Students’ Experiences of Psychosocial Problems in Higher Education
Battling and Belonging
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Book Description
Around the world, students in higher education suffer from and deal with psychosocial problems. This phenomenon is universal and seems to be increasing. A vast number of students enter higher education with problems like stress, anxiety or depression, or develop them during their student lives, due to, for example, loneliness, family crisis, mental health or study environment issues.
Battling, belonging and recognition are the focal points of this book’s analyses, showing how students faced with psychosocial problems experience high degrees of stigma and exclusion in the academic communities and society as such. The book is based on research situated in a welfare society, Denmark, where students have relatively easy access to higher education and to public support for education as well as special support for students with psychosocial problems. Taking a student perspective, the book provides in-depth, qualitative analyses of what characterizes student life, which specific psychosocial and other problems students experience, how problems are constructed, represented and become significant in relation to studying, and, not least, how students deal with them.
It will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of educational psychology, sociology of education and higher education. It will also be of interest to supervisors and administrators in higher education.
Table of Contents
Authors’ biographies
Acknowledgements
1: Battling and belonging. Students’ psychosocial problems and the experience of higher education
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
2: Higher education as a battlefield. Contradictions in the Danish educational context
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo &
Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
3: The orientation towards a student perspective. Methodological framework
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
4: "If a look at myself…" Poetic representations of students’ negotiations of self
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
5: "Like everyone else can". Shameful identities and the narrative of the ‘good student’ in higher education
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
6: "I cannot even set the pace". Asyncronicity and inequality in an accelerated educational system
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
7: "If you don’t feel at ease socially". Recognition, loneliness and communities in higher education
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
8: "I see it as an extra job I have". Students’ extra work in making higher education accessible
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
9: From battling to belonging in higher education
Trine Wulf-Andersen, Lene Larsen, Annie Aarup Jensen, Lone Krogh, Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo & Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen
Appendix
Editor(s)
Biography
Trine Wulf-Andersen is Associate Professor of youth, education and participatory research at Roskilde University, Denmark.
Lene Larsen is Associate Professor of youth, education and welfare at Roskilde University, Denmark.
Annie Aarup Jensen is Associate Professor of learning theory and didactics at Aalborg University, Denmark.
Lone Krogh is Associate Professor of Higher Education policies and practices, teaching and learning at Aalborg University, Denmark.
Aske Basselbjerg Stigemo is a postdoc researcher of education and learning, identity and time-environments at Roskilde University, Denmark.
Mathias Hulgård Kristiansen is PhD fellow of education, mental health and participatory research at Roskilde University, Denmark.