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The concept of self-regulated learning is becoming increasingly relevant in the study of learning and academic achievement, especially in higher education, where quite distinctive demands are placed on students. Though several key theoretical perspectives have been advanced for self-regulated learning, there is consensus regarding the central role played by student perceptions of themselves as learners. There are two general aims of this positional article. The first is to emphasise self-regulated learning as a relevant and valuable concept in higher education. The second is to promote the study of those constituent elements considered most likely to develop our understanding beyond a mere description of those processes thought to be involved in self-regulated learning. A case is presented for learning style, academic control beliefs and student self-evaluation as key constructs which contribute to an increased understanding of student self-regulated learning, and which facilitate the application of self-regulated learning in pedagogy by enhancing its tangibility and utility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is well established that year-long industrial placements can bring workplace knowledge and increased employability. A body of recent studies has attempted to discern any effect on academic performance following the return to university, using a number of different data analysis approaches. This study discusses the difficulties of ascertaining differences in scores for students that have undertaken placement. The results of 417 students who graduated from property management and development courses are analysed, using an approach to correct for previous academic performance. A statistically significant enhancement in the final-year marks for students returning from placement is identified. Some evidence is also found to suggest that placement effects on academic performance may vary according to gender and age at course commencement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Student success, variously understood as engagement, persistence, completion, graduation and entry to employment, has become a central focus for stakeholders in higher education. Theoretical and empirical research exploring these varied conceptions has mushroomed since the 1980s. Much of this literature focuses on what and how higher education institutions contribute to student success; a substantial amount also reports on the part students play in their own success. Less frequently studies investigate how non-institutional influences affect student success. This article addresses this gap. It uses data from a survey of first-time enrolled students in New Zealand higher education to investigate the importance of family, cultural, employment and personal influences on student perceptions of success. Findings show that non-institutional influences exert a moderate effect on student success, and that they are influences which need to be considered by institutions interested in fostering student success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central in this study is the role of student variables and the fit between secondary education and university education in the explanation of first-year student achievement. The fit between two levels of education can be defined in different ways. In this study the focus is on four fit-aspects: appropriateness of expectations, and the degree to which there is a continuance with respect to teaching approaches, knowledge and workload. The conceptual model, a synthesis of the Model of Student Attrition, the Educational Productivity Model and the Transition Model, is tested with structural equation modelling, based on maximum likelihood estimation. The results indicate that the fit between secondary and university education, in terms of resemblance between the learning environments and experience of some adjustment, as well as social integration, student employment and motivation, affect first-year achievement indirectly through time investment. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s there has been significant growth in the engagement of higher education with workforce development, with among other things the emergence of a distinct if varied area of provision commonly referred to as work-based learning. Recent examination of practice and literature indicates a growing sophistication in the way that work-based learning is being theorised and facilitated in higher education, with its gradual emergence as a distinct field of practice and study supported by relevant pedagogies and concepts of curriculum. Tensions continue to exist between the demands and opportunities provided by the workplace and the need to develop capable practice, support personal development and maintain academic validity; however, universities are beginning to engage with these issues at a deeper level than that suggested by simple notions of employer engagement and skills development, and the evidence indicates that well-designed work-based programmes are both effective and robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on an interview study investigating the experiences of academic acculturation (a process of mutual influence and enrichment with regard to academic practice) of a group of Chinese academic staff in two research-intensive UK universities. Following a systematic content-based analysis, three major themes emerged as salient, namely: (1) different perceptions of academic practice in the UK and China, (2) the importance of disciplinary identity, and (3) the role of English and original cultural affiliations in the process of academic acculturation. The study shows that, while these academic staff took active initiatives to orient themselves towards UK academic culture, they did not perceive that culture to have changed much through their acculturation. The study also reveals that the cultural affiliation of the academic staff, perceived norms in the new academic culture, and relative proficiency in English language all have an impact on the process of academic acculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on developing theory regarding assessment and marking to explore the impact of staff values regarding widening participation on grading decisions. It reports on an innovative creative arts module delivered for students with complex disabilities. Data collection included observation of teaching, interviews with staff, students and learning support staff, recordings of two academic team discussions and a