Conference Agenda

While universities have always been concerned with producing graduates with the necessary skills and knowledge to enter the labour market, a discourse of employability now pervades the higher education sector of many Western nations (Bathmaker, 2021; Boden & Nedeva, 2010; Healy, Hammer, & McIlveen, 2022; Succi & Canovi, 2020; Tomlinson, 2012). As part of the neoliberalisation and globalisation of higher education, performance matters more than ever, and universities are expected to not only develop the next generation of future workers, but ensure they are employable subjects.

Such discourses are increasingly controlled by the state, evidenced in governments developing employability agendas, identifying what constitutes employability traits and attributes, and measuring institutional performance vis-à-vis ‘employability’ (Boden & Nedeva, 2010). As a case in point, in Australia, the federal government’s Job-ready Graduates Package released in 2020 explicitly embraced employability within its new performance-based funding model for universities, aiming to encourage participation in degrees based on perceived employer demand (Department of Education, 2021) and simultaneously fixating on graduate employment outcomes as the largest determinant of institutional funding. These changes are significant as they represent the first time the federal government has attempted to influence course choice (Norton, 2020), reducing the cost of degrees deemed to be of ‘national priority’ and increasing fees in areas believed to not directly benefit the labour market, particularly in the arts and humanities. In so doing, these changes reflect the ongoing transformation of universities from social institutions into businesses (Connell, 2019), similarly seen in policy narratives that primarily position students as ‘future workers’ (Brooks, 2018; Brooks, Gupta, & Jayadeva, 2021).

While what actually constitutes ‘employability’ remains a key area of debate, in this paper we join others in maintaining that employability can now be seen as a legitimising discourse (Allen, Quinn, Hollingworth, & Rose, 2013; Boden & Nedeva, 2010), constructing and reinforcing particular kinds of student identities, practices, and actions. That is, students must ‘better themselves’ in order to become ‘employable subjects’ and ‘ideal workers’ (Allen et al., 2013; Bathmaker, 2021), so much so that it “no longer enough just to be a graduate, but instead [one must now be] an employable graduate” (Tomlinson, 2012, p. 415; emphasis in original). In this way, employability agendas arguably involve a form of self-management, self-maximisation, and development of an enterprising self (Bathmaker, 2021; Korhonen, Siivonen, Isopahkala-Bouret, Mutanen, & Komulainen, 2023), with students needing to develop an identity formed around the ‘employable graduate’ – to be seen as a person who is worthy of being employed and who can succeed in the competitive and increasingly precarious labour market.

Framed within this context, this paper investigates how current university students construct themselves as employable subjects, with a particular focus on how the legitimising discourse of employability is negotiated, adopted, transformed or rejected. Given the recent introduction of the Job-ready Graduates reforms within Australian higher education, our aim was to examine the formation of student subjectivities against renewed efforts to both enforce and enable employability, with the reforms presenting a unique opportunity to understand how university students discursively construct their identity against a pervasive systemic culture which now aims to make students ‘job ready.’

In 2022, interviews were conducted with 44 students at one Australian public university which had implemented a new strategic policy of ‘Work-ready Students’ as part of the Job-ready Graduates reforms. Framed through a post-structuralist lens, this paper draws on Foucault’s (1970) theorisation of membership categorisation, normalisation and naturalisation to examine how students occupy particular ways of being in the academy against norms of the ‘employable student,’ analysing student’s talk about their post-university aspirations and their negotiation of the university’s employability agenda.

Higher education is constantly facing new challenges and, apart from fulfilling its intellectual role, has to meet broader economic and societal expectations, which makes it increasingly important to educate professionals with specific knowledge who are most likely to meet the requirements of the labor market (Castro-Levy 2001, Hurtado 2007, Teichler 2011). Adaptation to these challenges and changes is reflected in policy decisions that continue to call upon higher education institutions to shape their curriculum and qualification offer to meet more directly the skills needs of a knowledge economy (Elliott 2017). The rapid development of technology and the digital world, as well as major changes coming with globalization, have significantly transformed the labor market, the content of the tasks to be performed and the expectations of employers (Pogátsnik 2019). Doing work requiring non-cognitive skills have not been automated, i.e. tasks and processes that require interpersonal skills, high levels of cooperation or emotional intelligence. Robotization and artificial intelligence do not affect soft skills. In the labor market, non-cognitive (soft) skills are particularly important alongside cognitive abilities and skills, the so-called hard skills. As the share of non-automatable work tasks increases, the demand for soft skills also grows (Nagy 2022). Globalization and digitalization have also brought about major changes in the labor market, transforming the content of jobs and employers’ demands. Continuous changes in the labor market and technological development in the 21^st century also affects higher education institutions, and the literature suggests that competence development based on labor market needs will play an increasingly important role. In the 21^st century, the need to develop competences has gained significance. Most education systems equip graduates with the cognitive skills needed to enter the world of work. However, it is soft skills that enable young graduates to become potential employees (Harrison 2017, Pogátsnik 2019).

In Hungary, there is a characteristic contradiction: while one of the tasks of higher education is to prepare students for work, higher education institutions often transmit a culture that is different from that of workplaces (Györgyi 2012). Whereas internationally, increasing emphasis is laid on improving the quality of education and on the real function of teaching and learning, Hungarian higher education is characterized by a teacher- and theory-centered approach, which means that knowledge is imparted through lectures and teacher presentations, but these methods do not allow for the development of non-cognitive, soft skills (Kovács 2016). Higher education curricula are still not reflective enough of labor market needs, and the skills acquired in education are far removed from what is needed in work situations (Óbuda University 2018, STEM-Hungary report). Employers’ experience is that it is not enough for new entrants to have adequate qualifications, but that they also need to have soft skills that enable them to adapt to labor market changes (Ailer 2017). While in international practice, many projects focus on the match between competences on the supply and demand side of the labor market (SAKE25, OntoHR26), in Hungary there is no common framework for measuring competences (Balogh 2014).

The gap between labor market needs and the competences possessed by graduates can be reduced through continuous measurement, student and employer feedback and the identification of relevant skills. The aim of our study is to explore the role of higher education in preparing students for the labor market and to examine how it helps students to acquire the skills that are indispensable in the 21^st century. Furthermore, our research investigates graduates’ competences and the extent to which their skills are in alignment with the requirements of the workplace.

The importance of studying elite education lies in that social classes are always relational and need to be contextualized to wider social hierarchies. Therefore, to understand educational inequalities we also need research on how privilege and power are (re-)produced in education (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Privilege can be understood referring to individuals but also to being part of an exclusive elite school. Previous studies on elite education have illustrated how the school as an institution and its position within the field of education shapes students’ orientations towards their future education and beyond (forber & Lingard, 2915; Maxwell and Aggleton, 2014). Gaztambide-Fernández and Maudlin (2015, p.62) have described this as envisioning, where the “sense of entitlement is then projected into the future through the ability to envision elite futures” and when the students apply to an elite school, they already need to be able to envision themselves as students who can fit that particular school. In this presentation we use ethnographic research data to explore (re)production of privilege in Finnish elite general upper secondary school and its relation to admission-seeking to higher education. More specifically we ask: how elite status is being (re-)produced and maintained (1) in the everyday life of an elite general upper secondary school and (2) in relation to admission-seeking to higher education.

Elite is not typically linked to Nordic education, known for its egalitarian ideals and tuition free public education. Yet, there are schools that are known as elite general upper secondary schools in Finland. The students who wish to continue to general upper secondary education can choose the school they want to apply. Students are then selected based on their comprehensive education grades and the general upper secondary schools that have the highest entrance limits nationwide are the ones referred as elite general upper secondary schools (see Magnusdottir & Kosunen, 2022; Laaksonen & Niemi, 2022; Tervonen, et. al. 2018). As the elite status is constructed on academic achievement rather than on economic means, previous research conducted in the Nordic context has described institutions like this as “meritocratic elite schools” (see e.g., Halvorsen, 2021). However, previous research exploring elite education has also illustrated how the discourse on meritocracy can be used to blur social distinctions and explain privileged positions within education (e.g. Törnqvist, 2021; Kahn & Jerolmac, 2013). Bourdieu (1998; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) engaged in the deconstruction of the meritocratic myth of social mobility to illuminate how education is not a neutral field, but as a field that consists of several options for different people (Skeggs, 2013). The starting point for this presentation is how social inequalities do not lie only in the processes of (non-)access to higher education, but also in the patterns of how students’ educational paths are formulated and, in admission-seeking strategies that are available for them when making higher education choices. Rather than understanding the application process to higher education as an equal, similar process for every applicant, it can be seen as a distinctive process, where students have very different admission-seeking strategies available for them.

Recent economic, social and educational changes in contemporary societies have had a considerable impact on how the relationship between the worlds of education and training and work is perceived. In the case of European Higher Education, which in recent years has become massified and, to a certain extent, democratised, it is interesting to investigate to what extent educational and labour pathways are conditioned by the sociocultural conditions of origin. It has been increasingly evidenced that having a higher education degree is no longer a sufficient condition for securing a job. Labour market changes occurred over the last few years, largely as a result of technological development and globalization, have made job perspectives less defined and predictable over time, whilst the transitions between jobs tend to be more frequent and difficult (Savickas, 2013). Young adults who have just entered the labour market, even if graduates, are the ones who suffer the most, with higher unemployment rates (ILO, 2017). In this context, additional forms of capital, which go beyond generic skills, have been identified as important predictors of employability, namely those related to social background, gender and ethnicity (Reay et al., 2006; Tomlinson, 2017). This may give rise to social inequalities, resulting from different educational and cultural biographies that will affect dispositions towards employability (Tomlinson, 2017).

Taking a comprehensive definition of employability, that not only focuses on individual attributes, but that considers it as resulting from the dynamic and evolving interactions between governmental and educational policies, organizational strategy, individual characteristics, and the social, economical, cultural and technological context (Guilbert, Bernaud, Gouvernet & Rossier, 2016), this study will explore the relationship between contextual factors, namely social capital, and career resources of higher education students. This proposal is grounded on the framework for career success (Hirschi et al., 2018). Taking the concepts of capital, Hirschi, Nagy, Baumeler, Johnston and Spurk (2018) propose, on the basis of a meta-analytic research, a comprehensive framework to assess key predictors of career success. Four types of career resources integrate this model: (i) human capital resources – referring to knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics considered relevant to achieve performance expectation for an occupation; (ii) social capital resources – including resources external to the individual, such as networks, mentors, and social support; (iii) psychological resources – integrating positive psychological traits and states; and (iv) career identity resources - referring to conscious awareness of oneself as worker and to the subjective meanings linked with the professional role. Career resources are here defined as “anything that helps an individual attain his or her career goals” (p. 4, Hirschi et al., 2018). Despite the positive and promising results of this theoretical framework, there is not much empirical research on this yet. In this scope, one of the open questions that this study will address is: how do career resources are affected by the social conditions of origin, namely, social class, gender and participation in extracurricular activities?

Student employment has become a widespread phenomenon across many European countries and a common practice among university students in general (Broadbridge and Swanson 2005; Darolia 2014; König 2018). According to EUROSTUDENT data, the percentage of working university students in European countries has risen to about 70% in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Germany.

A highly relevant question for scholars and policy makers in this context is how working while studying affects student retention. Previous research on term-time employment in the U.S. (Darolia 2014), Australia (Hall 2010), New Zealand (Richardson et al. 2013), the UK (Callender 2008) and Germany (Bacher and Wetzelhütter 2014) has shown that time-consuming student employment (i.e. more than 10 hours per week) has an overall negative effect on academic success with regard to final year marks, degree results or credits, and that they are more likely to struggle with combining work and study (Broadbridge and Swanson 2005).

As far as the subjective well-being of working students is concerned, studies have shown that students entering time-consuming employment are more likely to report increased likelihood of illness and sleeping problems (Broadbridge and Swanson 2006; Robotham 2013). Previous research also indicates that less privileged students are more likely to be affected negatively by term-time employment (Darolia 2014; König 2018). An example for such a student group are students who are the first in their families to attend university (i.e. First-in-Family students).

However, little attention has been paid to explore the role of term-time employment in First-in-Family students’ lives and its link to student retention. Qualitative in-depth analyses are needed to illuminate the complex role of term-time employment within the everyday lives of students. By drawing on narrative interviews with 14 First-in-Family students from three universities in Austria, I investigate the following research question: How does term-time employment shape the everyday lives of First-in-Family students and how is it related to student retention?

