ABSTRACT This article adopts identity as a theoretical frame through which to explore the reported experiences of a diverse group of postgraduate students studying in one university in England. We examine what they say about their identities and how they make sense of their interactions with their peers in the higher education space, as well as how they experience these interactions within discussion group activities in the postgraduate multicultural classroom. Our data is collected through focus groups and one-to-one interviews, a large proportion of which were conducted with non-UK/EU students. We found that all students interviewed value the social dimension of learning both within the classroom context and outside. We found there can be intercultural misunderstandings that could be addressed directly in a structured and safe environment. The article concludes with some suggestions for pedagogy and practice in postgraduate teaching, with a focus on diversifying practice to make room for greater inclusion of all students.

ABSTRACT Universities may have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic, but we argue there are still important lessons to be learnt from that experience of coping. In this paper, we explore whether universities could improve what they do, rather than just returning to pre-lockdown ways of working. We do this by analyzing a series of interviews with staff, recorded during the lockdown in the UK, using Tronto’s political theory of care. This analysis does not suggest that universities simply need to be more caring; it shows, instead, that they were already full of complex and overlapping caring activities. What staff accounts highlighted, however, were the fault lines between responsibilities for academic work and the tasks of caring; the competing priorities staff faced, between work, home and self; and how the burden of caring work was (and still is) unfairly distributed, with consequences for the wellbeing of staff. We conclude by suggesting that better-integrated caring practices are needed, and that developing these will require paying attention to the labour it takes to sustain academic work, and taking responsibility for helping the often-overlooked people who do this.

ABSTRACT Universities, and business schools specifically, are experiencing a transformation of their societal mission. Similar to the STEM fields, business schools are nested in global competitive environments facing multiple competing pressures, one being the need to demonstrate their social impact (SI). While business schools signal their commitment to SI by addressing it in their mission and adjusting their curricula and research, whether and how they assess the SI of their core functions is less well known. This study thus investigates how business schools organise for SI through performance management (PM). The analysis includes 10 European business schools selected among members of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) network, and draws on reports and interviews with staff responsible for social responsibility reporting. Findings suggest that business schools are in early stages of organising for SI, and practices largely reflect compliance with coercive and normative factors. Performance management is mainly concerned with monitoring SI performance – i.e. providing performance indicators and assessment tools without appropriate rewards or sanctions. This study sheds light on practices for SI assessment in business schools, the influence of environmental dependencies on these practices, and aspects that could strengthen institutional accountability and commitment to social impact.

ABSTRACT This paper examines gender disparities in university student pathways in Italy, from initial enrolment to completion of a bachelor’s degree and enrolment in a subsequent master’s programme. While it is established that females generally outperform males in completion rates and final grades, little has been done to analyse retention up to the master’s level due to a lack of longitudinal data covering the entire student university careers. We use discrete-time multi-state Markov models to investigate the key factors that influence students’ decisions throughout their university careers. Our analysis reveals that factors related to previous high school performance and early academic choices affect the university pathways of male and female students differently. Data regards first-year students enrolled in 3-year programmes at Italian universities between 2008 and 2020.

ABSTRACT Numbers of autistic students and staff studying or working in post-secondary educational settings have grown since the international adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). This has been accompanied by an increase in research exploring their experiences in these settings. This scoping review sought to develop an overview of research trends in this area and identify important considerations for future research. Systematic database searches identified 93 peer-reviewed articles. Data were extracted to summarise research trends from January 2007 to June 2021. Results showed a substantial increase in studies since 2017. Studies were largely confined to the USA and focused on the experiences of autistic students. Only five studies addressed the experiences of autistic staff. The student-focused literature was primarily based in university settings and explored a range of topics, including academic experiences and experiences of support services. There was a limited focus on the social and physical environments in post-secondary settings for autistic students and staff, and there was limited research on the experiences of autistic staff specifically. The current review points to the need for greater collaboration with and involvement of the autism community in research that has implications for their lives.

ABSTRACT The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral students’ research productivity is examined with a special focus on gender, parenthood, and the personality trait conscientiousness. Data consist of 614 doctoral students active in medicine, technology, the natural sciences in Sweden. Results indicate that the overall research productivity of doctoral students has increased during COVID-19. It is tested if the observed increase in research productivity depends on gender, parenthood, or conscientiousness. Hypotheses regarding a pandemic penalty for women and parents are not supported. However, results indicate that conscientiousness had a positive effect on doctoral students’ research productivity during the pandemic. It is concluded that conscientiousness has been an important factor in determining the research productivity of doctoral students during COVID-19. The results are discussed with regard to the national context of Sweden, where schools, childcare facilities, and laboratories were open to a larger extent during COVID-19 compared with many other countries.

ABSTRACT Supervisor and research community support are among the key determinants of a positive experience for PhD candidates. Yet, empirical evidence of the individual variation in experienced social support among PhD candidates is still limited. In this study, we adopted a person-centered approach to detect distinct social support profiles and their relationship with the experiences of research engagement. We also examined how certain background variables explained belonging to a profile. The data were collected in spring 2021. Altogether, 768 PhD candidates from a Finnish university participated in the study. We detected three distinct social support profiles (High, Moderate and Low research community and supervisor support) that systematically differed from each other in terms of the levels of PhD candidates’ research engagement. Additionally, we discovered that writing a monograph, working alone (not in a group), being in latter phases of studying, and being a domestic PhD candidate, raised the odds of belonging to a profile with lower levels of support. The results from this study can be used in developing doctoral education and supervision practices.

ABSTRACT The teaching–research nexus is omnipresent in academic professional life. How it is articulated depends on specific situations, contexts, and academic hierarchies. Initiatives to change the nexus in Dutch research universities are now informing European policy processes, but how academics in different positions play it out and deal with various contextual aspects is understudied. In this study, Wittgenstein’s notion of language games is combined with Elias’ notion of human figurations to assess articulations and interdependencies in the nexus. We analysed tensions and strategies in ten homogeneous focus group discussions with assistant, associate, and full professors across social sciences in The Netherlands. All academics identified tensions regarding the balancing of research and teaching and a systemic undervaluation of teaching, yet their games differed. Assistant professors experienced personal insecurities, whereas associate professors faced further differentiation of tasks, and full professors dealt with responsibilities concerning group performance and market-driven demands in both domains. In some figurations, research and teaching were balanced at team level. Paradoxically, all academics’ strategies tended to reproduce and strengthen patterns that exist at collective level, including tensions.

ABSTRACT Higher education institutions are struggling to elevate the value and status of academic teaching. In this endeavour, rewards for excellence in teaching are becoming a common measure. This study reports on the experience of the first academic teachers who were given the status as rewarded teachers in new reward systems. We explore rewarded teachers’ potential to influence teaching and learning culture through a socio-cultural perspective, where influence is assumed to materialise through teachers’ networks and cultural change is linked to a widening of significant networks. Interviews with 13 rewarded teachers from three universities were analysed using thematic analysis. We find that rewarded teachers maintain their positions in existing networks and gain visibility and influence in wider networks. This widening of their teaching and learning network is a first step, that over time can become a wider significant network potentially important in influencing culture. We suggest that a productive measure to support rewarded teachers is to provide support for expanding their significant networks further, bridging the boundaries between teaching cultures. This study adds to our knowledge about how reward impacts networks, and the potential role rewarded teachers play in cultural change, a perspective that is underexplored in research on reward systems.