Professionals are increasingly involved in attempts to understand and address problems with wicked tendencies, which require crossing boundaries between disciplines, organisations and stakeholder perspectives. This multiple-case study investigated six higher professional education courses in order to develop better understanding of how teachers…

This article explores students' experiences of intellectual, social, and emotional growth during the first year at university and the extent to which these experiences can be considered transformative (Mezirow, 1981). The study is a qualitative interpretive multiple-case study built on semi-structured interviews with students in two higher…

Universities aspire to offer students a transformative experience, but rarely spell out the nature of this transformation. In this essay, L. A. Paul and John Quiggin frame the successful university education as transformative in the philosophical sense. They explain the way that a successful college education can be understood as generating an…

College access among underserved youth in the United States has expanded dramatically in recent decades, due in part to "achievement ideology," or institutional and cultural messages that equate hard work plus educational attainment with upward mobility. But, college completion rates for this group have remained low, and student loan…

The decline in foreign language learners in tertiary education is a concern in many countries. While factors influencing students' persistence in second language learning have been explored, there has been limited discussion on the potential of language programmes that develop students' self-formation alongside language learning. This study aimed…

Much academic development work, whether it be student, academic staff, institutional or curriculum development, is undertaken from an affirmative rather than a transformative approach (Luckett, L., and S. Shay. 2020. "Reframing the Curriculum: A Transformative Approach." "Critical Studies in Education" 61 (1): 50-65). To be…

As a result of reported failings in the care of people in the health and social care sector in the United Kingdom (UK), Higher Education (HE) providers who produce professionals to work in these areas are being challenged to address caring values in the student body. As values are subjective and affective, this requires the learning environment to…

This paper examines the potential of the Career Thinking Session (CTS) model to career guidance and counselling practice with young people. A qualitative research study is presented, focusing on the case study of a client involved in the transition to higher education. The setting for the research is described and the origins of the CTS are…

This paper considers the effect on students from attending a university foundation degree programme delivered in partnership with six further education teaching institutions in England. The programme is situated within the early childhood education sector using an instructional design which promotes higher-level learning within the teaching…

This article examines relational ways of knowing--a concept both broad and deep--as a strategy we have infused throughout our design of one first-year Living and Learning Community (LLC). As outlined here, the authors teach faith as relationship; justice as being in just relationship with others, research as the concept of putting ideas in…

Can professors, through their casual, random remarks to students, alter lives and transform identities? The answer, based on two exploratory studies described in this article, appears to be yes. Drawing from constructive-developmental ideas of student maturation and from features of chaos theory as applied to the complex dynamic system of…

Evidence abounds that, in recent decades, students have typically entered college relying on perspectives they have uncritically accepted from others and are not sufficiently challenged and supported to transition to internal authority during college. Students who have experienced significant challenge, particularly as a result of marginalization,…

A common outcome of entering post-compulsory education as a mature aged learner appears to be development and growth of the self. However, this is often only viewed as an outcome or considered an added benefit, rather than an integral part of the academic process itself. This paper explores the relationship between academic growth and personal…

Uses a praxis methodology to explore the possibility of student transformation through participation in an interprofessional university-community partnership (the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program involving Saint Louis University). The experiences of participants in one partnership provided a focal point for questioning assumptions about the nature of…

This article is concerned with the complex role played by student assessment in the formation of the human subjects that are the product of higher education. Using a framework informed by the work of Foucault, it explores the productive effects of assessment regimes. Drawing on narrative data collected during in-depth, semi-structured interviews…