Reflection is widely regarded as important for learning from practice in Nursing. Academic reflective writing (ARW) is increasingly being used to assess reflective practice. However, there is currently scant literature on ARW, which is extremely complex, requiring students to link their own experiences to published literature. There are also concerns in the literature about the validity of ARW as a medium of assessment. In this paper, an exploratory discussion on ARW is illustrated with reference to the views of 8 self-selected students on a course for post-registered nurses. These students found ARW extremely challenging, and highlighted a range of difficulties associated with it. In conclusion, it is argued that the student experience of ARW warrants further investigation. In addition, it is suggested that either scaffolding should be put in place to facilitate the production of successful ARW, or alternatives should be explored.

This research identifies, through an extensive series of exploratory and explanatory case studies, the mathematical difficulties that might be encountered by dyslexic engineering students. It details support mechanisms that may be put in place to help these students reach their full potential and makes suggestions for the introduction of measures at institutional level to ensure compliance with current legislation. This is an area, identified from the literature search, that has not, until now, been the focus of any substantial research activity and thus the findings form an original and significant contribution to knowledge in this field. The findings are not only intrinsically interesting but will also be of use to practitioners of mathematics, support staff, staff developers and policy makers in higher education. A literature review gives historical background on the development of education in general, and mathematics in particular, in the UK. The main theories and problems associated with developmental dyslexia are also given. Surveys were undertaken to determine the extent of mathematics learning support in UK universities and also to determine the extent of the provision of mathematics support to dyslexic students. Using case study research and by providing one-to-one mathematics support, the difficulties encountered by dyslexic students were investigated. Related work is an exploratory study into the use of different media combinations in Computer Assisted Assessment. Additionally, an in-depth case study of the Mathematics Learning Support Centre at Loughborough University has been undertaken and is reported in detail with recommendations for changes suggested. The results of this research show that mathematics learning support is widespread and often essential to bridge the gap between school mathematics and university level mathematics but specialist mathematical support for dyslexic students is rarely available. It is determined that dyslexic students can be impeded in their learning and understanding of mathematics as a direct result of their dyslexia. Recommendations for further study in some areas and future lines of inquiry in others are suggested.

