1st Edition
Reimagining the Higher Education Student Constructing and Contesting Identities
Drawing on the perspectives of scholars and researchers from around the world, this book challenges dominant constructions of higher education students. Given the increasing number and diversity of such students, the book offers a timely discussion of the implicit and sometimes subtle ways that they are characterised or defined. Topics vary from the ways that curriculum designers ‘imagine’ learners, the complex and evolving nature of student identity work, through to newspaper and TV representations of university attendees.
Reimagining the Higher Education Student seeks to question the accepted or unquestioned nature of ‘being a student’ and instead foreground the contradictions and ‘messiness’ of such ideation. Offering timely insights into the nature of the student experience and providing an understanding of what students may desire from their Higher Education participation, this book covers a range of issues, including:
- Impressions versus the reality of being a Higher Education student
- Portrayals of students in various media including newspapers, TV shows and online
- Generational perspectives on students, and students as family members
It is a valuable resource for academics and students both researching and working in higher education, especially those with a focus on identities, their importance and their constructions.
Series Editors’ Introduction
Jennifer M. Case and Jeroen Huisman
Chapter 1. Reimagining the higher education student: an introduction
Rachel Brooks and Sarah O’Shea
Chapter 2. On becoming a university student: young people and the ‘illusio’ of higher education
Sally Patfield, Jenny Gore and Leanne Fray
Chapter 3. "She’s like, ‘you’re a uni student now’": the influence of mother-daughter relationships on the constructions of learner identities of first-in-family girls
Sarah McDonald
Chapter 4. Constructions of náksèuk-săa: tracing contested imaginings of the Thai university student
Thornchanok Uerpairojkit and James Burford
Chapter 5. The shifting subjectification of the ‘widening participation’ student: the affective world of the ‘deserving’ consumer
Emily Danvers and Tamsin Hinton-Smith
Chapter 6. Dispelling the myth of the ‘traditional’ university undergraduate student in the UK
Grace Sykes
Chapter 7. Imagining the constructivist student online: actively engaged learner or vulnerable student in need?
Kate O’Connor
Chapter 8. Dominant higher education imaginaries: forced perspectives, ontological limits and recognising the imaginer’s frame
Matt Lumb and Matthew Bunn
Chapter 9. Reframing the ‘traditional learner’ into the ‘partner’ in higher education: conflicting subjectivities and behavioural expectations of the undergraduate ‘student’ in UK universities
Eloise Symonds
Chapter 10. Constructing the university student in British documentary television
Kay Calver and Bethan Michael-Fox
Chapter 11. Constructing students as family members: contestations in media and policy representations across Europe
Anu Lainio and Rachel Brooks
Chapter 12. Student millennials/Millennial students: how the lens of generation constructs understandings of the contemporary HE student
Kirsty Finn, Nicola Ingram and Kim Allen
Chapter 13. Exploring spaces in-between: Reimagining the Chinese student in a transnational higher education context in China
Paola R.S. Eiras and Henk Huijser
Chapter 14. Between international student and immigrant: a critical perspective on Angolan and Cape Verdean students in Portugal
Elisa Alves and Russell King
Chapter 15. Conclusion
Sarah O’Shea and Rachel Brooks
Biography
Rachel Brooks is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK, and an executive editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education.
Sarah O’Shea is a Professor and Director of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) which is hosted by Curtin University, Australia.
