Conference Agenda

Research motivation

The Bologna process, with its primary goal to unite universities, led to creating the range of standards, among which were quality regulations (Kehm, Huisman, & Stensaker, 2009). They gradually evolved into accreditation entities, like the European Consortium for Accreditation in Higher Education with external control functions. Engineering programmes are supposed to be more open and flexible due to high demand on the labour market in both developing and in developed nations (WEF 2016; 2017). Professional mobility of engineers was firstly supposed to be facilitated via unified standards across the countries (Reyes, 2008). Nowadays, there are some concerns about the standards being an obstacle to globalisation of the engineering profession due to a surplus of regulations (Sánchez-Chaparro, 2022). Therefore, there is a tendency to lift at least part of the regulations, which will supposingly increase the quality of engineering educational programmes (Hakeem et al, 2014; Kans, 2021). In case if regulations are removed, quality culture will be operationalised on programme level, the basis of which is a programme directors’ quality perception.

However, the dynamic micro-level of programmes is more flexible than the slower meso-level of university (Celis et al, 2022). In engineering programmes, interaction with industrial partners is one of the central points of implementation. Industry in its turn is a source of rapid changes for programmes (Jackson et al, 2022). Programme directors’’ are those who are in touch with industry and know what potential employers need, embedding these needs into curriculum design, quality assurance and other aspects (Kans, 2021). This may lead to a situation when quality frame on the programme level is not in line with the one offered by university.. The underpinned quality perception, previously shaped by existing standards and regulations, in situations of attention shift from external regulation to internal quality work, is at a risk of quality concepts to be interpreted in a naive, non-structured way. Whether it’s good or bad - is a point of further discussion. Considering this possibility, analysing the case where quality is not well-defined by regulatory bodies, we can trace the evolution of naive quality perception via bottom-up approach to see if it matches the overall conceptual understanding of quality in general.

Russia is an example of the country where the regulatory paradigm in education is blurry and excessive (Knyaginina et al, 2022), and quality work is not institutionalised per se. Analysing quality perception of Russian programme directors’ might provide some insights into how the quality landscape may look once the regulations are lifted.

Objective

The aim of the study is to grasp the program directors’ quality perception. We then intend to see if the perception models preliminary derived are in line with conventional European quality interpretation. The latter is supposed to provide some insights into whether quality work without external regulations will still be constructed in conventional ways.

Theoretical framework

The frame of conventional quality understanding we mean to use is the most recent frame, where everything published on the topic of quality interpretation in European terms before is gathered (Schindler, 2015). The concept of quality, according to (Schinlder et al, 2015) can be broken into four main types: excellence, transformation, fit for purpose and accountability.

The rapid expansion of the Covid-19 pandemic throughout the world including in Israel had unprecedented consequences for all life domains, including the higher education system. The crisis triggered by this pandemic challenged academic institutions, because within a few days they were forced to continue to operate during a physical lockdown of their campuses and transit to digital learning, with all the implications involved. (Donitsa-Schmidt & Ramot, 2021; Draxler-Weber, Packmohr & Brink,2022).

Program and department heads (PDHs), the academic leaders of these institutions, coped with the crisis trying to conduct regular activity as well as possible. Their work environment changed, and they had to deal with their own personal hardships and the students' difficulties and cope with the teaching staff's needs in the programs they managed. This confrontation exposed them to complexities they had not encountered previously.

PDHs perform one of the most essential and challenging posts in the higher education system (Tietjen-Smith, Hersman & Block, 2020). They develop social networks and manage relationships and resources connected to the program/department under their management. In this way they enable their subordinates to function in a competitive arena of academic institutions under conditions that have been described as quasi-market, to attract students and obtain research budgets (Bobe & Kober, 2015; Deem, 1998)

Heavy workloads impair the necessary match between the individual's characteristics and workplace demands and negatively affects the employee's satisfaction and effectiveness (Kirmeyer & Dougherty, 1988). A study examining how academic leaders coped with work in European universities found that faculty members and holders of senior academic positions have an administrative burden stemming from tasks unrelated to teaching or research. This engenders feelings of harm to the academic leaders' family and social life (Pace et al, 2021). However, overload of academic work also causes stress and decreases academic productivity (Janib et al, 2021).

The research questions examined how PDHs viewed various aspects of the influence of the pandemic on: distance learning, internal organizational processes, and departmental interactions with their environment, how their research was affected, and the characteristics of their planning processes during this period. The main question was: How did the PDHs of higher education institutions in Israel perceive the challenges facing them as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic?

In an increasingly competitive global economy driven by knowledge and innovation, higher education (HE) is critical to the success of a country. In recent decades, a range of social, economic and political factors have led to a dilemma for the HE system, where the cost of HE continues to rise in the face of tight public finances. In contrast, expectations of HE outcomes continue to rise. Policymakers and legislators are facing how to effectively use taxpayer funds to improve the productivity of HE and respond to escalating demands for accountability. PBF is a strategy to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of HE and has been one of the most crucial reform mechanisms in the last few decades. Many countries have begun to use PBF to allocate resources to HEIs.

In 2015, the Chinese government promulgated the ‘Double First-Class’ plan, which will play a leading role in the future of government funding for HE in China. The ‘Double First-Class' plan explicitly states that government funding for selected universities will dynamically adjust according to performance. More support will give to high-performing universities and less to low-performing ones. Senior and middle leaders' role in universities has become more complex in the face of the accountability pressures from PBF. The perceptions and application of PBF by academic leaders primarily affect the effectiveness of PBF implementation. Therefore, this study examines how university academic leaders perceive and respond to PBF in Mainland China's ‘Double First-Class’ universities.

This study used sense-making as the conceptual framework. Sense-making aims to create a holistic picture of the ambiguous event through three interrelated processes: creation, interpretation and enactment. First, ‘creation' can be seen as the process by which individual leaders generate their creative activities out of the practices of everyday activities that are constructed in response to changing realities. Secondly, school leaders rely on previous tools and materials from their work experience with past policies and apply them to new contexts. Through interaction with what they know and new demands, they create their interpretations of reform demands. Finally, 'policy enactment' describes educational reform as a process that is open to different interpretations. More specifically, policy enactment conveys 'the creative processes of interpretation, that is, the recontextualisation - through reading, writing, and talking - of the abstractions of policy ideas into contextualised practices'. This highlights school leaders’ active role in creatively shaping a particular policy into a specific set of circumstances.

This study adopts a qualitative approach based on the conceptual framework of sense-making. The specific research questions are as follows: (1) how do university academic leaders understand the requirements of the PBF? (2) how do university academic leaders make sense of their leadership roles by combining experience with the requirements of the PBF? (3)how can academic leaders in universities encourage and facilitate sense-making among academics in PBF?

Preliminary findings indicate that, firstly, regarding the understanding of PBF implemented by universities, most academic leaders consider the policy's requirements reasonable to a certain extent, as the cultivation of talents and doing scientific research are the work universities or academics should do. Secondly, regarding how academic leaders respond to PBF, they use their existing knowledge, values and social context to make trade-offs with policy messages. Finally, there are several ways in which academic leaders encourage and facilitate sense-making by academics. In formal settings, such as regular staff meetings, academic leaders may publicly recognise or reward high-performing academics or teams as a way of spurring low-performing ones. In informal settings, academic leaders may also take an active interest in academic performance and assist them.

This paper develops a framework for the measurement of the market orientation (MO) of higher education institutions (HEIs) and implements said framework in measuring the nature of MO in HEIs.

Market orientation (MO), a foundational concept in the discipline of marketing, can be understood as the degree to which a firm undertakes behaviours in generating and responding to information about customers and competitors to create value (Bhattarai et al., 2019). Ample evidence supports the benefits of MO on customer, performance and employee-related outcomes (Modi and Sahi, 2018).

The link between a MO and HEI performance has also been empirically established (Abou-Warda 2014). For example, research on the relationship between MO and the performance of academic staff (Kűster and Avilés-Valenzuela, 2010), on student satisfaction (Tran et al., 2015) as well as on a range of subjective assessments of HEI performance (Hammond and Webster, 2014) appears quite strong. This MO HEI performance relationship has been confirmed across a range of European HE contexts, for example Assad et al. (2015) in the United Kingdom, Tanrikulu and Gelibolu (2015) in Turkey, Nagy and Beracs (2012) in Hungary and Flavian and Lozano (2007) in Spain.

However, the transposition of a MO into a HEI context, while argued as warranted, is far from straightforward (Llonch at al., 2016; Rivera-Camino and Molero Ayala 2010; Akonkwa, 2009). The context specific aspects of implementing a MO in a HEI context requiring consideration are significant, namely the treatment of students, types of stakeholders including academic staff, relationship to competitors and the measurement of HEI performance. That is the MO concept needs to be ‘context-specific’ to HEIs (Akonkwa, 2009, p. 312).

A review of literature across European and International contexts serves as a guide for conceptualising MO in a HEI context (Llonch J. et al., 2016; Rivera-Camino and Molero Ayala 2010; Pavicic et al., 2009; Voon, 2008). Thus in a HE context MO is a culture with resulting behaviours, across all departments of the institution, that seeks to understand and respond to; students, collaborating/partner institutions, competitors, parents, employees, employers, funders, other stakeholders as well as wider society and the environment in an innovative and sustainable way. A framework consistent with this conceptualisation is presented as a tool to examine the nature of MO in HEIs. This framework informs the subsequent aim of this research to measure the nature of MO in HEIs.

Different governments deal with restructuring their higher education systems in different ways, aiming for different outcomes. One of the growing tendencies in the national HE policy arena in different contexts has been an attempt to differentiate HE institutions into ‘teaching only’ and ‘research only’, as differentiating the academic system and drifting mission has been considered a primary factor in advancing research (van der Wende, 2014; Altbach, 2009). This paper explores recent reforms in HE system in Kazakhstan with regard to differentiating HEIs drawing upon perceptions of public universities and state-level policy document analysis through addresses the following questions:

• What is the rationale behind the government’s differentiation policies?
• How are the government’s differentiation policies perceived and responded to by HEIs?

This study was conducted as part of doctoral research at the University College London in 2016-2019.

