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International students are a key demographic in UK higher education, yet there is limited literature dedicated to pedagogies for and with international students. We undertook a systematic literature review of journal articles from 2013 to 2019 which presented empirical evidence on specific pedagogic practices relating to international students in the UK. We identified 49 articles matching our selection criteria and analysed their aims, methods, findings and discursive framings of international students. Our findings show a dispersed literature, with wide ranging practices and conclusions, prohibiting an effective evidence based synthesis. International students continue to be subtly framed as in deficit or passive, rarely as partners or knowledge agents. We propose future research can be more methodologically ambitious, offer richer pedagogic detail to facilitate transferability and replication of teaching practices, and build in positive framings of international students.

International students have been historically valued by universities for their contributions to their host countries. Yet, representations of international students in the general public have become increasingly mixed, an issue likely exacerbated by COVID-19, which has shown increased hostility towards international students. Given the increased reports of discrimination during this period, there is ongoing need to understand how international students have been represented in this specific time of crisis. Our study analysed public representations of international students through Twitter data and qualitative analysis of 6,501 posts made during the immediate COVID-19 crisis (January-April 2020). Our findings confirm competing public representations of international students that changed over time: initially through stereotyping and depictions as assumed disease carriers, shifting to empathy and support after university campus closures. We also outline themes of racism and discrimination, which are of importance for the global higher education sector as we move into a post-COVID world.

Although internationalisation underpins many practices in higher education, its adopted approaches can be uneven between institutions and create ambiguous conceptualisations of how it is enacted in practice. Therefore, a whole-sector analysis can provide insight into whether spaces exist for new and innovative approaches to internationalisation, or whether they might be limited by structural inequalities and pressures in the sector. Using the UK as an illustrative case, our research has conducted a qualitative ideal-type analysis of 132 institutional approaches to internationalisation across the sector, as codified in university internationalisation strategy documents and through secondary quantitative data about key internationalisation metrics. Our typology developed three dimensions that shape internationalisation approaches: reputation, mission, and attitude. Our findings outline that universities use their understanding of their reputations and material contexts to determine their missions, and the combination of these shape the dominant emotional tone of strategic approaches to internationalisation. We outline how institutions, on the whole, shape their approaches to internationalisation to fit an existing status quo of global elitism, rather than highlighting new and innovative approaches to internationalisation. The UK case can provide an illustrative example for other diverse sectors in marketised and internationalising contexts.

Much research in face-to-face contexts outlines the importance of early adjustment on students' higher education experiences. However, few studies have replicated this research in distance learning contexts to unpack the early multifaceted adjustments associated with studying in absence of a physical campus. This is particularly needed from a Global South perspective, where countries like South Africa have become regional hubs for distance learners. To explore distance learners' adjustment experiences, this study analysed results from a Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ) with 320 distance learners at the University of South Africa, mixed with qualitative thematic analysis of open-ended questions. The results outlined key factors that impact distance learning experiences for students in South Africa, including demographic variables, class, language, and access to resources. These findings, compared with similar work in face-to-face contexts, suggest areas in need of additional support from distance education providers in South Africa and beyond.