Thesis advisor: Ana Martinez-Aleman / College student engagement has been linked to a host of positive educational outcomes including academic performance and persistence. Problematically, many low-income college students are not able to get involved within the social system of higher education due to the costs associated with participation in the co-curricular events and activities that comprise so much of the full college experience. This mixed methods study explored the effect on student engagement of the Pinnacle Alliance (PA) - an intervention program designed to remove these cost barriers for low-income students at Lakefield University (LU), a private, highly selective, religiously-affiliated institution located in the Northeast United States. An electronic survey was administered to a sample of Lakefield undergraduate students concerning their involvement in co-curricular activities. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between participation in the Pinnacle Alliance and student engagement. While the quantitative findings indicate a non-significant relationship, subsequent focus groups were conducted to further examine and contextualize the effects of the Pinnacle Alliance on low-income students. Qualitative findings from the focus group suggest that the Pinnacle Alliance is an extremely important resource for many low-income LU students. The PA allowed these students to make participation choices free of the financial barriers they often face. In addition, PA-participating students reported feeling a greater sense of community and that they fit in more at LU. However, these students made clear that fitting in and belonging were not the reasons they chose to participate in the program; rather the elevated feelings of fitting in and belonging were the result of their participation. Finally, findings from focus groups conducted with students who were eligible for the Pinnacle Alliance but chose not to participate revealed that beyond financial constraints, motivational constraints can also inhibit engagement. Non-participating students cited lack of time, lack of interest, lack of awareness, and social stigma as the four major reasons behind their decisions to not be more involved with the Pinnacle Alliance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Negli ultimi dieci anni, il numero di studenti internazionali è aumentato drasticamente presso istituzioni universitarie di tutto il mondo. Questo aumento della presenza di studenti internazionali nei campus universitari ha portato nuove responsabilità e sfide nel fornire servizi di supporto efficaci per la comunità internazionale. Mentre molte istituzioni hanno sviluppato programmi curriculari ed extra-curriculari per supportare gli studenti in modo generico, non tutti i servizi vengono pianificati per soddisfare specificamente le esigenze degli studenti internazionali. Questa tesi valuta il grado in cui gli studenti internazionali sono soddisfatti con i servizi di supporto ed altri aspetti della loro esperienza universitaria, in particolare nel loro arrivo, nell’apprendimento e negli ambienti di vita. Contemporanemente, la tesi produce una ricerca sulla relazione tra le aspettative degli studenti e i consigli e raccomandazioni delle loro università. Utilizzando i dati dell’ International Student Barometer di i-graduate, i metodi di ricerca valutativa e quantitativa hanno esaminato l'esperienza di oltre 45.000 studenti universitari internazionali in 96 diverse università e istituzioni in Australia, nel Regno Unito (UK) e negli Stati Uniti (USA). I risultati di numerose analisi statistiche hanno dimostrato che tutti i quattro parametri della soddisfazione sono stati positivamente associati all'esperienza universitaria complessiva degli studenti e ai consigli della loro attuale università. Ulteriori analisi hanno confermato quali variabili di soddisfazione sono risultate negli aspetti più significativi dell'esperienza universitaria di studenti internazionali e quali variabili hanno influenzato maggiormente i consigli universitari. Questo studio empirico fornisce considerazioni chiave per amministratori universitari, professionisti e ricercatori su come allocare al meglio le risorse per sostenere e, allo stesso tempo, migliorare l'esperienza degli studenti internazionali, facendo in modo di sviluppare strategie di iscrizioni e mantenimento sempre più efficaci. / The number of international students has increased dramatically over the last decade at institutions of higher education around the world. This added presence of international students on university campuses has evidently brought a whole new set of responsibilities and challenges for providing effective support services to that community. While many institutions have developed curricular and extracurricular programs to support students in general, not all services are designed to specifically cover the needs of international students. This study evaluates the degree to which international students are satisfied with support services as well as other aspects of their university experience, namely in their arrival, learning, and living environments, while also investigating the relationship between student satisfaction and institutional recommendation for prospective applicants. Using data from i-graduate’s International Student Barometer, quantitative survey research methods evaluated the experience of over 45,000 degree-seeking, undergraduate international students at 96 different institutions in Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Multiple regression analyses indicated that all four dimensions of satisfaction were positively associated with students' overall university experience and the recommendation of their current institution. Further analyses revealed which satisfaction variables were the most significant aspects of the international student experience, and which ones influenced institutional recommendation the most. This empirical study provides key considerations for university administrators, practitioners, and researchers on how resources might best be allocated to support and enhance the experience of international students, leading to more effective institutional recruitment and retention strategies.

Research into ‘ethnic’ attainment differences in British higher education tends to depict students from minority ethnic backgrounds as disadvantaged, marginalised, discriminated against and excluded. This shapes the current theoretical perspective adopted by university policies and informs practice. However, the consequences of this perspective for students, their educational attainment and university education as a whole are largely unexamined. This study explored the teaching and learning experiences of students, alongside their views concerning how these experiences may have impacted on their attainment. To arrive at a more unbiased and better informed understanding of ethnic attainment differences, the student narratives in this study were analysed from a realist philosophical position. The experiences students related included student interactions, participatory and intellectual engagement, (un)equal treatment and academic study and support. The richness and variety of the individual narratives defied simple analysis and required further discussion of perceptions, interpretations, meaning, understanding and categorisation. Some students talked of social interaction in terms of race, colour, ethnicity, nationality, culture, class and age, while others thought such social grouping unproblematic. Engagement was seen either as participatory engagement in the learning process or as intellectual engagement with the subject. There were perceptions of unequal treatment due to race or ethnicity which contrasted with suggestions of straightforward unprofessional practices. Attitudes to academic study ranged from descriptions of struggling with the academic workload to feeling the lack of intellectual challenge. The analysis and discussion revealed a process of minoritisation that resulted from the current approaches to ethnic attainment. The continued use of group-based social differentiation inadvertently fosters the idea that ethnic and social attributes matter and creates a divisive subtext which loses any sense of our common humanity. Group-based social differentiation can undermine the resilience and human agency of students because it suggests that educational attainment is predominantly determined by ethnic and social attributes, downplaying the students’ capacity to act in pursuit of educational goals. As a result, university policies and practice perpetuate rather than ameliorate the status of minority ethnic higher education students.

