Education plays an important role in developing societies, and most governments around the world are paying more attention to collaborative learning in order to enhance educational outcomes. In this context, using technologies in education has been a critical factor in developing such educational systems. The use of online collaborative social networks (OCSNs) for educational purposes has become a highly debated topic among researchers all over the world. The current study aims to contribute to this debate by examining the potential use of OCSNs in Saudi Arabia’s higher education, which, due to its specific culture, faces particular educational issues. The study used a mixed method approach, with the Delphi method and followed up with interviews. Forty-eight experts selected from five Saudi government universities participated in the study and some of them participated in the later interviews. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data was obtained from these two methods and the findings of the interviews method were used to help understand the findings from Delphi method. As part of the study, a new model of building knowledge in four dimensions was designed and was called the SNTPCK model. This model was used as a framework for the study and as a codes generator for data analysis. The findings of the study showed that it is possible to improve Saudi higher education by using OCSNs, and stated a number of factors that might affect such usage. In addition, the study developed a new model for using OCSNs in higher education and described its implementation phases. In order to support the implementation model, the study developed a framework for the usage of OCSNs in education policy. The study concluded to that the Delphi method is an appropriate method of researching such phenomena. It recommended using OCSNs in Saudi higher education and recommended that OCSN implementation carried out gradually in the educational process.

Both organisations and customers are becoming more aware of the current economic, environmental and social challenges that the world faces today. In this context, it can be argued that universities are amongst the most important organisations that could contribute effectively in sustainability development in any society through producing and teaching sustainability related knowledge. This puts an ethical obligation upon these organisations to introduce and implement sustainability within their premises and operations. The procurement function is one of the main functions that can contribute effectively in the overall sustainability agenda of any university due to the large variety of products and services that this type of organisation procures and the related supply chain issues that they manage. However, the extant literature on Sustainability in Higher Education (SHE) suffers from a significant dearth of studies that specifically address Sustainable Procurement (SP) and Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) in universities. Thus, this thesis contributes to filling this particular gap through conducting exploratory research in order to investigate the implementation of SP initiatives in the current buying practices of UK based HE Institutions (Universities) and their supply chains, with a particular focus on the food and catering procurement area. This thesis, therefore, has two main overarching research questions, which are: “How are sustainability issues incorporated into the current food and catering procurement practices of UK based HE Institutions?” and “How are food and catering SP practices extended to multiple actors and multiple tiers across the existing supply chains of UK based HE Institutions?”. These two questions have been answered through three inter-related papers that tackle the following three topics: the implementation of SP initiatives through different implementation modes employed by universities (i.e., in-house catering vs outsourced catering); local sourcing as one of the main sustainability initiatives within universities’ sustainability agendas; and the impact of institutional pluralism on the implementation of sustainability initiatives within the university food and catering supply chain. The thesis uses three well-established theoretical lenses, (i.e., Transaction Cost Economics, Legitimacy Theory, and Institutional Theory), in the three papers respectively. Beside their own findings and contributions, the three papers collectively provide important contributions to both the SHE literature and the SSCM literature. In terms of the SHE literature, they: provide insights into the implementation of SP in HE institutions and their food supply chains; compensate for the dearth of studies on SSCM in HE; and enhance the theoretical authentication of the SHE literature. In terms of the SSCM literature, they: provide a new context for three theories; include a real supply chain perspective by including multiple tiers in the data collection and analysis; include the TBL in studying SSCM; and provided a theoretical generalisation of the results for the wider SSCM context.

Student teachers are expected to learn from experience in order to become reflective practitioners and to achieve Qualified Teacher Status. This is a study of student teachers’ ability to reflect on their experience of teaching. This thesis is a qualitative study which forms one part of a longitudinal action research project studying whether and how different reflective learning activities introduced into a PGCE programme promote reflection and increase the capacity to learn. It takes an interpretative approach, generating qualitative data on the processes of reflection of students relating to their teacher training. The study took place over a one-year period in one teacher training institution. There were 13 participants aged 22 or 23 years, who were all taking a post-graduate route into teaching Physical Education. The data arose from student responses to different reflective learning activities and subsequent interviews followed by an evaluation of the effectiveness of the overall learning strategy.

