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Learning analytics (LA) has gained increasing attention for its potential to improve different educational aspects (e.g., students' performance and teaching practice). The existing literature identified some factors that are associated with the adoption of LA in higher education, such as stakeholder engagement and transparency in data use. The broad literature on information systems also emphasizes the importance of trust as a critical predictor of technology adoption. However, the extent to which trust plays a role in the adoption of LA in higher education has not been examined in detail in previous research. To fill this literature gap, we conducted a mixed method (survey and interviews) study aimed to explore how much teaching staff trust LA stakeholders (e.g., higher education institutions or third-parties) and LA technology, as well as the trust factors that could hinder or enable adoption of LA. The findings show that the teaching staff had a high level of trust in the competence of higher education institutions and the usefulness of LA; however, the teaching staff had a low level of trust in third parties that are involved in LA (e.g., external technology vendors) in terms of handling privacy and ethics-related issues. They also had a low level of trust in data accuracy due to issues such as outdated data and lack of data governance. The findings have strategic implications for institutional leaders and third parties in the adoption of LA by providing recommendations to increase trust, such as, improving data accuracy, developing policies for data sharing and ownership, enhancing the consent-seeking process, and establishing data governance guidelines. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature on the adoption of LA in HEIs by integrating trust factors.

In recent years, increasing research attention has been devoted to "first-generation" or "first-in-family" university students. For a sizeable cohort of students there is still little or no family tradition of supporting new university entrants into, and few expectations of, the novel and unfamiliar territory of university life and work. Contextualised by UK policy concerns over limited widening participation and social mobility, we extend current research on first-generation university students with an enhanced focus on family and home. Drawing on extended narratives from eight first-generation students, this paper explores the extent to which these students can have a "slipstream" effect back upon the home, on their siblings and, in some instances, on their parents. Informed by understandings of family learning and social learning theory, the concept of familial role-modelling is used to consider the transmission of learning within the family. With familial cultures of learning a key driver for young people's ambitions and aspirations, by focusing on the under-researched links between home, family, and university, we stress the importance of further exploring the experiences of first-generation students. This, we argue, is necessary for individual universities, the HE sector, and government to better acknowledge and address.

This paper explores the relationship between education, parenting and family through the prism and particularities of family learning. Family learning is an example of an educational initiative, primarily aimed at parents and linked to wider policy concerns, which can be explored through a mapping of its social geographies; family learning is played out across and productive of different sites, spaces and identities. Based on qualitative research undertaken in West London, this paper draws on individual and group interviews with mothers participating in family learning classes and interviews with family learning providers. The key argument we extend is that focusing on the social geographies of family learning--of home, school, work, community and nation--allows us to see how educational initiatives extend the state's reach in family life, producing particular normative versions of family and "good" parenting operating at a range of interconnecting scales. Education remains a cornerstone of family policy in the UK and detailed analyses of specific initiatives at the point of implementation--how they are practiced and received--is vital for better understanding their diverse and varied effects in contemporary society.

Young people from refugee backgrounds have been repeatedly denied the ability to lead a life that they value. Community sport and leisure has been positioned as a tool to foster positive wellbeing experiences for these young people living in Western resettlement countries. Drawing on qualitative data from a Participatory Action Research project in London, England, we apply Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach to examine how the young people made sense of and negotiated their interconnecting capabilities through the sport and leisure programme. We examine three key interconnections between the capabilities of (a) life, bodily health and play; (b) affiliation and emotion and (c) bodily integrity and control over the environment. The findings are significant in ensuring sport and leisure provides opportunities for young people from refugee backgrounds to engage in positive wellbeing experiences and for enabling them and those supporting them to know and challenge harmful practices that may restrict capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra- and inter-generational social mobility have been implicit to a wide range of UK Government policies aimed at promoting social inclusion through a focus on education and employability. Framed by these policy initiatives and a critical look at widening participation in higher education, this paper reflects on the impacts of university learning on the self and the family among students with dependent children. With emphasis on, and differences highlighted between, male and female undergraduate students' own (often gendered) constructions of the impact of their university experiences and aspirations for social mobility, the paper suggests that while these students face numerous and varied barriers to their learning, they are motivated by the impact their studying will have on themselves and their families. Of notable significance is how higher education is perceived to reverberate within the home, promoting a culture of learning among, and encouraging the educational aspirations of, children. The paper concludes that this potential and perceived social mobility necessitates a bridging of the rhetoric of access with a reality of accessibility and retention for those students with caring responsibilities and offers a number of recommendations to encourage this. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper analyses the results of a research project on the experiences and learning needs of students with dependent children in a 1960s university. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews with university services and academic staff, as well as a questionnaire survey among students with dependent children and follow-up in-depth interviews with a sample of 18 of these students. The paper shows that, for those surveyed, future employment opportunities and being a role model for their children were the main motivations for entering higher education and that their choice of university was highly spatially restricted by their caring responsibilities. It also discusses the main issues students faced once at university, including time and timing, finance, childcare, confidence, sense of belonging and skills. The paper highlights how gender and other biographical characteristics influence parents' experiences and includes suggestions for lessening the barriers they face while at university. (Contains 3 tables and 1 note.)

