In 2010, reflecting the strategic institutional imperative of widening participation and enhancing transition to health programmes, a Scottish nursing community of practice (CoP), was formed to bring together academics from further and higher education, initially for a period of six months. The community was funded by the Greater Glasgow…

Engaging students has been seen as the key to promoting their achievement in higher education institutions. However, there is an important stage prior to this: the development of a positive student identity which influences students' motivation to engage. As the student body has evolved from full-time, on-campus students entering university…

The article explores perspectives on academic activities in public sector universities in Pakistan. Seven Pakistani universities yielded 290 teachers and 568 students in the sample. Factor analysis indicated five main factors in both teacher and student data sets. Both teachers and students were dissatisfied with the performance of the…

As one of the allied health professions, occupational therapy has adopted a primarily clinical focus on human occupation (or the process of daily life) and this is reflected in education, which has until recently tended to overlook contextual social factors such as poverty, marginalisation, exclusion, unemployment, incarceration and immigration.…

This paper sets out to examine the situated nature of graduate attributes through using activity systems theory to explore their contextual nature. It builds on earlier work into graduate attributes by examining the reasons behind the significant variation in their interpretation, thus providing an analysis of the contextual nature of teaching and…

This article takes a reflective stance on the development of practice in scaffolding and mediating for creativity and potentially better performance in gymnastics. The pedagogical approach outlined illustrates how an experienced practitioner can adopt mediational (rather than meddling) and scaffolding techniques to focus on supporting the…

Successive studies of the international student experience have documented a lack of contact between host and visitor despite its value for language and cultural learning as well as satisfaction with the stay. In spite of the rise in international education, there is a lack of literature on the domestic student perspective. This article redresses…

There is a perception that university students have changed dramatically in their modes of learning in recent years, mainly due to their widespread use of the Internet as an information source, the change in student body due to the greater accessibility of third level education and changes in experience in second level education. Lectures,…

One of the most difficult challenges facing those entering the lifelong learning sector (LLS) as teaching practitioners is for them to discover their identity as educators. Unlike the majority of those entering training to teach in compulsory education, who follow the traditional route of acquiring subject specialism through university training,…

Developing academic relationships between vocational colleges and universities in Australia has been problematic, with exchanges between the two sectors limited to linear articulation and prescribed credit transfer. Whilst some very good examples of collaboration exist, in general the two sectors operate independently of each other. The isolation…

Diversity, understood in a multiplicity of ways, has been a focus of attention in education in recent years. As in many other countries, recent post-school education policies in Aotearoa/New Zealand have emphasised previously under-represented ethnic groups, such as Maori and Pasifika. The intention has been to widen participation in further and…

After the 1992 Further and Higher Education Reform Act enabled polytechnics and the qualifying franchised colleges to be renamed universities or higher education institutions, the dominance of the rhetoric of skill development aggravated long-standing schisms between further and higher education about whether or not degree-level courses should be…

This article focuses on a blended learning curriculum development project, in which a student was "prospectively" engaged with teacher educators in developing resources designed to increase support for academic reading. Curriculum development took place at the University of Hertfordshire School of Education through the Change Academy for Blended…

University studies in Greece are characterised by a symptom usually described as "prolonged student status". This refers to students who prolong the period of their studies beyond the expected length for degrees, sometimes by many years. This article, as well as recording the distribution of the duration of studies in a public institution, reveals…

Progression from a foundation degree to an honours degree has become an increasingly popular pathway through higher education. The route creates dual institution scenarios in which students can progress from a further education institution to a higher education institution. This paper reports on research into the academic and social integration of…