This is a multi-article format dissertation that explores emotional and cognitive engagement in higher education classrooms. Student engagement in higher education classrooms has been associated with desired outcomes such as academic achievement, retention, and graduation. Student engagement is a multi-faceted concept, consisting of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive components. A deeper understanding of how these components interact would allow instructors and course designers to facilitate more engaging learning experiences for students. The first article is an extended literature review that investigates the extant empirical research on the relationship between emotional and cognitive engagement, and between emotional engagement and academic outcomes in post-secondary classrooms. I find that this topic has been scantily researched in the past 16 years and conclude that the relationship between emotional and cognitive engagement is cyclical, rather than linear, and is influenced by student control appraisals, value appraisals, achievement goals, and the classroom environment. The second article investigates the longitudinal relationship between emotional and cognitive engagement in university blended learning courses across 2 institutions, with 68 students. Using intensive longitudinal data collection and structural equation modeling, I find that course design and student perception variables have a greater influence on engagement than individual student characteristics and that student multitasking has a strong negative influence on engagement. Students' perceptions of the importance of the activity has a strong positive influence on both cognitive and emotional engagement. An important outcome of engagement is the students' perceptions that they were learning and improving. While emotional and cognitive engagement are highly correlated, the results do not indicate that emotional engagement leads to higher levels of cognitive engagement.

The purpose of the research reported in this thesis is to investigate the occurrence and recognition of “limit experience” among some Catholic High School students in their final year at selected secondary colleges in Brisbane. “Limit” experience was defined as an experience that reveals a reality of life beyond the self, beyond the here and now. It may be recognition of our own fragility and vulnerability as much as a joyous awareness of a reality beyond our normal encounter with life.” The research work of the Alistair Hardy Research Centre and of Hay (1987) in particular has centred on the question, asked in various ways: Have you ever been aware of, or influenced by, a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday life? The survey instrument for this research was designed to divorce questions on such experiences from the direct reference to the term “religious”, although individuals might indeed interpret them as “religious”. To approach the issue, an extensive open-ended survey was administered to senior high school students. It was designed first to determine the extent of recognition of such experiences among the students and second to examine whether factors such as home background, regular religious practice, type of school, subject choice or co-curricula activities may make a difference in enhancing the awareness of such experience. This research has also been designed to enable comparison with similar studies. Major research in Australia by Flynn (1975, 1985, 1993) highlighted the factors above as influencing student achievement. Flynn also made connections to religious practice and attitudes to church but not to religious experience as such. Robinson and Jackson (1987) had undertaken extensive research on religious experience in Great Britain that also has important parallels to this research. Some of the techniques of both studies and in some cases actual questions have formed part of this research instrument. This research has gone further than both studies by incorporating the Hay (1987) categorisation of types of religious experience to form the basis for direct questions on student experience. The data gathering, treatment and analysis focused on four catholic secondary schools in the Brisbane Archdiocese. While the research focus was by definition limited, and while the results have of necessity to be treated with some caution before wider generalisation, the outcomes of the research do illuminate some of the important issues identified in the literature. The results of the survey showed that over 90% of the respondents could affirm some association with a “limit” experience along the lines of the Hay (1987) framework. With significant strengthening of criteria to allow for meaningful statistical analysis, this reduced to 76% of respondents. Results for this smaller group were shown to be essentially independent of home background, type of school attended, co-curricula programs and level of religious practice. With the significant exception of religious education, their recognition of “limit” experience was also independent of subject choice. This last is in contrast to the earlier work of Robinson and Jackson (1987). Exploratory analyses of the data enabled comparisons to be made with a suggested framework for “spiritual sensitivity” and the context of “relational consciousness”, both of which were first proposed by Hay and Nye (1998). This suggests some possible directions for further research into adolescent spirituality. The exploratory analyses also highlight some of the conflict between the reality of these experiences for students and their experience of dissonance with institutional religion.

