School students’ confidence when answering diagnostic questions online

Educational Studies in Mathematics - In this paper, we analyse a large, opportunistic dataset of responses (N = 219,826) to online, diagnostic multiple-choice mathematics questions, provided by...     

Positive emotions: passionate scholarship and student transformation

This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to pedagogic actions, primarily extrinsically orientated, and pervasive throughout the learning experience. The data conceive positive affect as oppositional, principally ephemeral and linked to performative pedagogic endeavours of getting, knowing and doing. A cyclical social dynamic of reciprocity, generating positive feedback loops, is highlighted. Finally we inductively construct a tentative ‘emotion-transition framework’ to assist our understanding of positive emotion as a force for transformational change; our contention is that higher education might proactively craft pedagogic spaces so as to unite the feeling discourse, the thinking discourse (epistemological self) and the wider life-self (ontological) discourse.     

Towards graduate employment: exploring student identity through a university-wide employability project

Students have expectations of their university education leading to graduate careers, with universities investing considerable resources in institution-wide initiatives designed to enhance opportunities for student work placements and work-related learning. However, there are large variations between courses and disciplines in student uptake of these opportunities, with limited evidence explaining why this might be the case. Recognising recent approaches which consider student identity in transitions, this study explored student attitudes to work-related learning across a range of subject disciplines. The first phase of the study used in-class surveys (N = 199) to focus on students’ self-identification and perceptions of employability initiatives. Follow-up interviews were conducted to further explore themes emerging in the survey data. The study found that, while some students drew on resources for identity work in their recognition of and approach to work-related learning, access was limited, and university resources were not always recognised or effective. The findings have implications for the design of effective graduate employability initiatives.     

Exposing the dark side,an exploration of the influence social capital has upon parental sports volunteers

This study explored the influence social capital had over parental sports volunteers who are considered to be of paramount importance in the delivery of UK sports initiatives. A review of the relevant literature identifies and discusses the complexities within the debate to define social capital while human and cultural capital emerge as an essential element in the production of parental volunteers’ ability to access opportunities through a process of bonding or bridging social networks. This study used a grounded research focused on the use of semi-structured interviews and research diaries with (n = 8) study participants. The results from this study, which were analysed through a Bourdieuan perspective, suggested the process that recruits parental volunteers is exclusive; furthermore, the results show the insidious presences of the dark side of social capital, which affected the respondents by reinforcing exclusive ties and identities, which was found to exclude outsiders while reproducing a dominant social hierarchy. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the study for future practical and academic applications of social capital production within sports volunteerism.     

Acknowledging the affective in higher education

This article argues that we need richer conceptions of students as affective and embodied selves and a clearer theorisation of the role of emotion in educational encounters. These areas are currently under‐researched and under‐theorised in higher education. The first part of the article explores the literature on emotion. The second reports on a case study which aimed to map students' emotional journeys over their first year at university. These data highlight the importance of relationships, students' changing emotions over the year, their perceptions of their academic studies and understandings of life at university. The article concludes that it is important to understand the affective dimension in pedagogic encounters and the lifeworld of students, and that it is possible to do so without a collapse into therapeutic discourses.