During the early Independence period when the country’s efforts to transition from the dominant Soviet communist agenda of universities as teaching only with limited access to Western market-oriented ideology gave rise to private providers making HE more accessible and provoking massification. After the first decade of the 2000s, the government started seeking to optimise the number of HEIs by merging and/or closing some institutions that failed to meet state standards (OECD, 2017) and transform the system by creating research universities in order to encourage research and innovation development (parlam.kz, 2011). The government’s intention was to concentrate research capacity in selected research universities, giving them more budgetary funding for generating new technologies and innovation, while the rest of the HEIs were recommended to strategize their operations for advancing regional-level research (Canning, 2017). With diverse missions and differentiated by their scope for research and teaching, HEIs are stratified with research universities being at the top of the system and whose main focus is the generation and transfer of new knowledge through research and innovation.

As part of the broader differentiating policies with the focus on developing selected universities into research-intensive institutions, the government implemented a change in the organizational system of public HEIs from state enterprise to a non-commercial joint-stock company type with 100% state ownership, as well as introducing a board of trustees and various councils who will be engaged in governing the university collectively. This reform is carried out in order to provide legal opportunities for enlarging academic and governance autonomy of HEIs which is a completely new phenomenon for the HE system of Kazakhstan. However, what participants conveyed is that while there is an awareness of differentiation policies and drivers behind the emphasis towards developing research in HE, there is no particular effect is observed in relation to their work so far. This might be due to the state policies remaining at a documentary level with no further actions or processes of implementation being carried out or accentuated so far.

While differentiating HEIs might be considered as “tidying up the mess in the system” (policy-maker respondent), it inevitably creates vertical stratification between them. As such, in the case of Kazakhstan with large territories and the system is yet between Soviet legacy and the global hegemony of competition and global positioning (Deem, Mok and Lukas, 2008; Ishikawa, 2009), stratification caused by inequalities of resources in the condition of scarce funding, raises the question of excellence versus equity, and a danger of creating more marginalised institutions while the elites prosper (Halfmann and Leydesdorff, 2010). Such a scenario might be highly probable with institutions located regionally already suffer from insufficient financial and human resources while being pressurised by various state performance-based requirements.

Drawing on the ideas of consumer activism, this paper discusses the student as consumer complaints as an important but often overlooked mode of political agency in marketised universities. The paper starts with unpacking the notions of consumer choice as they relate to the process of boycotting and buycotting. I will then discuss how consumer rights and complaints intersect in marketised higher education (HE) and introduce a number of prominent student complaints from the UK context. The focus of this paper is centred around the question: To what extent can consumer rights provide students with political agency in marketised HE? While this paper is centred around the UK context, it argues that the rise of student complaints is also characteristic of many other European countries.

From a neoliberal perspective, consumers are seen empowered when they have enough choice to exercise their economic interest. Consumption from such perspective involves agency and can be viewed as ‘a free choice to be exercised by individual consumers who are at liberty to pursue their own private needs’ (Shaw et al., 2006, 1054). Many (e.g., McShane & Sabadoz, 2015; Shankar et al., 2006), however, argue that the idea of empowerment through mere consumer choice is misleading. It raises questions about who is engineering the choice, or what privileges are needed to have any actual choice in an economic market.

I argue that to view consumption as a political act, it demands that consumers recognise existing market structures that privilege the corporate profit-seeking and make critical links between their own consumption patterns and broader social issues. When consumers act as citizens, the process of consumption gets intersected with moral and political elements of production and distribution.

It is interesting to consider the extent to which students engage in consumer activism. It is likely that they do so as regards their consumption practices on campuses and beyond as existing research on students’ food preferences has highlighted. The difficulty, however, emerges when we try to consider how students practise boycotting and buycotting in relation to their university choices. Some may use the word of mouth to favour certain universities over others, depending on their political or ethical practices. Or it could be that some actively opt out from studying in Oxbridge or Ivy league due to their exclusionary practices or colonial history. Such choices related to rejecting certain universities should be seen as political acts. These acts, however, are not available to all, and for most students studying in the highest tariff universities is not an option they could consider at all.

Arbel and Shapira (2020a, 2020b) introduce a concept of ‘nudnik’ to capture consumers who are complaints focused and whose actions lead to various legal and reputational sanctions for businesses and corporations. Unlike the usual consumer activists who place their energy on pre-consumption choice making, a nudnik’s agency reflects in demanding that their expectations are met after consumption has taken place (Arbel & Shapira, 2020a). Furthermore, nudniks pursue action even in cases where most consumers remain passive; for them, to complain is a right thing to do even if it relates to something rather minor or does not result in direct individual benefit (Arbel & Shapira, 2020a, 2020b; Furth-Matzkin, 2021).

The idea of consumer as nudnik is an important avenue for exploring consumer agency in HE. It enables us to consider how the student as consumer position can become empowering after the student has entered or exited HE. This is particularly important in marketised universities where students are increasingly positioned as self-interested, focused on value for money and demanding of individual employment outcomes.

Explaining social inequalities in higher education (HE) participation is a highly relevant and popular research topic. In Germany, despite increasing participation in HE, the share of HE students from educationally advantaged parental homes has remained at a consistently high level since 2006 (Middendorff et al., 2017). Several studies show that these origin-specific inequalities in access to HE are largely due to students' educational decision-making (e.g. Daniel & Watermann, 2018; Becker & Hecken, 2007). The secondary effects of social origin according to Raymond Boudon (1974) make the largest explanatory contribution in these rational choice models, which include the social class differences in the valuation of study costs, study benefits and the probability of success in completing a degree (Schindler & Reimer, 2010). Components of social capital and cultural capital are often added as an auxiliary concept to factor analyses of educational decisions (e.g. Spangenberg et al., 2017; Lörz, 2012). Their direct effect on the intention to enrol in HE has not yet been sufficiently researched. This state of research is just one example of an international trend in quantitative education research that has emerged in recent years. Rational choice approaches are usually used to explain differences in social origin, supplemented by peripheral aspects of Pierre Bourdieu's (1986, 1977) theory of social reproduction (Hopf, 2014). In this way, Bourdieu's general concept is truncated and distorted when translated into empirical constructs (Lareau & Weininger, 2003; Sullivan, 2002). Apart from the continuing difficulty of translating Bourdieu's theoretical concepts into empirical evidence (Sullivan, 2001), there is no clear rationale for this preference for the rational choice paradigm. Both research paradigms have certain advantages and disadvantages (Vester, 2006) and it is first necessary to determine which one is appropriate for which research question. A comparative study of educational inequalities using both research traditions is still a research gap, which is why the topic is scientifically essential. The study presented in this article is based on the first wave of the 2015 "Studienberechtigtenpanel", a German panel study of school leavers with HE entrance qualifications. Linear regression analyses (N=25,195) were used to compare the theoretical assumptions of Boudon's rational educational choice with those of Bourdieu's theory of social space and capital. They confirm that both concepts, rational choice and social reproduction, cause social differences in study intention and can explain part of its variance. Overall, rational choice items have a higher explanatory contribution than social reproduction items, so that more than half of the effect of social origin on study intention can be explained by rational choice. Book-reading activity seems to be a suitable indicator of incorporated cultural capital, as it explains 5% of the variance in study intention. However, for an adequate measurement of the possession of cultural and social capital, it seems essential to complement the operationalisation with other factors. The findings suggest that rational choice constructs are products of complex socio-cultural processes that remain a black box in the study of educational inequalities. Future studies should work towards disentangling the primary and secondary effects of social origin by incorporating further aspects of socio-cultural process characteristics into models of rational educational choice. An adequate measurement of the mechanisms underlying educational inequalities allows for a more robust explanation and thus more precise policy implications for reducing social inequalities in access to HE.

High participation rates in higher education entail issues about its institutional diversification and stratification, since it is acknowledged that the expansion of higher education does not mean equal opportunities for all to access every institution (Marginson, 2016). The division between public and private or between universities and other types of higher institution (namely within binary systems), as well as the geographical region in which they are located, correspond to lines of stratification of institutions in terms of their social prestige and attributed quality (Bowl et al., 2018; Shavit, 2007; Teichler, 2008).

In Portugal, the policies of expansion of higher education were developed in the 70’s of the XX century, facing a scenario of late democratisation and low enrolment. A network of public organisations was established, covering the entire country, but carrying a policy of territorial differentiation — legislation determined that some regions had different types of organisations, others a mixed type and others only one type (the polytechnic) — which interacted with already existing territorial inequalities.

At the turn of the century a new political framework was introduced on top of this network, designated by some authors as “an agenda of modernisation” (Neave & Amaral, 2012; Nóvoa, 2018). New laws for the governing of institutions and for the teachers' careers were published by the national government and significantly changed the higher education landscape. These changes followed a global script (Gornitzka & Maassen, 2014) of neoliberalism and managerialism, which was appropriated differently by each country. In Portugal it meant a reduction of public financing, the implementation of a logic of cost-sharing and revenue diversification (Cerdeira, 2009) that exposed even more organisations to their institutional profile and territorial context.

These problems raise the question not only about the diversification of each organisation by itself, but also about the diversification within the system. The assumption that the changes following a global script, based on principles of neoliberalism and managerialism, must be confronted with research about the various possible interconnections between state, society and higher education in various national contexts, drives the proposed paper that aims at exploring the Portuguese case. The main question guiding the research is: do the policies of differentiation promote diverse organisations, or do they risk simply reproducing territorial inequalities?

This paper draws on an investigation of the social characteristics and experiences of commuter students at an elite Scottish university which traditionally has had a relatively low proportion of commuting students, but is now experiencing a significant increase in this group (Donnelly & Gamsu, 2018). The 'boarding school' model characterises elite higher education institutions in the UK and the US, but many European countries have a stronger tradition of local universities, where students live at home for the duration of their undergraduate education.