questionnaire on moderation issues completed by staff. Whilst the students were very positive about the experience, the data identified pace of learning, the role of support workers and issues in authenticating student learning as aspects for future development. In particular, the research suggests that staff tackled the tension between valuing academic standards and inclusion by recasting student achievement as different rather than inferior, interpreting assessment rubrics in the light of their individual 'frameworks' for assessment. The article considers whether this recasting of standards illuminates the problematic nature of standards and assessment criteria in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nine academics participated in semi-structured interviews to explore possible linkages between their teacher identities and the pedagogies they employ. A content analysis of the interviews was performed to gain insight into the factors playing a role in how academics define themselves as teachers, the larger educational goals they espouse and the pedagogies they use. The data were subsequently re-interpreted through the lens of authenticity, an evocative yet elusive construct whose meaning was clarified in earlier work. The study surfaces several conceptual linkages between teacher identity, pedagogy and authenticity, and suggests that authenticity might constitute a crucial link between teaching and the achievement of complex learning outcomes at undergraduate level. Academics' personal theories of teaching, in particular the conceptions they hold of learners, are revealed as critical to the extent to which their pedagogies are 'authentic'; the latter, ideally, offering contexts within which students are supported in developing their authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, grade integrity is defined as the extent to which each grade awarded, either at the conclusion of a course or module of study, or for an extended response to an assessment task, is strictly commensurate with the quality, breadth and depth of a student's performance. The three basic requirements for this aspiration to be realised are, in order: assessment evidence of a logically legitimate type; evidence of sufficient scope and soundness to allow for a strong inference to be drawn; and a grading principle that is theoretically appropriate for coding the level of a student's performance. When further developed, the general approach outlined could produce positive side benefits, including ways of dealing with grade inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between student influence, students' strategic approaches to studying and academic achievement, and to examine differences between students in a Master's programme in Engineering with conventional teaching and one based on problem-based learning in a sample of 268 students. A version of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students and a questionnaire measuring students' attempts to influence their study environment were used. The results showed that informal strategies for influencing the study environment and academic achievement were related to the strategic approach to studying, and that students in the programme based on problem-based learning employed more informal and social strategies to influence their studies. These findings indicate that an informal influence strategy is an aspect of the strategic approach to studying, and that problem-based learning could improve teacher-student relationships, increase the students' involvement and their use of strategic approaches to studying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines student departure from university, based on data from a survey of undergraduate university students in Norway conducted in 2005. The survey maps students' progression through higher education, and the analysis focuses on the different types of departure and their causes. More than 50% of all university students left the initial institution before degree completion, but the majority of the leavers transferred to another higher education institution, and only 17% left higher education without completing a degree. Hence, student departure is perceived as being a greater problem for institutions than it is for society or the individual. Background characteristics can largely explain dropout, while students' educational goal or motivation have no effect. Conversely, motivation, educational goal and field of study contribute more to explaining why students transfer than background characteristics. A student's own study behaviour is, however, relevant to both events. A high level of student effort reduces the probability of either transfer or dropout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the predictive correlations between results from the New Zealand National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), a standards-based qualification, and university grade point averages achieved by first-year students in one large New Zealand University (and, for comparison purposes, also presents correlations from the Cambridge International Examinations [CIE], an international norm-referenced system delivered in New Zealand, and university grade point averages achieved by first-year students who entered with that qualification). The study then evaluates alternative models for university entrance, using different attributes of the qualifications for possible entry criteria, and ascertains the implications of the best of these models for different groups of students. The best alternative model gives greater weight to excellence and merit in NCEA results, and less weight to credit accumulation at minimum pass rates. A combination of this alternative model and the current model provides a merit-based admissions system which would potentially increase the number of students from groups under-represented in university education in New Zealand (students from Maori and Pacific ethnicities and from schools in lower socio-economic communities), who are admitted with no necessary decline in the success rate during first-year university study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors looked at aspects of successful and problematic studying in terms of three different research traditions: students’ approaches to learning, self‐regulated learning and cognitive strategies. These frameworks have been widely applied when explaining university student learning. However, relations among different traditions have not been sufficiently looked at. In this study the authors explored the relations between learning