Higher Education Agencies Research Articles

Global Perspectives on Teacher Emotions and Agency in Higher Education: A Content and Bibliometric Analyses Over the Past Five Decades

ABSTRACTThis study dives deep into the evolution of research on teacher emotions (TE), teacher agency (TA) and their role within higher education institutions (HEIs) from 1975 to the present. Combining a meticulous bibliometric and content analysis, the paper has painted a detailed picture of how the academic conversation has developed over nearly half a century. The approach did not just count publications but looked at how they connected globally. The study reveals a rich tapestry of international collaborations, with the United States, Australia and China standing out as key players, showcasing the global interest in this field and its interconnected insights. Another fascinating finding is the uncovering of the multifaceted dimensions of research on TE and TA and the significance of regional and global perspectives in shaping the holistic landscape of the field. The emergent themes, such as ‘Language Teacher Emotion’ and the significant impact of ‘COVID‐19’ on educational dynamics, are even more intriguing. These themes strongly indicate the field's evolution and responsiveness to the emerging challenges in the contemporary academic landscape.

A Reparative Lens for Exploring Youth Aspirations in South African Universities

ABSTRACT In South Africa, low-income rural black youth are assumed to exhibit endurance in their higher education agency while yet not really being agentic, because they accommodate an oppressive university and settle for less ambitious aspirational horizons. Drawing on illustrative empirical data from a longitudinal study of black youth without hot knowledge of higher education to deploy from their families’ biographies, the project explored students’ accessing, participating in and moving on from their studies at five South African universities. In exploring youth aspirations and agency, the concept of repair is employed to position aspirations as reparative and temporal where past injustices, present and future intersect in shaping agency and in projecting imagined futures for youth. The cultural lens of aspiration offers a space to interrogate and dismantle past exclusions and unsettle norms of the “disadvantaged student” to avoid reinscribing past injustice in ways which are globally relevant to marginalised university students from poor backgrounds compared to better off students. It shows how day to day negotiated conditions of living in universities by these students are agentic; enduring poverty and exclusion is an active aspirational struggle for dignity and recognition, even if these students are not able to undo relations of power. Ubuntu is mobilised as an ontological means to further deepen how we understand aspirations and agency as interdependent and interacted between person and community and as refusal of the neoliberal university. Finally, features of universities as potential spaces of aspirations and repair for transformative change and transformative futures are sketched.

Participation, assertion and aspiration-indigenous teacher agency in higher education

ABSTRACT Educational research often silences teachers’ voices, distorting perspectives. This article delves into the marginalized voices of educators and administrators, focusing on Indigenous agencies within higher education (HE) in the state of Jharkhand, India. Employing the narrative interview method of oral history, it elucidates life stories through lived experiences amidst conflicting educational paradigms. Drawing from the author’s doctoral research, the article provides a historical and socio-political context of colonial legacies and contemporary challenges faced by Indigenous communities in India self-identifying as ‘Adivasi.’ Synthesizing an analytical framework through a ground-up approach, agency theories uncover new themes within HE’s temporal, spatial, and personal-social space. The findings describe counter-strategies against systemic denial of Indigenous agency within HE, contributing to discussions on the requirement of context-specific epistemic frameworks for India’s Tribal communities to assert their voices and choices in HE.

Everyday datafication and higher education

Datafication—the transformation of human life into quantifiable digital data—raises important questions for student agency in higher education. Student agency is central to learning and engagement within university, and the development of agentic selves in students forms a core purpose of higher education. Data-driven practices such as learning analytics promise to support the development of student agency in the context of learning, while at the same time introducing new information and power asymmetries into the relationship between students and the university. Critical research on datafication, meanwhile, has highlighted the threats to student agency posed by data-driven analytics practices that reinforce structural inequalities and depend on the surveillance of student behaviours and bodies. This paper explores student agency in relation to datafication through a discussion of the findings of ethnographic research with university students in Scotland. Drawing on literature from the field of critical data studies that focuses on people’s everyday experiences of datafication, the paper will highlight how students understand, feel about and respond to datafication in their everyday lives, and what this means for their relationship with the university. Students draw on a range of everyday data literacies developed through their experiences of datafied platforms and academic knowledge to make sense of university data practices. They employ diverse tactics for coping with datafication, including minimizing perceived risks by taking measures to protect their privacy and disconnecting from certain platforms. They tend to trust the university with their data, but this trust is conditional and closely related to their overall perception of the university. Above all, perhaps, students are resigned to datafication within and beyond the university. Thus, while students demonstrate agency with respect to datafication in a range of ways, data relations between the university and students are fundamentally top-down, reflecting wider societal dynamics whereby people routinely give up their data in exchange for access to digital services, with little ability to opt out or control what happens to it. Universities, it will be argued, have the potential to introduce participatory forms of data governance that reframe these relations, thus supporting the development of student agency over datafication within and beyond the university.

