Climate change denial is often rooted in an array of conspiracy theories with climate change itself viewed by some as the real conspiracy. While not all of us are climate change conspiracy theorists, it is upsetting for most of us to learn and accept that our climate is changing, that it is primarily human-caused, and that it is harming people,…

Purpose: Mental ill health is on the rise amongst undergraduate students and has been investigated using both positivist/quantitative and exploratory/qualitative research methods. However, the lived experiences of mature students who have mental ill health have not been directly investigated. A limited research literature suggests that challenges…

Ageist mindsets and practices occur worldwide and can embody both explicit and implicit forms of discrimination. Inclusive and affirming community music spaces highlight the centrality of age as an integral form of diversity and can help to counteract age-based biases that older adults might experience in society.

This article focuses on narrative interviews with mature students at one partner university that was part of the UK higher education (HE) Changing Mindsets project and research (2017-19). Changing Mindsets comprised workshops and training aimed at supporting students and staff in five participating universities to develop a growth mindset and…

Generative AI (GenAI) refers to the production of entirely new creative works, such as text, pictures, music, or poetry, in response to simple prompts (Lanxon et al., 2023). Some view GenAI as a disruption to our education system, pointing to biases in the training data, concerns about misleading or inaccurate information, challenges to educators,…

The use of the "traditional"/"nontraditional" binary when referring to students in the context of higher education (especially in the United States) is so firmly established and compulsory that even when we try to challenge the dualism we often fall short. I believe that this has even happened in the current call for…

Purpose: Qualitative research is well-established and widely adopted across a range of disciplines; however, there is little discussion of the teaching of qualitative research methods. What engagements there are primarily focus on methods rather than core concepts that inform ethical and effective use of those approaches. "Subjectivity"…

Predominantly white institutions (PWIs) struggle to attract and retain underrepresented faculty. Despite aspirations for diversity, the reality remains that underrepresented faculty are not hired and retained in numbers sufficient to change the institution's demographics. The leadership of PWIs strives for solutions to ameliorate the trend in…

Cognitive biases restrict and even prevent the acceptance of new information, but the introduction of critical thinking may help control bias. The subject is a case study of how educators with adult students use critical thinking to control cognitive bias. The topic of cognitive bias is well researched, with over 150 different types of bias…

The purpose of this study is to explore the self-directed learning behaviors of adult users of the social media vehicle, Twitter, through the lens of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States during the second wave, spring and summer of 2020. The objective of the study is to identify Twitter behavior and usage patterns to assist in…

The United States has gone through two transformations in the meaning of higher education in prison and the value of access for people in prison in the last 50 years and is now moving towards a third. The establishment of Pell grants in 1972 allowed for widespread access to higher education in prison, while the removal of those grants in 1994…

While community colleges have traditionally been the leading providers of adult learner programs and the entry point for many minority students into higher education, very few English language learners (ELLs) transition to higher education. This qualitative gap analysis of the systems in place at a large urban public community college in the…

This article highlights two competency-based coaching and mentoring models for the incumbent infant-toddler workforce, designed and implemented at two Illinois institutions of higher education. Each model has been intentionally developed with an antibias and equity lens, focused on cultivating a diverse workforce of practitioners through…

This paper identifies a nascent trend in several countries regarding increased collection, public availability and use of destination data for graduates of secondary education, with policy ambitions to support pupil-level decision-making and drive provider-level accountability. This trend mirrors the previous development of such data for higher…

In this piece, we argue that an economy of publication and citations has emerged that not only changes the notion of what is deemed quality in educational research but also changes the incentives of us as researchers. With pressure on publishing in "international" journals, education researchers are increasingly pushed to publish their…