The central research question addressed in this paper is the following: In the context of an elite Scottish university, what are the social justice implications of commuting to university from home rather than living in university accommodation? Some recent literature on the lives of commuting students has argued the need for a more positive focus on students’ experience of mobility, focusing on the positives as well as the negatives aspects of liminality and mobility (Christie, 2007; Holton & Finn, 2020). These researchers argue that much work on university commuting tends to normalise the ‘boarding school’ aspects of traditional and elite higher education, instead of recognising and valuing the more local aspects of undergraduate higher education in newer universities where students are likely to live at home but still experience a range of mobilities. This paper argues that there is also a need to understand the experiences of commuting students at elite universities, where living in university accommodation continues to be a normative expectation, reflected in timetabling, emphasis on face to face teaching and access to university social events and support services. At our case study university, the decision to commute was not random but reflected and reinforced existing social divisions. In terms of these disproportionalities, we argue that it is important to understand the negative as well as the positive aspects of commuting students’ lives, as well as considering the mitigating actions which the university could take in order to improve commuters’ lives. Commuting students' suggestions for change included timetabling that reduced large gaps between lectures; more choice of tutorial groups; and the expectation that all lectures would be recorded and available on-line. Daytime social events that did not involve a drinking culture would help to engage this group of students and enable them to form stronger ties to the university. Additional questions arise in relation to the need for a more redistributive and progressive student funding system in Scotland, which would reduce the financial imperative to live at home for students from less affluent backgrounds (Riddell & Weedon, 2018).

Despite a more favourable initial representation of women in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, structural gender inequities manifest and unfold throughout the research academic life course (Silander et al. 2013). Such inequities are associated with unequal division of academic labour, with women performing significantly more academic service than men (Guarino & Borden, 2017); and disparate involvement in domestic and care work of male and female researchers (Cervia & Biancheri, 2017), leading to increased gender gaps in research production, leadership and collaboration, and, consequently, in academic promotion (Winslow & Davis, 2016).

Individual resources and characteristics, such as researchers’ seniority (position), field of study and gender, are among the strongest predictors of academic productivity and collaboration (Silander et al. 2013) there being a need to study all these factors in combination (Silander et al., 2013) from a longitudinal approach (Winslow and Davis, 2016).

In Latin America, the number of publications in the social sciences has been growing spectacularly over the last decade and especially in educational research, with the case of Chile being notorious (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2022). However, with few exceptions, the role of researchers' gender on this trend has not received significant attention in Chile or was studied more than a decade ago (Bernasconi, 2010).

This study investigates gendered patterns of research dropout, output, leadership and collaboration across Chilean educational researchers’ careers, using life course and social network approaches. The research question of this study is as follows: How do the effects of gender on research dropout, article publication, leadership and collaboration patterns manifest across the career life course of Chilean education researchers?

Framework

Female participation in science and research is not equal to that of men (Poczatková & Křibíková, 2017). Several studies have shown that female scientists publish less (Winslow & Davis, 2016), are less cited and tend to be first authors less frequently (UNESCO, 2021).

In examining longitudinal trends in participation and productivity, it was found in the USA that the increase in participation of women in science over the past 60 years was accompanied by an increase of gender differences in both research productivity and impact (Huang et al., 2020). This imbalance increased during the COVID pandemic having a negative impact on the number of women scientific publications (Pinho-Gomes et al., 2020).

Regarding authorship, ‘globally, women account for fewer than 30% of fractionalised authorships, whereas men represent slightly more than 70%. (Larivière et al., 2013, p. 212). Further, articles with female key authors are less frequently cited than articles with male key authors, which is also explained by the fact that female scientists publish less (UNESCO, 2021). Gender also plays a role in patterns of academic collaboration (Mamtani et. al, 2020). Overall, women tend to build less homophilic and more egalitarian networks than men (Araújo et al., 2017; Díaz-Faes et al., 2020).

Furthermore, women academics tend to abandon academia at an early stage (Gasser & Shaffer, 2014) without necessarily following a progressive development through subsequent stages. This discontinuity across the academic life course has given way to what has been called ‘leaky pipeline’ in academia and in which personal and institutional factors work together so as to push women away from pursuing an academic career. Some studies have focused on the leak that takes place between the early academic years in women’s trajectories and the later years although it is recognised that more research is needed (Light, 2013).

Under the European Union framework program for research and innovation, Horizon Europe for the years 2021–2027, having the "Gender Equality Plan" becomes inevitable and necessary for a scientific institution to be able to apply for funds.
As part of the Horizon Europe Programme, all universities and scientific institutions applying for funding for research projects have been obliged to prepare and implement Gender Equality Plans (in short: GEP) by 2022. Having a GEP has become an eligibility criterion in all Horizon Europe calls. Such Plans have been developed in many Polish public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), but the quality and methods of their implementation vary dramatically. The reality shows that there is often a discrepancy between the prepared strategic documents and the real level of changes in organizations that occur as a result of the implementation of the provisions of such documents. A special case is the GEP implementation process, due to the fact that this change is somehow "forced" by the conditions imposed by the European Commission.
The aim of the study is therefore to analyse and assess the possibility of introducing real changes in the organizational culture of Polish universities and scientific institutions in the field of gender equality on the basis of the quality of their GEPs. The main research problem is: Are real changes possible in the organizational culture of Polish public HEIs due to the introduction and systematic implementation of GEPs?
The most common problems of change leaders in organizations are: the incorrect assessment of possible disruptions in the implementation of change, unrealistic assessment of the ability to change among employees, and especially self-sustaining patterns of behaviour, thinking, feeling and work, including unconscious prejudices. In addition, there is always a natural resistance to change among staff, which results from specific elements of culture, and a certain scepticism resulting from previous (especially unsuccessful) attempts at change. Bearing in mind these "blind spots" of each organizational change, the following detailed research problems will be posed:
1) What is the quality of existing GEPs in Polish public HEIs?
2) How are goals and activities formulated? Are they possible to reach?
3) What potential barriers may occur in the process of implementing changes in the area of gender equality?

This paper presents the activities of the COST Action VOICES (CA21137, gendervoices.eu), a research network funded by the European Commission « to increase the visibility of inequalities faced by Young Researchers and Innovators (YRIs) from a gender perspective, and to promote a sustainable dialogue between YRIs and stakeholders in the research ecosystem at the systemic level (European & national policy-makers) and at the institutional level (senior researchers, academic managers) by creating a community of gender equality practitioners composed of various stakeholders (YRIs, independent researchers, academic managers, organizations) across Europe. » (MoU of VOICES). The Action is chaired by the presenter of the paper.

Besides more than 300 young researchers and senior researchers from all Europe, the network includes networks of stakeholders as EPWS (European Platform of Women Scientists) and Eurodoc (Platform of Young Researchers Associations across Europe) and is organised in six working groups. It organises an annual conference and an annual training school.

The paper will focus on the poor visibility of young researchers in institutional policies regarding equality and inclusion. If doctoral students are easy to track and benefit of specific policies at local and national level, post-doctoral students are more difficult to study because of the variety of status they have, the variety of career paths across disciplines and countries, and their high level of mobility. They are poorly represented in decision-making bodies and sometimes not even considered as full members of the staff because they are funded by another organisation, or not considered as researchers because they officially fill an administrative job in research support. The duration of this precarious status and the working conditions are also very variables from a case to the other. This can be summarised as a blind spot of gender equality policies. Nonetheless, many inequalities originate in early career stages and understanding how and why they develop would be crucial to design and implement effective policies to tackle them and to ensure more diversity in academic staff.

VOICES tries to document gender inequalities among young researchers, but also intersecting inequalities and existing policies to prevent them. It also gathers all stakeholders to promote new policies and will release a white book at the end of the Action in 2026.

A first conceptual framework was provided in the MoU of the Action, based on EU policy papers and recent literature (especially Murgia & Poggio 2019). This first draft is now challenged by the introduction of intersectionality including more dimensions than gender only. This new approach tends to challenge the institutional definition of "young researcher" and to promote new perspectives, notably a perspective from the experience of young researchers' lives telling their own stories instead of an institutional perspective based on the payroll. At the moment, VOICES framework is still in a process of co-creation across the deferent working groups under the coordination of Prof. Victoria Showunmi, leader of the intersectionality working group.

The epistemological, social and policy implications of the concept of lifelong learning have been widely scrutinized and recognized over the last twenty years (Field, Schmidt-Hertha, and Waxenegger 2015; Jarvis 2011; Maruyama 2020; Oliver 2020). Lifelong learning has been on policy agenda of the European Union for decades. In this perspective, the principles of human dignity, autonomy, active citizenship, personal self-attainment, social inclusion and employability linked to the lifelong learning have represented a strategic lever for the economic growth, the social stability and the redress of structural inequalities of racially minorized target of people (Knight 2008).

The differencing conceptualizations of lifelong learning (included the identification of the non-formal and informal learning) have led to a wide variety of validation and recognition practices for different target groups across the European area. At the same time, it is somewhat unclear which factors facilitate or inhibit the implementation of these processes. An aspect that has become more urgent due to the new immigration waves, as well as the recent spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Amidst growing concerns and unprecedented events, the pandemic significantly reduced learning opportunities for the most fragile and disadvantaged people, like migrants and refugees and clearly showed the inefficacy of existing practices in the university context (Thomas and Arday 2021).

While the literature includes a wide range of definitions of lifelong learning, as well as different practices of recognition and valorization of prior and informal learning each having different strategies for using evidence of learning, limited is a sound scientific evidence that these practices have a positive effect on target groups of individuals. The existing body of literature on recognition of migrants’ and refugees’ learning (i.e., qualifications and/or competencies elsewhere acquired) is generally considered extensive in terms of principles and practices (UNESCO 2019). However, despite the policy recognition of the importance of recognition practices, it has to be noted that this broad field of research shows scant effects (or sometimes ineffective implementations) in the European higher education contexts. If on the one hand, The Lisbon Recognition Convention states that all countries should develop procedures to assess whether refugees and displaced persons fulfill the relevant requirements for access to higher education or to employment activities, even in cases in which the qualifications cannot be proven through documentary evidence; on the other hand, higher education institutions have the autonomy to organize the inflow of third country nationals and to decide on the program of this group of lateral entrants. However, any structure in terms of recognition of qualifications and competences acquired elsewhere is lacking for third country nationals who wish to continue their studies in Europe after they have already made their way into higher education outside Europe. It is clear that there is no proper tool to enable universities to effectively scale up the qualifications and competences of third country nationals acquired elsewhere. Moreover, no systematic analysis has been conducted on evidence gathered from previous studies on recognition practices for migrant and refugee students at university.

The present study moves from the following research questions:

• How is realized the process of recognition of refugees’ and migrants’ previous learning across the EU higher education institutions?
• What are the main practices used for of recognition of refugees’ and migrants’ previous learning?
• What are the characteristics of the research studies exploring recognition of refugees’ and migrants’ previous learning?

In this perspective, thestudy aims to fill this gap providing an updated overview of validation and recognition practices for students with a migratory background within the EU area.