How has the conceptualisation of student agency in higher education evolved? Mapping the literature from 2000-2022

ABSTRACT The objective of this article is to analyse the development and content of research in the global literature on student agency in higher education (SAHE) based on a bibliometric review of 224 articles published in the Scopus database during the period 2000–2022. VOSviewer, Excel, and Tableau software were used to analyse the texts. The review documented the growth trajectory and geographic distribution of the literature and identified the intellectual structure of SAHE. The findings show that the SAHE knowledge base has grown dramatically since 2017, particularly in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Five schools of thought emerged from the literature as the main pillars of agency, or individuals’ capacities to take actions to improve their lives (1): the socio-cultural approach of agency (2); the social cognitive framework of agency (3); feedback, assessment, and agency (4); students’ motivation and engagement; and (5) learning analytics, online education, and agency. The results show that student agency is framed within a constructivist and sociocultural learning perspective. Findings also demonstrate that agency has significant effects on personalising and increasing the dynamism and potential of academic experiences if students take an active role in managing their own learning.

Student-centred learning and teaching: a systematic mapping review of empirical research

ABSTRACT Student-centred learning and teaching (SCLT) has become a widespread approach in higher education and is praised by students, educational researchers and policy makers alike. SCLT is believed to help students become self-directed learners by placing them at the centre of the learning process. Despite the central role currently ascribed to SCLT in higher education, systematic knowledge about how it is practiced in higher education is limited. Informed by the findings of a systematic mapping review of empirical research, this article discloses how SCLT is practised inclass, outof-class and institutionally in higher educational institutions. Overall, we find that empirical research on SCLT is diverse and covers a wide range of pedagogical approaches and methods. Even so, the main focus of the research mapped is on in-class learning activities, whereas less focus is placed on student support systems and on how to develop a SCLT culture in institutional practices. Furthermore, the review finds an extensive focus on student activation and engagement in the empirical research on SCLT. This runs contrary to the theoretical literature arguing that SCLT should promote student agency and autonomy. We therefore encourage more empirical research on the relationship between SCLT and student agency in higher education.

Book review: Digital Agency in Higher Education: Transforming teaching and learning, by Toril Aagaard and Andreas Lund

Book review: Digital Agency in Higher Education: Transforming teaching and learning, by Toril Aagaard and Andreas Lund

Student Subjectivity in the Marketised University.

We present data from an exploratory qualitative interview-based pedagogical research project on the development of student agency in higher education. Our aim was to respond to Nick Zepke’s claim that what is often missing from the current neoliberal discourse of higher education ‘is students having a voice in what and how they learn and how they can action their voice in the wider community as agentic citizens.’ Informed by Lacanian discourse analysis, our project investigated the opportunities and threats facing some of our undergraduate students as they struggled to exercise agency and develop autonomy in the marketised university. Repeat interviews (n = 15) with final year students focussed on the psychosocial categories of power, affect, intersubjectivity and desire. The analysis was guided by Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, an account of the vicissitudes of agency. We found that students can move between discourses depending on the extent to which their agency (operationalised here as Lacan’s ‘object cause of desire,’ the objet petit a) was enabled or thwarted. Our critique of the metaphor of the ‘student journey’ addresses the implications for learning and teaching and the university’s mission to develop its students in light of perceived commercial pressures.

Does student agency benefit student learning? A systematic review of higher education research

This is a systematic review conducted to explore the primary research literature on student agency in higher education, as well as links between student agency and student learning. Out of more than 2,300 results, 42 articles published between 1980 and 2021 were assessed. Of these, 29 studies were included in a narrative review based on their centrality of student agency and methodological quality. We found that a student agency perspective is integrated into research focussed on assessment and feedback, globalisation and internationalisation, knowledge production, learning analytics, learning connections and transfer, real-life learning situations, and student-focussed teaching and learning. Our study reveals that researchers report a link between sources of agency and student agency, as well as between agency and individual outcomes, but the relationship between agency and societal outcomes requires further investigation. We argue that research must include holistic notions and critical discussions of agency for moving higher education practices and student agency literature forward.