approaches, regulation of learning and cognitive strategies. The subjects were students at the University of Helsinki who filled in the Task Booklet of Learning and the Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire. Their academic achievement was coded from university archives. It was found that approaches to learning, regulation of learning, and cognitive strategies were related to each other, and further, to study success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration of new students into the university has been widely studied from both psychological and academic perspectives. Much less, if anything, is heard from the other party in the integration process – the teachers. At the heart of this study is the voice of university teachers. Staff from 12 departments in three faculties (n = 52) in one university were invited to discuss student integration in focus groups. Their views on integration ranged from integration being beneficial, appropriate and unavoidable to being unnecessary and even harmful. The disparities in views pertain to a number of factors, many of them beyond the departments’ control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, the author challenges common-sense notions of objectivity and subjectivity which inform assessment practice, and argues for assessment as a socially situated interpretive act. A case study of an engineering community of practice at a South African university illustrates the multiple subjectivities that shape assessors’ interpretations of student performance. This case study contributes to an understanding of academic professional judgment as a ‘double reading’ – an iterative movement between different modes of knowledge which comprise the objective and the subjective. The author concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this for how academic communities of practice come to judge and how these judgments are validated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports part of an Australian longitudinal study which examined the patterns evident in the relationships Ph.D. students and supervisors developed and the ways they worked together. The participants were 21 Ph.D. students and their main supervisors. Data were collected via interviews conducted between 1995 and 1998. Three interviews were conducted separately for each student and supervisor. This report focuses on the allocation of supervisors to students and continuity of supervision in relation to students’ progress and satisfaction with supervision. From this small sample it appears students who felt involved in supervisor selection, whose topics were matched with their supervisor’s expertise and who developed good interpersonal working relationships with supervisors were more likely to make good progress and be satisfied. This was more likely when supervisors were experienced and senior academics or the student had two active supervisors. Disruptions caused by a temporary change of supervisor created problems and delays. Suggestions to overcome this are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the perceptions of 100 university lecturers in history and psychology regarding the impact of gender on their students' achievement. Qualitative data were gathered from semi-structured interviews and analysed according to discipline and gender of respondent. Key findings were that most respondents (with the exception of most female history lecturers) did not believe gender had an impact on essay writing style but that it did have an impact on other aspects of undergraduate achievement. Twice as many psychology lecturers as history lecturers believed that women had superior language abilities, and over twice as many women as men believed that confidence affected student performance. Gender differences in communicative style and approach to study were also noted by many respondents. Educational practices (teaching and assessment methods, as well as the gender imbalance of many university departments) were highlighted as impacting particularly on the performance of women. The authors suggest that subject and gender perspectives are interacting here in ways that may affect student experience and performance across the university curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated predictors of attainment in students awarded first degrees by institutions of higher education in the UK in 1995-96. Those aged under 21 or between 26 and 50 at graduation were more likely to obtain good degrees (with first-class honours or upper second-class honours), but the pattern of age-related variation was different across different subjects of study. Overall, women were more likely to obtain good degrees than men, but this trend did not occur at all ages or in all subjects. There was also a considerable variation in the proportion of good degrees in different subjects. The contingent nature of these phenomena suggests that they result from variations in teaching and assessment practices as well as from characteristics of the students themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increased use of blind-marking in undergraduate examinations, gendered patterns persist in the figures on achievement at undergraduate level in British universities. It has been suggested that in the humanities, such differences in achievement might be explained by differences in writing style according to gender. This article examines data drawn from an analysis of undergraduate students' writing in order to investigate the extent to which gender appears to impact upon their writing styles. It is argued that male and female students' academic writing styles shared more similarities than they did differences. There was no evidence to suggest that there was less use of tentative phrases in male writing, although there was some evidence to suggest that a bold style was adopted slightly more frequently by men. It is argued that the adoption of an academic style which overrides some traditionally gendered traits in writing may be particularly highly rewarded by examiners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part II. Discusses mature students' approaches toward studying and academic achievement. Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI); Response rates and entrance qualifications; Comparison of factor patterns; Comparisons of subscale scores; Correlations; Completion rates; Academic attainment.

Presents an exploratory research about first-year university students' metacognition. Examination of the way university students describe, judge and justify their cognitive strategies; