This research challenges the norms of undergraduate recruitment promotion practice responding to political, economic, social and technological drivers in a competitive environment. The practical problem is defined from a marketing practitioner standpoint working with core approaches which do not represent nuanced subject and audience needs, instead leaving them on the margins of the institutional recruitment offer. Marginalised students are represented by those who did not attend private or high-achieving state schools, including, but not restricted to, those identified by widening participation policy. Marginalised subjects are represented by selected arts and humanities courses without overt links to specific professions. These aspects of marginalisation triangulated from an elite institution perspective create a framework for investigating the problems created by core promotional practice, and for developing solutions. The use of a case study supported by design-based research methods allows for practical research outputs in a live environment. Mixed methods are employed to gather data from a small sample of insider sources (nine students and seven tutors) and general public sources (1,923 online reader responses to 31 news articles and forum posts). The insider and public accounts provide an alternative marketing intelligence corpus to normative large-scale quantitative data. This is used to inform design principles incorporated into a prototype package of three promotional resources and a sustainable strategy. The success of the challenge to promotional practice norms materialises not simply through public-facing practical solutions as initially anticipated, but also though the collaborative processes of the enquiry, improving professional relations between marketing administrative and academic staff. The alternative approaches realised through this research can be summarised as a move towards small-scale market intelligence gathering and resource production to meet the nuanced needs of marginalised subjects and audiences, and an alteration to professional practice which acknowledges academics as marketing partners. These outputs are now employed within routine practice within the boundaries of the original study, and have the potential to be generalisable through wider discussions among HE marketing practitioners.

This qualitative study, underpinned by the philosophical assumptions of con-structivism (Guba and Lincoln, 2005) uses semi-structured interviews to ex-plore the views and experiences of 15 young Republic of Ireland teacher union activists with regard to their union involvement and its influence on their con-cept of professionalism. In particular it explores how they became active in their union, the INTO, how they experience voice and agency and how they conceive teacher professionalism. Navarro’s (1992) concept of voice, Priestley et. al.’s (2013, 2015) framework for teacher agency and Stevenson’s (2014) new democratic professionalism are used to underpin and support the study. Analysis of the data garnered allowed pertinent findings to be synthesised and new learning to be gained. The study identified the role of union capital in sup-porting young member involvement and activism. It evidenced voice and self-efficacy beliefs as enabling the realisation of agency thus suggests a redefining of Priestley et. al.’s (2013, 2015) framework and presents a new teacher union contextualised conception of agency. Drawing on Stevenson’s (2014) new democratic professionalism, the study also presents a conception of profession-alism influenced by teacher unionism as evidenced by the data. Finally, it sug-gest that when teacher union contextualised agency interacts with teacher un-ion influenced professionalism the dynamic can be conceived as teacher union influenced agentic professionalism.

Transnational higher education (TNE) involves the offering overseas of ‘home university’ award courses by, or with, overseas partners, or directly through an overseas branch of the university. TNE is growing in significance in the context of the internationalisation of higher education and the increasing mobility of information and people in a more globalised world. TNE has become an important and distinctive avenue of access for many students. However, TNE is a complex and demanding activity for institutional managers. The context for the study is the relative paucity of research on the management of TNE, compared with the teaching-learning area, coupled with my own professional interest in understanding and improving TNE management. The study involved a thematic analysis of documentary sources in the form of institutional audit reports by the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). The specific objectives were to identify and analyse the patterns and themes in AUQA’s concerns and commendations, in order to draw out the implications for improving the development and management of TNE. Finally, using a strategic management perspective, the main challenges confronting senior institutional managers in TNE initiatives were examined. A total of 204 concerns and 31 commendations were identified by a systematic review of TNE management in 27 university audit reports. The concerns and commendations were categorised using a structured, 6-dimensional analytical framework to produce a comprehensive overview of management issues in TNE. Almost half the concerns and commendations related to institutional strategy and management, with significant numbers also relating to governance and quality assurance. In relation to the 235 concerns and commendations, 21 themes, or areas of recurring concern, were identified. Major themes included weaknesses in academic and corporate governance processes, alignment of TNE initiatives with overall university strategy, and senior management oversight. For each theme, implications for improving management practice were developed by drawing on relevant literature and my own professional experience. Adopting a strategic management perspective suggested that the 21 themes could be grouped meaningfully into 3 clusters relating to: Integrating the TNE venture into institutional structure and processes; Determining the nature and form of the TNE partnership and associated contract; and Managing and sustaining the TNE initiative. A model was developed to illustrate the interrelationship between the 3 clusters and the role of strategic leadership. The study contributes to developing a deeper and more systematic understanding of the nature of TNE and the sources for concerns that arise from its inherent complexity and risk. The study also extends the broad knowledge base for consultants, institutional managers, practising academics and quality assurance and accreditation agencies in Australia and other countries. Finally, the study contributes to strengthening my own professional knowledge and practice as a consultant to Australian and overseas universities and private higher education institutions who are developing TNE programs.

