European Higher Education Students: Contested Constructions
(opens in a new window)Professor Rachel Brooks
Rachel Brooks is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at the University of Surrey. She is also editor-in-chief of Sociology, an executive editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education, and co-editor of the Routledge/SRHE ‘Research into Higher Education’ book series. She has published widely in the sociology of higher education. Recent books include: Constructing the Higher Education Student: Perspectives from across Europe (2022, with Sazana Jayadeva, Achala Gupta, Anu Lainio and Predrag Lazetic); Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities (2021, with Johanna Waters) and Reimagining the Higher Education Student (2021, with Sarah O’Shea). Rachel is a member of governing council of the Society for Research into Higher Education and the Economic and Social Research Council (the UK’s national social science funding body), and was a member of the education sub-panel for the UK’s national research assessment exercise (REF2021).
Webinar Details
There are currently over 35 million students within Europe and yet we have had no clear understanding of the extent to which understandings of ‘the student’ are shared across the continent. Thus, a central aim of this paper is to investigate how the contemporary higher education student understands their own role, and the extent to which this differs both within nation-states and across them. This is significant in terms of implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumptions that are made about common understandings of ‘the student’ across Europe – underpinning, for example, initiatives to increase cross-border educational mobility and the wider development of a European Higher Education Area. Drawing on data from students across Europe – and particularly plasticine models participants made to represent their understanding of themselves as students – I will argue that, in many cases, there is an important disconnect between the ways in which students are constructed within policy, and how they understand themselves.
The models produced by participants typically foregrounded learning and hard work rather than more instrumental concerns commonly emphasised within policy. This brings into question assertions made in the academic literature that recent reforms have had a direct effect on the subjectivities of students, encouraging them to be more consumerist in their outlook. Nevertheless, I will also shown that student conceptualisations differ, to some extent, by nation state and institution. These differences suggest that, despite the ‘policy convergence’ manifest in the creation of a European Higher Education Area, understandings of what it means to be a student in Europe today remain contested.
This webinar will take place online on 31st January at 1pm.
A recording of the webinar is below and also available at this link - (opens in a new window)https://youtu.be/QocXTHjYafw
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