From a theoretical perspective, I draw on the conduct of everyday life concept (Schraube & Højholt 2016) that is a subject-oriented sociological concept which attempts to grasp society from the everyday lives of people performing actions in the various areas of their lives. Its basic premise is that people have to tackle all of the different – in some cases contradictory – demands that they encounter in the various spheres of everyday life (ebd.).

In a recent research report that investigated the offering of work experience and placements in higher education institutions in the UK, it became clear that the last decade has seen a diversification of types of work experience options offered to students, and an expansion throughout the sector (Atfield et al., 2021). In the particular field of education, workplace experience is now an integral element of many degrees, both in the UK and beyond (Holman and Richardson, 2020).

This expansion and focus on creating opportunities for students to take a short-term placement, a full year sandwich placement or a simulated placement experience (Atfield et al., 2021) follows the longstanding narrative in employability related literature of the widespread benefits of placements (inter alia, Dalrymple et al., 2021). Indeed, literature has highlighted benefits in the development of generic skills and personal attributes (Wilton, 2012), transferable skills (Jackson, 2016), and the better access to work communities, their tools (Stanley, 2013), language and culture (Gracia, 2010). Literature has also suggested that placement experiences allow students to improved academic results (Kettis et al., 2013) and explore career choices (Mello et al., 2021). Overall, research seems almost unanimous in the positive impact that placements will have for undergraduates’ studies and future transition into work.

However, one limitation in the literature just presented is the focus on undergraduates that are using placements as their first experience in the world of work. Such limitation has also been highlighted by Lavender (2020) in relation to employability definitions, and the overall focus on a skills-centered approach which is also visible in the literature on the benefits of placements (e.g., Wilton, 2012; Jackson, 2016).

The clear issue in this argument is that mature students, defined by the Office for Students (2018, p.1) as “those aged 21 or over at the time of starting their course”, often enter higher education with previous professional experience, and therefore might not require or benefit from an introduction to a workplace. For example, in a recent study with Australian undergraduates, Jackson and Tomlinson (2022) reported that mature students felt they had better career networks than other students. These findings highlight the international scope of the issue and seem to reinforce the argument that placements and overall work experiences might have a different value for mature students.

Embedded into a wider study on second year students’ experiences of a short-term placement within an Education Studies BA in the UK, questions on the impact to mature students soon emerged. Although the following research questions directed the wider research project, this presentation will share the findings from research question 1, with a specific focus on mature students.

1. How do students experience the transition between university and the workplace in their short-term placements?
   1. What are the perceived benefits and challenges experienced by the students in the transition between university and the workplace, in short-term work-placements?
   2. How do students contextualize their placement experiences regarding notions of employability?
   3. To what extent do students develop a professional identity in their short-term placements?
   4. To what extent do students frame their placements as mediational transitions (i.e. “as if” experiences)?
   5. What are students’ experiences of the placement module as a mediator in the transition between university and a workplace?
      1. To what extent do the module’s activities support or constraint students’ transitions between university and the workplace?

Planning one’s own career is one of the major decisions in life and deciding for a study subject narrows the options for future professions dramatically. While some students have clear career prospects already during high school, others are quite uncertain and rather tend to explore possible pathways. However, Gottfredson (2005) describes that students quickly realize that it is not possible, nor necessary, to explore a broad range of career choices. According to her theory, most occupational aspirations are effortlessly eliminated as unacceptable options while a small set of preferred occupations are carefully weighed but, eventually, all but one will be abandoned. The decision to end the search for alternatives and begin focusing on the establishment of a career is a sign of career maturity according to Super’s (1963) career development theory. Students who do not bring their career exploration to a timely end, particularly during university, are more likely to show a lower commitment to their academic careers and a higher likelihood of dropping out (Perry, Cabrera & Vogt, 1999).

The phenomenon of unsuccessful career exploration is reflected by the substantial number of university students who claim to have false study expectations as a major reason for their decision to end their studies, along with other major reasons such as a lack of study interest and a desire for doing practical work (Heublein et al., 2010; Heublein et al., 2017; Mouton, Zhang & Ertl, 2020). This phenomenon is cited by Klein and Stocké (2016) as indirect evidence of information deficits at the beginning of studies amongst German students. Information deficits have been recognized as a factor that leads to early dropout in the higher education for more than two decades (Schindler, 1997). From a broader European perspective, policy makers have recognized the importance of supporting young adolescents’ career exploration by providing career guidance interventions for students at-risk of dropping out, for example in Ireland and other Scandinavian countries (OECD/European Communities, 2004, p. 18).

However, the findings concerning information deficit’s effects on study outcomes are inconsistent (Klein & Stocké, 2016). Here it should be noted that “information deficit” is used interchangeably with “level of informedness” (Heine et al., 2010; Heublein et al., 2017; Bluthmann, Thiel & Wolfgramm, 2011). Amongst the few studies that investigated informedness, Heublein et al (2010) found no clear differences between the percentage of poorly informed dropouts as compared to graduates who were poorly informed. Conversely, Blüthmann et al. (2011) presented a structural equation model with multiple significant but indirect pathways between informedness and the intention to dropout, such as study conditions, individual study difficulties and interest in their study choice.

To better understand information deficits after the start of university, this study seeks to develop a new operationalization for this construct by grouping students based on their level of informedness and evaluate this operationalization through the career maturity perspective (Super, 1963). This study also aims to find construct validity for informedness groups as an indicator for information deficit. Finally, this study aims to investigate the differences in the level of informedness amongst various study fields and gender.

To address this, our study aims at investigating various theoretically-derived indicators of information deficit and informedness to assist in producing a construct validity for the newly generated informedness groups. This will then be analyzed in through the lens of career maturity. Two research questions will provide context for our analysis of the informedness groups.

Research question 1: How far can the measure of informedness groups be validated by theoretically-derived indicators of information deficit?

Research question 2: Are there differences between genders and study subjects’ areas on their levels of informedness?

This paper reconstructs the relevance and significance of different institutional levels in higher education for educational strategies of socially privileged/upper-class students in a case study in Germany against the backdrop of institutional change in the higher education system.

Whereas in other countries mechanisms of social reproduction in higher education are clearly embedded on the level of universities (e.g. elite universities) due to their pronounced vertical hierarchisation, this is less clear in Germany with its historical egalitarian higher education system. Although domestic policies and developments like the excellence initiative try to introduce stronger vertical stratification to enhance international competitiveness and visibility of German universities, the German higher education system is still considered relatively equal on the university level in comparison with other higher education systems (Deppe et al.2015)

Beyond the literature review on how the current German higher education system changes towards stronger stratification, we also base our empirical study on the theoretical framework of educational strategies, that we defined in our previous work. This draws heavily on Bourdieusian notion of implicit and explicit strategic behaviour and investment of habitus and economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984, 1990). Students from socially privileged background which we define as upper class students, bring a significant different set of capital configurations and habitus to the field of higher education, which usually remains invisible, because of their fit to the logic and rules higher education. However, changes on the macro level like massification and institutional stratification demand reconfigurations and repositioning of privileged students if they want to maintain their advantageous position.

Based on our earlier conceptualisation of educational strategies among upper-class students, we aiming to relate this concept stronger to the institutional changes on the meso level of higher education. We suspect that the horizontal and vertical differentiation on the meso level is mirrored on the micro level of student’s strategy and distinction work. To reconstruct this possible connection is the aim of our empirical inquiry. (For reasons of anonymity, references are omitted.)

Individual workers’ social skills or soft skills, including leadership, communication, and other interpersonal skills, play a pivotal role in labour market outcomes and are valued by employers. Competencies related to leadership are key attributes for employers. Beyond a strong grade point average, leadership roles and participation in extra-curricular activities are important factors in an employer’s decision to hire one candidate over another. Thus, considering the value that leadership experience provides not only for businesses, organisations, and industries, but also for more beneficial labour market outcomes for individuals, such as a faster transition from education to work or higher wages and earnings, higher education makes for an ideal setting for competency development. It also highlights the responsibility of training the professional and community leaders of tomorrow.

The development of college students as leaders has been one of the main purposes of higher education. Universities and colleges set the interest in student leadership as a priority area and add the core concept of leadership and relevant skills for quality education into their criteria. A growing number of leadership programmes have emerged at institutions ranging from one-day workshops to stand-alone programmes and full degree-granting programmes. Students can also participate in extra-curricular activities and groups such as student organisations, campus publications, student governments, fraternity or sororities, intercollegiate or intramural sports, or academic groups/honour societies, and they can also hold formal positions and play a leadership role. Compared with such activities and curriculum programmes, being a positional leader typically brings much more autonomy and authority to students and helps them develop competences (not only leadership) more effectively in real situations. Hence, it is easier for employers and researchers to identify student leadership experiences by checking the roles they have played.

In the context of China, employers in governmental organisations, public institutions, state-owned enterprises, and many private businesses (especially in managerial positions) prefer students with experience in leadership and formal positions. They usually set their preference clear in recruitment advertisements and give priority to student leaders. There are several student organisations in Chinese universities and colleges, which are important elements of campus culture. Being a positional leader in student organisations is the most frequent type of route that college students follow in China. The government has noted the importance of leadership education and asked higher education institutions to provide more support and training for student leaders.

Students, employers, and HEIs have been in consensus for student leadership to have a positive influence on the labour market in the global context. However, few empirical results can clearly tell us how much wage premium student leadership experience can bring to students’ first job, and the hints for the relationship between prior leadership positions and successful employment. While the importance of student leadership experience is a commonly agreed concept, the effectiveness of this experience on individual performance in the labour market is unclear. Thus, based on a Chinese college undergraduate panel survey, our main purpose is to explore the impact of formal leader positions in colleges on individuals’ career prospects by estimating the wage premium of student leader experience. Our secondary purpose is to link the factors that affect being a student leader and the outcomes of this in the labour market and discuss the set of skills to explain the influence of leadership experience. We believe that our analyses of these two points will contribute to students, parents, and HEIs by clarifying the role of serving as a student leader in colleges and helping students transition from higher education to the labour market.

Higher Education (HE) students are increasingly aware of the changes in the labour market, marked by instability, the rise of new occupations, jobs, and functions, and the restructuring or disappearance of others, driven by digital advances, new social interaction patterns, and organizations’ demands, which highlight the need for new employee profiles (Bakhshi et al., 2017). At the same time, HE students are concerned with their preparation for the challenges ahead, when transitioning to the job market or trying to shift jobs, and have been noticing that technical field-related competencies are no longer sufficient to navigate the world of work and to succeed (Monteiro & Almeida, 2021a; Tomlinson, 2008). This means that HE students are challenged to become active agents of their career from an early stage, in order to be able to explore - the self and the environment –, develop the necessary competencies, and prepare for the university-to-work and further possible transitions (García-Aracil et al., 2021).

The development of career resources, defined as “anything that helps an individual attain his or her career goals” (Hirschi et al., 2018, p. 4,) is, therefore, of the utmost importance, but the access to interventions with this scope is frequently limited by students’ preference for anonymity, difficulty in matching timetables or physical distances or financial costs (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011). There is, therefore, the need for comprehensive and accessible interventions for people regardless of their economic, social, cultural, educational, or personal situation, in order to foster employability (UNESCO, 2019).

The identified needs motivated the construction of the Boost 4 Career (B4C) programme, a distance-based career resource intervention that seeks to promote the enrichment of the career resources of HE students with different individual and socio-cultural characteristics. This programme is framed within Hirschi and colleagues’ Career Resources Model (Hirschi et al., 2018) which proposes the organization of career resources in four main categories, namely: (a) human capital resources, which refer to knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics that are important to meet performance expectations for a given occupation; (b) social capital resources, referring to resources external to the individual in terms of developmental networks, mentors, and available social support; (c) psychological resources, that include different positive psychological traits and states, and; (d) career identity resources, which include the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker and the subjective meanings linked with the work role. Additionally, the self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Krathwohl, 2002), and the virtual pedagogical model from Universidade Aberta (Pereira et al., 2007) guided the construction of the B4C programme, considering students’ motivation to personal and professional development and the emphasis on student-centred learning, flexibility, and digital inclusion.