With the aid of information and communication technology, e-learning has become the latest model in education. Saudi Arabian universities are currently applying the idea of e-learning to facilitate life-long learning and provide new educational opportunities for students. In particular, e-learning is being strongly supported by the Saudi Ministry of Education. Therefore, the Jusur LMS was created, in order to manage the e-learning process. However, a 'one size fits all' approach, whilst not ideal in general, is especially not appropriate for the Saudi culture. Moreover, there is limited support for students to satisfy their individual needs, especially for implementing collaborative projects. To better understand the Saudi students’ needs, this research focuses on the acceptance of the social personalised e-learning, versus static e-learning and traditional education for Saudi university students, and how the former can cater to Saudi education, instead of offering an identical delivery to all students, regardless of students’ interests, preferences, backgrounds, or knowledge. The results from a relatively large-scale case study at Taibah University point towards Saudi students accepting more easily social personalised e-learning, than static e-learning or classroom education. Additionally, the results revealed that Saudi students cannot be said to perceive usefulness, ease of use, and intention of further use towards the traditional collaborative e-learning system they use (the Jusur system) for group project work. Furthermore, this study analyses the current level of satisfaction and the needs for collaborative team projects, with the aim of predicting further requirements for social personalised e-learning systems. It investigates the needs of the students for best ways for recommending the project, group members and communication tools for the group project, aiming at collecting the requirements for the implementation of the research environment. Additionally, it proposes a framework for recommendation of collaborative project work to function within a social e-Learning System. Additionally, it proposed the architecture of the system. It investigated Saudi Arabian higher education students’ acceptance of a recommended virtual project and recommended group formation for e-learning versus traditional project- and team-formation methods for e-learning. The comparison is based on the well-known technology acceptance model (TAM), the theoretical xi framework which was used for designing the data collection from students. The results of the case study have indicated that a recommended virtual project and recommended group formation for e-learning is more acceptable to Saudi students than current e-learning methods.

Postgraduate taught programmes in the United Kingdom have seen significant increases in student numbers since 2008. A significant proportion of this increase is explained by the growth in international students choosing to study both in this country and on these programmes. However, since 2011/12 these programmes have begun to see a decrease in numbers. These students generate significant income for universities therefore this decline could have serious implications for the future viability of the programmes and a reduction in a valuable income stream for universities. If universities and course leaders are to increase, or even just maintain, current recruitment numbers and remain competitive in this market then they will need to have a good understanding of what attracts potential students to their institution and programme of study. An important aspect of this understanding is up to date knowledge of what students expect to achieve by studying on a particular programme. The growth in international student numbers has increased the diversity of the student profile on postgraduate taught programmes. Therefore, identifying and understanding the differences in student expectations is becoming both more difficult and important. This research study recognises the importance of understanding student expectations in order to improve student satisfaction, leading to increased success and competitiveness of the programme in the future. It, therefore, makes the assumption that students are customers of the University. It has a pragmatic research methodology, using both quantitative and qualitative data to contribute to knowledge in a number of ways. Firstly, by showing that the specific background factors of nationality, age and gender do have a significant influence on the student expectations of the outcome of a postgraduate taught programme. It can no longer be assumed that the expectations of all students will be the same, but the differences discussed in this study will need to be taken in to consideration when programmes are being designed and developed. Secondly, using the customer service gap model (Parasuraman, 1985) it has identified that statistically significant differences do exist between student expectations and the perceptions of those expectations by course leaders, therefore, a customer service gap is evident. The importance and implications of these expectations for the future competitiveness of the University are then identified. Although the findings of this study will become out of date as the expectations of students change, the principles introduced will not. That is, the importance of student expectations and that they should be included in the regular reflective processes conducted by course leaders to improve the quality of postgraduate taught provision and compete effectively in this highly competitive market in the future.

No description available.