As new ways of delivering higher education are promoted this study has built upon existing work on ‘becoming a student’ and extends investigations into changing economic and socio-spatial conditions that give rise to new student experiences. Specifically, it explores the co-production of student spaces and student identities in the context of new higher education provision. The research contributes to debates on student and youth identities by revealing the contested production of student spaces and the socio-spatial inclusions and exclusions that accompany these processes. The research is drawn from a case study of higher education in Hastings, south-east England where the foundation of post-18 education at the University of Brighton Hastings Campus is part of a suite of interventions to stimulate coastal urban regeneration, contributing to policy to address deprivation in struggling seaside resorts. The thesis examines the everyday geographies of an early group of students in this context in order to shed light on the ways in which student identities and student spaces are co-constructed within Hastings, often in uneven and unexpected ways. The methods included a quantitative survey of student experiences and behaviours together with a follow up qualitative photo elicitation interview that examined student’s articulation of their identities through visual representation. These methods involved a particular cohort of students and explored how a range of student experiences and spaces were influenced by student life-course, previous residential location, relationships with other students, the university and the town. Place, space and identity were key concepts used to examine the similarities and differences of experience between the local and migrant groups. Further empirical data was obtained from in-depth interviews with key actors with a responsibility for shaping the student experience through space and place in order to examine how their actions and perceptions shaped student spaces and experiences. The findings of this research demonstrate the importance of place making to higher education students who have attempted to reproduce the Brighton student experience in Hastings. The results are timely as education and learning is reconfigured nationally, and students shape their identities in new spaces, through new relationships and experiences within a new setting. The conceptual framework combined findings related to place, identity and the accumulation of capital that advance an understanding on place making as pertinent to a new student body.

There is a growing contemporary interest in how universities can play a role in making a difference to community and social issues, and to question how universities’ authority to create and legitimate knowledge becomes an increasingly important in the struggle for social justice. This thesis engages with this timely debate by exploring the intersection of knowledge, power and participation in community-university engagement. I situate my enquiry in specific forms of practice between academic and community and social actors collaborating to produce shared knowledge about issues of social justice. My particular focus is on how diverse ways of knowing, including that of Indigenous peoples, can count towards the way in which such issues are both defined and addressed. I specifically make use of the concept of ‘cognitive justice’ – or whose knowledge counts – to analyse how attention is paid to epistemology in these collaborations. I used a qualitative research design and conducted fieldwork in Canada and the UK to develop 10 case studies. I interviewed academic and community partners about a project they collaborated on in order to explore how people understood what they were doing together, how knowledge was used, shared and legitimated and how these encounters were framed with respect to social justice. My conceptual and analytical framework focused on an exploration of deliberative processes of participation and cognitive justice in this landscape. This thesis makes the case for cognitive justice in community-university engagement in three main areas. The first is to suggest that the participative conditions necessary for cognitive justice include relational practices of engagement and the presence of deliberative characteristics to knowledge creation and use. The second is to argue for an inseparable connection between knowledge and participation in practice, and thus that the degree to which cognitive justice can be considered central to social justice requires practices to go ‘beyond recognition’ of diverse knowledges alone. The third considers the ways in which forms of engagement themselves can be considered cognitively just. I argue ‘doing’ cognitive justice requires new arrangements between researchers and researched which also brings with it ethical and methodological considerations.