Globally, more than 100 million people are forced to live far from their homes, cities and nations due to war, persecution of various kind and climate change (UNHCR 2022). Out of this dramatic number, only 5% have access to higher education (UNHCR, 2021). Approximately 7 million people holding international protection are hosted in the EU Countries, people settled with the hope of finding security, continuing their studies and building a future (Harðardóttir & Jónsson, 2021). This situation was further exacerbated by the crisis in Ukraine. However, at least in Italy, little or no research is available on the refugee’s condition in higher education.

Against this framework and due to the lack of specific research in the area, the generative research question of this study seeks to examine the process of reception and inclusion of refugee students at the University of Bologna. More precisely, the study aims to investigate, describe, and analyze the measures taken and the services offered to ensure students with a background of forced migration the access to degree programs, fundings, and support activities, as well as the role played by various actors within the process. The purpose is to contribute to the creation of a common knowledge useful to improve the overall process and guide future developments and comparisons with other universities.
The overall analysis includes two sets of data, but this paper will discuss the empirical part:
National and regional regulations, University resolutions, decrees and agreements. This first data set has allowed to understand the key elements that characterize the reception of students with a history of forced migration.
Data generated based on qualitative empirical research, as described in the following section.
Firstly, it has been noted that the university ensures different ways of access, and the initiative Unibo for Refugees represents the general framework for all initiatives since 2015-2016. Through the adoption of facilitation of the enrollment process, the project makes it possible for asylum seekers to enroll in single courses and it funds scholarships (12) and study awards (10) for refugees and displaced students. Other opportunities are the CRUI grants funded by the Ministry of Home affair and the UNICORE project, in which the University collaborated with UNHCR to pilot the Italian model of university corridors. The university has also responded to the recent humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine accepting students from the second semester of 2021-2022. The measures have been taken in emergency circumstances and have led to differences in the reception processes.
From the analysis of the data it emerged that the University adopts channeled procedural facilitation measures in support of registration, funds scholarships and provides services and activities in cooperation with the regional institution for the right to study and other actors. The international desk staff successfully deals with technical enrollment aspects but lacks the resources to ensure in-process and post-graduation support.

This exploratory research sets out to identify characteristics of the transition undertaken by returning learners as they move away from their workplace and begin embarking on postgraduate study.

The findings stem from a preliminary study carried out at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic amid the many nationwide lockdowns. This data has contributed to the doctoral research currently being pursued by the author; implications for the main study are discussed.

The research questions:

1. What transitional experiences characterise the change from a workplace to higher education?

2. What are the implications of individual-level transitions on higher education organisations’ design of policy and practice?

Populations of learners are growing progressively diverse – with many individuals retreating to education later in life to fulfil various distinct goals. Despite this, little acknowledgment has been given to this transition in the literature. The lack of knowledge available in this area has led to inadequately prepared learners, as is evidenced in this study, as well as clusters of students unaware of the support available to them as they enter the new domain. Formerly, much of the literature has discussed the linear ladder of progression, the move from school or university to the workplace, with little coverage of those individuals shifting between but nonetheless progressing ‘back’ to education.

This research explores the accessibility of the learning experience, taking into account the remote nature of teaching and learning during the pandemic, along with the benefits and barriers that the students were acquainted with as they attempted acculturation and affiliation with their new role and context through a virtual learning environment.

Over the summer term of the 2020-21 academic year, a focus group of postgraduate students was held at a world-leading faculty of education in the UK. While this could only be carried out safely over a virtual platform at the time, the Zoom meeting proved to be a compassionate and comprehensive conversation. Through the exchange of narratives, the participants benchmarked and empathised with one another. The participants’ contributions weren’t short of social cues and gestures either, evidencing how they had adapted to the virtual space after a year of online learning. Bringing the participants together to discuss their experiences in this way provided them with a platform upon which they could reflect, and attempt, if only briefly, to combat the isolation.

To explore the data, a framework of transitions (Anderson, Goodman & Schlossberg, 2012; 2022), organizational culture (Handy, 1991; 1993), and identity was assembled; as the population crossed over into their new context, insight from these three pillars bridged together intellect from across the domains of practice. Schlossberg’s (1981) seminal work on transitions, in particular her model of 4 S’s, has facilitated the analysis of unique coping mechanisms employed by the participants. In discovering the characterisations of the participants’ ‘situations’, data was extracted to build a holistic illustration of the transition process that each returner encountered as they enrolled back into higher education.

Undertaking this move during the Covid-19 pandemic spurred on a series of unanticipated events for the participants, which required that they drew upon and further sourced assets and coping mechanisms to facilitate their acculturation and engagement with learning during this time.

The author has since carried out a thematic narrative analysis, following which a series of themes were created in order to retell the lived experiences of the individuals. Through this presentation, the author will be exploring the intricacies of the data, discussing the role that the various virtual environments played in the participants’ transitions, their experience of remote learning, digital pedagogies, and how this mobility contributed to their multi-membership during this unprecedented time.

Higher education is in ‘a time of profound, unrelenting change of a magnitude and scope unequalled since the Industrial Revolution’(Levine & Van Pelt, 2021, p. ix). This present ‘flux’ (Bebbington 2021), ‘in-between time’, or ‘interregnum,’ is challenging public universities’ traditional ways of fulfilling their social responsibilities to serve public good (Grant, 2021, p. 3). The term ‘public’ in ‘public good’ is seriously contentious (Clarke, Mills, Mockler, & Singh, 2022). Consequently, leading universities is highly complex and uncertain, but remains a major responsibility, rendered more fraught by a persistent habit of using the terms ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ interchangeably. We concur with Branson et al. (2020, 4-7) that ‘management’ is about ‘controlling and directing’ by following policies, rules, and prescribed procedures to be ‘publicly accountable’. In previous research conducted in five research intensive universities, we identified and described ‘deliberative leadership’ as both a sustainable approach in higher education, with potential also to be transformative, thus conceivably an asset also in promoting interdisciplinarity (Solbrekke & Sugrue, 2020).

Recognising that leadership is ‘complex, multilevel, and socially constructed’ (Xie 2019, 76), has led to the emergence of ‘adjectivalism’: ‘substituting an endless supply of successive candidate adjectives’ (Gronn 2009, p.18), including servant, spiritual, transformational, transactional, and transrelational, a list by no means exhaustive (Xie, 2019). A more recent inclusion has been ‘distributed’ (Youngs, 2017). Others advocate for sustainability (Rieg, Gatersleben, & Christie 2021), gender (van Helden, den Dulk, Steijn, & Vernooij 2021), and inclusion (Aboramadan, Dahleez, and Farao 2022). Still others have focused on the consequences of NPM for leading public universities (Barnett, 2011; Pinheiro, Geschwind, Hansen, & Pulkkinen, 2019). Internally, these dynamics have increased the extent of the academic ‘precariat’ (Fitzsimons, Henry, & O’ Neill 2021), while increasing external pressures post Bologna (1999) have resulted in demands for stronger management masquarading as leadership (Karseth & Solbrekke, 2016; Kohtamaki 2022). These and other external demands have spawned increasing ‘managerialism’ and ‘leaderism’ (vozhdism) (Brankovic 2018). In a more rudderless higher education landscape, there is advocacy too for greater attention to values, ‘integrity, fairness, kindness, excellence, sustainability, passion and reason,’ drawing attention to ‘what is important in life’ (Carney, 2021, pp. 4-17). Building on theories of ‘professional responsibility,’ Solbrekke and Englund (2011) indicate the tensions between external governance policies of professional work, including the work of public universities captured in the language and logic of ‘accountability’ and ‘responsibility’.

Into this cauldron of competing and conflicting pressures and demands, academic hospitality in tandem with interdisciplinarity are posited as a means of providing some situated certainty for securing a more sustainable higher education sector while preparing graduates more appropriately for work and society. Academic hospitality has different forms, identified as material (hosting conferences, collaborating with peers), epistemic (being open or hospitable to new ideas), linguistic (translating into other languages, being sensitive to the language of ‘other’ disciplines) and touristic (being welcoming and hospitable to fellow academics) (Phipps & Barnett, 2007). Additionally, interdisciplinarity has been presented as an elixir: “a solution to a series of contemporary problems, in particular the relations between science and society, the development of accountability and the need to foster innovation in the knowledge economy” (Barry, Born, & Weszkalnys, 2008, p. 21). This paper opens an exploratory study of the leadership challenges presented in higher education, when both interdisciplinarity and academic hospitality are inserted more systematically into its reform agenda. In doing so, it addresses the following research questions:

• How do interdisciplinary programme teams and leaders, and senior university leaders (with responsibility for promoting interdisciplinarity) talk about leading interdisciplinary education in their respective institutions?
• What insights do their accounts offer into institutional leadership and institutional transformation?

This proposal addresses the call to report research into the organizational transformation of higher-education institutes. Against the background of a global trend towards neoliberalism and managerialism, the government of China is reforming its higher-education policies in order to pursue managed opportunities for decentralization, giving increased autonomy at local level while maintaining overall control and oversight of the higher-education system as a whole. This leads to tensions in both policy and practice, in particular in Transnational Higher-Education (TNHE) partnerships, where responsibility for governance, management and administration is shared between Chinese and non-Chinese institutes. These are second-tier international institutes without independent legal status. TNHE institutes are of growing political, social and economic importance in China. They have developed in response to increasing demands for mass higher education, changing employment needs, and the political imperative in China to engage with research, scholarship and leadership development on a global scale. Our proposal therefore relates directly to the fourth and sixth thematic research fields set out by Network 22: policy, management and governance in higher education; and internationalization in higher education.

Responding to changing societal conditions, including technology, social disparities and geopolitical tensions, and crisis from climate change, a global pandemic, war, energy shortages and inflation, the higher education sectors across the countries need to be adaptive and transit towards a new forms of organizing for sustainable development which reaches beyond national borders(Altbach & de Wits, 2020; Marginson, 2020, p. 1; Mok, Xiong et al., 2020). In educational research this often involves Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) who have been generally considered significant contributors to the promotion of sustainability (Karatzoglou, 2013). TNHE partnership among diverse partners has exhibited its resilience against the impact of such societal uncertainties, and is recognized as an effective mode to pursue sustainable development in ecological, economic, and sociocultural perspectives. TNHE joint institutes have a significant physical presence in China. There are currently 137 Sino-foreign joint institutes, of which 25 are Sino-UK joint institutes. More such partnerships are expected to be established in the near future. However, transnational partnerships and governance in Sino-UK joint institutes are complex and developed in historical, geographic, social, political, economic and cultural contexts along its practices (Mizzi & Rocco 2013). There is a question about whether HE governance designed for UK, as an example, can fit well under other conditions outside the UK (specifically for this study, this is China where hierarchy is the general picture in higher education governance). Furthermore, the motivations and interests behind the transnational stakeholders are highly related to their geographical, economic, and political proximity to the institutions (Lawn and Lingard, 2002).

