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Institutional ethnography (IE) is a sociology that focuses on the everyday world as problematic. As a theory/method of discovery, it focuses on how the work people do is organized and coordinated by text-mediated and text-regulated social organization. Actor-network Theory (ANT) is a theory/method that is concerned with how realities get enacted. ANT focuses on a multiplicity of human and nonhuman actors (e.g., computers, documents, and laboratory equipment) and how the relations between them are constituted and how they are made to hang together to create certain realities. In this chapter, we discuss some of the similarities and differences between IE and ANT. We begin with an overview of IE and ANT and focus on their ontological and epistemological “shifts.” We then discuss some of the similarities and differences between IE and ANT, particularly from an IE stance. In doing so, we put these approaches into dialog and allude to some of the potential benefits and pitfalls of combining these approaches.

This case study will detail and discuss the decision by a central student-facing learning development unit at Keele University, to provide student writing retreats, accessible to students at all levels of higher education (HE) studies. Staff and researcher writing retreats have been found to improve productivity and motivation, and to develop some participants’ sense of identity as “writers” (Casey, Barron, & Gordon, 2013; Moore, 2003; Murray & Newton, 2009; Papen & Thériault, 2018; Swaggerty, Atkinson, Faulconer, & Griffith, 2011). Many UK higher education institutions provide a range of writing retreats, in varying formats, to staff and PhD students to further their writing goals but rarely, if ever, to undergraduate (UG) or postgraduate-taught (PGT) students.

Over the past four academic years, the learning development unit at Keele University have been developing and running a range of student writing retreats for UG and PGT students as part of our freestanding academic skills development provision. This case study will provide a summary scope of the sector, present relevant literature supporting writing retreats and critically reflect on and evaluate the freestanding writing retreats provided to students. The educational evaluation to be presented here stands as an innovation in the teaching and support of academic writing practices of students.

This study aims to examine the effects of participating in physical activities on female college graduates' starting salaries. We used an instrumental variable (IV) approach to address the possible endogeneity problem. By using the Taiwan Higher Education Dataset, we discovered that participating in physical activities during college increased an individual's earnings by 3.06%. The significant positive effect of physical activity on salary demonstrated in this study is consistent with that in other relevant studies. This study also discovered that both the intensity and the persistence of participation in physical activities affected salary outcomes. Individuals earned 0.17%–2.41% more if they exercised for an additional hour per week, suggesting the importance of the intensity of participation in physical activities. In addition, persistent participation in physical activities was associated with a 3.08% higher salary.