First in Family (FiF) is an under-recognised equity grouping which may encompass low-SES, mature-aged, regional and remote, and Indigenous students. FiF tertiary students are more likely to be in a position of educational disadvantage over students who have other family members available to share the experience of university life and discuss…

This paper examines the way Higher Education (HE) students use metaphors to make tangible the lived and living experience of learning. The article provides a contemporary development of the ethnographic paradigm by offering a new model termed "proximal ethnography" to capture the sense of inside-out-inside research, of being what one has…

There is a wide consensus that during their year abroad higher education (HE) language students should improve their language skills in contact with native speakers in the host community. Research shows, however, that many students find it difficult, if not impossible, to make meaningful contact to locals, and some consider the lack of it as a…