This research adopts Sino-foreign joint institutes as study case to explore, on one hand, how China’s TNHE decentralization governance of Sino-UK joint institutes is subject to regulatory interventions by the state and vulnerable to the changing global environment by studying interrelated stages of policy design from a macro perspective, as well as policy implementation from an institutional perspective; on the other hand, how China’s TNHE governance reforms influence the decision-making power allocated among different external stakeholders of oversea university as host education providers in Sino-foreign joint institutes. This raises the question of whether higher-education governance designed for the UK, for example, can be suited to conditions outside the UK. Specifically for this study, ‘outside the UK’ refers to China, where higher-education governance has traditionally followed a hierarchical model. That is the rationale for our research into the tensions, contestations and negotiations in the joint organisational governance and management of Sino-UK joint institutes and programmes.

Higher education (HE) has received considerable attention due to its social, economic, and cultural returns for societies and individuals (Jerrim & Vignoles, 2015; Lochner, 2020). Particularly the benefits for individuals are closely coupled with increased social cohesion and economic return for countries in the long run (Altbach, 2000; O’Sullivan et al., 2017). As a result, the number of individuals demanding HE has increased exponentially, which has pushed governments to address this demand and provide opportunities for all. Türkiye is one of those countries which adopted an aggressive policy to expand its HE capacity since 2005 (Özoğlu et al., 2016) with the motto of “one university in each province.” More concretely, right after the policy was initiated, in two years, 41 public universities were established (Özoğlu et al., 2016). This policy aimed to fill the gap between supply and demand while making HE accessible to all, regardless of their geographical location and socio-economic status. However, the policy was not limited to the acceleration of establishing new universities. It also covered increasing the quota of already established ones and making public universities totally free of tuition fees.

Two opposing arguments emerged concerning the outcomes of the expansion of HE. While the proponents have a more neoliberal lens that highlights the key roles of a qualified labor force for the market and their economic return, the opponents questioned and raised their concerns about the growth in the number of graduates and resulting diploma inflation and uncontrollable unemployment (Teichler, 2020). Türkiye’s expansion policy seems to embrace a more optimistic perspective as the government and the existing scholarship refer to these universities as tools for regional and economic development (Polat, 2017), while HE is considered a means for better and more prosperous living conditions by higher income and wellbeing (Ma et al., 2016).

The aim of promoting available and accessible HE to whoever aspires has been confirmed by the statistics offered by the Council of Higher Education (HEC, 2023). These statistics demonstrate that between 2006 and 2014, the gap between the number of students who applied for the university entrance examination (a competitive nationwide examination taken by around three million students) and the ones who enrolled was getting lower. However, this gap has started to expand since then and reached a peak in 2022 in the lifetime of the HE, which has caused a serious supply and demand imbalance in student applications and enrollments. Considering the relatively young population of the country, this situation may create an illusion that Türkiye needs further higher education institutions (HEIs) to address this increasing imbalance. Yet, the filled quota rates of the most recently founded HEIs are extremely low, which is even the case for the lucrative fields, including engineering (Kaya-Kaşıkcı, 2023). Thus, it can be concluded that there is no reception by the target groups despite the oversupply of available quotas. This contradiction in what the expansion policy promised and what was accomplished suggests a need for a closer look at the underlying factors that make HEIs more attractive and demanded.

Against this background, this study aims to investigate the predictive roles of key institutional-level variables for access to HE in Türkiye. Such an investigation aims to give insight into the extent to which the government’s expansion policy has accomplished its primary goal of increasing access to HE over time. With this purpose in mind, the study utilizes the year of foundation, geographical location, and the student-instructor ratio of the public universities as variables to document how well they predict the HE access measured in the form of the rate of used quota spanning from 2019 to 2021.

This research starts from the observation from previous research higher education (HE) ethnic-cultural minority (ECM) students with a migrant background and those from socio-economically vulnerable families experience many hurdles in their study progress (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Existing research mostly focuses on compulsory education, while the context of higher education remains underexplored (3, 7). This is noteworthy as the continuing massification and democratization of higher education is giving previously underserved populations more chances to enroll, making equity in higher education a contemporaneous and pressing issue (2). ECM students and students from lower socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds bring differing needs with them to HE institutions (HEI’s). Furthermore, SES and migration background are strongly intertwined in the Flemish context, with research indicating that 40% of the educational disadvantage among ECM students is explained by SES (8, 9).

The proposed research aims to uncover mechanisms for inclusive higher education, focusing on two vulnerable groups, specifically ECM and low-SES students. The analysis has the following research objectives: an in-depth analysis of how ECM students and those of vulnerable SES backgrounds navigate the possible barriers and supports in HE.

A theoretical framework that provides important insights for this research is the intersectionality perspective. This framework not only points to the recognition of barriers that may characterize a particular group, but also underlines the importance of "intersections" where characteristics intersect and lead to unique challenges and experiences (10). In addition to the intersectionality framework, I draw upon a set of relational concepts set out by Pierre Bourdieu (11, 12, 13): capital, field and habitus. According to Bourdieu (11), it is important to consider processes of exclusion within the social space in which they take place, which he calls a “field”. He regards fields as mutually different, distinct domains in which a person's life takes place, such as the educational field (14). Thinking in terms of a field implies thinking in terms of power dynamics between people (6, 11). Acquiring power requires capital that comprises not only economic (money), but also cultural (knowledge, skills, education) and social (relationships, networks) capital (11, 13). Cultural capital can be understood as knowledge of the norms, styles and conventions valued in a specific field, while social capital refers to relationships and contacts relevant to achieving goals, like study success (13).

To function well in a field, it is not only essential to have capital. Bourdieu (11, 12) links field to the concept of habitus, which explains how individuals internalize and reproduce social structures through their everyday actions and practices. It refers to having insight into the specific peculiarities of daily practice in a certain field (6). Since habitus, field and the different forms of capital are all intrinsically linked, they must also be considered in relational terms (4), as they achieve their full analytical vigour in conjunction with one another (14). Field, habitus and capital of traditional students entering university are more easily in harmony with one another, while this ideal interplay is rarely not as easily achieved the case for ECM and low-SES students (4).

Hence, in this study we explore which aspects of capital, habitus and field determine academic and social success or lack thereoff in higher education for ECM students from socio-economically vulnerable groups.

The research identifies potential approaches gathered from the in-depth understanding of the sociocultural factors and contextual information regarding the experiences and perspectives influencing inclusive education. Insights from the research can be used as a basis for the development of targeted, evidence-based policies and programs for more inclusive HE and increase support services and staff’s awareness of the specific needs of these students.

According to the Institute of International Education, international student (IS) numbers continue to be on the rise. Regarding the LGBTQIA community, individuals tend to wait to “come out” until they are in college (Beemyn, & Rankin, 2011). This can be due to moving to a location that may be more accepting or learning more about the LGBTQIA community (Beemyn, & Rankin, 2011). Coming to the United States (U.S.) provides IS with the opportunity to “develop and explore in a supportive environment” that may not be available in their home country (Valosik, 2015, p. 48).

Students experiment with various identities as they develop (Morgan et al., 2011). It may become difficult for individuals to navigate their identities because of the social and political climate at their institution (Morgan et al., 2011). Students that hold multiple intersecting identities may face forms of discrimination and oppression due to all of the identities that they hold (Harley et al., 2002). Individuals experience different forms of marginalization when they have multiple intersecting identities such as sexual, gender, and race (Kulick et al., 2017).

Additionally, like their domestic counterparts, IS are at risk of experiencing identity development issues that can cause distress and confusion. LGBTQIA IS on U.S. campuses experience compounded distress due to transitional difficulties and sexual identity development. It was found that four in five students who hold an identity of being an IS, Muslim, or LGBTQIA experience increased anxiety within their campus environment because of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Looking specifically at LGBTQIA IS and their interactions with a campus environment and experiences, the Unifying Model of Sexual Identity Development is the theoretical model used. This study focused on two research questions:

1. What are the experiences of LGBTQIA IS on college campuses in the United States?

2. How do LGBTQIA IS describe the impact student services have on their on-campus experiences?

The Unifying Model of Sexual Identity Development consists of two parallel elements of development: individual sexual identity development and social identity process (Dillon et al., 2011). Sexual identity development is “the individual and social processes by which persons acknowledge and define their sexual needs, values, sexual orientation, preferences for sexual activities, modes of sexual expression, and characteristics of sexual partners” (p. 657). Whether progressing through individual sexual identity development or the social identity process, sexual identity development consists of five statuses: compulsory heterosexuality, active exploration, diffusion, deepening and commitment, and synthesis. Compulsory heterosexuality applies to any individual that accepts the societal notion that heterosexuality is innate and adheres to cultural norms. Individuals within the compulsory heterosexuality status are likely to perceive others as heterosexual and to hold prejudices against individuals holding sexual minority identities. Active exploration is the “purposeful exploration, evaluation, or experimentation of one’s sexual needs, values orientation and/or preferences for activities, partner characteristics, or modes of sexual expression” (p. 660). Active exploration can be conducted through either cognitive or behavioral actions. It must, however, be a purposeful means of exploring sexual identity to meet an established goal. Diffusion is the “absence of commitment and of systematic exploration” (p. 662). There are two forms of diffusion: “diffused diffusion” and “carefree diffusion.” Carefree diffusion consists of having little concern about not having strong commitments. Diffused diffusion is associated with experiencing stress about not having commitments. Individuals within this status are experiencing an increase in their commitment to their identity. Within this status, individuals have an increased likelihood of questioning the societal construct of heterosexuality being the norm. Within the status of synthesis, individuals begin to align their identity and beliefs with their attitudes and behaviors (Dillon et al., 2011).