Technology-Enhanced Learning for Student Agency in Higher Education: a Systematic Literature Review

From an educational perspective, student agency is a construct that refers to external and internal factors involved in taking responsibility for learning and the possibility of making choices in learning. Although there are studies that back the idea of using educational technologies to support the development of student agency in higher education, there is still a lack of frameworks that relate student agency with technology-enhanced learning. In this study we present a systematic literature review addressing this gap, with emphasis on educational sciences. The results from the mapping of 29 studies show a focus on the micro level of learning design and clear relationships with other concepts, such as ownership of learning or self-regulated learning. The analysis of the results enabled us to develop an own model approach connecting student agency and technology-enhanced learning. Future work will involve iterative phases of revision and validation of the developed model through empirical studies.

Cyber Security System With SIEM And Honeypot In Higher Education

Communication science and information technology (ICT) has been progressing and contain complex implication for individual, groups and inter-country relationship. Along with ICT evolution, threats (including theft of information) increase and electronic systems are adopted. As a government agency in higher education with the country’s strategic data, XYZ cannot escape hackers trying to access the assets. Strategic assets include system and company’s data as well as systems and data which might be taken for granted by irresponsible parties. Therefore, it is necessary to secure information and data systems in XYZ. Moreover to test whether the implemented cyber security system can optimally standardize the company’s information and data systems. The application of Security Information Event Management (SIEM) to cyber security systems to detect incoming threat alerts and block access to suspicious threats. While the honeypot is used to deceive the hacker into a fake system intentionally attacked and learning the tricks that intruders use when performing the action. The results of the test of the application of SIEM and Honeypot at XYZ can monitor the monitoring of information system and data-related threats in real-time, and deter and transmit cyber-attacks to adequately protect information security so that the use of cyber security systems with SIEM & Honeypot can secure the information and data systems owned by XYZ optimal.

Student agency analytics: learning analytics as a tool for analysing student agency in higher education

ABSTRACT This paper presents a novel approach and a method of learning analytics to study student agency in higher education. Agency is a concept that holistically depicts important constituents of intentional, purposeful, and meaningful learning. Within workplace learning research, agency is seen at the core of expertise. However, in the higher education field, agency is an empirically less studied phenomenon with also lacking coherent conceptual base. Furthermore, tools for students and teachers need to be developed to support learners in their agency construction. We study student agency as a multidimensional phenomenon centring on student-experienced resources of their agency. We call the analytics process developed here student agency analytics, referring to the application of learning analytics methods for data on student agency collected using a validated instrument. The data are analysed with unsupervised and supervised methods. The whole analytics process will be automated using microservice architecture. We provide empirical characterisations of student-perceived agency resources by applying the analytics process in two university courses. Finally, we discuss the possibilities of using agency analytics in supporting students to recognise their resources for agentic learning and consider contributions of agency analytics to improve academic advising and teachers' pedagogical knowledge.

Academic developers as brokers of change: insights from a research project on change practice and agency

ABSTRACT This paper presents the findings of a four-year research project studying change practice and agency in higher education. The main findings of five empirical studies are presented. These findings lay bare how academic staff perceive opportunities to change their practice, identify leaders’ strategies when trying to bring about change, illustrate the different and at times incompatible ways of understanding change initiatives, acknowledge the importance of moral dimensions in change, and demonstrate how leaders mobilise theory when engaging in change practice. The article synthesizes the results of the project and draws conclusions with a view to how academic developers may best engage with critical stakeholders in higher education institutions. The paper concludes by presenting some thoughts on how a new model for academic development may take form. The paper aims to provide insights, inspiration, and critical dialogue to researchers in academic development.

Positional Goods and Upstream Agency

ABSTRACTPhilosophical discussions of positional goods typically focus on parties competing for shares of such goods and on the inequalities among them that both shape and arise from these competitions. Less has been said about the actions of the various agents who shape the opportunities available to parties competing for positional goods. Such agents include suppliers of the goods in question, as well as those who instil value in these either directly or indirectly. This paper explores the complexity and normative significance of this more causally upstream agency with an emphasis on the role played by such agency in higher education. More specifically, we identify some of the forms taken by upstream agency, how the agents involved are related to each other, how they are related to the agents who actually compete for positional goods, and what sort of moral demands can be made of them. Much of this work will be taxonomic and descriptive. Our aim, however, is to show how the taxonomy that we develop and the dynamics that we describe bear on the questions with which political philosophers have tended to be more preoccupied concerning the moral significance of positional goods and how they ought to be regulated.