The B4C programme aims to foster the career resources in a remote modality, giving HE students the opportunity to manage their time and space of learning. This free access programme aims to contribute to students’ engagement in career management, mainly among those who come from low-income backgrounds, those who may have professional responsibilities in addition to the academic ones, cultural minorities or older students who may want to improve their competencies (Carlsen et al., 2016).

Within this scope, this study aims to analyse to what extent can career resources be improved through a distance career intervention and whether the expected gains with the programme may vary depending on the students’ features, including social class, and work status (e.g., working students vs non-working students). The implications of this study and future directions for research and intervention will be addressed, considering the growing heterogeneity of student population in the HE institutions.

The role of doctoral education has been traditionally to prepare people for academic jobs. Yet, this has changed since the beginning of the 2000s due to the rapid increase in the number of PhD graduates and the growing influence of neoliberal economic policies. For instance, the number of graduates increased by 56% across the OECD countries between 2000-2012 (OECD, 2014), while the number of doctoral students doubled between the early 1990s to mid-2000s in the UK (Halse, 2007). But, as the number of positions in the academic labour market has not been growing to the same extent, its capacity has become no longer sufficient to absorb the majority of doctoral graduates (Cuthbert & Molla, 2015). Meanwhile, the growing influence of neoliberal economic policies, especially the knowledge-based economy discourse, has also encouraged the non-academic market orientation of doctoral graduates. Here, doctoral graduates are perceived as the “most-skilled labour force”, and their employment beyond the academic market -especially in the STEM disciplines, is promoted (Shin, Kehm & Jones, 2018; Molla & Cuthbert, 2019). Overall, the relationship between doctoral study and future employment in the academic market has been weakened.

Here, the efficiency of the traditional form of doctoral education in preparing graduates for a non-academic career has been loudly discussed and criticised. Studies argue that this model only prepares for an academic career and promotes a narrow set of skills that are only valued in the academic job market (Manathunga, Pitt & Critchley, 2009; Gokhberg, Shmatko & Auriol, 2016). Consequently, different policy responses have been suggested, which were later welcomed by many parts of the world. The loudest reform debates and actions have been made around the “skills” discourse. It is argued that doctoral study should be reconfigured by integrating skills students can utilise in a broad range of job settings after graduation (Solem et al., 2013; Acker & Haque, 2017). In addition to the skills policy, practice-oriented doctoral programmes that offer more collaboration with the non-academic labour market were introduced to produce functional knowledge that can be put into a practical context and collaborations with industry and the world of work (Hancock & Walsh, 2016; Jones, 2018).

Although these policy responses can be beneficial at some point to strengthen the link between doctoral study and future employment at the institutional level, the personal level relationship remains largely overlooked. It is known that doctoral graduates have more diverse career motivations and interests than before (Seo et al., 2020). Yet, there is limited knowledge on what shapes these diverse career motivations and interests, which is the area of investigation that has great potential to provide in-depth knowledge on doctoral students’ future career preparation.

Therefore, this study aims to answer:

1- How do doctoral students makes sense of embarking on a doctoral study for a future career?

2- How do doctoral students perceive the value and contributions of doctoral education for a future career?

Studies on individuals’ future career perspectives tend to assume a straight line between skills that individuals have or pursue and the best-matched positions for those skills in the labour market. Yet, this research investigates the issue more comprehensively through in-depth explanations of how they construct their future career goals and prospects. Here, a processual rather than possessional perspective, i.e., conditions and experiences that shape their future career aspirations rather than focusing solely on the skills and attributes they have (Holmes, 2013), fits better with research aims. Therefore, this research will utilise the notion of identity, specifically, the dynamic view of identity: ‘identity-in-action’ and ‘identity-under-construction,’ (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2018) as a theoretical lens.

Few sociological studies of educational transition examine progression to terminal degrees – i.e. PhDs (Posselt & Grodsky, 2017). Higher education expansion has meant considerable growth in PhD numbers and entry rates. A PhD confers advantages in job quality and income (Yudkevich, 2020). Although not conferring the very highest incomes or wealth, PhDs - especially PhDs from the most prestigious universities (Wapman et al., 2022) - can unlock access to that slice of the cultural elite represented by academics, scientists etc.

Based on studies of earlier educational transitions, sociologists have pointed to declining effects of background on later transitions, especially for class, noting unobserved heterogeneity among educational ‘survivors’. Empirical evidence on this question for advanced degrees is mixed. Torche (2018) found some evidence that graduate education is an equaliser, whereas others find continued inequalities (In & Breen, 2022; Wakeling & Laurison, 2017).

Institutional stratification is a complicating factor. Many higher education systems exhibit formal or informal institutional strata, frequently hierarchical (Shavit et al., 2007). These correspond with structural inequalities in access, especially class and race/ethnicity; and differentiated outcomes for income, occupation etc. Institutional stratification has been little studied at the postgraduate degree level, although evidence suggests at least a persistence of tracked inequality (In & Breen, 2022; Mateos & Wakeling, 2022). There is also evidence of sticky pathways in some countries from first degree through PhD into faculty positions (Altbach et al., 2015).

Here, we examine the transition between UK-domiciled first-degree undergraduate degrees and PhDs. The UK makes an interesting case because it combines formal equality between universities, strong institutional stratification (Boliver, 2015; Wakeling & Savage, 2015) and a tradition of geographical mobility for higher education (Willetts, 2017). We measured higher education institutional stratification using a measurement of institutional prestige for the UK proposed by David et al. (2021) - ‘top-27’, pre-1992 and post-1992 institutions.

Our research aims to answer the following questions:

1. What are the patterns of institutional mobility from first-degree to postgraduate research degrees in the UK?

2. What is the association between patterns of institutional mobility and higher education stratification in the UK?

3. How do those patterns differ according to major structural inequalities, including class, race and gender?

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have central role on the road of societal transition toward a sustainable future. They are responsible for preparing current university students, i.e. future leaders, to cope with global environmental challenges, and by the means of their social capital they also play an active role in the current socio-economical processes. Hence they actively shape current and future, as well as regional and national sustainability related innovations and policies (Radinger-Peer & Pflitsch 2017). One of the main driver for sustainability societal transitions in the hand of HEIs is sustainability related education (ESD) including formation of views, attitudes, knowledge and practices. However, the potential of ESD is not sufficiently resorted in many higher education institutions due to several barriers that are delaying sustainability transition in HEIs (Lozano et al. 2013, Blanco-Portela et al. 2017). During the integration of ESD to universities and to their curricula, it would be crucial to know on the attitudes and expectations of students in different study majors. Unfortunately, we have very limited knowledge on how study major are related to students’ environmental concerns, attitudes, values and pro-environmental behaviours (altogether environmentalism hereafter).

In the few study that investigated links between academic major and environmentalism researches used only a few categories of study majors and were based only on a few HEIs (e.g. Lang 2011, Zuk & Zuk 2017, Chuvieco et al. 2018, Hansmann et al. 2020). Moreover, many of these studies used only a limited number of measures for assessing environmentalism. In this study, using a large central European sample (N=7174) from more than 15 HEIs we investigated differences of students’ environmentalism using 8 different well established measures and 8 additional questions in order to understand aspects of environmentalism (see Methods).

Main Research Questions:

What pattern concerning environmental attitudes, pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) and some related measures (e.g. materialism, willingness to sacrifice, priority views for economic growth) can be found among students learning different academic majors? Are these patterns markedly different if we investigate different institutions? How measures of environmentalism change from first to final grade students according to different study majors?

Generic skills can be considered important during higher education studies. Previous studies have indicated that generic skills have impact on students’ learning, study success and retention in higher education (Badcock ym. 2010; Arum & Roksa 2011; Tuononen et al. 2019). Previous studies have also shown that undergraduate students have challenges, for instance, in argumentation, interpreting and evaluating information and drawing conclusions (Badcock, Pattison & Harris 2010; Arum & Roksa 2011; Evens, Verburgh & Elen 2013). Furthermore, there is some evidence that student’s educational and socioeconomic background has impact on how well students master generic skills (Arum & Roksa, 2011; Kleemola et al., 2022) and the way of which generic skills are assessed differentiates students in their mastery of generic skills (Hyytinen et al. 2015).

There are numerous generic skills needed during in higher education and in working life. In higher education, typically, focus is on higher-order cognitive skills such as critical thinking and argumentation, analytic reasoning, decision making and writing (e.g. Zoller & Tsaparlis 1997; Arum & Roksa 2011; Lemons & Lemons 2017). The generic skills assessed in this study are analytic reasoning and evaluation (how students can identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative argumentation and how they can differentiate between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources), problem-solving (how students can recognise a problem and solve it by using argumentation), writing effectiveness (how logically and clearly the answer has been constructed), and writing mechanics (how students use conventions of standard written language and control of language). The aim of the study is to examine

(1) how well Finnish undergraduate students master various generic skills, and

(2) what background factors relate to these skills.

The university is an institution responsible for the comprehensive education of its students. In the European context, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has been developing for more than twenty years to update the university model so that it responds adequately to the needs of contemporary society. In its latest declaration (Rome Conference, 2020), it demands a university capable of: a) providing solutions to the changes facing society; b) adapting knowledge, skills and competencies to meet new challenges; c) making educational offerings more flexible to participate in programs that enable the improvement of specific skills, d) fostering student-centered learning and teaching, and e) supporting the use of digital technologies for learning, teaching and assessment, scholarly communication and research.

To make progress in these terms, Opazo et al. (2016) indicate that it is essential to use, in a well-planned and structured manner, innovative educational methodologies that complement traditional ones. At this point, the use of Service-Learning programs (SL) fits perfectly as a means for such a mission, by placing academic learning in real contexts and covering needs identified in the community.

These practices have a widely recognized potential for the attainment of transversal skills in university students (Santos Rego, Sáez-Gambín, D., González-Geraldo, et al., 2022). Such skills help prepare students for today's world, drawing links between approaches from both the academic and strictly productive spheres (Alvarez et al., 2022).

However, not all SL experiences are likely to have a positive impact on students' futures, as research to date has recognized certain factors or criteria that determine the quality of projects, and that can have an impact on the benefits provided by these experiences (Billig et al., 2005). Briefly, these "good practices" are related to: the duration and intensity of the project; its academic rigor; the creation of solid partnerships; performing a meaningful service; a correct delimitation of roles; providing diversity in the experience; carrying out an efficient evaluation; and developing an adequate reflection (Imperial et al., 2007; National Youth Leadership Council, 2008).

Among these quality criteria, there is a consensus in the literature that reflection is the most important element. Not surprisingly, reflective processes conform the identity of experience-based methodologies, as they give meaning to what has been experienced, and determine future activities and decisions (Ash & Clayton, 2009). Thus, through dialogical activities with oneself or others, or through research and observation, students question, analyze their experiences, and seek solutions to future problems (García-Romero & Lalueza, 2019).

However, there is a lack of research that empirically studies the effects of the design of service-learning projects on students. Those that have been conducted are mostly focused on describing the experience or studying how it affects students' motivation, feelings or other impressions, and not so much on how the different quality variables are related to the effectiveness of the methodology (Lin, 2021). Despite this, we can find some studies that affirm that a more complete reflection has a greater impact on variables considered mediators of academic performance (Lorenzo, et al., 2021), as well as on student satisfaction with their experience (Santos Rego, Sáez-Gambín, & Lorenzo Moledo, 2022).

Specifically, the objective of this research is to analyze how reflection is related to the development of transversal competencies in university students. This paper is framed in the Research Projects: “Service-Learning (SL) and employability of university graduates in spain: competences for employment” (EDU2017-90651-REDT) and “The impact of the university in the community through service-learning projects. A study focused on reciprocity (SL)” (PID2021-122827OB-I00).

The discipline of physics has famously been described as a ‘culture of no culture’ (Traweek 1988), and physics is often perceived as objective, universal, and rational, a way of approaching the world that is untouched by social dynamics. At the same time, physics is also described in terms of aesthetics and beauty. This can concern a strive for mathematical beauty (Hovis and Kragh 1993) or take the form of wonder and awe for the vastness and the purity of nature (Girod 2007). Girod (2007) further discuss how scientists describe being able to understand the world differently and more richly because of their understanding of science. Physics is also entangled with notions of intelligence and cleverness, a discipline inaccessible to many (Archer et al. 2020). The question of the (in)accessibility of the discipline of physics has over the years gained much attention in educational research, particularly in relation to the recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented groups (de Barros Vidor et al. 2020).

