Do Pre‐entry Interventions such as ‘Aimhigher’ Impact on Student Retention and Success? A Review of the Literature

This paper reviews the potential impact of pre‐entry widening access interventions on student retention and success in higher education. It thus addresses two contemporary policy concerns: What is the impact of pre‐entry widening access interventions; and how can we improve student retention and success? A review of academic and practitioner literature finds limited research about the impact of pre‐entry interventions in general and very little on the impact of pre‐entry interventions on students' retention and success in higher education. A review of the research, however, identifies the importance of factors which pre‐entry interventions address: pre‐entry decision making, expectations about higher education and academic preparation. To date, however, the impact of pre‐entry interventions on retention in higher education has been largely ignored. Thus pre‐entry activities, such as Aimhigher, should be evaluated for their impact on student retention. The paper offers an outline evaluation framework, including evaluation topics and suggested key performance indicators to bridge this gap.     

Negotiating assignment pathways: students and academic assignments

Existing research identifies that students’ approaches to assignments are related to their general approaches to study. It is suggested that students need to better understand the requirements of assignments and acquire new concepts such as ‘argument’. This fine-grained study proposes four qualitatively distinct assignment pathways: gathering, connecting, minimalist and performing. Students negotiate assignment pathways to sustain a sense of control, confidence and connection. Making changes to their approaches to assignments is not straightforward. Suggestions are made for using insights from the research to more effectively support assignments as vehicles for learning.     

Putting in more: emotional work in adopting online tools in teaching and learning practices

This paper explores the emotional journey associated with changing one's teaching and learning practices and how this constitutes emotional work. The paper analyses the emotions evident in the data from a small-scale phenomenological study of lecturers who are using technological tools in their teaching, learning and assessment practices in one higher education institution. The discussion illuminates the nature and scale of the emotional work experienced by some lecturers when changing their teaching and learning practices to incorporate technology. It indicates that this challenge is so extreme that even the most committed advocates of online teaching practices may consider giving up and reverting to traditional ways of teaching. The paper identifies strategies that lecturers use to manage the anxieties they experience in their adoption of online tools.     

Why compare? A response to Stephen Lawton

This paper aims to stimulate interest in comparative education policy analysis through a critique of a paper written by Stephen Lawton (Journal of Education Policy, 7(2), 1992). We argue that such comparative analysis is an important element in understanding neo‐liberal education reforms. However, more work needs to be done in providing adequate categories for analysis. We do not believe that Lawton's meet the criteria for such analysis. In the first part of the paper we discuss Lawton's categories, showing how, in our view, they fall short. The second part provides an initial, and very brief, discussion of what might constitute adequate categories for analysis. We end with a plea for more work in this field, and invite others to work with us!     

Learning and teaching virtuous gratitude

Gratitude has been widely regarded by philosophers, psychologists and educational theorists as a personal and/or pro-social response of some moral significance. Indeed, beyond its more obvious value as a basic form of social association and reciprocation, gratitude has also been conceived as a moral virtue—if not, more grandly, as a ‘parent of the virtues’. Insofar, one might also expect the promotion of gratitude to be a matter of some educational importance. Despite this, and notwithstanding recent psychological attempts to develop practical interventions designed to promote gratitude, this paper argues not just that the educational role of such interventions is open to serious question, but also that—beyond any requirement of the young to express thanks as a matter of routine social reciprocation—the status of gratitude as an educable virtue is more complex and problematic than has often been previously supposed.     

Evaluating the use of metaphor in online learning environments

Metaphor appears to be an innate tendency in human communication and can be shown to have significant potential when applied to the design of online learning environments. This paper describes and discusses an example of an online research methods learning resource that employs metaphoric navigation. Feedback from the tutors who design and populate the resource and from early pilots with student users is discussed. A particular focus for the discussion is the problem faced by sufferers of autism spectrum disorder, brain damage, and other cognitive disabilities that affect the comprehension of metaphor. Research that demonstrates that autistic tendencies also exist in members of the general population is also discussed as an important consideration in learning environment design. The paper concludes that there appears to be evidence that many people in the general population have traits associated with autism spectrum disorder that are likely to affect their engagement with online learning. This variation in approaches to learning strongly suggests that one single online environment is unlikely to facilitate learning equally in all students. Currently most learning sites and commercial and open source virtual learning environments offer some facility for customization of the interface, but no opportunity for students to choose from a range of environments in which to study. This paper argues that the creation of multiple learning environments which overlay the same learning content is a priority if we are to optimize the experience for the greatest number of learners and avoid exclusion due to disability or learning preferences.