Work-integrated learning programmes help students acquire professional acumen and provide opportunities for them to experiment with new aspects of self and identity. Twelve internship students were interviewed regarding their perspectives on how they think they learn about professionalism and the information sources they use. They describe how…

In countries such as Chile in which a neoliberal economic approach is predominant, higher education systems are characterized by productivity, competition for resources and income generation, all of which have impact on academics' experiences of time. Through a qualitative approach in which 20 interviews and two focus groups were conducted, this…

Criminal justice education is a relatively new program in higher education in many countries, and its curriculum and parameters remain unsettled. An exploratory study investigated whether threshold concepts theory provided a useful lens by which to explore student understandings of this multidisciplinary field. Eight high-performing final-year…

This article discusses the findings of a recent study which demonstrates that generic attributes are highly context-dependent, and are shaped by the disciplinary epistemology in which they are conceptualised and taught. Generic attributes have, for a long time, been viewed as super-disciplinary, and hence as separated from and overlayed onto…

This article presents a phenomenographic study that investigates students' approaches to achieving understanding. The results are based on interviews, addressing physiological phenomena, with 16 medical students in a problem-based curriculum. Four approaches--sifting, building, holding and moving--are outlined. The holding and moving approaches…

An ethnographic account of the community of academic physicists is based on interviews, and a picture of what physics is like as a discipline is constructed. The features of its epistemology that differentiate it from other disciplines and characteristics (career structure, value-system and preferred modes of communication) are described.…

An empirical enquiry into the nature of academic disciplines is described. The main similarities and differences of six academic disciplines--physics, history, biology, sociology, mechanical engineering and law--are outlined. Different research styles are identified and characterized as urban and rural research styles. (Author/MLW)

This article reports the findings of a 3 year research project which investigated disciplinary variation in student writing. Within an Open University course in the history of science, students from an arts background were found to achieve significantly higher grades than those from a science background. Textual and interview data suggest that…

The results of interviews of students of medicine, business administration, and engineering concerning their perceptions of their professional education's relevance to actual professional work, the nature of learning and knowledge, and worldwide economic and technological development are presented and discussed. (MSE)