Many college students have difficulties deciding on a major or field of study at university. Hartman, Fuqua and Hartman (1983) reported that if undecided students did not receive help, they were more likely to drop out of school and to be unhappy with their eventual choice of career. Furthermore, undecided students may make poor career and academic choices which will impact their future (Gati, Krauz & Osipow, 1996; Fouad, Cotter & Kantamneni, 2009). While the need for career interventions has increased (Fouad et al., 2009; Reese & Miller, 2010), few studies have systematically evaluated the impact and outcomes of career interventions designed to reduce career indecision. In addition, the majority of studies were conducted on Western populations thereby restricting the generalisability of findings across cultures. Therefore, there is a need to investigate whether theory-based interventions that have shown positive outcomes on Western samples can be applied in a Southeast Asian context. This study aims to address this gap in research literature through examining the effects of an intervention to help Malaysian students increase their career decision-making self-efficacy, and reduce career indecision and career decision-making difficulties. This thesis describes the research work aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of a career course designed to help students make career decisions in a Southeast Asian context. It details the quasi-experimental longitudinal intervention utilising intervention and comparison groups that was carried out with first-year Malaysian college students. Participants in both groups were given questionnaires assessing career decision-making self-efficacy, career indecision and career decision-making difficulties at various time points. Results indicated that participants in the intervention group upon completion of the course experienced increased career decision-making self-efficacy and reduced career indecision. Participants in the intervention group also showed an overall decrease in career decision-making difficulties but further investigation revealed that the decrease was non-significant in one subcategory of difficulties, namely difficulties related to the lack of motivation. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of existing literature and suggestions for further research are also included.

Despite the growing volume of research on ‘teacher research’, little is known about student-teacher research engagement in academically oriented, pre-service English language teacher education (ELTE) programmes. Previous studies have focussed exclusively on student-teacher (ST) research tied to teaching practice (TP). Therefore, almost nothing is known about what forms ST research in ELTE may take prior to TP or when no arrangements are made for TP-related ST research. Reported here is a case study of pre-service STs’ research education (RE) provision at a university in North Cyprus which was delivered as a single, third-year module focussing explicitly on the acquisition of research knowledge and practical skills through a ‘hands-on’ research project. The case study particularly investigates the formally stated, observed and perceived ‘realities’ of RE in the context through official document analysis, key informant interviews, classroom observations and repertory grid (RepGrid) interviews with four STs taking the observed module. The findings of the case study indicate more incongruence than harmony between the RE ‘reality’ domains and the values attributed to RE in general by different stake-holders and participants. The case study, therefore, has important implications for initial, university-based ELTE policy and practice regarding the status, structuring, capacity and delivery of explicitly intended RE provision. The study also highlights the importance of the purpose and meaning of compulsory research engagement being conveyed to the STs when RE is unrelated to TP and, hence, there is no prospect of a ‘teacher research’ project.

This thesis critically examines the development of student agency and how it can be achieved in higher education through designing a curriculum underpinned by a relational pedagogy. Within the context of a higher education sector dominated by marketisation, performativity and competition, the publications qualitatively investigate the lived experiences of academics and students with reference to a range of pedagogic practices. These include peer coaching, service learning, formative assessment practices; and a collaborative staff and student engagement activity designed to evaluate the learning experience. My work is informed by a number of complementary theoretical perspectives including socio cognitivist, sociocultural and socio constructionist approaches which are used to examine and promote understanding of how learning is influenced by social interaction. The commentary outlines connecting themes and theoretical perspectives, the main arguments of each paper, and critically reviews the methodological approaches adopted. It concludes by summarising the original contribution my work makes to the research fields of assessment and evaluation, and service learning. This includes findings drawn from examining pedagogic practices not previously investigated using qualitative approaches, and importing the predominately North American concept of service- learning to provide a new perspective on how UK universities might engage with community partners. The key significance of the work as a whole is that it demonstrates that curriculum design can enable the development of student agency both individually and collectively, and that this can be supported by incorporating relational pedagogic approaches that particularly reflect on the nature of reciprocity and the role of trust as part of the learning experience.

This research explores the ways in which young Turkish university students understand, express and negotiate religious practice versus secularism in the public and private spheres as these have emerged in the early twenty-first century, in light of the historical polarization between Islamism and secularism in Turkey. Data was collected using qualitative research methodologies, including participant observation and in-depth interviews with forty-five university students in Istanbul, Turkey. This latter method allowed participants to express their perceptions and experiences about the relationship between Islam and secularity in the context of Turkey’s move to democracy, and the success of the AKP religious party in democratic elections. The thesis begins with a review of relevant scholarly literature; first, debates on the relationship between Islam and the secular state, and secularist policies of Turkey; second, social and cultural conceptions of the relationship between Islam and secularity in Turkey; third, philosophical and conceptual debates on Islam and secularity. Examining this issue, I explore (1) the perceptions and views of university students on secularism and Islamism, the secularist state and the Islamic state; (2) their understanding and experience of religiosity and secularity; (3) the impact of religious groups in Turkey on the relationship of university students with religion, secularity and modernity; (4) the divisions or cohesion of Turkish society based on religion, culture, and lifestyle. I then move on to present and examine one of the most prominent public events of Turkish politics in 2013, the Gezi Park Protests, in terms of the subject of my thesis. The thesis concludes that Turkish university students, both secular and religiously oriented, do successfully negotiate the secular spaces of the public sphere, and have developed new kinds of religiosity and Islamic understanding that stress individual choice and shape their attitudes towards the state, politics, and fellow students who choose to embrace different lifestyles.