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The current literature on 'sense of belonging' spans a number of disciplines, with no apparent consensus on definition between these, complicated by the fact that sense of belonging is temporal and context-sensitive (such as during COVID-19). In particular, a closer look at how students define sense of belonging is needed from an up-to-date perspective to help them feel more connected to the faculty/campus and improve their wellbeing and mental health in the 'new normal' and 'next normal' post-pandemic eras. Therefore, this study explores higher education students' sense of belonging, a concept that has not been adequately conceptualised, from their perspectives. As these perspectives are subjective, an interpretive approach is required to generate rich meanings. This study has adopted a meta-ethnographic approach to synthesise qualitative studies, which allows for comparison and synthesis of studies into a new interpretation through translations. Interpretive qualitative synthesis resulted in one higher-order concept, four main concepts, and nineteen sub-concepts that conceptualise higher education students' understanding of sense of belonging to their universities.

Background: Knowledge of quantum computing is arguably inaccessible to many, with knowledge of the complex mathematics involving a particular barrier to entry, creating difficulty in terms of teaching and inclusive learning for those without a high level of mathematics. Meanwhile, it is increasingly important that the knowledge of quantum technologies is accessible to those who work with real-world applications and is taught to the younger generation. Purpose: Resulting from collaborative dialogue between physicists, computer scientists, educationalists, and industrial end users, we propose the concept of quantum literacy as one means of addressing the need for transdisciplinary research in response to the complex problems that we see at the heart of issues around global sustainability. In this way, quantum literacy can contribute to UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, Quality Education. Methods: We introduce a specific puzzle visualization learning tool through which to achieve the pedagogic ends we set out with respect to quantum literacy. Visualization through puzzles can enable non-specialists to develop an intuitive, but still rigorous, understanding of universal quantum computation and provide a facility for non-specialists to discover increasingly complex and new quantum algorithms. Using the Hong-Ou-Mandel optical effect from quantum mechanics, we demonstrate how visual methods such as those made possible through the puzzle visualization tool can be very useful for understanding underlying complex processes in quantum physics and beyond and therefore support the aims of quantum literacy. Conclusion: We argue that quantum literacy, as defined here, addresses the challenges of learning within a highly bounded discipline and of access to the kind of powerful knowledge that should be more accessible to a wide group of learners. We therefore argue for the importance of addressing pedagogic issues when powerful knowledge consists of dense concepts, as well as complex and hierarchical relations between concepts, in addition to presenting a strong barrier to entry in the form of mathematics.

This paper makes the case for fairness as a driver towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of equitable quality education. We outline a dialogic fairness framework attending to the principles of relational justice in both the service of reducing educational inequalities and improving democratic qualities. The prominence of education as a theme in Fairness Commissions from many UK municipal councils afforded the opportunity to find out if and how fairness could be considered a driver of change towards greater equality in education. Our work with the Newcastle Fairness Commission generated a number of principles of fairness and education, as well as a framework to help operationalize these principles in schools, that we detail in this paper. The framework that was generated was one that recognizes fairness as a form of relational justice arising from a dialogic approach. It was based on a process that used multi-stakeholder interviews and a roundtable inquiry. Views arising from the process interviews and roundtable discussion were consistent with other research into young people's understandings of fairness and education. More research is needed to find out how fairness is understood and enacted by education stakeholders and how these conceptualizations, perspectives, and experiences might combine to improve educational equity and democratic qualities.

The paper argues that there is a reductive logic inherent in conceptualisations of academic ability in some Western education research as currently configured. Effective interrogation of this concept necessitates consideration across relevant fields of research, as outlined in three areas of critique: that research on educational stratification can adopt a contradictory stance with respect to conceptualising academic ability and defer to innate cognitive ability in pupil test data while denouncing this elsewhere; that cultural reproduction theory is itself a powerful social construction with ramifications for the possibility of equal learning opportunities for all; and that a narrow focus on educational stratification reifies instrumental outcomes, devaluing some of the broader purposes of education. It is argued that these reductive tendencies have ramifications for education policy and school-based practices. A lack of focus on, and clarity about, the concept of academic ability warrants more holistic conceptualising, which draws on methodological pluralism.