This paper analyses empirical data collected in the course of an interdisciplinary collaboration between an academic from the University of Oslo’s (UiO) Department of Education (author Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke, hereafter Tone) and an academic from the Faculty of Dentistry (author Anne Møystad, hereafter Anne). Although the two worked together on an academic development project often pursued in higher education – how to improve student supervision – rarer are the ways in which their collaboration grew to include research on how a profession (dentistry) contributes to a public good. Concerning public good, we draw on McLean and Walker (2012) who argue that professions and society have a contract, where in exchange for professional autonomy and prestige, a profession contributes to public good by sharing its expertise as a public service to the social system. We argue that what has led to Anne’s and Tone’s contribution to public good has been a collaboration marked by a high degree of academic hospitality. Their academic hospitality helped them overcome challenges as they arose in their ten-year (and counting) collaboration that has brought about a change in the dental faculty’s cultural values and approaches to teaching, learning, and assessment. The dental faculty now discusses, reflects on, and lives out ideals for teaching students how their work contributes to public good.

The work of Anne and Tone led a faculty to change fundamentally their supervision and assessment practices, to develop practices designed to ‘make’ students, rather than ‘break’ them, as they prepare for professional work. The case details how Tone and Anne, with painstaking attention to language and to hearing each voice at the Faculty of Dentistry, worked to align dental academics’ often widely varying views on their dentistry’s professional standards. They worked to make suitability assessment formative for dental students and academics alike, giving each ample information about whether students are suitable or not for professional work (Solbrekke & Møystad 2022). Because the assessment occurs over the course of each semester, students have opportunities to reflect on and then change their behaviors.

Our purpose is to dissect Anne’s and Tone’s collaboration to highlight its inner workings and then generalize about collaboration in interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary education. To analyze their collaboration, we draw heavily on the concept of a specific type of collaboration as enacted through academic hospitality (Phipps & Barnett, 2007). Academics engage in academic hospitality when colleagues: share ideas, methods, and concepts with each other, whether from the same or different disciplinary tribes (epistemological hospitality); provide resources to each other or students (material hospitality); welcome fellow academics who travel to new locations, whether across the globe or from across a campus (touristic hospitality); and use language to develop a shared repertoire to communicate across disciplines or educational environments, such as across clinical and non-clinical teachers. We also draw on Imperiale et al’s (2021) reconsideration of academic hospitality’s emphasis on conversations as the modes of engaging in academic hospitality, as well as their exploration of how academic hospitality is lived out in relationships.

Teamwork is now the basic work structure in most industries (Deepa & Seth, 2013), and teamwork skills are considered one of the most important soft skills needed (Burrus et al., 2013). Organisations need to actively and systematically support teams for their benefit as well as for the benefit of the members and the team (Wenger et al., 2002)

This paper presents findings from a practice-oriented research project which revolves around the collaboration in facilitator teams in the course Experts in Teamwork (EiT) at the Norwegian University of Technology and Sciences (NTNU). EiT is a compulsory master’s degree course at NTNU in which students develop interdisciplinary teamwork skills by collaborating to develop a project. EiT was developed to respond to the expressed need from business and industry for graduates with the enhanced ability and skills to work and collaborate in interdisciplinary teams (Sortland, 2015). Approximately 3,000 students take the course each year. Students are divided into classes of 30 students, called villages. In each village, a facilitator team, normally consisting of one teacher and two learning assistants, facilitates students’ learning. The teacher and the learning assistants have complementary roles in the village, with the teacher having the overall responsibility for the course and particularly the development of the project part. The learning assistant’s role is to facilitate the students` interdisciplinary teamwork processes and support the development of students’ collaboration skills

An educational unit at NTNU called the Experts in Teamwork Academic Section conducts training seminars for teachers and learning assistants – separately and together. One seminar, The Village, specifically focuses on the collaboration between the teachers and learning assistants in facilitator teams. This seminar is the facilitator team’s first meeting and ensures the facilitator team becomes acquainted, converses and plans how they want to work together in the course.

The notion that a proportion of the facilitator teams did not develop a collaborative practice that greatly supported the team in their tasks sparked the project and became the starting point of the practice-oriented research project. An important prerequisite supporting the development of students’ interdisciplinary collaboration skills is that the facilitator team has collaborative practice and uses each other’s complementary knowledge and roles.

The social learning theory of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) was chosen as a theoretical framework to develop the training seminars in this project and was used as a lens to enquire into facilitator teams’ experiences collaborating during the course. A community of practice is formed by people who share a domain of human activity and who engage in the process of collective learning within that domain. Wenger et al. (2002) propose a structural model with three constituent elements that define a community of practice as a social structure: a shared domain, a community and the practice they develop. The combination provides a social knowledge structure for developing and sharing knowledge and supports collaboration and developing a practice. To actively and systematically cultivate a community of practices to develop and strengthen will benefit the members and their organization (Wenger et al., 2002).

This paper aims to explore the following research questions:

What supports and challenges collaboration between teachers and learning assistants in the facilitator team at EiT?

In which ways can we support teams’ collaborative practice by using communities of practice as a theory and structural model?

Universities and colleges are expected to develop systems to value good teachers, promote their academic careers and raise the status of education (Ministry of Education, 2016). It is emphasized that the students become part of the collaboration, where it becomes a shared responsibility to seek ways to improve, by working together and thereby strengthening the quality work in the education sector (Ministry of Education, 2016). Quality in teacher education (TE) is characterized by a clear vision of good teaching, a clear connection between theory and practice and a practice that gives the opportunity to test and evaluate teaching (Hammernes & Klette, 2015). Several studies have been done on teacher collaboration in TE (Stoll & Louis, 2007), but so far there is little research examining the importance of teacher collaboration and professional learning among teacher educators. The purpose of this paper is to examine how collaboration between teacher educators takes place in TE in Norway, with the intention of studying teacher collaboration as an indicator of quality in TE programs. The paper is a part of a PhD-project, that seeks to develop knowledge about how different professional learning communities among teachers in TE contexts may contribute to increased quality of teacher educators` teaching work. The research question is: In what ways may professional learning communities among teachers potentially have an impact on quality work in teacher education, and in higher education more broadly?

The paper will explore the purpose and possibilities of strengthening professional learning in TE. Research in schools indicate that learning in professional communities gives individuals, groups, the whole organization, and the school system the opportunity to be involved in and influence learning over time (Aas, 2021), but professional learning can hardly be developed in a school without support from leaders at all levels. In today's debate about educational leadership and school development, the term professional learning is one of many concepts used to capture the distinctiveness of the school's collegial community (Aas, 2013). There seems to be broad international agreement that the term professional learning includes a group of people who work within a collective enterprise and who critically examine their own practice through systematic processes that deal with learning and development (Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006). Higher education institutions are characterized by self-governing departments, a strong subject orientation and identity among teachers, a strong degree of autonomy among teachers and a weak tradition of collaboration (Huffman et al., 2016; Stoll & Louis, 2007). Studies from upper secondary schools, show that it can be extra difficult to establish professional learning communities in these institutions, but that it can be possible to develop and organize collaborative arenas for teachers if school leaders support the work, and if the teachers, over time, have good conditions for knowledge development (Helstad, 2013).

The Norwegian strategy plan Teacher education 2025 – National strategy for quality and cooperation in teacher education (Ministry of Education, 2017), refers to research showing that more systematic collaboration between teachers in teacher education, and teachers with updated practical experience gives positive results. The students' experience of relevance and coherence in the education is important for them to be able to acquire knowledge and skills (Smeby and Heggen, 2012). The knowledge base we have about quality in higher education, and about teacher education more specifically, indicates that we need more knowledge about the importance of, and organization for collaboration between teacher educators. So far, development of professional learning communities has been highly described in schools, whereas professional learning among teacher educators needs to be further explored.

All networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

In Portugal, in recent years, there has been a growing attendance of students with disabilities in higher education (HE), which makes a deepening reflection on inclusive education (Antunes et al., 2020; DGES, 2023). This is a challenge, both for students with disabilities and teachers, non-teaching staff, colleagues and the institutions themselves. According to the data collected by the DGES (2023), in the academic year 2022/23, the overall number of students with disabilities enrolled in HE increased 35% compared to the previous academic year. The completion rates of HE courses for students with disabilities, however, do not follow this trend due to various challenges they face including contextual barriers, lack of resources and support materials, content inaccessibility issues, and attitude barriers (Pires, 2018). University support is typically delayed and palliative (Björnsdóttir, 2017; Mara, 2014). Thus, research and work in the area are urgent not only for students, but also for teachers, non-teaching staff and institutions. Some isolated initiatives seek to support teachers' actions and encourage students with disabilities in HE. This data evidence suggests that, for HE institutions to deliver the most inclusive solutions, it is vital to discuss the changes that must occur regarding students with disabilities.

The development of inclusive practices raises concrete questions in institutions and demands immediate answers. The arrival of students with disabilities has created challenging situations in the classroom, that sometimes don’t even reach the level of institutional discussions. On this path towards inclusive HE, developing and implementing effective policies that empower the academic community and society is crucial. As defined by the international convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UN, 2018), it is essential that everyone actively participate in this inclusive process, so that education and participation may become a reality for everyone. In this context, it is essential to give voice to students with disabilities to better understand the challenges they face in HE and to collect good inclusion practices in their institutions (Martins et al., 2022).

The formation of educational expectations is crucial for students’ future academic achievement and social mobility, but it depends on students’ capacity to sustain their subjective expectations, so that their expectation will truly motivate individual agency and self-efficacy. Social class is an important predictor factor influencing educational expectations in sociological and educational fields. The traditional literature has largely found a negative relationship between family social background and educational aspirations. This is mainly because Rational Action Theory suggests that individuals’ expectations are based on their family background and academic performance. Children from disadvantaged family tend to lower their educational expectations due to the pressure of college fees and their own academic level. However, a different voice is beginning to emerge in the current literature on educational expectations. It claims that disadvantaged classes do not have low expectations. This is mainly due to the specificity of cultural contexts and family climate. For example, a deprived home environment can sometimes also inspire greater resilience and educational aspirations for students.

Some articles that focus on academic behavior and performance of Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC), they find that disadvantaged families in most CHC countries or regions, including China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, tend to have higher educational expectations because of the perceived importance of education and schooling. Even when these students migrate to developed Western countries, these immigrant families have far higher educational expectations and academic standards than other immigrants from other countries or regions (e.g. Africa/Latin America/East Europe). More recently, some of the emerging literature has begun to explain this high expectation from a moralizing perspective, arguing that disadvantaged students treat high expectations as a mechanism or label for their own signaling actions. They believe that higher educational expectation is a good indicator for good students, son (or daughter), person.