Considering the continuous design activities that are performed throughout the design projects, design students go through several stages of decision makings, and sometimes they experience problematic situations in between consecutive supervisory meetings. Revealing all experiences during the discussions with supervisors, thus communicating the ideas could be sometimes difficult. In order to provide a better guidance, it is also important for supervisors to understand students&rsquo / process in between these meetings. There are available tools used in the fields like education or health in order to monitor an individual&rsquo / s daily life in relation to the context (e.g. time, place, activity) and personal circumstances (e.g. emotions, feelings, ideas). These tools are developed based on experience sampling method (ESM), a research method focus on collecting self-reported data from participants in order to measure their daily life experiences, especially during a long period of time. Since the target group and experience has different characteristics for each context, design of experience sampling tools are also gaining importance to address these specific experience according to individuals&rsquo / needs and expectations. Aiming at assisting design students to do regular self-reporting on their experiences, this study presents a background research for designing experience sampling tools that would be used by students and supervisors to keep track of students&rsquo / experiences throughout design projects. In this sense, this study intends assisting students self-reporting activities, translate the main design requirements of experience sampling tools into the context of design projects, as well as revealing guidelines for the future implications of ESM tools in design education

This thesis highlights the complex nature of students’ experiences in the sexuality education classroom. It seeks to provide insight from the perspectives of Year 10 students in two classes on their experiences of a particular sexuality education programme. The purpose of this study was to ‘give voice to’ and explore the experiences of asmall group of nine Year 10 students in their compulsory co-educational sexuality education programme. To this end, the main source of data was focus group interviews with student participants. Students were asked to participate in focus group interviews part way through the unit of work and invited to share their thoughts, feelings and perceptions of the programme. The data analysis generated themes that describe student’s experiences in relation to course content, pedagogy and classroom organisation. The analysis of students’ talk in focus group interviews also showed that gender relations and emotional safety were important features of the students’ experiences of their sexuality education programme. More particularly, it was found that students valued their exposure to this subject and felt that school was a good place to learn about sexuality education. They enjoyed social constructivist teaching approaches that were student-centred and interactive. The students expressed some dissatisfaction with the way in which their sexuality education programme was organised and being delivered. In addition, there was evidence of both male and female students being influenced by traditional, hegemonic constructs of masculinity and femininity, and also a heteronormative culture within the classroom. The findings present implications for sexuality education teaching in relation to programme development and classroom practice. They suggest that sexuality educators may need to consider the way in which their classrooms are organised, as well as the pedagogical approaches they use, as it appears these aspects have significant influence on the emotional safety of students, on relationships within the classroom and on the student experience of sexuality education as a whole.

The purpose of my study was to explore the experiences of senior island high school students and their participation in extracurricular activities. I investigated a rural island high school, located on the west coast of Canada, by conducting interviews of senior high school students to reveal their experiences with extracurricular activities available at the school. Using a qualitative case-study design, I provide recommendations for improving access to extracurricular activities. My results support literature finding that voluntary participation in extracurricular activities positively affects student academic standing, and that recognized school excellence improves student culture. I also found that organizational efforts and transparency in programming are needed to entice nonparticipants to become involved. Through comparative reflective analysis, I determined that word-of-mouth was a primary source of extracurricular promotion; however, this was found to create tiers of social groups, which in turn prevented access to the extracurriculum. Participants also indicated that a longer timetabled school day was a barrier to participation, and that active community volunteering efforts in the operation and offering of extracurricular activities were limited. My research is aimed at enabling educational practitioners to improve access to extracurricular activities in an island high school environment. / Graduate