Higher education quality policies in Germany and United Kingdom:


 
 
 The objective of this study is to discuss the accreditation systems in Higher Education (HE) currently in Europe. The specific goals include describing the context of HE in Germany and the UK, identifying the main policies implemented. The studies are systematically mapped and contextualized and they will analyse quality assurance and evaluation. This research describes the assessment of the social phenomenon and the accreditation of HE based on the performance of European rating agencies. This paper will also present the main points of action of the quality policy and the quality of HE agencies and their development. It was created a concept mapping of HE in these countries and it was also discussed the characteristics, restrictions and evolution of the processes of accreditation, evaluation and peer review. The main points of action of quality policies and quality agencies in HE, and their current situation of development were demonstrated.
 
 

Quality Framework And Indicators For Accreditation Of Teacher Education: International Cases And Suggestions For Nigeria

This paper focused on teacher education and quality assurance issues particularly the quality framework and indicators for accrediting teacher education. It analysed the fact that all parts of the world have not shown equal commitment to the accreditation of teacher education. Similarly, what constitute quality framework and indicators for accrediting teacher education had varied among the countries, higher education agencies and teaching regulatory authorities. For Nigeria, though the professionalisation of teaching has advanced, the professional accreditation of teacher education has not kept pace with the advancement. This study was therefore undertaken to take stock of the international best practices in accreditation of teacher education with a view to suggesting quality framework and indicators for the professional accreditation of teacher education in Nigeria.

Articulation and Continuities: First-Year Experience in Higher Education

Discussions around first-year experiences have been focused on student adjustment and inclusion into the culture and discourses of higher education. However, the issue is much broader and includes efforts of articulation of processes and continuity of experience. This guest-edited issue thus focuses on the wider issues and includes discussions on systemic articulation and ruptures in student experiences. Developmental shifts when entering higher education are experienced by students in a variety of ways. It is incumbent on higher education and the wider system to enable continuity of experience and articulation of systems in such a way that student success is at the centre. Thus, the core articles in this issue focus on systemic articulation, in and out of classroom experience and the operational and ontological engagement of students, beyond the first-year experience. Moreover, while discussions on university success are usually focused on higher education agency, it is essential that the silence around causality and influence of schooling and wider societal issues are recognised. The articles in this issue purposefully bring together such a wider perspective.

Mature Access: the contribution of the Access to Higher Education Diploma

ABSTRACTSince the late 1970s, the Access to Higher Education (Access to HE) Diploma (the Diploma) and its predecessor Access to HE certificates and courses have provided opportunities for adults to undertake the preparation they need to progress to higher education (HE). The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has been collecting data about these students since 1998, working with a variety of further education (FE) and HE agencies, and has published annual reports. This paper brings together this information to consider the question of whether or not this qualification has contributed to widening participation in HE. General patterns in the data are presented, acknowledging that some changes in data collection methodologies over the years place limitations on the statements that can be made. The paper suggests that nonetheless this unique set of data does indicate that Access to HE has made a contribution. However, some of the changes in patterns of the proportions of widening participation characteristics in Access to HE entrants to HE raise questions for further analysis, and changes in the context of FE and HE structures and funding may pose challenges to Access to HE students and their progression to HE.

Political Interference in Higher Education Quality Assurance. The Swedish Case

T his paper presents the Swedish national Quality Assurance system for Higher Education introduced in 2011 . The system was created by officials at the Ministry of Education and introduced by the Government in spite of a) widespread criticism from the Swedish Higher Education sector, students, national and international expertise, and b) the existence of a well accepted proposal for a new system created by the Higher Education Agency in collaboration with academia and students. The system caused Sweden to be excluded from the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education ( ENQA ). The article reflects on the need for organisations as ENQA not only to guarantee quality but also to guard the border between the Higher Education Institutions and the political powers.

Bringing together knowledge and capabilities: a case study of engineering graduates

In contemporary times there is a renewed focus on the purposes of university education in science or engineering, especially in emerging economy contexts like South Africa where the massification of higher education is in its early stages. The contributions by Muller (High Educ 70(3):409–416, 2015) and Walker (High Educ 70(3):417–425,2015) both recognise the crucial importance of expanding epistemological access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, but their visions offer different emphases on how to proceed. Muller (2015) argues for the centring of disciplinary knowledge, while for Walker (2015) it is the concerns of society that should be central. In this article we argue that both of these are partial answers. We draw on a longitudinal study with ten South African engineering graduates, who were interviewed both in their third year and then approximately a decade later. Our analysis shows how the engagement with disciplinary knowledge is at the heart of the shaping of ‘graduateness’. Thus we argue for a coming together of the two perspectives in this issue towards a nuanced perspective on graduateness that recognises the significance of disciplinary knowledge but that also holds a space for the development of student agency in higher education.