The inner Confucian Heritage Culture also differs considerably in its examination systems, unique climate and educational system contexts compared to Western cultural contexts. Within the Confucian Heritage Culture, some researchers have used the concept of education fever to describe the popular pursuit of education success. In the Chinese context, extremely selection based on the national college entrance examination (Gaokao) is an important feature of higher education admissions, but the system has attracted both praise and disparagement. For example, people who fail in their studies or fail to get into university are perceived as losers. Although the reform of Chinese national college entrance examination is still underway, the basic feature of one-chance examination but for whole life are essentially unchanged.

Thus, based on data from 4781 senior high school graduates in a city in Guizhou, China, this study analysed the impact of SES on students’ educational expectations in the context of Chinese Gaokao system. In particular, it revealed the phenomenon of shrinking educational expectations of students with low socioeconomic status. These students were more likely to suffer from the failure of examination, which negatively affected their personal short-term and long-term educational expectations. In contrast, high socioeconomic status students hold stable educational expectations, because their families can serve as a strong support for future success, whether they failed in the examination.

Finally, this study addresses the relationship between the examination system, individual educational expectations, and socioeconomic status. It also dialectically discusses how the examination system became a socially revered culture in the Confucian Heritage Culture. The findings provide a reference for countries with similar examination systems and for researchers concerned with educational expectations and educational opportunities for low socioeconomic status groups.

This study provides insights into student engagement practices in Austrian higher education. By presenting three case studies, we, first, illustrate how student engagement practices vary across Austrian universities, and second, critically reflect upon how those practices can be enhanced to broaden access and inclusion for all.

Within the European context, student engagement is mainly conceptualised as part of the community engagement and civic involvement of universities. This understanding has emerged from several developments – such as the Bologna Process, the European Union’s funding and mobility programmes, widening participation of under-represented and vulnerable student groups – that have contributed to a shifting of the (self-)image of universities and facilitated an ongoing debate about universities’ role and responsibilities in society (Resch & Fellner, 2022). It is argued that universities should deliberately contribute to society by addressing specific needs through civic involvement of students and staff. Therefore, strengthening the civic engagement of students (e.g., via student engagement practices) is seen as an integral part of universities’ societal contribution (Fellner et al., 2022).

While there are multiple efforts to strengthen student engagement at the European level (e.g., via Erasmus+ projects dedicated to this topic, European networks and initiatives such as GUNI network (Global University Network for Innovation) or the European Association of Service-Learning in Higher Education), and at the national as well as institutional level (e.g., through Third Mission strategies), little research focuses on whether all student groups have access to student engagement practices and whether they are able to equally participate in and benefit from such practices. From a student equity perspective, asking such questions is highly relevant, since not all students stand to benefit equally from engagement, especially regarding extra-curricular activities (Winstone et al., 2022). Furthermore, student engagement is seen as crucial in terms of student retention and success (Tight, 2020).

Already a decade ago, scholars such as Butin (2010) argued that “[t]he overarching presumption is that the students doing the service-learning are white, sheltered, middle-class, single, without children, unindebted, and between the ages 18 and 24“ (p. 31). However, these characteristics do not apply (anymore) to the majority of the Austrian student population (Lessky & Unger, 2022). In addition, participating in student engagement activities often requires financial and time resources that might be limited to students from equity groups due to their responsibilities outside of university (e.g., term-time employment. caring obligations, etc.).

Our research tackles this concern by investigating the following research questions: (1) How are student engagement practices designed across the Austrian higher education sector?, and (2) How do these practices enable or hinder the participation of students from equity groups?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mental health affects how individuals feel, think, and respond to the world around them and includes "our emotional, psychological, and social well-being". An environment may also affect an individual's mental health, with environmental stressors potentially changing how an individual feels or responds to the world around them. This can also apply to the educational environment; students face several stressors entering into and progressing within the higher education environment - all of which can influence their mental health.
Almost half (41%) of postsecondary students identify as having diagnoses related to mental health and nearly one-third (29%) of postsecondary students were in mental health therapy/ counseling in the past year. Eisenberg et al. found that, as of fall 2021, of the more than 33,000 participants surveyed for the American College Health Association's National College Health Assessment, 27.4% were diagnosed with anxiety and 21.7% were diagnosed with depression. While there is an overall increase in students' poor mental health, Lipson et al. found that students from different ethnic and racial identities may be at a greater likelihood for mental health complications.
When navigating the higher education environment, Ennals et al. found that "knowing oneself and negotiating social spaces of educational settings are key processes" for students to improve their mental health -- factors that support their ability to thrive within the postsecondary environment. However, research indicates a negative relationship between poor mental health and postsecondary success. Poor mental health can impact a student's ability to persist within and graduate from higher education. Other postsecondary student characteristics may further complicate their mental health which may have subsequent challenges to their success within the higher education environment. A student's first-generation status11, military status, and other "non-traditional" (e.g., age, dependency status, etc.) characteristics may impact their perceived sense of belonging within the higher education community and subsequently impact their mental health. Additionally, the specific institutional environment and their academic performance within that postsecondary setting can also impact student mental health.
With the increase in student requests for mental health services and resources, there is a greater need to provide more comprehensive support services that better address student mental health needs. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the lives of many college students, negatively impacting their mental health and creating the need to seek support services. Though more students are seeking mental health services, institutions may not allocate appropriate funding to support the increased need for student mental health initiatives. Limited mental health support services may impact the overall experience and success of the student with mental health needs. As such, it is necessary to further explore student mental health and different student mental health patterns. The investigation of student mental health patterns in a nationally representative sample of students will provide insight into key student and institutional characteristics that can be associated with poor mental health and help postsecondary institutions with student advocacy efforts in the future.
The following research questions guided this project:
1. What are the descriptive differences in student and institutional characteristics based on variation in students’ perceived mental health over time?
2. To what extent do student and institutional characteristics account for varying students’ perceived mental health statuses?

There is increasing interest in social emotional factors related to learning for STEM graduate students. Furthermore, graduate students report growing levels of a sense of imposterism and other socio-emotional issues as a result of the COVID pandemic (Kee, 2021). Research has shown that socio-emotional well-being is associated with retention and academic achievement (Conley, 2015). Along with anxiety and stress that have been reported by graduate students, students also report experiencing imposter phenomenon (IP). IP has been described as feelings of incompetence or fraudulence and IP has been reported for both undergraduate and graduate students (Clance & Imes, 1978; Mak et al., 2019). Students experiencing IP report a fear of failure, associate achievement with luck, and these students tend to experience self-pressure, anxiety, and stress (Clance, 1985; Cozzarelli & Major, 1990). IP has not been well theorized, particularly for STEM fields, and there is limited research that examines the underlying factors. Here we examine imposterism within an expectancy value theory framework (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). Expectancy value theory considers an individual’s perceptions of social roles, activities, socializer’s beliefs, and prior experiences as factors that contribute to academic choices and career goals. These factors according to expectancy value theory influence self-schemata that includes identity and self-efficacy (Author). Here IP and expectancy value theory factors are examined to gain insight into graduate students’ perceptions of competence for STEM research.

Research Questions

What is the relationship between students’ reported perceptions of imposterism and

1) overall prior experiences in STEM?

2) experiences knowing people in STEM?

3) prior experiences participating in STEM-related experiences?

4) perceptions of socializers’ beliefs for them as STEM researchers?

5) expectation for success beliefs for STEM research?

Higher education has become central for the economic and social development of countries. As the systems expanded, an increasingly heterogeneous student body entered higher education and challenges related to quality and equity emerged (Unesco, 2021). Equity implies that social class, ethnicity, geographical location or other characteristics should not determine students’ access and success. Yet, different socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be reproduced in differentiated academic achievements, with the less privileged students having poorer grades or dropping out more frequently (Tavares et al, 2022). The difference in achievement and academic success between lower SES students and higher SES students has been widely addressed in the literature (Li & Carroll, 2019; Kahu & Nelson, 2018). These differences may be linked with the different mechanisms through which students acquire and use social capital and support (Mishra, 2020). As higher education is not an isolated experience, but rather entails persistent support and encouragement from family, peers, community, neighbourhood, and faculty), it is important to understand the extent to which some contextual factors might influence academic achievement.

Several studies have sought to understand the relationship between academic achievement and these contextual factors. An important contextual factor influencing the learning process and academic achievement is the pedagogical interaction between students. The impact of these interactions is known in the literature as ‘contagion’, ‘neighbourhood effects’ or ‘peer group effects’ (Ding & Lehrer 2007). It generally means that students’ academic achievement may be influenced by the characteristics and behaviours of their peers. Peer effects – the term used in this study – can therefore be defined as the impact of the study group on the learning environment and on the individual academic performance (Illanes, 2014; Guadalupe & Gonzalez-Gordon, 2022). The effects of peers seem larger for minority and disadvantaged students, with scarce access to resources or opportunities to develop the study habits needed to succeed. Peer group abilities have considerable positive effects on students’ academic performance as they tend to have higher academic achievement if the quality of their peer group is higher (Ding and Lehrer, 2006; Zimmerman 2003; Vandenberghe, 2002; Sacerdote, 2001). Many other studies have found that top ability peers had a positive influence on others’ outcomes (Griffith & Rask 2014; Sacerdote 2001; Carrell et al., 2009). The interaction between peers supports and motivates students to achieve a higher cognitive level and to find a personal meaning for learning (Dempsey, Halton, & Murphy, 2001).

This paper will focus on Brazilian higher education, a country where inequalities are still huge in various sectors of society. Despite affirmative actions and positive discrimination policies (Bertolin and McCowan, 2022), higher education remains a stratified system (elitist courses and courses which mostly attract disadvantaged students). Inequalities also persist in academic progression, retention and attainment. Focusing on the attainment of disadvantaged undergraduate students, this paper aims to examine whether these students might benefit from interaction with peers of high socioeconomic and cultural capital (Griffith & Rask 2014). For that purpose, the study compares the academic achievement of disadvantaged students in cohorts with different degrees of socioeconomic diversity: homogeneous cohorts of low SES students, in which peers are mainly from the same low socioeconomic and cultural background; heterogeneous cohorts, in which peers are both from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds; and homogeneous cohorts of high SES students, in which peers are mainly from a high socioeconomic and cultural background. The hypothesis to be tested in this study is that the academic achievement of underprivileged students who complete their studies tends to be better in cohorts in which the number of students with high sociocultural capital is higher.