The outward migration of skilled migrants has disproportionally affected the Global South, particularly in countries in Africa, producing what is commonly referred to as 'brain drain'. Within this literature, there has been considerable focus on the future migration intentions of international students, who symbolise skilled migration. However, much previous literature assumes international education must be obtained through physical mobility, despite the growing provision of internationalisation at a distance, whereby students remain 'at home' while studying online or distantly from an institution based 'abroad'. This study has unravelled the future migration intentions of students studying through online distance education, using a questionnaire of 607 South African, Namibian, and Zimbabwean students in relation to four sets of factors: academic and social adjustment, educational and work experience, socio-economic variables, and individual demographic characteristics. Our findings indicate a complex picture of international distance students' future migration intentions and significant differences between students based on country of origin, socioeconomic status, and demographic variables. These findings have particular relevance following the increasing shifts to online distance learning following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper reports on a project in the North of England that looks at the college-to-university decision-making processes of non-traditional students through the conceptual lens of 'Possible Selves', as initially developed by Markus and Nurius (1986) and applied to higher education by Harrison (2018), Henderson (2019) and others. Our data involves in-depth interviews with young people, and with the college staff responsible for advising and guiding them, at Further Education Colleges from which the rate of transition to university is lower than the national average. Our findings show that young people talk about their 'like-to-be' and 'like-to-avoid' futures in complex and self-regulated ways, often moderating how they articulate aspiration to align with external discourses, such as those projected by college staff. Students also demonstrate a keen awareness of structural limits, effectively constructing future selves which, though 'elaborated', reflect counter-reading of dominant narratives around financial self-improvement as achieved via the 'full' university experience. The 'Possible Selves' approach is therefore found to be enabling as a mediating artefact for researchers, and valuable for identifying policy-relevant points of tension between students and their college staff.

Internationalisation represents a significant disruptive force for higher education over the last four decades, impacting teaching, research, and service provisions in many countries. In response, much scholarly literature has focused on internationalisation's causes and effects in the sector, leading recent systematic literature reviews to consider it a thematic field of higher education research. To mark the 40th anniversary of "Higher Education Research & Development," we consider the extent to which the journal has made a contribution to this thematic field and how the framing of internationalisation has developed or changed over time. A systematic literature review of 151 articles about internationalisation published since the journal's founding in 1982 demonstrated that this theme is of substantial interest and contribution. We have highlighted through a qualitative discourse analysis of article titles and abstracts that the journal has developed growing criticality towards internationalisation over time through recognition of underlying power differentials and inequalities. Several areas are suggested to move this thematic field forward in the journal and the wider higher education field, including the inclusion of more authors from the Global South and increased criticality towards deficit narrative framings of international students.

Learning analytics has been increasingly outlined as a powerful tool for measuring, analysing, and predicting learning experiences and behaviours. The rising use of learning analytics means that many educational researchers now require new ranges of technical analytical skills to contribute to an increasingly data-heavy field. However, it has been argued that educational data scientists are a 'scarce breed' (Buckingham Shum et al., 2013) and that more resources are needed to support the next generation of early career researchers in the education field. At the same time, little is known about how early career education researchers feel towards learning analytics and whether it is important to their current and future research practices. Using a thematic analysis of a participatory learning analytics workshop discussions with 25 early career education researchers, we outline in this article their ambitions, challenges and anxieties towards learning analytics. In doing so, we have provided a roadmap for how the learning analytics field might evolve and practical implications for supporting early career researchers' development.

Internationalization efforts in higher education have often been categorized according to Jane Knight's binary of "Internationalization at Home" (IaH) and "Internationalization Abroad" (IA). However, a rising number of technology-supported activities have created new opportunities for university internationalization. For example, students can now remain "at home" while using technology to study with an institution or program that is simultaneously located "abroad." We have conceptualized these activities as a new third category called Internationalization at a Distance (IaD). In this article, we introduce the concept of IaD and outline an in-depth case study of an international distance education provider at scale, the University of South Africa.

Although many studies have investigated the overarching benefits of curriuclum internationalisation in various forms, there have been few investigations of students' perspectives on changing university policies towards internationalisation. In this study, we considered master's students' perspectives on two changing internationalisation policies at a Dutch university: (1) the switch to English Medium Instruction (EMI) and (2) the increasing incorporation of internationally-minded materials into the curriculum. Through analysing 138 questionnaire responses, the relevancy of and comfort with internationalised content, the use of EMI, and overall teaching quality was explored. The findings suggested that, although most participants valued their overall internationalised learning experiences, factors such as students' educational backgrounds and perceived confidence using English influenced the degree to which curriculum internationalisation policies were deemed relevant to students' lives and careers. This article summarises with suggestions for university staff, programmes, and departments undergoing transition policies towards curriculum internationalisation.

