Sole Parent Students And Higher Education

This book examines how sole parents are constituted within university contexts, through social discourse and social policies. The gendered assumptions of female parental care-work are analysed as both constraining and enabling sole parent participation in higher education. Social welfare policies and the policies of university institutions are also considered as central to the experiences of sole parents who study at universities. This book explores the sense of belonging and engagement for sole parents in higher education with a view to challenging how universities engage with under-represented and diverse students. Equitable access to higher education is important as a potentially transformative personal and social good and this book contributes new thinking to understanding why a university education remains elusive for many students.

This timely volume explores the ways that university institutions affect the experiences of student carers and how student carers negotiate the (often conflicting) demands of care and academic work. The book maps the experiences of student carers in academic cultures, exploring the intersectional ways in which gender, class, race and other social categories define who can take up a position as a student and a carer. It is framed by concerns of equity and diversity in higher education and ways that diverse people with wide-ranging care responsibilities are able to access and engage with degree-level study. The book promotes the idea of a more inclusive and equitable higher education environment and supports the emergence of more ‘care-full’ academic cultures which value and recognise care and carers. The book will be highly relevant reading for academics, researchers and post-graduate students with an interest in higher education, social justice, gender studies and caring responsibilities. It will also be of interest to postgraduate students in sociology of education as well as higher education policymakers.

This handbook explores feeling like an ‘imposter’ in higher education and what this can tell us about contemporary educational inequalities. Asking why imposter syndrome matters now, we investigate experiences of imposter syndrome across social locations, institutional positions, and intersecting inequalities. Our collection queries advice to fit-in with the university, and authors reflect on (not)belonging in, with and against educational institutions. The collection advances understandings of imposter syndrome as socially situated, in relation to entrenched inequalities and their recirculation in higher education. Chapters combine creative methods and linger on the figure of the ‘imposter’ - wary of both individualising and celebrating imposters as lucky, misfits, fraudsters, or failures, and critically interrogating the supposed universality of imposter syndrome.

Bridging a gap between higher education research and women’s and gender studies, this volume explores the conceptual underpinnings and methodological implications involved in researching different concepts commonly associated with gender, including queer, trans*, women, men, feminisms, intersectionality, alongside discussions about the term gender itself. Drawing on a range of empirical experiences and methodological frameworks, chapter authors consider the ethical, political, theoretical, and practical questions that arise when conducting gender-related research in college and university contexts. This book is a foundation for understanding the complexities of gender, as well as a site for envisioning new futures for educators and researchers in this emerging global discipline.

Higher education increasingly entails a crossing of national, linguistic and cultural boundaries. Recent years have seen significant expansion in the sector around transnational education and online learning, with students, academic staff, educational programmes and even institutions all ever-more mobile. This expansion is usually seen in unproblematic terms, with economic growth the main priority in view. The challenge that is entailed in pursuing social justice in the face of such global expansion, however, should not be underestimated. This book subjects to critical scrutiny the uncertainties that are associated with internationalised higher education. It explores how the agency of teachers, other members of staff and students is mediated by experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Physical or virtual movement around the globe may have become more straightforward in recent years, but the same cannot be said of intercultural relations in classrooms. Challenges can be expected where concerns, projects and practices of students are pursued in an unfamiliar cultural setting, or where agency crosses over more than one cultural system. Finally, mobility often throws up situations in which privileges are accompanied by distressing challenges. The book teases out the implications of all these issues for teaching in higher education. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of education, politics, sociology, human geography and social work. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Teaching in Higher Education.

Problematising ‘who’ is recognised in widening participation and equalities policy, Samuel Dent presents an Institutional Ethnographic study, involving 16 students at a research-intensive UK University, and collected over two years, to gain further insight into the institutional experiences of students who care for children while studying.

This methodologically oriented collection brings together higher education diary research studies from international contexts to showcase the versatility of the method and its adaptability to higher education research. While keeping a diary is a familiar personal practice, diary method is a neglected form of research in higher education studies as well as the social sciences more broadly. This book showcases the range of options within diary method, as well as the benefits and challenges that this fascinating but mysterious method may bring to students and academic researchers alike. The benefits and the risks and challenges of diary research are discussed across the empirical studies included in the volume. Using a variety of solicited diary techniques, including audio, written and photo diaries, and focusing on different aspects of higher education including undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics, these studies include salient topics such as: LGBTQ identities, faith, caring responsibilities, international students, socioeconomically disadvantaged students and employability. This important contribution to methodological innovation in the higher education research field promotes diary method as a viable option in social sciences and beyond. Whether new to the method or a seasoned diary researcher, this book is ideal reading for anyone who would like to learn the fundamentals of diary research and explore its feasibility in empirical contexts.

This book offers new interdisciplinary analyses of borders and blockages in higher education and how they can be inhabited and reworked. Amidst stratified inequalities of race, gender, class and sexuality, across time and space, contributors explore what alternative academic futures can be claimed. While higher education institutions are increasingly concerned with ‘internationalization’, ‘diversity’, and ‘widening access and participation’, the sector remains complicit in reproducing entrenched inequalities of access and outcomes among both students and staff: boundaries of who does and does not belong are continually drawn, enacted, contested and redrawn. In the contemporary neoliberal, entrepreneurial and ‘post’-colonial educational context, contributors critically examine educational futures as these become more uncertain. This wide-ranging collection serves as a call to action for those concerned with the future of higher education, and how alternative futures can be reimagined.