It is widely acknowledged that student-centred learning (SCL) gives learners feelings of being appreciated and respected, and thus helps students to be engaged and motivated to learn. SCL is an approach implemented in online learning (OL). This study investigates the role of the tutor, in implementing and facilitating SCL as a positive learning environment in the specific context of OL in Egyptian Higher Education (HE). The study examines tutors’ perceptions of SCL in OL as a concept and the factors that influence these perceptions, the pedagogical approaches they need to successfully implement SCL, and the affordances and challenges of this implementation in the specific context of Egyptian HE. Data for this study was collected from 20 online tutors at two major Egyptian universities in Northern Egypt both in focus groups and in individual semi-structured interviews. This study contributes to the area of research into SCL on matters such as definition of SCL, tutors’ approaches to understanding the concept, and its practical application in OL. The study investigates the pedagogical repertoire tutors need to implement SCL, describes approaches and strategies applied in SCL, and highlights results which can be used to offer support and guidance to tutors in order to facilitate their students' ongoing learning processes, leading to individually tailored and flexible education paths. The study findings indicate that online tutors approach the issue of SCL in OL with reference to four main aspects: prerequisites, challenges, concerns and solutions. The main research findings are that student control and independence are not widely practised in online Egyptian HE. There are many concerns for online tutors when empowering students such as: losing control, losing tutors’ respect and the invisibility of online students for monitoring them. Moreover, the research found that student trust is an issue that needs to be resolved. For tutors, tutor-student trust is a process that requires students’ early preparation to learn how to be responsible. The study found that social collaboration in OL offers promising opportunities for educational reform in Egyptian HE, particularly with respect to problems such as overcrowded classes. Furthermore, tutors acknowledged the importance of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in gaining the professional and experiential skills that they need to develop their teaching practices. Another finding of this study, referring to the low wages for tutors in Egypt, is that financial incentives have a significant impact on tutors’ feelings that they are invested in and acknowledged by their academic institutions. Consequently, tutors are getting engaged with the learning community and using the utmost abilities to pursue their work.

This research project is situated in an area of interest in contemporary HE, namely ‘students as partners’. The study explored the experiences of staff and students working in partnership as part of a national What Works Change Programme at Ulster University. Using a phenomenological approach, one-to-one semi-structured interviews were carried out with stafand students(n=14), which aimed to capture rich descriptions of the lived experience of individuals. A surprising feature of the data revealed that there was a high level of consensus between staff and students in how they described their lived experiences and the impact that partnership working was having on them. The data produced two main themes which articulated the benefits of partnership working: personal development, and enhancement of the learning climate. In addition, challenges associated with partnership working are revealed and include: time, resistance, and capacity of both staff and students. These insights bring new understanding to stakeholders at Ulster in relation to how these findings can help us think more holistically about student engagement from three dimensions: emotional, behavioural and cognitive. The importance of remaining vigilant to the emotional dimension of student engagement is argued as this can act as a catalyst to change thinking and behaviours. Focus groups (n=5) were subsequently carried out with institutional stakeholder groups at Ulster. This evaluation set out to assess the value of the interview findings for the purposes of developing a framework, including more specifically, a Guide for staff and students on how a ‘students as partners’ approach might be implemented at Ulster in order to develop capacity for student engagement. Recommendations for all relevant stakeholders at Ulster are made to support the implementation of a ‘students as partners’ approach. Whilst specific to Ulster, there are valuable learning points, which may be extended to the HE sector more generally.

