This study investigates Mandarin Chinese learners' motivation in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) program in a British secondary school from the perspective of learning environment, learner engagement, and learner identities. Fifteen pupils who are learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) have been interviewed individually or…

Big ideas, sometimes referred to as key, core, fundamental or threshold concepts, are widely applicable concepts at the heart of disciplines that are or have been central and influential for their fields. Attention here is particularly directed to meta-concepts common to sister disciplines in the sciences. "Learning thresholds",…

There is growing global recognition of the contribution that leadership development can make to improving quality and outcomes in the Early Years (EY) education sector. UK governments are responding to such evidence through the creation of new national qualifications for EY professionals across the sector and the expansion of publicly funded…

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in profound disruption to geography higher education. A pivot to online teaching required staff to rapidly adapt their practices to novel digital spaces. Whilst many studies have reported the different pedagogic approaches adopted, fewer have evaluated the resultant student learning experience. In this study, we…

A quantitative study was undertaken to investigate the accessibility of an undergraduate foundation statistics module for business and management students over four consecutive years, before and after the adoption of a flipped classroom teaching approach for a large cohort (~ 500 students per year). Students' module feedback questionnaires, exam…

In this article, we present details of a new Academic Boredom Survey Instrument (ABSI) incorporating different measures of academic boredom's trait, state and other characteristic attributes for the exploratory study of student engagement in Higher Education (HE). Developed from a review of international research literature and our own empirical…

Entrepreneurship-related modules have become increasingly popular over the years, not only among business school students but also among those from other disciplines, including engineering and the arts and humanities. In some circumstances, they are offered as optional modules for students across different faculties and disciplines. While it is…

Universities are under increasing pressure to equip graduates with a broader set of competencies, such as communication, teamwork and leadership skills, that go beyond subject-specific knowledge. This, alongside growing student numbers in higher education, creates pedagogic challenges, especially with regards to assessment design. Conventional…

From October 2021, the government introduced a pilot in 30 local authorities to support 16 to 18-year-old children looked-after (CLA) and care leavers (CLs) in general further education (FE) colleges through the extension of Pupil Premium Plus funding to post-16 (PP+ Post-16). The 6-month pilot was completed between autumn 2021 and spring 20221 ,…

The need for universities to effectively support students identifying as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Colour (BIPoC) remains a pressing element of strategies to close awarding gaps. Within overall support packages, the contribution of Learning Developers merits investigation, since these staff are often responsible for nurturing growth in…

Engaging a large cohort of students with teaching content is a difficult task for any educator working in higher education. When students are not receiving feedback about their participation efforts, this can lead to decreased engagement. Polling activities, such as hands up responses, can be used to address this but students cannot respond…

Mathematics in early years settings is often restricted to learning to count and identifying simple shapes. This is partly due to the narrow scope of many early years curricula and insufficient teacher training for exploring deeper mathematical concepts. We note that geometry is an area particularly neglected. In an innovative year-long project, a…

A sense of belonging and feeling at home at their institution are key factors in student success at university. Engaging with extracurricular activities is part of this dynamic, and an area in which 'international' students face additional barriers. These include institutional and psychological barriers to belonging, resulting in a shortage of…

Whilst student engagement with learning has been consistently linked to positive academic outcomes, there has been an increasing focus among higher education institutions on the importance of producing employable graduates. This study investigated whether individual differences in socially aversive personality traits predict different types of…

The importance placed on student engagement strategies within higher education (HE) and the emphasis on sophisticated and expensive polices by universities has been well documented. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, the main aim of such resource intensive aims is fundamentally to attract students to their institutions. This study…