In this presentation, we align ourselves with research that has characterized students’ movements through learning ecologies as pathways or trajectories that resist “pipelines” or implied linearity. Recently, researchers (e.g. Avraamidou, 2020; Mendick et al., 2017; Rahm et al., 2021) have taken up notions of landscapes of becoming, pathways through STEM, and wayfaring which resist deficit notions dominant in the pipeline metaphor, and permit an analysis of student agency as they may entail path switching or on/off ramps and intersecting paths. Rahm et al. (2021) offer that to learn about the role of science in learners’ lives, we need to move beyond “connecting the dots” of activities in science, and instead attend to that which cannot be represented in pathways or trajectories. Thus, “becoming somebody” in physics is “tied up in complex ways with a web of meanings and practices that constitute learning lives” (p. 4). In this presentation, our concern is to unpick this web as we trace the meanings three mature university physics students make of their experiences in various physics learning ecologies, across time and space. In their stories, these three mature students do not articulate end goals of “physicist”, nor do they narrate clear pathways into their present undergraduate programs. Rather, they speak of physics in ways that reveal their figuring of physics as part of a web of meaning that entails the tangling of emotions with physics learning that might serve, as Avraamidou (2020) argues “as links between past (e.g., personal histories), present (e.g., social positioning), and future selves (e.g., a science person)” (p. 338).

Our analysis is based on the notion that well-being is connected to whether life can be experienced as meaningful and authentic (Sayer 2011). We draw on Schutz’ phenomenological understanding of people’s experience of the world, which seeks to explain people’s meaning-making and connection in relating to the world and each other (Schutz & Luckmann 1983). The central theoretical notions through which we explore our interviewees' narrative are experiences of connectedness versus experiences of alienation. In particular, we utilize the concept of transcendence to illuminate how the interviewees explain their relationship to physics (e.g. Thurfjell et al 2019). Importantly, we do not investigate how moments can add up to trajectories into physics, but rather how mature students view physics as providing an organizing structure for their life trajectories, to materialize a life that might not have seemed possible outside of the realm of physics.

In the presentation we interweave the analyses of three student narratives, those of Tina (first generation university student, early 40s), Tobias (first generation university student, late 20s), and Kamal (second generation immigrant, late 20s).

In the recent years, there has been much focus on so-called “student-active learning and teaching methods” (“studentaktive lærings- og undervisningsformer”) in Norway, which require higher education (HE) institutions to break away from one-way communication by the teacher and employ more practical methods such as cases, discussions, and participation in research (Meld. St. 16 (2020-2021)). The same is true for Italy, where the creation of Teaching Learning Centres and Digital Education Hubs is at the core of the NRRP (the Next Generation EU funded National Recovery and Resilience Plan) effort. This should be the major impulse towards a transformation in Italian’s HE teaching practice after several laws and guidelines that served as precursors such as "Reform of university and research" (Legge 30 dicembre 2018, n. 145), "Guidelines for the quality of university teaching" (Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca, 2019), "Guidelines for the evaluation of university teaching" (ANVUR, 2020) and "Report on the quality of university teaching" (ANVUR, 2021, periodically published).

Research has documented student-active learning methods not only leading to students’ improved learning outcomes (Komulainen et al., 2015), but also strengthening students’ soft skills such as collaboration, presentation, and assessment (Godager et al., 2022). The use of such learning methods is perceived by students as motivating and supporting in knowledge acquisition (Langsrud & Jørgensen, 2022). While many university educators employ or wish to employ various student-active methods in their teaching, the final grade students receive in the course is still often based on the result of the final high-stakes summative exam at the end of semester.

This format of examination often provides students with limited opportunities to holistically demonstrate the knowledge and skills they are supposed to have acquired by the end of the semester, which in its turn leads to students’ decreased motivation to engage in learning activities and increased focus on “what’s going to be in the exam”. Moreover, the concept of final exams is further problematized by emergent artificial intelligence (AI) technology which has been employed by higher education students worldwide for example for essay-writing. Currently, this led to some universities (e.g., in Australia) taking a “pause” and temporarily returning to traditional “pen and paper” exams while searching for a way to redesign student assessment.

To address this issue, we have chosen to employ the principle of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996, 2014) which is based on the constructivist tradition and that serves as a framework for designing coherent teaching programs and curricula. The idea is to share with students in advance what will be required of them in terms of learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment modalities. The stress is on student engagement in their own learning process to set up a meaningful and integrated learning experience. To attain this goal, the assessment is integrated into this process rather than being left apart as a final and disconnected task (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004).

In this paper, our goal is to examine the current situation in Norway and Italy, discuss possible ways forward and address some of the challenges. The paper is guided by the following research questions (RQ): (1) What are the different types of student assessment involved at universities in Norway and Italy? Which are the most commonly used and which are the least? (2) What challenges do reported assessment modalities can pose, and what can possible solutions be? (3) What are the differences and similarities between the Norwegian and Italian universities in this respect? What can we learn from each other to advance in disseminating meaningful assessment practices?

Reflecting and reflections today are being understood as a vital part of learning processes. Critically reflecting on one’s own experience not only is assumed to holding advantage in terms of consolidation and retention of knowledge; but it bears the potential for transformative and expansive learning through changing conceptualization and worldviews (for an overview cf. Rogers, 2001). Integrating reflections into pedagogical arrangements has been highlighted with respect to the development of competences, as becoming competent involves personal transformational processes and self-awareness (e.g., Mezirow, 1991). However, developing students’ reflexivity proves a challenging undertaking, since the entanglements of professional identities with personal trajectories can easily lead to frictions in the pedagogical process (Fladkjær & Otrel-Cass, 2017). To add insult to injury, teachers all too often pretend on being able to take a neutral stance when “facilitating” reflective activities and neglect their own entanglements and frictions.

In the present paper, we share a journey of understanding the intricate interplay between students’ reflections in a pedagogical activity, and our own entanglements with them, both as teachers facilitating these reflections, and as researchers struggling to interpret them. The context of this study was a project at a university built on the pedagogical foundations of Problem-based Learning (PBL). Despite of the well-elaborated benefits of PBL for learning and competence development, students struggle to reflect on their own professional identity, and to communicate their competences on the labor market. Under this focus, we explored new pedagogical approaches to reflections by engaging a group of 12 students in a series of reflective activities, and collected data while simultaneously revising our own pedagogy in a series of micro action-research cycles (Mills, 2014).

In this paper we will analyze, juxtapose and questions the processes we encountered under a reflective perspective to highlight what new understandings we gained. Being reflective as part of research has been described as a useful tool to disentangle complex material and personally embedded narratives (Fook, 2011; Hickson, 2016). However, reflections and reflexivity has also been critiqued lately as providing an all too cognitivist and therefore disembodied view on the pedagogical process (Hill, 2018) and for not providing ample conceptualizations for the entanglements and materiality of learning (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017). Some researchers argue therefore, that research perspectives need to move away from a self-affirming reflexivity towards an “uncomfortable reflexivity” (Pillow, 2003, p. 188).

Over the course of the project, we embraced the critique expressed towards reflexivity and reflections as part of our research methodology, as we felt that new perspectives were needed to deepen our understandings of the entanglements between our participants, ourselves and the technology involved in the process. Inspired by research in the field of primary teacher education (Moxnes & Osgood, 2019; Moxnes & Osgood, 2018) we embraced the concept of diffractions introduced by Donna Haraway (2018/1997) and Karen Barad (2014; 2007) to trouble rather than to streamline pedagogies through a research-based positioning. However, diffraction should not be seen as a counter-concept to reflection (Hill, 2018). Instead, by “cutting together appart” (Barad, 2014, p. 168) concepts, Bozalek and Zembylas (2017) argue for an acknowledgement that the “‘entanglement’ of reflexivity and diffraction is one that includes continuities and breaks rather than a ‘story’ of one vs. the other” (p. 9). In our analysis we are troubling this with yet another entanglement, the intra-actions between ourselves as teachers and researchers. By analyzing these two processes as simultaneous and entangled, we dive into an understanding of research on pedagogical processes that is by itself pedagogical.

This paper presents preliminary results of a first exploratory study, with multidisciplinary (Psychology, Economics, Market Law, Art History and Teacher Training) and multilevel (various undergraduate and master courses) conditions. This multidisciplinary glance is of utmost importance in Higher Education (Alexander et al., 2011). Up to now, we have plenty of educational research on educational students. Research on psychology-students or teacher-students is insufficient to understand learning processes at all areas of HE, and certainly HE-instructors at other disciplines would benefit from inquiry on their own students’ behaviors and motivation. The time has arrived to move beyond our lecture room walls and inquiry how students at other faculties tackle their learning processes and cope with the challenges (Quinlan, 2015). In this study, two different Spanish universities participate.

We designed a concrete instructional plan which offers a systematic study support for students with the purpose of enhancing self-regulated learning. We applied a particular psychometric algorithm on a system of learning tests, specially designed for promoting metacognitive engagement (Bruttomesso et al., 2003; Leclercq, 1993). This algorithm does not only evaluate the correctness of students’ responses to multiple-choice items, but also the degree of certainty of their given response. Other authors call it certainty-based-marking (CBM) (Gardner-Medwin, 2008). CBM breaks the traditional marking scheme (in our country 0-10), since grades are adjusted to the degree of confidence or certainty declared by the student (low-middle-high). For example, a 10-item test –as we used in our study- generates a grading range from -60 to +30. That is: students need to learn how to reinterpret their own results and make sense of them. All sorts of emotional, motivational and metacognitive reactions happen (Remesal et al. 2022a) when using this strategy. In this paper we want to focus on the students’ very first reactions to that new evaluative algorithm, within an instructional plan where this testing system has an underlined formative purpose. We look at CBM-results in connection with emotional reactions (positive and negative / activating and de-activating emotions, following Pekrun (2006); calibration (relation between expectations and achievement (Dinsmore & Parkinson, 2013; Hadwin & Webster, 2013) and metacognitive thoughts. All three phenomena together interweave towards new possibilities of self-regulated learning behavior (or lack thereof!) (Barr & Burke, 2013, Remesal et al. 2022b).

The instructional system we designed and put to the test roots on a view of self-assessment as the basic tool for self-regulated learning (Panadero et al. 2016). In this study we want to evaluate the effectiveness of such instructional system to pedagogically support complex learning processes of students at different disciplinary areas and levels (bachelor – masters).

Reflective journals (RJs) are a type of written document in which students record their thoughts, experiences, and beliefs over a period of time for the purpose of gaining self-awareness and improving their learning abilities. This tool allows students to self-observe their learning process and demonstrate reflection (Wallin & Adawi, 2018).

One of the main benefits of using RJs as an assessment tool is that it creates a supportive and safe environment for students to express their concerns and ideas, reflect on their values, experiences, and assumptions that impact their learning, and track their development over time (Minott, 2008). Additionally, research has shown that the act of reflection can influence behavior, as students evaluate their work and adjust their learning processes based on their reflections (Fabriz et al., 2014). Thus, the ability to reflect on one's own learning is a crucial skill for lifelong learning (Ryan, 2015). Consequently, promoting reflective practices among students is considered a crucial goal in higher education to effectively prepare them for future professional experiences (Adie & Tangen, 2015). While the potential of reflective practices to bring about lasting and effective changes in students' lives is widely acknowledged (Waggoner-Denton, 2018), there is still a lack of clarity regarding the dimensionality of reflection and the potential link between using reflective writing and the adoption of reflective practices in students' personal and professional lives (Griggs et al., 2018).

Furthermore, despite some previous research on the measurement and assessment of reflection and RJ writing (e.g., Kember et al., 2008), there is currently no widely accepted method for identifying and assessing reflection (Waggoner-Denton, 2018). The lack of consensus on the optimal ways of assessing reflective practices is also reflected in the limited empirical research on the dimensionality of reflective writing, particularly in higher education. In light of this, the present research aims to analyze students' RJ writing, design a reflection scheme, and create and validate a questionnaire based on the scheme to measure higher education students' perceptions of their reflective writing experiences. Moreover, this study aims to quantitatively assess the connection between perceived reflective writing skills and students' tendency to transfer these skills to their future professional and personal lives, based on their own reports. To achieve this, an exploratory sequential research design was employed, starting with qualitative data and then collecting quantitative data. This design is commonly used to identify themes, design an instrument, and subsequently test it (Creswell, 2012). In line with previous research suggesting that activities that foster deep learning, such as reflective writing, may lead to greater transferability (e.g., Griggs et al., 2018), two hypotheses were evaluated. It was expected that students' perceived reflective writing skills gained during the learning process would be positively correlated with their perceived tendency to transfer these skills to their professional lives (H1) and personal lives (H2).

