Constructing the higher education student: a comparative study of six European countries
We are delighted that our book, ‘Constructing the Higher Education Student: perspectives from across Europe’ has recently been published. This draws together key findings from the project as a whole, and discuss six key constructions of students – as ‘in transition’; citizens; learners and hard-workers; future workers; stressed; and a threat or object of criticism.
It is available open access, and you can download a copy here.
Recordings of the presentations given at our project conference in June 2021 are now available on the project website. You can watch them all here.
What does it mean to be a contemporary higher education student?
FREE online conference, University of Surrey on 17 June (13:00 – 16.35) & 18 June (9.30 -13:00) 2021 (BST)
Being a higher education student is an increasingly common experience across the world, with participation rates at or above 50 per cent in many nations. Nevertheless, there is relatively little debate about what being a contemporary higher education student actually means. While stereotypes of students are regularly deployed in the media and, in countries where high fees are charged, assumptions are frequently made about students becoming more ‘consumer-like’ in their orientation – empirical evidence is often solely lacking. This conference aims to redress this omission by exploring understandings of contemporary higher education students.
The conference programme is available here and the abstracts can be viewed here.
Reimagining the Higher Education Student: online book launch
Thursday, 22ndApril 2021 (08.00-10.00 UK time; 17.00-19.00 Sydney time)
Reimagining the Higher Education Student, edited by Rachel Brooks and Sarah O’Shea, seeks to question the accepted or unquestioned nature of ‘being a student’ and instead foreground the contradictions and ‘messiness’ of such ideation. Given the increasing number and diversity of higher education students, the book offers a timely discussion of the implicit and sometimes subtle ways that they are characterised or defined.
In this launch event, we will provide an overview of eight of the book’s chapters, as well as some of the overarching themes addressed by the volume as a whole. The first session will focus on constructions of students in Australasia, and the second on students in Europe.
Session 1. 08.00-09.00 (UK time); 17.00-18.00 (Sydney time)
Session 2. 09.00-10.00 (UK time); 18.00-19.00 (Sydney time)
You are welcome to join us for one or both hours. Please register for a place here. Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link to the meeting.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CONTEMPORARY
HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENT?
FREE Online conference, University of Surrey
17 JUNE (1-4.30 PM) -18 JUNE (9.30AM-1 PM) 2021 (UK time)
Keynote: Dr Gritt B. Nielsen, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University
Call for abstracts
Being a higher education student is an increasingly common experience across the world, with participation rates at or above 50 per cent in many nations. Nevertheless, there is relatively little debate about what being a contemporary higher education student actually means. While stereotypes of students are regularly deployed in the media and, in countries where high fees are charged, assumptions are frequently made about students becoming more ‘consumer-like’ in their orientation – empirical evidence is often solely lacking. This conference aims to redress this omission by exploring understandings of contemporary higher education students. We are particularly interested in papers that examine questions such as (but not limited to):
We will also present data on some of these themes from the ‘Eurostudents’ project – a cross-national comparisons of constructions of students within Europe.
We welcome papers from scholars at all career stages and from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including sociology, education, geography, youth studies, social policy, media studies and anthropology. Contributions from national contexts other than the UK are warmly invited.
Abstract Submission: Please send abstracts of up to 500 words by 11th April 2021 to the Eurostudents team at surrey.eurostudents@gmail.com
Further information: The conference is being organised by the ‘Eurostudents’ research team (Rachel Brooks, Achala Gupta, Sazana Jayadeva and Anu Lainio). You can learn more about the project here: www.eurostudents.net.
#Eurostudents2021
One of themes that we have been exploring in the project is whether students are seen as significant ‘political actors’. In this article, just published in the British Educational Research Journal, we examine the extent to which policymakers, higher education staff and students themselves understand students in this way, and explore both similarities and differences across our six countries. It is published open access so you can download it free of charge.
We recently wrote an article for the Society for Research into Higher Education blog, based on our analysis of the narratives about students used by those making or seeking to influence higher education policy across Europe. It’s called ‘Asserting the nation: the dominance of national narratives in policymakers’ constructions of higher education students’ and you can read it here.
We recently gave a presentation at the Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference on the Future of Higher Education in Bucharest (29-31 January). It discussed the extent to which the higher education staff and students in our project believed that social characteristics have an impact on what it means to be a student. We found considerable differences of opinion between the two groups (staff and students), as well as some interesting cross-national variation. You can read the latest draft of the paper (and the others that were given at the conference) here.
In our latest article, just published in the Journal of Education Policy, we explore the ways in which the idea of Europe was alluded to by the ‘policy influencers’ we interviewed, in relation to their understandings of higher education students. We argue that the idea of Europe constitutes an important ‘spatial imaginary’ for higher education within the continent, and helps to frame the ways in which students are conceptualised. However, this is not played out in the same way for all respondents. For some, we suggest, Europe act as a distinct place or idealised space; for others, it constitutes an important site of spatial transformation. We explore how these understandings are related to nations’ political and historical contexts, and their contemporary positioning within Europe.
The full article can be accessed here.