Despite their ubiquitous presence in higher education (HE), staff learning and development programmes (LDPs) featuring soft skills remain a largely uncharted dimension of global university culture. Few studies have explored their meaning for participants or the relationship between LDPs, self-care and managerial practices. This study used autoethnography to explore staff experiences of learning and development programmes (LDPs) within one HE setting. Fieldwork included personal participation in a variety of LDPs and 25 semi-structured interviews with participants from a cross section of programmes and work sectors. Symbolic ritual and ritual interaction theory were used to interpret study data. Findings suggest that, as social worlds, LDPs featuring soft skills offer and fulfill practical and affective functions. From a social interaction perspective they emerged as an embodied, enjoyable andcommunal component of staff training and development, providing actors with a space, in which they can temporarily redefine themselves vis-à-vis the group and the wider social world. The ritual aspects of the LDP social world helped to create for participants a sense of passage with a beginning, middle and completion phase, which in contrast to the unending state of liminality associated with modern life, may help explain their appeal to temporary and part time staff, myself included. On some programmes the focus was on performance management (e.g. leadership skills), on others self-care (e.g. meditation, resilience), however most included both. Theatrical and dramatic devices were frequently used as motivational tools, encouraging academic staff in particular to emotionally invest in an increasingly mandatory entrepreneurial culture, with which they might otherwise be reluctant to engage. As ‘social worlds’ with neoliberal directives, LDPs promote various self-governance activities in the form of self-entrepreneurism and novel, corporate versions of selfcare. I propose three major subdivisions; self-entrepreneurial activities, self-care, and self-examination, which together constitute a hybrid form of self-governance. By emphasising self-responsibility they avert wider discussions concerning participation, power and inequalities in HE. The categories of ‘career nomad,’ ‘reluctant entrepreneur’ and ‘course hopper,’ that participants were seen to embody in this study, may prove useful for further research into modern workplace identities, while myobservations concerning liminality in the modern workplace has implications for the future direction of staff learning and development. Study outputs focused on sharing results with senior stakeholders involved in strategic planning of future LDPs, and considering more collaborative and holistic ways to promote staff wellbeing within the organisation.

This thesis is an autobiographical exploration of the process of learning and teaching in Higher Education. The use of autobiography and its importance as data in providing sovereign accounts, transformative experiences and opportunities for theory building are examined. Group work theory and practice from the sociological perspective of National Training Laboratories and the more psychoanalytical Tavistock Institute approaches are compared and contrasted. It is concluded that these are mutually illuminating. Drawing on apparently different experiences of working in and with groups, firstly with secondary school English classes and then with adult students following postgraduate courses in university, the thesis explores the process of becoming a group worker, recognising the differences, and then accounting for the transition, between teacher control and learner autonomy. The advantages and disadvantages of learning to become an independent and an interdependent learner through individual and shared approaches to experiential education are examined. Among the conclusions reached is that learning is an anxiety-raising activity for both students and tutors, but that the anxiety is a prerequisite that has to be managed rather than minimised.

In the era of globalisation, non-Anglophone higher education institutions worldwide have begun to offer English courses with the strategic aim of generating funding and proving competitive on a global scale. Along with this, the global employment market seeks graduates who can assimilate into diverse cultural and social contexts. Institutions therefore aim to cultivate ‘global citizens’ who have the knowledge and skillset to adapt to globalised environments. However, global citizenship is a contested terrain with very little empirical basis. This research aims to provide an exploration into a non-Anglophone site – South Korea – with the aim of understanding how two institutions present the role of English, student perceptions of the role of English and how in turn the latter are conceptualising global citizenship as pertains to their identity. The research employed two data sets – websites and individual interviews. Within the two institutions, 20 undergraduate students participated in the study. Students from one of the universities were majoring in Social Welfare while students from the other university were drawn from a range of disciplines. The epistemological agenda of the study is constructivist in nature with an approach heavily rooted in symbolic interactionism and qualitative methodologies. The websites were analysed through a mixed approach of discourse analysis and multimodal analysis. The individual interviews were analysed through thematic analysis and discourse analysis as deemed appropriate suitable. The findings show that overall the institutions’ internationalisation agenda is rooted in English with orientations towards native English. Internationalisation native English and an aversion to Korean influenced English. As regards global citizenship identity, students conceptualised it in terms of English. This had major repercussions on how they viewed their membership of a global community and was mostly accompanied by a disregard for their own culture as a whole is presented as something ‘non-Korean’ and usually Americanised, while native English is presented as the ideal for global citizenship. Student perceptions on the role of English were largely divided due to the amount of choice they had regarding participation in policies such as English Medium Instruction. Students also mainly perceived English proficiency in terms of and the capacity to position themselves within a globalised framework. This research has ideological and practical implications for English practices and policies within internationalisation contexts such as South Korea and beyond. The findings regarding global citizenship can contribute to literature in the area and fill many conceptual gaps. It can also provide an insight into 21st century identities particularly in newly globalised environments such as South Korea.