Academic oracy has gained increased attention in recent years as fields such as developmental psychology, linguistics, and education, “have emphasised the importance of talk (…) and its use as both a cognitive and social tool for learning and social engagement” (Mercer et al., 2017: 51). An outcome of this growing interest is a shift towards more active learning approaches, which place demands on students in terms of speaking (Doherty et al., 2011). Studies have identified different aspects of those changes, such as lectures becoming more interactive (Roberts, 2017), seminars requiring higher levels of verbal participation (Engin, 2017), and the fact that there is often some type of assessment of oral skills (Huxham et al., 2012), which may come in the form of assessment to oral presentations (Bhati, 2012).

Research on oracy has been conducted in compulsory education (primary and secondary), notably in the UK (Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Mercer & Mannion, 2018; Michaels, et al., 2008; Alexander, 2008; Jay et al., 2017), but also in Australia (Stinson, 2015) and in other countries (Howe, 2017), which establishes a strong relationship between teaching of oracy and improved academic achievement (Heron et al., 2022). While there has been some documented transfer to higher education settings (Doherty et al. 2011; Kettle & May, 2012; Dippold et al., 2019; Heron, 2019), not enough is known about the role and function of oracy in higher education contexts, whether in Australia or internationally.

As part of my PhD research, I have been examining the ways in which curricula in three disciplinary areas at an Australian university construct and implement oracy development in and through learning and teaching and its relationship to broader issues of employability and skills. That has been done through critical analysis of relevant documentation, interviews with students and lecturers, and classroom observation.

When the conference takes place in August 2023, I will have conducted two of the three case studies of my research, so will be able to share the initial findings with the community. Having been a researcher and an undergraduate, Master’s and now PhD student in institutions across the Americas, Europe and now Australia, I understand that the concern around students’ academic oracy as a tool for learning is key to students’ experiences of higher education.

The purpose of our research is to understand how postdoctoral researchers at Dutch research universities experience their working conditions and their prospects and opportunities, in relation to their mental health and wellbeing.

When looking at the employment conditions of postdoctoral researchers (postdocs), their direct working environment (e.g. their supervisors) as well as more indirect factors such as institutional and HRM-policies, our recent studies (Van der Weijden & Teelken, 2019, 2020) revealed these have not kept up with these alternations and the demands placed on them. Consequently, postdocs are caught within a dual controversy. The first involves the lack of clarity concerning their career prospects and developments despite their highly valued work, the second regards the fact that they are specialized staff, contributing to the primary process of their employing organisation but comparatively invisible and weakly connected with the organisation they are working for. Although the postdocs’ formal position seems weak, our previous study revealed that their situation in terms of academic socialising is much stronger and active than appears at first sight, particularly due to their personal agency. (Teelken & Van der Weijden, 2019).

Given this dual controversy, we think that the postdocs’ mental health deserves further investigation. Whereas studies on the mental health of PhD-candidates and lecturers are now increasingly available, the outcomes are quite unfavourable as they demonstrate substantial stress amongst these groups, see for example the recent work by Pitt et al (2020), Ysseldyk (2019) and Van Benthem (2019). Studies concerning the mental wellbeing of postdocs are comparatively rare, the first study on the mental health of Canadian postdocs demonstrated that they face serious problems and experience severe stress, which play a role in their job satisfaction (Van Benthem et al., 2019). Therefore, purpose of our research is to understand how, in the context of labour market instability, postdoctoral researchers experience their working conditions and their prospects and opportunities, in relation to their wellbeing.

Research question: How do the postdoctoral researchers at Dutch universities consider their employment conditions and how does this affect their mental wellbeing?

General description on research questions and objectives

This qualitative study sought to ascertain the implications of argumentation-based learning online activity in relation to two learning outcomes: First, students’ epistemological beliefs, regarding the nature of learning, often reported as valuable precursors of their adaptive learning (Greene et al., 2018), and second, students’ high-order thinking skills. This study’s main objective is to shed light on this instructional activity, by analyzing qualitative data reflecting the participants’ epistemological and ontological standpoints, and their perceived thinking levels experienced during the activity.

Theoretical Framework

Argumentation-based Learning and Epistemological Beliefs

Teachers’ and students’ epistemological point of view regarding the nature of knowledge and learning might influence their approach to teaching and learning and how they make important instructional decisions and/or set their learning goals (Fives & Buehl, 2016). There are three distinct levels of epistemological belief. Absolutists believe that knowledge is finite and unchanging and that objective truth exists. Multiplists hold a higher level of epistemological belief in which knowledge is seen as inherently subjective, consisting not of facts but of opinions, generated by human minds, indefinite and not subject to evaluation (Asterhan & Schwarz, 2016; Kuhn et al., 2011). The highest level is called evaluativism, according to which individuals recognize the significance of weighing evidence and addressing contradictory claims (Kuhn et al., 2000).

Encouraging students to reach the highest level of epistemological beliefs – evaluativism – is considered a foremost learning goal in health education. Evidence-based decision-making programs (Hinneburg et al., 2020) and evidence-based practices for physicians, medical and nursing students (Cira et al., 2020) are considered imperative for ensuring patient safety. Students should recognize the value of weighing evidence, which can be achieved by continually practicing teaching and learning methods that encourage conscious use and application of a wide variety of knowledge sources. This requires formulating structured queries; and conducting searches of resources from which trustworthy and reliable evidence can be acquired (Horntvedt et al., 2018).

Argumentation-based Learning and High-order Thinking Skills

Encouraging high-order thinking skills is deemed important in health education (Medina et al., 2017). These skills can be developed by carefully designing learning activities within courses and the curriculum as a whole, such as argumentation-based learning. The term “argument” in this paper refers to the artifacts that a student creates when asked to justify claims, whereas the term “argumentation” refers to the process of constructing these artifacts (Sampson & Clark, 2008). Argumentation is suggested as a means to improve high-order thinking skills of conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge (Asterhan and Schwarz, 2016) rather than mere factual knowledge. Factual knowledge pertains to the basic elements that students must know to be sufficiently acquainted with a discipline or solve problems (Anderson et al., 2001). Beyond merely memorizing facts, conceptual knowledge refers to understanding similarities and patterns in factual knowledge and is centered on the interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure (Wilson, 2016). Procedural knowledge pertains to knowing “how” to do something, for example, how to use particular methods to achieve a specific learning goal (Anderson et al., 2001). Metacognitive knowledge is the knowledge of general strategies for learning and thinking. Weinberger and Fischer (2006) maintained that these types of knowledge can be achieved by encouraging students to construct arguments to justify their position. Advancing higher-order thinking skills is considered an important learning outcome in health education (Medina et al., 2017).

In the era of the post-massification of higher education, superfluous graduates are swarming into the increasingly competitive workplace. However, faced with the labor market with over-supplying talents and full of uncertainty, graduates with university degrees are no longer entitled to a voucher for employability but only gain a pre-requisite and entry ticket to the limited seats (Gibb & Hannon, 2004). And the rolling wave of the ICT revolution with the development of artificial intelligence has demanded higher skills and left graduates with narrower space for job seeking, which has been even recently worsened by the economic downfall caused by COVID-19. However, those pressing challenges also present opportunities seized by adventurous graduates. Instead of following the regular trend of being job seekers, they opt for job creators as another career alternative, that is, to be self-employed and create new start-ups. According to the 2021 GUESS Global Report, 10.8 percent of graduates have established their ventures, and nearly 30 percent of students are in the act of creating new ones (Sieger et al., 2021). Graduate entrepreneurship (GE) has also been a significant agenda promoted by global governments as one of the remedies for the overpopulation of the crowded workplace and a vital source for the economy. Shouldering the third mission of responding to the socio-economic needs and acting as the seedbeds of qualified talents, universities are therefore urged to exert various strategies to cultivate potential graduate entrepreneurs. Given this significance, multiple studies have investigated why (the determinants of GE intentions), how (the factors of GE behaviors), and what (the outcomes of GE practices). Despite increasing academic attention, there is a lack of systematic literature review for GE research to synthesize and reflect on the current stock critically and comprehensibly. Without looking back at the achievements and deficiencies of previous GE studies, we can hardly revise, reflect, and refresh existing piles by identifying possible gaps and bridging them with promising perspectives.

Prior review studies (conducted in 2004 and 2006 separately) have provided illuminating reflections on GE literature, but surprisingly, no up-to-date reviews have emerged to portray the current GE landscape. The first GE literature review was brought up by Hannon (2004), who summarized the motivation studies of GE and concluded that there was a paucity of evaluation studies. He pointed out that researchers have failed to give robust and holistic studies to justify the mechanism of GE. Conducting a literature view on graduates' career-making and start-up, Nabi, Holden and Walmsley (2006) later revealed that GE literature was fragmented and atheoretical with incomplete and somewhat contradictory results. Specifically, a uniform standardized definition was absent. Solid theory models and longitudinal research with in-depth qualitative explanations are also desperately needed. Their studies have both briefly pointed out some crucial gaps neglected by scholars then. However, it remains unknown whether the current literature has addressed previous gaps and what’s been newly encountered and discovered after more than a decade, as the GE literature review hasn’t been updated since 2006.

Given the significance of GE and the shocking absence of a timely literature review on GE, this study takes stock of current GE literature and revisits this field with four questions:

1. Is GE a worldwide concerned topic in academics?
2. How do studies define GE and discuss its significance?
3. How do studies address the factors promoting or constraining GE?
4. How do studies discuss the measurement of outcomes of GE?

Entrepreneurship education is a loosely defined concept that is used in different ways in different perspectives and contexts. As scientific field, has been developing in recent decades, namely with links between education for entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial intentions, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, the development of entrepreneurial skills, and cultural context (Oliveira, 2016).

Fostering entrepreneurship education (EE) can be important to equip young people with skills, knowledge and attitudes that are indispensable for the development of entrepreneurial culture, not only in the work and business context but also in general context of life (Eurydice, 2016). It highlights the need to develop various skills, referred to in several studies (eg. McCallum, 2018; O'Brien, & Hamburg, 2019; Reis et al., 2020, or Tittel, & Terzidis, 2020), namely innovation, autonomy, creativity, communication, critical thinking, adaptability, planning and management, financial literacy, technological, teamwork, and problem-solving.

Entrepreneurial competencies in a broad sense are part of the European Reference Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (European Commission, 2006) and are currently embodied in EntreComp: the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework. In this, entrepreneurship is a competence defined as the capacity to act upon opportunities and ideas to create social, cultural, or financial value for others, whether in the school curriculum, innovation in the workplace, community or at university (McCallum et al., 2018). Additionally, entrepreneurship skills build competencies in students and enhance their abilities to put knowledge into action, contributing to their employability and advantage to the workforce, the community, and ultimately the economy (Mittal, & Raghuvaran, 2021).

In this regard, due to the direct positive relationship between entrepreneurship education and employability, confirmed also by Iglesias-Sánchez (2019), entrepreneurship in recent years has been included as part of the curriculum in many universities and colleges. However, in Europe, educational institutions have not yet managed to consistently implement EE in the curricula or in the real context, nor yet promote the necessary pedagogical innovations (Oliveira, 2016; Eurydice, 2016), so it would be important its study and effective integration at all levels of education and in various areas of study, particularly in higher education.

This way, pedagogical approaches in entrepreneurship education may constitute a key factor for the development and consolidation of this field of study. Experiential approaches are common in the pedagogical process especially when one of the goals is to develop entrepreneurship skills and mindset, so it is important to relate educational theory to pedagogical practice (Bell, & Bell, 2020).

In the literature, experiential learning theory defined by Kolb (1984), is the pedagogical approach associated with entrepreneurship education most often referred to (e.g. Healey & Jenkins, 2000; Koustas, & Elham, 2021) and seems to be the most consensual and appropriate for the development of entrepreneurial skills (Minai, 2018).

