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This paper examines the application and efficacy of performance ethnography designed for adult professional learning. An ethnographic performance related to women in research leadership was constructed and performed in an executive tertiary leadership programme and the responses from the female audience/participants were investigated. The study defines a form of research-based theatre: "interactive ethnographic performance" where an ethnographic performance text is intersected by drama pedagogy designed to enhance the learning experience. It found that this model of interactive ethnographic performance applied to professional learning provides opportunities for deep engagement and critical reflection and offers a site for powerful collective learning.

Sessional teachers in universities are often marginalised by their part-time status, availability for training, and invisibility within the institution's infrastructure. Nevertheless, tutors as a subset of this group, regularly have access to some training and development. This paper presents a methodological approach for implementing the BLASST framework for sessional staff at a New Zealand university, based on a project to benchmark support for tutors. Using Activity Theory, I discuss tensions associated with developing a training programme for tutors and how such an approach can aid the development of similar models for all sessional teachers.

Research into both student engagement and student emotions is increasing, with widespread agreement that both are critical determinants of student success in higher education. Less researched are the complex, reciprocal relationships between these important influences. Two theoretical frameworks inform this paper: Pekrun's taxonomy of academic emotions and Kahu's conceptual framework of student engagement. The prospective qualitative design aims to allow a rich understanding of the fluctuating and diverse emotions that students experience during the transition to university and to explore the relationships between academic emotions and student engagement. The study follows 19 mature-aged (aged 24 and over) distance students throughout their first semester at university, using video diaries to collect data on their emotional experiences and their engagement with their study. Pre and post-semester interviews were also conducted. Findings highlight that different emotions have different links to engagement: as important elements in emotional engagement, as inhibitors of engagement and as outcomes that reciprocally influence engagement. There are two key conclusions. First, student emotions are the point of intersection between the university factors such as course design and student variables such as motivation and background. Second, the flow of influence between emotions, engagement, and learning is reciprocal and complex and can spiral upwards towards ideal engagement or downwards towards disengagement and withdrawal.