Informal semi-structured interviews were conducted and thematically analysed to provide a detailed account of the baby boomer students’ university experience. Using an adapted health action process approach, with the health goal being replaced by a learning goal, the results confirm that university study in later life can be beneficial to the individual as well as to the wider community. This research can inform policy-making by emphasising the importance of lifelong learning and healthy ageing for the baby boomer generation. The results highlight the value of higher education creating a supportive environment for baby boomer students which, in addition to educational achievements, can assist participants in maintaining good health and making informed health care decisions in the future.  相似文献   

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