The research deals with how higher-order thinking of education students, expressed in reflective writing and metacognition, promotes professional insights as part of a social-emotional learning process. The findings reveal significant personal and professional insights among the students, which may serve as a bridge to intellectual development that manifests in social, emotional, and cognitive development.

social-emotional learning (SEL)

General skills of social-emotional learning are reflected in this study in three central dimensions of generic skills and abilities: (1) cognitive self-regulation, for example, control of attention, work planning, and cognitive flexibility (2) emotional processes, for example; Emotional awareness, emotional expression, behavior regulation, empathy (3) Cultivating social skills while understanding social cues, conflict resolution, pro-social behavior (Jones and Bouffard, 2012).

Social-emotional learning is reflected in learning emotional and social skills and concepts used by the students in contexts and social situations during the courses. This is reflected in the emotional aspect, including, for example, empathy, teamwork, informed decision-making, regulation, perseverance, and dealing with failure. Studies (Jones et al., 2019; Blyth et al., 2018; Jones & Kahn, 2017) that examined social and emotional development demonstrated that they are intertwined and affect academic achievement, physical and mental health, and civic engagement. Moreover, it has been proven that cultivating social and emotional abilities in learners can predict an improvement in academic achievements, reduce situations, deal with crises, accelerate social leadership, and influence learning applications and their mental and emotional fitness. Thus, social-emotional learning has received much attention in the last decade and includes many concepts and organizing theories of these skills and competencies (Sperling, 2018).

higher order thinking

High thinking allows learners to be aware of their learning process and control their decisions while paying attention to the entire learning process. This process requires different decisions during learning and provides tools to deal with difficulties while thinking about successful and varied solutions whose contribution to the quality of education is significant (Ben-David and Orion, 2013; Zohar and Barzilai, 2015; Perry, Landy, and Golder, 2019).

The research literature uses the terms reflection, metacognition, and self-directed learning interchangeably, although there are theoretical differences between them (Veenman, 2011). Metacognition researchers tend to believe that self-directedness is a corresponding component of metacognition. In contrast, researchers refer to self-direction as a concept containing metacognition alongside concepts such as motivation and emotional regulation (Veenman et al., 2006). Many studies have indicated that learners who did higher thinking processes, such as reflective and metacognitive processes, discussed more self-examination activities and demonstrated a deeper understanding of the study material compared to groups that did not learn strategies advocating this type. of thinking (Kaberman & Dori, 2009; Zohar, & Barzilai, 2015).

The reflective and metacognitive process may influence and shape the hidden pedagogical beliefs and concepts directly affecting teaching. To achieve this, it is essential to include in the practical experience during training elements of building complex educational processes: beliefs and attitudes about teaching and its components (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004; Korthagen, 2004). Zohar and Barzilai (2015) point out that the skills required to implement this type of thinking are (1) planning - setting goals, choosing an appropriate strategy, (2) monitoring - awareness and examination of the thinking processes during learning, and (3) evaluating the thinking. And learning processes, which are carried out at the end of the work process through reflection and self-evaluation, may lead to operative recommendations regarding learning.

In many computer-based learning environments (CBLEs), learners of all ages struggle to use critical cognitive and metacognitive self-regulation abilities (Azevedo, 2015). In this situation, choosing what to learn, when to learn it, and how long to study it becomes more crucial (You, 2015). Time usage, goal-setting, self-monitoring, self-reactions, self-efficacy, and motivation are the six self-regulatory processes that underlie all other activities (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). Time management, motivation, and perceived self-efficacy play the most significant roles among these processes (Zimmerman, 1998). According to several studies (Kirk et al., 2013; Visser et al., 2015), it appears that time management plays a significant role in educational outcomes from K–12 to higher education. Given the intricacy of the self regulation construct, the researcher of this study concentrated on one of its dimensions in this paper: time management.

Numerous studies discuss the value of time management and learning, emphasizing both the quantity and quality of the learning time students spend on learning (Balkis, 2011). Several of these studies concentrate on academic procrastination, which is defined as the propensity to put off or even avoid performing an activity that is within one's control (Gafni & Geri, 2010). Procrastination, a minor but significant aspect of self-regulation, is especially examined in this study in an effort to understand its connection to student’s success in CBLEs. Specifically, this study made use of the existing model of Strunk (2012) for the study of procrastination and timely engagement because of the significance of the time that students spend learning and engaging in academic procrastination. According to model proposed by Strunk (2012), procrastination is on one side, with two distinct motivating inclinations. Procrastination for the sake of strategic advantage and an increase in work quality is defined as the procrastination approach. The avoidant coping type of procrastination is procrastination-avoidance. On the other hand, a time engagement approach is characterized by getting started on tasks right away to produce higher grades. To avoid the anxiety of failure that arises from delaying starting tasks, one would interact with them as soon as possible. This strategy is known as timely engagement-avoidance.

Although some research findings emphasize the negative effects of procrastination, others have identified a profile of active procrastination that corresponds to students who choose to delay work in order to achieve a superior performance (Choi & Moran, 2009; Kim & Seo, 2013). This contradiction makes it even more important to contextualize the research of this particular phenomenon in CBLEs.

CBLEs are prepared to gather significant amounts of data through user-machine interaction. Particularly, LMSs gather student data that, when examined properly, can give educators and researchers the knowledge they need to assist and continuously enhance the learning process (Paule-Ruiz et al., 2015). Modular Object Oriented Developmental Learning Environment (Moodle), a free LMS that enables the design of potent, adaptable, and interesting online courses and experiences, is one of the most popular (Rice, 2006).

This study aims to examine relationships among students course achievement and several time management-related features. In this regard, the following research questions are asked to answer:

1) How are the undergraduate students grouped based on the variables such as students course grade, time management-related features (the time differences between first access of students to course assignments and release dates of assignments, first access and submission dates, and submission dates and due dates)?

2) Are there statistically significant differences among different latent profiles regarding course grade and time management-related features?

Answers to these questions offer insight to scheduling and planning of the assessment methods in online courses.

Academic buoyancy (Martin & Marsh, 2006) is students’ competence to respond effectively to academic daily setbacks and is considered an optimal characteristic of students’ functioning related to achievement. From the Self-determination theory perspective (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), satisfaction of the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness and autonomous forms of motivation relate to students’ optimal functioning in schooling. Academic buoyancy, need satisfaction and autonomous motivation are important motivational constructs in the normative context of English preparatory programs (EPP) where students are required to achieve standard language skills to study in an English medium department. In the normative context of EPP, the ability to respond effectively to academic daily setbacks (i.e., academic buoyancy) is considered as an optimal characteristic of students functioning related to achievement (Martin & Marsh, 2008). To what extent, however, academic buoyancy can be predicted by students’ sense of need satisfaction (or frustration) and their autonomous versus controlled motivation in a normative context? If, despite the normative conditions of EPPs, need satisfaction and autonomous motivation could predict changes in students’ academic buoyancy and through it, success in EPP, then a need supportive motivational style could be suggested to EPP teachers to enhance students’ success.

In the present study, we investigated 1) whether students’ end-of-course (T2) academic buoyancy in the normative environment of EPP is predicted by their beginning-of-course (T1) self-determined motivation (operationalized as the degree of both students’ satisfaction of their psychological needs as well as autonomous versus controlled forms of motivation) while controlling for T1 academic buoyancy and 2) whether students’ T2 academic buoyancy mediates the relation between students’ T1 self-determined motivation and final (T3) academic achievement. In T1 and T2, 267 Turkish EPP students (females 56.9%; M_age = 19.11 , SD = 1.28) participated in the study. SEM analysis showed that T1 autonomous motivation and T1 controlled motivation were predicted by T1 need frustration negatively and positively, respectively. T2 academic buoyancy was predicted positively by T1 need satisfaction. The analysis also suggested a direct path (indicating a negative relation) from controlled motivation to students’ final grades. Finally, students’ T2 academic buoyancy mediated the relation between students’ need satisfaction or frustration and final achievement. Students’ need satisfaction as well as high autonomous and low controlled motivation could support students’ buoyancy and achievement in the normative settings of EPP. Training EPP teachers in supporting students’ psychological needs and enhancing their autonomous motivation seems to be important for strengthening students’ academic buoyancy and success in EPP.

That ‘diversity’ lends itself to different interpretations, and that there is a mismatch between pronouncements on diversity and its applications, are well documented in the literature (Ahmed, 2012; Wekker et al, 2016; Bhopal and Henderson, 2019). What such critiques centre are the ways in which diversity may be rendered “tangible and operational” (Essanhaji and van Reekum, 2022, p. 883). While such efforts are laudable in their aim to unearth injustices, exclusions and the ways in which these manifest themselves in educational practices and discourses, their analytical potential is somewhat limited. What is called for is a deeper understanding of the ways in which discourses and practices of diversity engage with questions of sameness and difference, nationalism and the futurity of whiteness.

Against the background of the mainstreaming of a set of “xenologies” for “differentiating between human collectivities” (Wolf, 2016, p. 7), in various domains, notably but not exclusively the recent pronouncements on immigration and asylum in the UK, and epistemologies of “white ignorance” (Mills, 2007) as evidenced in the attacks on Critical Race theory by the former UK equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch, and the call to include in the curriculum the “benefits” of the British empire, the question of diversity is rendered subservient, politically, to the purported needs of the nation. Conceived of as a homogeneous space, the return of ‘the national’ entails an assimilationist logic that constructs ‘the different’ as defective, one that must be subject to surveillance, disciplined and removed. This symposium draws together and frames interrelated discussions around these themes, while engaging with how whiteness is sustained and invested with the “right to exclude” (Harris, 1993) as well as practices of extraction evidenced by the experiences of “scholars of colour who are called upon to ‘diversify’ the curriculum and workforce” (Sriprakash et al, 2022, p. 45)

This symposium addresses some of ways in which diversity in the Irish, Scottish and English education contexts works to render differences invisible. Khoo’s paper seeks to review the recent institutional emphasis on race and ethnic equality in Irish HE through the lens of critical sociology of race in Ireland. Such analysis throws into sharp relief the ways in which whiteness as an assemblage of strategies, policies and practices constitutes and sustains Irish higher education. Swanson and Gamal’s paper argue that mandating the promoting of “fundamental British values” (FBV) in England’s school recasts the notion of diversity as “the failure of state multiculturalism” (Crawford, 2017) to be replaced by ‘rigid notions of internal uniformity” (Conversi, 2017, p.25). Concomitantly, diversity as a “thin and capacious” construct (Uberoi and McLean 2007, 46) is invested with demonic signifiers that threaten the cohesion of the nation. Coursing through these two papers is a concern with troubling the “exhibition of diversity” which works to center and invibilise differences (Wekker et al, 2016, p. 71). Lord and Oforji’s paper takes as a starting point the ways in which diversity itself has been conceived of in the European educational space. The inherent purported ‘goodness’ of diversity and its instrumentalisation in institutional targets and outcomes hides extractive practices. Lord and Oforji draw on their experiences of working in Scotland, of paying high international student fees and immigration to highlight the extractive intentions of the valorisation of diversity.

Concerns with race and ethnic equality have ramped up recently in Irish higher education, with the introduction of high-level policies and initiatives to address racial and ethnic disparities and inequalities. New strategic institutional programmes for race equality in HEIs are connected with the strategic work programmes of the national human rights and equality institution, the Higher Education Authority (Kempny and Michaels 2021), and a newly-created Ministry, the Department for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DfHERIS, 2021). Higher education equality initiatives are emerging from under a long shadow, following over a decade of crisis and austerity policies that followed the major financial and economic crisis of 2008. This paper looks at the wider historical, social, political and intellectual context for the development of race equality policies in Irish higher education. It tries to contextualise the rise of institutionalised equality and diversity work in a broader manner, connecting specific Irish developments with global legacies and trends. The paper draws upon several key Irish contributions on the theorising of race and ethnicity and interrogates their relationship (or not) to key questions about equity, diversity and equality in higher education. Notably, considerations of equitable access, participation and success were initially broadly concerned with questions of class (‘socio-economic status’), disadvantage and social mobility, but also came to take on work on the specificities of Irish racism (eg McVeigh, 1992; Garner 2003), with Irish Travellers (Mincéiri) gaining official status as an ethnic minority in 2017 (Pavee Point 2017). How does the advent of institutional race and ethnicity categorisation and monitoring reproduce, repress or redress equality, equity and diversity concerns via a racial or ethnic schema? What does an increased focus on race and ethnicity highlight, promote or stigmatise and what does it occlude? This paper hopes to draw insights from the fields of ignorance studies and questions of undone science (Richardson 2018), as well as theories of race and racialisation, to understand the constitutive role of visibilisation and invisibilisation. It revisits and reviews the new institutional emphasis on race for equality and human rights and as an institutional transformation project through the lens of a critical sociology of race in Ireland (Joseph 2017, cf Bonilla-Silva 1997). In doing so, this paper attempts to visibilise, reflect upon, contextualise and explicate some of the specificities of whiteness that are constitutive of Irish higher education institutions, their strategies, policies and activities.

