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.     

THE EVOLUTION OF REGIONAL ACCREDITATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: THE ROLE OF THE NORTH CENTRAL ASSOCIATION, 1895–1934

This paper traces the factors which led to one regional association, the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, adopting an accreditation role by default rather than by design. The failure of National Bodies to adopt this role is also high‐lighted, although their influence on regional bodies is clearly indicated. The change from a resources‐based to a process‐based accreditation system has been part of the long evolutionary process, but the difficulties inherent in this approach still confront the American system of Higher Education     

‘A Delicate Balance…’: Language as a Tool of Identity Expression for Incarcerated Men Pursuing Higher Education

In the course of an initiative to provide higher education to adults in prison, incarcerated men enrolled in an undergraduate degree programme were offered the opportunity to participate in a series of writing workshops. This article examines the products of these workshops, specifically the ways that language chosen by the writers serves as a tool in the process of identity construction and expression. Choices made in discourse, shown to be deliberate, demonstrate the men’s awareness of relationships between language, identity and power, as well as testifying to the significance of these connections for writers.