This article draws on an evaluation of the "Poverty proofing the school day" initiative. It outlines an argument arrived at through abductive reasoning to explain the generic and widespread instances of the stigmatisation of disadvantaged pupils that have been uncovered. The process of abductive reasoning necessitated broadening the conceptual framework through which we usually understand poverty and its impacts on education, and in so doing we take account of the affective or psychosocial dimensions and the attendant coping strategies that result. Listening to children's descriptions of poverty and its impacts on schooling is an essential aspect of better understanding these non-material aspects of poverty and their ramifications for all involved. There is, however, a lack of time and appropriate structures in schools to attend to this wider conceptualisation of poverty, yet the outcomes of "Poverty proofing the school day" demonstrate that schools do have a significant role to play in reducing the barriers to learning that result. We make the case that the specific conditions of high-stakes performativity in which schools operate, and the dominance of instrumental and metrics-based responses to issues around poverty and learning, reduce the visibility of the affective dimension and in so doing enable unwitting stigmatisation to result.

This paper considers whether the impact agenda that has developed over the last decade in UK universities is likely to help create the conditions in which critical educational research makes a more visible difference to society. The UK audit of university research quality (the research excellence framework (REF) now includes an assessment of impact. Impact pathways are requirements of both national and European Union research funding bodies and the Australian Research Council. Issues in the assessment of the social impact of research are explored by the European projects Evaluating the impact of EU SSH, social science humanities, research (IMPACT-EV) and ACcelerate CO-creation by setting up a Multi-actor Platform for Impact from Social Sciences and Humanities (ACCOMPLISSH). For many UK researchers the institutional focus on influencing the world outside the academy has brought welcome support and resources to engage with society and may appear to bring universities back to something approaching their original civic identity. However, evidence from across the academy suggests that impact as depicted in REF impact case studies does not accurately represent the experience either of the academic research endeavour or of impact as it may be more broadly construed. Analysis reported here of 85 highly rated impact case studies in the education unit of assessment of the 2014 REF suggests there is a risk that the REF impact process will embed a shift against qualitative and theoretically driven methodology that is often found in socially critical educational research. Impact is postured as neutral, hiding the neoliberal drive towards research models based on implementation, evaluation and policy. There is a need to create spaces in universities for rethinking of the impact agenda, perhaps looking at value or social creation instead of, or as an integral aspect of, impact.

This paper discusses a research project which sought to find out about young people's views on fairness in education in English schools. Fairness is an everyday term, which in policy hides multiple and contradictory positions across the political divide. In education, we find a policy context that focuses on distributional justice and equality of opportunity but also on principles of freedom and choice. This paper argues that engaging with how young people understand fairness contributes to models of social justice in education. Focus group data and written statements on fairness from approximately 80 young people aged 16-18 from five very different English schools were analysed. Students' primary concerns, absent from educational policy, were the themes of relational justice and stakes fairness, which are eclipsed by current recourse to distributive justice and meritocratic ideals. We argue that a focus on the lived experience of fairness is therefore necessary to widen the discourse about what is fair in education and to reinvigorate public debate about the values on which our education system is based.

Analysis of lived experience data is increasingly advocated as an enabling strategy to inform ethical and effective policy and practice, particularly in the university mental health field. However, where Michel Foucault's work is often drawn on to frame subjectivity of lived experience in the neoliberal university, this brings forth epistemological, methodological, and ethical tensions in using student voice to inform changes in mental health policy and practice. In Foucauldian terms, a double bind emerges wherein the power of student voice to destabilise existing forms of mental health knowledge and to reimagine the distress-inducing power structures within the neoliberal university are recuperated to (re)produce the same neoliberal structures and subjectivities. Drawing on data from 10 student focus groups, this study explores the epistemic, methodological, and ethical questions attached to analysis of student lived experience data in the context of a Foucauldian-informed understanding of the neoliberal university. It is argued that in pragmatist terms, whilst student voice must be contextualised within the socio-material and socio-psychological context of the neoliberal system to ensure beneficial consequences for student experience, a Foucauldian approach to interpreting lived experience data can also re-empower the subject with the freedom to resist and disrupt the reproduction of mentally unhealthy structures within the neoliberal system as part of a whole university approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education of students identified as "gifted" has had a highly problematic history, having been judged as conceptually confused, socially and ethnically discriminatory, and educationally exclusive. Despite this, it is argued that contemporary research and scholarship critiquing the concepts of giftedness and gifted education programmes may provide a base for teacher education and development generally, rather than only for those interested in giftedness. It has particular potential for altering teachers' thinking about students' ability. Such research has emphasised the developmental nature of intelligence, its multidimensional character and the sociopolitical role of the concept of ability in school systems. It is argued that the appropriate use of this research could contribute to a more equitable and inclusive model for teachers' thinking and for practice in schooling. Five implications for teacher development are discussed.

