Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education

Reflection, Critique and Challenge

Tom Lowe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032198682
• eBook ISBN: 9781000867473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Providing a selection of critical pieces on the key challenges and debates in student engagement in higher education, this edited collection of sector-leading, scholarly-informed critical reflections is designed to consider and build upon what can be done to advance student engagement.

By problematising student engagement practice, this book explores how to strengthen policies, recognise the issues and create solutions to overcome barriers and tensions. It considers topics such as diversity, accessibility, representativeness, evidencing impact, data analytics, the campus estate and the impact of COVID-19. The contributors provide lessons learned and knowledge from the field to make practice with students more considered and robust for the challenges ahead in the post-pandemic university.

Moving beyond endorsing student engagement and offering best practice to critically reflect on and challenge our engagements with students in contemporary higher education, this book is ideal reading for all those developing education, course leaders and heads of academic departments, as well as anyone interested in advancing student engagement in their higher education setting.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1. Advancing student engagement in higher education: The need for reflection, critique and challenge
• 2. Researching and evaluating student engagement: A methodological critique of data-gathering approaches
• 3. Challenges and tensions for student academic engagement practices in contemporary UK higher education
• 4. There is not one student experience: Our learner journeys as individuals
• 5. Equality and diversity in our student engagement practice: Radical possibilities to reaching racial and religious equity in higher education
• 6. Authentic leadership for student engagement
• 7. Students as consumers: A barrier for student engagement?
• 8. Accessibility to student engagement opportunities: A focus on ‘hard-to-reach’ universities
• 9. How to engage students in your educational developments: A student leader’s view
• 10. Student evaluation of courses – co-creation of meaning through conversations: Insights from the student perspective
• 11. The problem with student engagement during COVID-19
• 12. Control, freedom and structure in student–staff partnerships
• 13. To what extent can we really make students partners in neoliberal universities?
• 14. Critical challenges to support Generation Z learners
• 15. Student–instructor partnerships for curricular justice
• 16. Embracing student agentic engagement and enacting equity in higher education through co-creating learning and teaching
• 17. Defining, delivering and evaluating student engagement in a professional service in higher education: A case study of a student engagement team in an academic library
• 18. University estates: From spaces to places of student engagement
• 19. Learning analytics in higher education: The ethics, the future, the students
• 20. Placing sport at the heart of the university community: A critical reflection on sports club membership and what it means for student engagement from a Bourdieusian perspective
• 21. Towards inclusive student partnership: Challenges and opportunities for student engagement in the Australian context
• 22. Recognising the hidden impact of extra-curricular activity on student engagement and success
• 23. Widening the aperture on college students’ sense of belonging: A critical ecological perspective
• 24. Valhalla and Nirvana: Views of Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation in further and higher education
• 25. So what and what next?: Concluding thoughts on advancing student engagement
• Index