Search results

This paper draws on viva preparation workshops conducted at the University of Strathclyde and at other universities in the UK. In workshop discussions, students’ questions reveal anxieties, expectations and gaps in their understanding of the viva. A comprehensive list of questions would suggest that every aspect of the viva is unknown to students. However, analysis reveals recurring issues and underlying ambiguities in the viva. Given that universities provide so much information to students, it is surprising that students have so many questions. However, students’ questions do not indicate ignorance, but show them positioning the viva as a new communication event. The implications of this analysis for the viva are that a panel of examiners, rather than national standards, might provide the foundation for transparency and rhetorical development, rather than more information, would enhance students’ and supervisors’ understandings and preparations.

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 chapter examines the value of an academic community as a space in which competing imperatives of collaboration and solo research may not only coexist but also interplay productively. It will critically analyse how developing collaborative practices within an unaffiliated research collective (Beyond Gender) has provided vital tools for building an interdisciplinary academic community within Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE). While the merits of cross-disciplinary collaboration and networking continue to be invoked in institutional strategic plans, academic reward systems continue to favour individual outputs and sole authorship. With researchers increasingly struggling with heavy workloads, it can be challenging to argue that the time and energy required to create and sustain meaningful professional networks is worthwhile. In this chapter, I demonstrate, however, that academic research is rarely the product of an individual. I advocate for collaborative working as a means of diversifying research knowledge and generating adaptable ways of working. I illustrate this by demonstrating how involvement in Beyond Gender has generated research activity at SRHE. It is increasingly acknowledged that mattering and belonging are helpful to our understanding of higher education and to creating effective learning spaces (Gravett, 2023; Carruthers Thomas, 2019). This chapter aligns with this growing area of scholarship, showing that mattering and belonging fostered through academic community building supports creativity and innovation in research.

Academic writing is often considered to be a weakness in contemporary students, while good reporting and writing skills are highly valued by graduate employers. A number of universities have introduced writing centres aimed at addressing this problem; however, the evaluation of such centres is usually qualitative. The paper seeks to consider the efficacy of a writing centre by looking at the impact of attendance on two “real world” quantitative outcomes – achievement and progression.

Data mining was used to obtain records of 806 first‐year students, of whom 45 had attended the writing centre and 761 had not.

A highly significant association between writing centre attendance and achievement was found. Progression to year two was also significantly associated with writing centre attendance.

Further, quantitative evaluation of writing centres is advocated using random allocation to a comparison condition to control for potential confounds such as motivation.

This study aims to explore how leadership, management practices and organisational cultures have changed in low and high-performing mental health (MH) providers between 2015 and 2020 in the English National Health Service.

The authors used a qualitative case study design comprising a purposeful sample of two low-performing and two high-performing MH providers, based on semi-structured interviews with 60 key informants (mostly internal to the organisation with some external informants from local Clinical Commissioning Groups).

The authors found major differences regarding leadership, management and organisational culture between low and high performing MH providers in 2015/2016, and that the differences had diminished considerably by 2019/20. In 2015/16, low performing providers were characterised by a “top-down” style of leadership, centralised decision-making and “blame cultures”. In contrast, the high performing providers were characterised as having more distributed, collaborative and inclusive styles of leadership/management, with open and supportive cultures. As the low performing providers changed and adapted their styles of leadership and management and organisational culture over the five-year period, they more closely resembled those of the high performing trusts.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationship between changing organisational factors and the performance of MH care providers. It provides evidence that it is possible for radical changes in leadership, management and organisational culture to be enacted over a relatively short period of time and that such changes may help low performing providers to turnaround their underperformance.

The purpose of this paper is to present a theory of psychological resilience in volunteer firefighters.

Using a constructivist grounded theory (CGT) approach, the qualitative study engaged a purposive sample of eight firefighters in Canada, conducted in-depth interviews and analysed the data using comparative methods.

The results provided unique insights into resilience in firefighters and revealing resilience as multidimensional, complex, dynamic and contextual. Six core concepts interrelate to construct resilience: relationships, personal resources, meaning-making, leadership, culture and knowledge.

The findings of this research offer a framework for practical integration of resilience theory into workplace health policy and practice. The theory was co-created with firefighters hence is contextually sound to this population, but applicable to other emergency and health services.

Volunteer firefighters are under-represented in the literature, despite facing intermittent and frequently intense work-related stressors; this research begins to address the gap in the literature. As well, previous resilience theories have noted relationships between some components, but there is little evidence linking categories; this theory more patently represents the complex nature of resilience in volunteer firefighters.