This article draws on evidence from interviews with directors of a diverse group of international gifted education organisations. The business models with which they operate and their obligation to satisfy various stakeholder expectations are found to compromise philosophical tenets and organisational aims, particularly those concerned with cultural diversity and multivariate identification criteria. Considering these economic limitations in a sociological context highlights how intrinsic they are to the neoliberal educational marketplace. Interdisciplinary research can best equip gifted education practitioners to navigate the complexities and contradictions in practice that result.

Sociological work on high ability is framed by social constructionist theorising and/or takes a social justice approach, and hence particular analytical intellectual traditions are foregrounded. Whilst these approaches have contributed the main critique of essentialist psychological understandings of high ability, they can eclipse normative discourses and the ethically situated meaning of high ability for individuals. This paper explores why epistemological questions about high ability cannot be separated from values-based ones and assesses where this has happened in relation to sociological approaches to high ability. It suggests that a narrative approach is one way of enriching sociological theories and discourses of high ability and that this can progress not only sociological, but interdisciplinary theorising in the field.

Knowledge of quantum computing is arguably inaccessible to many, with knowledge of the complex mathematics involving a particular barrier to entry, creating difficulty in terms of teaching and inclusive learning for those without a high level of mathematics. Meanwhile, it is increasingly important that the knowledge of quantum technologies is accessible to those who work with real-world applications and is taught to the younger generation. Resulting from collaborative dialogue between physicists, computer scientists, educationalists, and industrial end users, we propose the concept of quantum literacy as one means of addressing the need for transdisciplinary research in response to the complex problems that we see at the heart of issues around global sustainability. In this way, quantum literacy can contribute to UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, Quality Education. We introduce a specific puzzle visualization learning tool through which to achieve the pedagogic ends we set out with respect to quantum literacy. Visualization through puzzles can enable non-specialists to develop an intuitive, but still rigorous, understanding of universal quantum computation and provide a facility for non-specialists to discover increasingly complex and new quantum algorithms. Using the Hong–Ou–Mandel optical effect from quantum mechanics, we demonstrate how visual methods such as those made possible through the puzzle visualization tool can be very useful for understanding underlying complex processes in quantum physics and beyond and therefore support the aims of quantum literacy. We argue that quantum literacy, as defined here, addresses the challenges of learning within a highly bounded discipline and of access to the kind of powerful knowledge that should be more accessible to a wide group of learners. We therefore argue for the importance of addressing pedagogic issues when powerful knowledge consists of dense concepts, as well as complex and hierarchical relations between concepts, in addition to presenting a strong barrier to entry in the form of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that there is a reductive logic inherent in conceptualisations of academic ability in some Western education research as currently configured. Effective interrogation of this concept necessitates consideration across relevant fields of research, as outlined in three areas of critique: that research on educational stratification can adopt a contradictory stance with respect to conceptualising academic ability and defer to innate cognitive ability in pupil test data while denouncing this elsewhere; that cultural reproduction theory is itself a powerful social construction with ramifications for the possibility of equal learning opportunities for all; and that a narrow focus on educational stratification reifies instrumental outcomes, devaluing some of the broader purposes of education. It is argued that these reductive tendencies have ramifications for education policy and school-based practices. A lack of focus on, and clarity about, the concept of academic ability warrants more holistic conceptualising, which draws on methodological pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a research project which sought to find out about young people’s views on fairness in education in English schools. Fairness is an everyday term, which in policy hides multiple and contradictory positions across the political divide. In education, we find a policy context that focuses on distributional justice and equality of opportunity but also on principles of freedom and choice. This paper argues that engaging with how young people understand fairness contributes to models of social justice in education. Focus group data and written statements on fairness from approximately 80 young people aged 16-18 from five very different English schools were analysed. Students’ primary concerns, absent from educational policy, were the themes of relational justice and stakes fairness, which are eclipsed by current recourse to distributive justice and meritocratic ideals. We argue that a focus on the lived experience of fairness is therefore necessary to widen the discourse about what is fair in education and to reinvigorate public debate about the values on which our education system is based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education of students identified as ‘gifted’ has had a highly problematic history, having been judged as conceptually confused, socially and ethnically discriminatory, and educationally exclusive. Despite this, it is argued that contemporary research and scholarship critiquing the concepts of giftedness and gifted education programmes may provide a base for teacher education and development generally, rather than only for those interested in giftedness. It has particular potential for altering teachers’ thinking about students’ ability. Such research has emphasised the developmental nature of intelligence, its multidimensional character and the sociopolitical role of the concept of ability in school systems. It is argued that the appropriate use of this research could contribute to a more equitable and inclusive model for teachers’ thinking and for practice in schooling. Five implications for teacher development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]