Introduction

As a result of both an increase in the number and diversity of students and a wider and higher number of institutions offering a degree in higher education, much research has been focused on what has been called the ‘student voice’ although this concept has remained undertheorised (Felten et al., 2013; McLeod, 2011; Seale, 2009).

In her work, Seale (2009) pointed that much of the work around ‘student voice’ seemed to make implicit connections between students’ feedback and reflective practices and the improvement of teaching practices and curriculum development, there being an assumption that students’ feedback would produce changes in curricular and teaching practices as a consequence of staff and lecturers’ reflections on this feedback and a disposition to promote those changes.

The aim of this papaer is to examine the current state of the art of the concept of student voice in higher education. Through a systematic literature review, it aims to identify the main patterns of publication around this concept in the last three decades (1992-2021). In addition, it identifies the conceptualisations underpinning the concept, the main methodologies that have been used to investigate it, and the contexts in which student voice has been explored.

Student voice

McLeod provides an overview of the polysemic of the concept ‘voice’ which can be associated to “identity or agency, or even power… it can be the site of authentic reflection and insight or a radical source for counter narratives… can be a code word for representing difference, or connote a democratic politics of participation and inclusion, or be the expression of an essentialized group identity” (2011: 181).

In higher education, according to Seale (2009), conceptualisations about student voice are rather undeveloped. According to the author, ‘student voice’ is usually conceived as feedback provided by students which help lecturers and academic planners to reflect on and improve teaching practices and curricula. In turn, McLeod identifies four different types of uses of student voices in education: “(i) voice – as strategy (to achieve empowerment, transformation, equality); voice as-participation (in learning, in democratic processes); voice-as-right (to be heard, to have a say); and voice-as-difference (to promote inclusion, respect diversity, indicate equity)”. (2011: 181). These distinctions are especially important in a context of diversity, inclusion, respect of differences and in promoting participatory and democratic processes among young learners (McLeod, op. cit.).

Furthermore, itis worth to mention here five different types of roles that students’ voices can take on in higher education according to Seale (2009): (a) student as stakeholder; b) student as consumer; (c) student as teacher facilitator; d) student as evaluator or informant; and e) student as story-teller. According to the author, these roles are not necessarily explicit in the literature, and they frequently involve uneasy relationships between students, lecturers and higher education institutions since these last two usually deploy more power. Also a view of student voice as promoting transformation, participation and empowerment on the part of students and their learning has been mainly studied in relation to the concept of ‘pedagogical partnership’ and participation and transformation of students as learners (Cook-Sather et. Al., 2021). Such focus has left aside other dimensions and roles that students may play in higher education (for example, in governance (Klemencic, 2020), in activist initiatives, or in producing knowledge, among others).

The Danish educational system is associated with equal access to education and a high educational mobility, and all students are entitled to receive state grants during their education. As a part of the Danish educational system, the educational program for a Bachelor Degree in Social Education is characterized by a very high educational mobility which is reflected in the fact that the majority of the students come from lower economic background and have parents with low educational degrees. Despite the equality discourse circulating in the educational program for a Bachelor Degree in Social education, we are witnessing an uneven distribution of belonging and participation among the students. In the paper, we approach diversity as a question of belonging for all students. Following this, the longitudinal study is based on the research question: How to initiate more diverse educational settings and a more even distribution of belonging and participation?

The longitudinal study of students´ participation and belonging draws on studies that conceptualize students’ participation and processes of in/exclusion in educational settings as a matter of belonging. From other studies we know that educational and pedagogical practices that enhance students ´sense of belonging and ´connection´ are crucial for the diversity dimension within the educational setting (Thomas 2015). In youth studies, belonging refer to young peoples´ social and emotional work in relation to connect to people, places and issues that matters to them (Cuervo & Wyn 2014). The concept of belonging is a personal and intimate feeling as well as an orientation toward the surrounding places and social settings (Antonsich 2010). In relation to educational settings Gravett & Ajjawi (2021) emphasize belonging as a phenomenon intertwined with processes of identities and learning and as a phenomenon unfolding in relation to the academic content, the social relations in classroom and the places of campus.

The study is also grounded in poststructuralist and feminist gender and intersectionality studies (Butler 1993, Davies 2006, Staunæs 2003, Kofoed 2004, Wetherell 2008) that pay attention to how the construction of gendered, racialized, ethnicized, and classed differences and identities are being regulated and negotiated in the everyday life in different social settings – i.e., educational settings. Drawing on this theoretical perspective we think of students´ sense of belonging and participation as intertwined with social cultural categories - such as gender, ethnicity, and social background - and the way social categories intersect and affect each other in the educational setting and classroom culture. The interplay between different social categories and the impact on students´ belonging and participation is related to the cultural practices in classroom. Social categories work as ´tools´ by which students (and teachers) are dis/connecting to - and in- and excluding - other students and produces the criteria for what is recognized as ´appropriate student´ and ´inappropriate student´. In that sense social categories and the intersection between social categories affect differentiation and difference-producing practices in the classroom culture and the possibility for belonging and participation.

The presentation will present some preliminary findings based on the qualitative parts of the study conducted during the students first year at the Social Education Programme. The presentation is based on three themes: 1) group work, 2) student participation, 2) the framework and structures of the education.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a small-scale qualitative study examining racialised faculty and student experiences of internalised racism within Higher Education (HE) within UK. The paper specifically sheds light on experiences of internalised racism enacted by one BPoC member towards another member of the racialised community and how racialised staff and students make sense of such incidents. Whilst there is established and growing scholarship highlighting how racism in higher education is sustained within higher education through racist attitudes, policies, unwritten codes, and formal and informal practices that promote racial silence among faculty and students of colour (Bhopal, 2015), less is known about internalised racism within racialised groups. Race scholars researching higher education have examined the narratives of faculty and students of colour around microaggression (Pittman, 2010), bullying, citation politics (Ahmed, 2017), gatekeeping practices in knowledge production (Johnson and Joseph-Salisbury, 2018), implicit and explicit bias in course evaluations (Saul, 2013) and deliberately reducing employability and career progression by White management, faculty and/or students (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2017). However, there is an absence of narratives around internalised racism, frustration and anger affecting relationships between people of colour, whether between senior management and faculty, senior and junior faculty, faculty and students, or between students themselves.

Black feminists such as bell hooks (1995) and Lorde (1984) have highlighted that there has been a reluctance to research internalised racism within academia for fear of airing dirty laundry in public, which limits us in finding meaningful solutions. They suggest that we need to uncover more narratives from faculty and students of colour about how they experience internalised racism at various intersections, to gain a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which it feeds into the racist structures of neoliberal universities. Whilst Kohli (2014) has examined the narratives of Black, Latina and Asian American women students in teacher training programmes in the USA, and Harper (2007) has researched the accounts of African American students in US universities, there is a dearth of research within a British context. This research draws on critical feminist perspectives of intersectionality (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2017) to shed light on individual narratives of internalised racism between people of colour at various intersections within UK HE is setting. Hill Collins and Bilge (2017) posited that, combating the social injustice faced by women with hybrid identities was only possible if we understand their experiences of social inequality, which were constructed by an intersection of race, gender and class. The current research explores the experiences of racialised staff and students at the intersection of racism, AntiBlackness, patriarchy, ableism, and Islamophobia.

Following the death of George Floyd in the USA, the movement driven by the pressing question ‘why is my curriculum white’ was reignited. Student and public protests followed around the world and in the UK, Universities responded with a recognition of the need for further work in social justice, diversity and inclusion (Advance HE, 2021). The University of Leeds, similar to other universities (e.g. UCL and SOAS in London) initiated a programme to decolonise education. This project is a journey which demands that educators willingly question the origins of the knowledge they teach and identify the colonial legacies that are replicated within curriculum and pedagogy, as well as wider university structures and practices (https://studenteddev.leeds.ac.uk/developing-practice/decolonising/). Student and staff co-production of education as well as student voice are central to this journey. Educational research is one way we can collect this student voice and engage students in devising strategies and solutions for reform where this is needed. More specifically, research that illuminates the lived experiences and critical insights exemplified by those who have been silenced or ‘othered’ by these colonial legacies can support be understood as compassionate research. Here I am using ‘compassionate’ as described by Gabor Mate (2022) as ‘the compassion of curiosity and understanding’ which is based on the belief that there is a reason behind the ways people behave. It is driven by a desire to understand someone’s context and source of pain that could be behind the outcomes observed. Compassionate research, I argue, would engage in questions of curiosity and understanding. While this does not necessitate qualitative methods, such methods are well-suited to interpretivist and subjectivist paradigms (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). The argument presented in this paper is that a) the decolonising project involves educators having opportunities to critical analyse and reflect on their discipline, and b) one way to prompt this critical analysis is presenting data which explores the reasons behind some observed inequality.

The observed inequality considered in this project is the under-representation of Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) graduates in academic posts which tend to require post-graduate study (see https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/375735/ERI_Ethnic-Representation-Index.pdf). This Ignite presentation will share the coding framework used to analyse data collected through focus groups with recent undergraduate graduates from one University in the North of England. The framework is used to explore the potential for applying colonial theories in a critical analysis of the factors influencing BAME graduates’ academic career considerations.

Reasons for this racial and ethnic disparity may relate to practical reasons that the academic track is not appealing. Or one might simply argue that the pathway is not of interest and other options presented themselves. This project, however, explores specifically the ways in which racial ideology may be considered a mechanism behind these patterns (van dijk, 1998). This ideology emerged as a tool of colonial powers, separating ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Bhabha, 1984) and has implicitly shaped various structures, policies and practices within higher education and the various disciplines represented therein. The project therefore explores BAME student perceptions and experiences of various structures, policies and practices in HE and explores ways this could implicitly inform post-graduation education and career decision-making. As post-graduate study typically involves research, this project will ask critical questions about how knowledge is constructed and the explore traces left by colonial legacies on the meaning and practice of research. The project proposes that such colonial legacies may be implicit barriers to the pursuit of an academic path.