Bonilla-Silva E (1997) Rethinking Racism: Toward a structural interpretation. American Sociological Review 62(3): 465–480. DfHERIS (2021) Annual Report 2021 - Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DfHERIS) https://www.gov.ie/en/organisation-information/76993-annual-report-2021-department-of-further-and-higher-education-research-innovation-and-science/ Garner, S (2003) Racism in the Irish Experience, London: Pluto Press Joseph, E (2020) Critical Race Theory and Inequality in the Labour Market: Racial Stratification in Ireland, Manchester, Manchester University Press Joseph, E (2017) Whiteness and racism: Examining the racial order in Ireland, Irish Journal of Sociology 26,1 Kempny, M; Michaels, L (2021) Race Equality in the Higher Education Sector https://hea.ie/assets/uploads/2021/10/HEA-Race-Equality-in-the-Higher-Education-Sector-Analysis-commissioned-by-the-Higher-Education-Authority-1.pdf McVeigh, R (1992) The Specificity of Irish Racism, Race and Class 33,4 31-45 Meer, N (2022) The Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice, Bristol: Bristol University Press. Pavee Point (2017) Recognising Traveller Ethnicity https://www.paveepoint.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EthnicityLeaflet.pdf Richardson, J (2018) Understanding Eurocentrism as a Problem of Undone Science, in G Bhambra, D Gebrial and K Nisancioglu (eds) Decolonising the University, London: Pluto Press, pp 231-248

Recently, a myriad of ‘difficult’ issues have gained prominence both in popular and policy discourses: concerns about immigration, the belief that diverse values threaten national identity and damage ‘social cohesion’, and ‘radicalisation’ in UK society. In the UK, successive governments have embarked on a “civic rebalancing” project (Keddie, 2014, p.540) aimed at creating “a cohesive citizenry” to counter these purported threats. This has entailed two strategies: Firstly, a liberal-nationalist approach to develop “a sense of belonging to and identification with the nation-state” (Vincent, 2018, p. 12) based on the assumption that the fractiousness witnessed in society is caused by a breakdown in patriotic loyalties to the state. To ‘solve’ this ‘problem’, the teaching in schools of “fundamental British values of democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and beliefs” (DfE 2014) has been institutionally mandated. Secondly, a strategy of the “securitisation of education” was promulgated (Farrell, 2016, p.282). The introduction of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015) placed a duty on teachers to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. A significant corpus of literature has criticised the assumptions that underpin these ‘Fundamental British Values’ (FBV) (Farrell, 2016). Some have questioned why the values are defined as ‘British’ rather than universal (Elton-Chalcraft, 2017). This paper extends some of these critiques by arguing that the notion of “Britishness” advocated for in these values is exclusionary as it is underpinned by an assimilationist logic that declares that loyalty and belonging to the nation is ‘singular’, notably for ‘the common good’. Concomitantly, ‘diversity’ is recast in the discourse of FBV as “failed corrupting plurality” (Gilroy, 2012 p. 384). The promotion of FBV in the curriculum is an “attempt to promote the salience of national boundaries” (Starkey, 2018, p. 159). The reductive effect in the abstracted notion of Britishness implied in significations such as freedom, democracy and equality always anticipates the arrival of the unnamed other as dangerous and ‘a trouble’ to the nation state that is morally beyond reproach, and thus such unnamed other needs to be contained, pacified and assimilated. This speaks to the double entendre in the title of the paper, ‘troubling diversity’. Here, diversity is a concept that is troubling to the state, but it also hints to the idea that this version of reality in respect of ‘diversity’ needs troubling.

Elton-Chalcraft, S., Lander, V., Revell, L., Warner, D. and Whitworth, L. (2017). To promote, or not to promote fundamental British values? Teachers’ standards, diversity and teacher education: British Educational Research Journal, 43, 29-48. Farrell, F. (2016). ‘Why all of a sudden do we need to teach fundamental British values?’ A critical investigation of religious education student teacher positioning within a policy discourse of discipline and control: Journal of Education for Teaching, 42(3), 280-297. Gilroy, P. (2012). ‘My Britain is fuck all’: zombie multiculturalism and the race politics of citizenship: Identities, 19(4), 380-397. Keddie, A. (2014). The politics of Britishness: multiculturalism, schooling and social cohesion: British Educational Research Journal, 40, 539-554. Starkey, H. (2018). Fundamental British Values and citizenship education: tensions between national and global perspectives: Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 100(2). Vincent, C. (2019). Cohesion, citizenship and coherence: schools’ responses to the British values policy: British Journal of Sociology of Education, 40(1), 17-32.

The value of social and cultural diversity in education, as conceptualized by EERA in its 2023 Conference Theme, is described in terms of its ethical and academic value. It is taken as a writ that social and cultural diversity is inherently good, and something for which education and education research must strive. As former Scottish international students become immigrants become Scottish and public sector employees, we agree that ‘the richness of who we are and who we are becoming becomes a source and resource’ but argue against this being in service of ourselves, ‘for what we do and why we do it across the education continuum’ but in service of the education continuum. Ball (2012) argued that education policy was a profit opportunity, with education sold as profitable global and national commodity. His work has since shown how ‘the market, business and commercial sensibilities are colonising and re-forming the meaning and practices of education’ (Ball, 2018, p. 588). We argue this is made explicit by the policy initiatives supported by governments, research institutes, funding bodies, and higher education providers, that advocate for the increasing internationalisation of higher education (Shahjahan, 2016). These initiatives operate through neocolonial practices that celebrate ‘diversity’ while supporting a pattern of global migration from the global south, which ultimately feeds a global workforce that benefits the global north (Spring, 2014). Therefore, we argue the ‘richness’ of who we are has been exploited by Scottish universities, working within a European education sector, that has capitalised on our international student fees and our hopes of immigration into Scotland and England, while continuing to capitalise on our roles as public sector employees responsible for caring for and educating Scots, Brits, and Europeans writ large. We contend it is our economic utility, and the economic value of our social and cultural diversity, that is ultimately sought by the notion and promotion of ‘diversity in education’ within Scottish universities and the wider European education sector. To this end, we challenge the situating of our diversity as an ethical and academic good for European education, arguing social and cultural diversity is sought by Scottish, as well as the wider European higher educations sector, because it financially supports a system that commodifies diversity. We explore the reality of this through autoethnographic accounts of our journeys into, through, and beyond, Scottish universities, informed by critical and creative methodologies discussed by Pruyn and Huerta-Charles (2018).

Ball, S.J. (2012) Global Ed. Inc.: New policy networks and the neoliberal imaginary. London: Routledge. Ball, S.J. (2018) Commericalising education: profiting from reform!, Journal of Education Policy, 33 (5), 587-589. De Lissovoy, N. (2015). Coloniality, Capital, and Critical Education. In De Lissovoy, N. (Ed.). Education and Emancipation in the Neoliberal Era. (pp. 99 – 129).Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Pruyn, M., Cary, L., Huerta-Charles, L. (2018). Performing Teaching, Citizenship and Criticality. In Holman Jones, S., Pruyn, M. (Eds.) Creative Selves / Creative Cultures. Creativity, Education and the Arts. (pp. 37 – 54). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Shahjahan, R. A. (2016). International Organizations (IOs), Epistemic Tools of Influence, and the Colonial Geopolitics of Knowledge Production in Higher Education Policy. Journal of Education Policy, 31(6), 694–710. Spring, J. (2014). A global workforce: migration and the talent Auction. In Spring, J (Ed.), Globalization of Education: An Introduction (2nd ed.). (pp.188 - 211). Routledge.

This symposium discusses university education in various European countries (Finland, Germany, Austria and England) from the perspective of non-normative students, namely, disabled students, students racialised as non-white and students who come from working class families. International scholarly debates have theorised the lived experiences of non-normative students in university as subjection to institutional violence or misrecognition (Burke 2018; Arday 2018). This refers to the treatment of these groups of students as ‘out of place’, which causes encounters that are disruptive, require negotiation, and invite complicity (Puwar 2004).

Studies (e.g., Burke 2018; Dolmage 2017; Arday 2018) show that academia leaves students and scholars who are racialised as non-white or are disabled to struggle with various forms of exclusion, despite their claimed diversity and accessibility policies (Ahmed 2012; Brown & Leigh 2018). There is also research evidence how class-based institutional violence during academic studies causes a sense of inadequacy and not belonging among working-class students (e.g. Käyhkö 2020).

The symposium papers deal with the theories deriving from critical disability studies, critical race and whiteness studies, sociology of education and from theories concerning emancipatory knowledge production. The concepts of ableism, racialization, social (in)equality, belonging and the politics of belonging are utilized in analyzing the practices, cultures and experiences within the university education from the basis of various research projects. Methodologically, the research presented and discussed in this symposium covers and explores approaches of narrative, life-historical and collective participatory memory work studies.

Discourses in higher education and the wider academic communities have identified a stark underrepresentation of individuals with chronic conditions, disabilities and/or neurodivergence (Brown and Leigh, 2018). Statistical reports (Institute for Employment Studies, 2019; HESA, 2017, 2020; The Royal Society, 2014) highlight that the rates of disclosure fall at particular transition points, such as from undergraduate to postgraduate, from doctoral to postdoctoral researchers and from junior to senior academics. Literature considers the doctoral journey, but the role of disabilities, chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence play in navigating the doctoral journey are not mentioned, although the decision to disclose a condition is relevant for individuals’ emotional wellbeing and the subsequent managing of the conditions. For this symposium, I report on a research project that aimed at gaining better understanding of the lived experiences of doctoral students regarding their navigation of the doctoral journey under the influence of disabilities/chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence as well as at gaining insights into performativity and the social life of disabled/chronically ill/neurodivergent doctoral students in contemporary higher education contexts. This in-depth qualitative research was formulated as an Embodied Inquiry (Leigh and Brown, 2021) with data having been collected via interviews and through participant-supplied photographs. The study relates to 11 participants, 9 women and 2 men, of whom 5 women were long-established members of academia, whereas the other 6 participants were doctoral students or early careers researchers. The disabilities/chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence reported by the 11 participants included: physical disabilities, mental health issues, formally diagnosed conditions, and symptoms associated with disabilities/chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergence. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2019) highlighted that despite many improvements and developments over decades, academic buildings still are widely inaccessible, but that inaccessibility is fluid depending on how busy the building is. Postgraduate research students are careful about disclosing conditions, but they are often forced to disclose specific needs in order to access support. When postgraduate research students unwillingly share details about their illnesses and or neurodivergence, they feel significantly more marginalised than students who have taken an active decision to disclose. Ultimately, disabled, chronically ill and/or neurodivergent people are socially and emotionally lonely amongst the masses.

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3:2, 77-101 Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 1-9. Brown, N., & Leigh, J. (2018). Ableism in academia: where are the disabled and ill academics?. Disability & Society, 33(6), 985-989. HESA. (2017). Student Enrolments. Available at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis accessed on 3rd November 2017. HESA. (2020). HE student enrolments by personal characteristics 2014715 to 2018/18. Available at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb255/figure-4 accessed on 16th February 2020. Institute for Employment Studies. (2019). Review of Support for Disabled Students in Higher Education in England. Available at https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/a8152716-870b-47f2-8045-fc30e8e599e5/review-of-support-for-disabled-students-in-higher-education-in-england.pdf accessed on 16th February 2020. Leigh, J. & Brown, N. (2021). Embodied Inquiry: Research Methods. Bloomsbury. The Royal Society. (2014). A Picture of the UK Scientific Workforce. Available at https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/diversity-in-science/uk-scientific-workforce-report/ accessed on 16th February 2020.