This research explores "teaching excellence" by examining the perceptions of geography academics and students at Brunel University as to what makes a lecture "unmissable". The findings from 10 interviews with lecturers and five focus groups with undergraduate students suggest that whilst there is probably no such thing as an entirely unmissable lecture, attendance rates are significantly enhanced by three key factors: (i) a high degree of participation and interactivity ("active learning"), (ii) a clear structure which enables integrative links to be more easily made, and (iii) a passionate, enthusiastic lecturer, who can bring a subject to life for students. As research has shown that a high degree of interactivity encourages deeper approaches to learning, the paper argues that a move away from conventional lecturing towards more applied methods and small-group teaching may be a way of improving teaching excellence. Yet as large-group lectures are unlikely to be replaced any time soon, making them as participative as possible is one way to ensure that higher cognitive functions are at least partially acquired.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) has been positioned as a means of addressing the current methodological limits within forced migration studies and sport. Yet, there are challenges in ensuring that PAR achieves its intended aims of collaboration, mutual respect, trust, accountability, fairness, and social transformation. This article stems from a PAR study exploring the relationships between sport and leisure and the wellbeing of young people from refugee backgrounds in London, UK. We offer a critical discussion of two overlapping and sensitizing issues in our work: (1) developing trust and negotiating reciprocal partnerships; (2) navigating ethical dilemmas and doing PAR with integrity. We argue that embedding a reflexive approach and developing trusting and reciprocal relationships allows us to collaboratively negotiate these issues and promote the benefits that may be derived to all partners involved through the participatory process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical touch is considered a core competency in Physiotherapy, central to clinical reasoning and communication. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of research into how the skill is learned and the experiences of students in that process. The aim of this paper is to explore that learning experience among pre-registration physiotherapy students. An approach underpinned by phenomenology and ethnographic methods was undertaken over an 8-month period in one Higher Education Institution in the UK. Data came from a series of observations and focus groups, complemented by personal reflective learning diaries with first- and second-year undergraduate students. Focus group data were analyzed thematically and triangulated with other data sources. Three themes were developed: 1) 'Uncertainty, self-awareness and anxiety' explores the discomfort experienced in the early stages; 2) 'Emerging familiarity and awareness of inter-action' demonstrates developing confidence in bodily capability and communicative capacity; and 3) 'Realities of touch in a clinical environment' focuses on the shift from the pre-clinical to clinical context and highlights the cyclical processes of embodied learning. This study highlights the complexity and immediacy of the embodied learning of touch and its interactions with the development of professional identity. Negotiation of boundaries, both seen and unseen, creates jeopardy in that process through the first two years of the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes an assemblage approach to extend knowledge and understanding of widening participation (WP) in the United Kingdom. We reflect on the identification and experiences of a WP student population—how this population has been marked out, labelled, and considered through policy and intervention, alongside the materialities and mobilities that shape the lived experiences of these students. Using questionnaire findings, narrative interviews, and photo diaries, it draws on a 12‐month study at a London university to explore the factors that have enabled final‐year undergraduate students from a WP background to stay the course and complete their programme of studies. Our arguments are shaped by the geographical and educational literatures on materialities and mobilities. We bring these together to sketch out a student success assemblage comprising wide‐ranging elements that we frame around identity, support, and resources. Assemblage draws attention to the multiplicity of human/non‐human relations that shape student experience and students' capacities for success. Assemblage intersects with university precisely through a focus on experience and, as we suggest, takes on a particular inflexion for students from a WP background. This underpinning ontological basis to studying WP enables us to view the university, student experience, and success as being continually produced and reproduced, and coconstituted between the human and non‐human. Universities should attend to student assemblages to better understand the experiences of and support needed by underrepresented groups in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]