A literature review published in 2008 outlined known relationships between gender, ethnicity, and academic attainment in UK higher education. In the period since this publication, many changes to the higher education sector have occurred, including raising tuition fees, an increased focus on widening participation, and an increasing interest in diversifying the curriculum. There is a need for an updated and expanded literature review to highlight whether the relationships between gender, ethnicity, and academic attainment remain the same one decade later. This article synthesises the current literature related to the impact of gender, social class, and ethnicity on higher education participation and academic attainment. We highlight the important role of intersectionality in understanding overarching trends. Altogether, this literature review shows that there are persisting inequalities in both participation and attainment based on gender, social class, and ethnicity. To conclude, we provide several suggestions for improving our understanding of these phenomena in the decades to come.

In this article, we suggest that competencies in working in intercultural and multidisciplinary environments are part of expected key skills in contemporary organisations. Higher educational institutions across the globe are pressured to contribute to the development of such key skills. Using social identity theory, through social network analysis of 113 postgraduate management students in one UK business school and follow-up focus group interviews (N = 16), we have identified three types of learners: Co-National Learners, Bridge-Building Learners, and Cross-National Learners. We argue that developing learning relationships in intercultural and multidisciplinary environments needs to go beyond a cultural-only approach, and the understanding of identity has an important place.

Much of the research on how social media is embedded into the educational practices of higher education students has a Western orientation. In concentrating on a case study of the varied ways in which African International Distance Education (IDE) students actively use social media to shape their learning experiences, we discuss an under-researched group. The paper draws on analysis of 1295 online questionnaires and 165 in-depth interviews with IDE students at UNISA, South Africa, one of the largest providers of IDE globally. "WhatsApp" emerges as 'the' key social media tool that opens up opportunities for IDE students to "transfer, translate and transform" their educational journey when studying 'at a distance'. Although "WhatsApp" does provide a 'space of opportunity' for some students, this is framed through socio-technical marginalisation, itself a reflection of demographic legacies of inequality. Exploring social media practices though the case of African IDE students places these students centre stage and adds to the awareness of the multiple centres from which international education is practiced.

Learning design approaches, such as those adopted by the Open University, provide a set of tools and resources for purposefully-designing modules with a focus on student experiences. However, many of the current learning design strategies have been situated within specific institutions in Europe and North America. This means that there are several issues worth considering around "if" and "how" established learning design approaches make sense in diverse institutional and cultural contexts. To critically assess the relevance and appropriateness of learning design strategies in new contexts, this article describes an in-depth participatory workshop with 34 education professionals from five African countries. Altogether, 10 suggestions for learning design practices were derived from the consensus of workshop participants, which provide a foundation for the development of learning design practices moving forward.

As universities worldwide rapidly internationalise, higher education classrooms have become unique spaces for collaboration between students from different countries. One common way to encourage collaboration between diverse peers is through group work. However, previous research has highlighted that cross-cultural group work can be challenging and has hinted at potential social tensions. To understand this notion better, we have used robust quantitative tools in this study to select 20 participants from a larger classroom of 860 students to take part in an in-depth qualitative interview about cross-cultural group work experiences. Participant views on social tensions in cross-cultural group work were elicited using a unique mediating artefact method to encourage reflection and in-depth discussion. In our analysis of emergent interview themes, we compared student perspectives on the role of social relationships in group work by their academic performance level. Our findings indicated that all students interviewed desired the opportunity to form social relationships with their group work members, but their motivations for doing so varied widely by academic performance level.

The United Kingdom hosts the world's second largest number of international students, with recruitment encouraged through national education policies. Yet, restrictive migration policies contradict this narrative. Recent oppressive migration policies have been dubbed in the United Kingdom as a "hostile environment." This article reflects on how the hostile environment politicizes migration, specifically for international students, considering how international students are positioned as both desired and unwanted by the national government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]