In recent years, educational research has illustrated the persistence of social structures: Social class still has a decisive influence on educational trajectories within Europe (Hauschildt et al. 2021). Learners from working-class families are statistically underrepresented compared to their peers from academically experienced homes – as well in Austria and Germany (Kracke et al. 2018). Higher Education research is increasingly concerned with the question of how to design learning spaces in a way that prevents drop-outs from those so-called non-normative students and foster inclusion (Finnegan, Merrill & Thunborg 2014). For this symposium, I draw on a qualitative research project that aims at analysing university education and belonging to its practices and expectations from the perspectives of first-generation students. Led by the assumption that the examination of life histories can generate insights into social conditions (Dausien & Alheit 2019; Bron & Thunborg 2017), different biographical data has been generated over the course of three years (biographical-narrative interviews, diary entries, autobiographical stories of one's educational path), constructing 24 case studies of first-generation students across universities in Austria and Germany (n=4). This paper specifically explores the empowering potentials of these research methods and the question of how they can be integrated in university teaching practice. How can the use of research strategies that take one's own experience as a starting point have an empowering effect for non-normative students? How can belonging to university be constructed by using life-historical and narrative methods? The focus of the analysis is a seminar of the Bachelor's programme in Educational Science at an Austrian university, in the context of which students explored social inequality in their life course and (voluntarily) wrote autobiographical texts about their educational path. In this sense, I do not only discuss biographical, narrative research methods in terms of knowledge production, but also – in Pierre Bourdieu's sense (1997) – with regard to promoting emancipation among the study participants and shifting to the idea of knowledge production as a common process. Building on these theoretical propositions, this paper is the result of a joint reflection by two students participating in the project and one researcher. The concluding reflections highlight the emancipatory potential unfolding in autobiographical writing, underlined by an increase in reflexivity, (self-)critical thinking and experienced agency. The process of practising reflexive distance to one's own life history can be understood as an educational process that is closely linked to biographical and habitual transformations.

Bourdieu, P. (1999). Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Stanford Univ. Press. Bron, A., and Thunborg, C. (2017). Theorising biographical work from non-traditional students' stories in higher education. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 54 (2), 111–128. Dausien, B. & Alheit, P. (2019). Biographical Approaches in Education in Germany. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Finnegan, F., Merrill, B. & Thunborg, C. (2014) (eds.). Student Voices on Inequalities in European Higher Education. Challenges for Theory, Policy and Practice in a Time of Change. Routledge. Hauschildt, K., Gwosć, C., Schirmer, H. & Wartenbergh-Cras, F. (2021). Social and Economic Conditions of Student Life in Europe. EUROSTUDENT VII Synopsis of Indicators 2018–2021. wbv. Kracke, N., Middendorf, E. & Buck D. (2018). Beteiligung an Hochschulbildung, Chancen(un)gleichheit in Deutschland. (DZHW Brief 3|2018). DZHW.

Even though Finland scores relatively well in terms of educational equality of opportunity, persons with white ethnicities, middle class background and who speak national languages as first language are most likely to end up university education (Nori et al. 2020). In this presentation we analyse interviews conducted with students, who share the experiences of racialisation in Academia (lately referred students racialised as non-white). We focus on manifestations of normative whiteness in informal social encounters outside official teaching and learning situations. Our study conceptualises whiteness as a normativity that often acts invisibly but operates constantly as a racialised touchstone for belonging in Finnish universities. We regard whiteness as a hegemonic power structure and a set of norms against which ‘others’ are defined. (Keskinen & Andreassen 2017). This means that whiteness should not simply be reduced to bodily features or skin colour but rather it should be approached as a structural position of privileges that some bodies can occupy and some not due to racialising practises. Our analysis is based on 16 thematic interviews of university students. Common to all of them is that they have grown up in Finland, but their belonging to the hegemonic white, Finnish- or Swedish-speaking majority population is continuously questioned by racialisation on the basis of skin colour and/or other physical features. Our analysis has been inspired by Nirmal Puwar's (2004) question of what happens when those bodies not expected to occupy certain places, here university, do so. Our preliminary analysis suggests that from the perspective of our research participants, the university is a bastion of normative whiteness. In informal encounters, normative whiteness manifests for example as disregarding racist comments, automatic positioning out of Finnishness, and assumptions where students are regarded rather manual workers than privileged university students. The analysis of normative whiteness in informal encounters at Finnish universities troubles the Finnish collective self-image as a forerunner of educational equality (Rastas 2012). It also highlights how tightly whiteness and Finnishness are still intertwined.

Keskinen, S. & Andreassen, R. (2017) Developing Theoretical Perspectives on Racialisation and Migration. NJMR, 7(2), 64–69. Nori, H., Isopahkala-Bouret, U., & Haltia, N., (2020). Access to Higher Education (Finland). In Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies. London: Bloomsbury. Puwar, N. (2004) Space invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place. Oxford, New York: Berg. Rastas, A. (2012). Reading history through Finnish exceptionalism. In Lofsdottir, K., Jensen, L. (Eds.) Whiteness and postcolonialism in the Nordic region exceptionalism, migrant others and national identities. Surrey: Ashgate.

In this paper, we present the results of two student projects focusing on the experiences of first-generation learners, i.e. university students whose parents have attained at highest secondary education (FGCS = first-generation college students). We specifically focus on the (re)constructions of student identity in the first stages of study based on the assumption that the transition from high school to the university environment marks entry into a new social and cultural world. And first-generation learners may be equipped with different resources to cope with this important point in their personal development (Crafter, Maunder, & Soulsby, 2019).

International studies report that first-generation college students are at higher risk of experiencing academic stress and negative emotions regarding their studies (Murphy & Hennessy, 2017; Balon et al. 2015) and overall tendency to experience a higher degree of mental health distress (Rubin et al., 2016). They face typical challenges linked with the transition from secondary to tertiary education, which is linked with moving places, changing networks of peers, building relationships with academic staff, and of course, different demands regarding studying, particularly a strong focus on independent work, but further might experience additional challenges linked particularly with a socioeconomic situation or caring duties. All together with the specific situation for FGCS, these challenges might result in a higher degree of problems in the process of adaptations and a more difficult path toward academic success (Misra et al., 2000, in Jenkins, et al. 2013, McIntyre et al. 2018, in Rubin et al. 2019).

Reay (2018) included in her analysis the perspective of social isolation and lack of academic integration, which might contribute to the FGCS experience of studying as if participating at different somehow parallel institutions, as compared to students with compatible identities and backgrounds. Chang et al. (2020) and Phillips et al. (2020) explore possible cultural mismatch between values inherent to academic institutions and values promoted within the family background of FGCS.

But these results also need to be understood as context-specific. In the Czech Republic, where the study is conducted, change from the very narrow elite to mass university education happened at the beginning of 21. a century and lead to a situation where reports provide information that about 66,1 % of students enrolled at the bachelor level are first-generation students (CVVS, 2020). However, with the increased level of education (master, doctorate) proportion of these students is decreasing. So, while widening access to education enabled a more diverse population of students to participate in tertiary education, it is not enough to just enable access and we need research on what are their experiences within these classed institutions. Through the exploration of the individual situation, we can also contribute to the discussion on changes within the academic environment to be able to better accommodate a diverse student body, so that they can flourish in both academic and psychological terms.

Here we turn to the body of research that is focused on the importance of identity(identities) within education. The construction of salient identities related to a learning process can contribute to both relevant processes of well-being and academic achievement (Matschke, 2022, Mavor, Platow, Bizumic, 2017). Thus in this presentation, we will focus on the process of transition to higher education focusing on how students needed to reconstruct themselves and their self-understanding in a new educational environment that brings in a change in educational expectations and requirements, as well as change of place and networks.

After the milestone of the 20th anniversary of the social dimension in the Bologna Process, new commitments were formulated by the European Commission towards “building inclusive and connected higher education systems” (European Commission 2017), as well as to further strive towards a holistic approach (Schmidt Scukanec/Napier 2020, 2). With a holistic approach “universities can address a broad range of societal needs, including those of vulnerable, disadvantaged and underrepresented [students]” (Schmidt Scukanec/Napier 2020, 6). Similarly, the UNESCO has formulated education goals towards inclusion anchored in the SDG4 which reads "ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education for all by 2030 and promote lifelong learning opportunities." The UNESCO also sets holistic goals from early childhood development until lifelong learning (UNESCO 2023).

Despite the strategic commitment of universities to inclusion and the social dimension, inheritance of educational inequalities is still an issue in many countries (OECD 2016). This contribution addresses first-in-family students (fifs), who are an underrepresented group in higher education (HE), and their transition to university­ partly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenge to the entire HE sector as well. Internationally, there is increasing concern regarding the disengagement of marginalised students from the formal education system (OECD 2020).

First-in-family students cannot access experiences or information from their family members to ease their transition to university (Lessky/Unger 2022; Patfield et al. 2022). Their transition is often more cumbersome compared to students from an academic family background and according to previous literature, it is harder for them to build a social network and develop a feeling of belonging at HE institutions (O'Shea 2019). Additionally, some families put them under pressure because they are the first to study and they are often expected to succeed (ibid), while the influence of the social/family background leads other fifs to the final decision to leave university (Nairz-Wirth et al. 2017).

A Bourdieusian perspective ([1972 ]1993, 1984, 1990) is used to analyze the interplay of habitus, social capital and field. In the field of HE, sense of belonging is often referred to as student abilities to build social networks and it is gaining importance as a ‘predictor of positive academic outcomes’ (Lewis and Hodges 2015, 1).

More precisely, the main research question is to explore the relevance of social capital for first-in-family students during their transition to university. Further, we also look at the fifs´ sense of belonging to peers and the role of institutions in building a sense of belonging.

The research questions will be answered with a qualitative design (see methods section).

This topic is not only interesting for researchers in the field of HE/education pathways as fifs represent a traditionally disadvantaged student group who managed upward social mobility. Still, they are often not mentioned in diversity programs and third mission statements (Dipplhofer-Stiem, 2017). This makes the topic also relevant for practitioners and policymakers.

Transitioning to the university environment is a milestone in an individual's life path. This milestone is often a symbol of a new beginning and change from controlled education at secondary school, where the responsibility for education is mainly in the hands of teachers, to a university environment, where the student is an active agent of his/her education (Vengřinová, 2022). A new environment can be confusing for beginning students (Hassel & Ridout, 2018; Kálmán, 2020), but simultaneously it brings the opportunity to explore the unknown, learn new things and become independent (Aristeidou, 2021; Parker et al., 2004). All this happens during the process of integration first described by Spady and Tinto in the 1970s. Tinto (1975) divided the integration of the higher education system into integration into two spheres: academic and social spheres. Both of these spheres are interconnected.
In the last ten years, a large heterogeneous group of students (MSMT, n.d.) has been attending universities in the Czech Republic, symbolising the universal phase of Czech higher education (Prudky et al., 2010). Each student has a specific background: SES, culture capital, individual attributes, and family background;... Tinto (1975) says that integration into studies is influenced by three essential factors: pre-college schooling, individual attributes and family background. In the current research, the authors analyse the third factor and how family background influences the integration process. The result of the research is that first-generation students have more difficult entry into studies in terms of integration into the tertiary educational level than non-first-generation students (Dika & D'Amico, 2016; Ives & Montoya, 2020). First-generation students represent those students who are the first in their families to have a chance to earn a college degree (Petty, 2014), which means that they come to college from families with lower educational backgrounds (Gibbons & Woodvide, 2014). Members of these families are used to helping each other and have closer family ties. They, therefore, tend to increase the frequency of communication and control over the newcomer student. However, this leads to the fact that it is more challenging for the student to break away from the family culture and integrate into a new environment (Arch & Gilman, 2019). At a time when students of Czech colleges were forced to stay at home (due to the covid-19 pandemic) and study online, the possibility of social integration was limited. Social integration is necessary for academic integration, during which the student becomes familiar with the demands of going through the study, study engagement starts, and starts to accept his/her new social role: student. During the first semester of 2020/2021, when online teaching was mandated, beginning first-generation students could not turn to their peers when looking for help with questions related to the academic sphere because they did not know their peers. They also could not turn to their family members, with whom they spent most of their time, as they had no experience with the university environment. Therefore, their teachers became their crucial source of information. Research by Hassel and Ridout (2018) and Le et al. (2010) emphasise the importance of students' contact with college teachers and the role they play for beginning students in learning a new educational environment. This paper aims to answer the following questions: (1) How do beginning first-generation students describe the role of their teachers in the process of academic integration into online studies? (2) What beginning first-generation students perceive to have been (in)effective on the part of teachers towards their academic integration.