This article offers evidence on ways in which assessment of student learning outcomes made a difference for some academic institutions in the United States. It offers perspectives on the internal changes that took place, especially within academic programmes. Even after the capacity for assessment was developed, challenges remained in evaluating…

Data from over 21,600 students who left Catalan higher education institutions during the academic years 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 have been analysed in order to describe the academic and personal profiles of university dropouts. Additionally, a telephone survey and face-to-face interviews with a pilot group of leavers were conducted to gather…

This article explores the concepts of "brand" and "franchise" in the development of international quality assurance. The impact of corporate language and culture on higher education is evident and has been extensively analysed. Recent attention given to branding of universities reflects the ever-growing influence of corporate…

In many countries the outputs from university student satisfaction surveys are used for a variety of educational management purposes. Within the United Kingdom, the main instrument employed by state authorities to measure student satisfaction is the National Student Survey (NSS). The issue investigated by the current research related to whether…

Learning outcomes of higher education are a quality tool in a changing higher education landscape but cannot be seen as neutral measures across professions and disciplines. Survey results from graduates and recent graduates indicate that prevailing measures of learning outcomes yield the same result within and across disciplinary and professional…

In Tanzania, the national examinations are used as the primary tools for selection and transition from lower to upper secondary education. Female students are more likely to fail in the national exams and to drop out from education. This article examines the perspectives of female students concerning their advancement in secondary education. Two…

Recent gender retheorisation has drawn on Mikhail Bakhtin's literary and linguistic theories of monoglossia and heteroglossia to reconcile seemingly contradictory gender discourses. Thus, girls/women and boys/men as they are biologically sexed might be discussed within a poststructural gender theory discourse that disconnects gender from the…

Research on social mobility typically acknowledges the relevance of gender. However, gender-based differences still lack extensive description and explanation. This article starts by reviewing a number of influential contributions on social mobility, educational systems and employment change, as well as important critiques raised in feminist…

This article seeks to investigate whether the improvement of the status of women in Hong Kong in recent decades, effected through various efforts to promote the values of equal opportunity concepts, is reflected in patterns of gender representation in primary school textbooks used in Hong Kong. A comparison of a popular series of primary school…

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 15 openly bisexual male youth from sixth forms across the UK, this article documents positive experiences of bisexual male youth in school: participants had positive coming out experiences and did not encounter significant discrimination or harassment because of their sexual identity. Participants attribute this…

This article examines how Muslim girls of Somali origin raised in Sweden imagine their adulthood in regard to career and family life. The theoretical framework is social constructionist in that it assumes that children have agency and are capable and competent actors, in contrast to what has previously been generally assumed about children from…

This paper discusses the characteristics of women discipline supervisors in the Arab education system in Israel, through their professional development to their attainment of senior supervisory posts. It examines how they attain supervision posts and perform various managerial functions in what is considered a male role, in a patriarchal society,…

In this paper, we draw from academic capitalism to explore the work lives and experiences of faculty who work in a striving university. Our analysis suggests that faculty members feel pressures induced by academic capitalism, including a lack of space, no time and the sense of constant surveillance. Our work adds to the theoretical as well as…

One of the tasks of postgraduate education is to develop students' conceptions and skills necessary for lifelong learning in their profession. Therefore, this study aimed at identifying students' development in self-regulated learning throughout a postgraduate teacher education programme. A longitudinal design with three measurement…

This article explores the features and potential of an embodied, rather than merely skills-based, approach to doctoral writing. The authors' conceptual framework is derived from the phenomenological literature, particularly Heidegger's critique of modern life as permeated by a quest for mastery and control. They address two key questions…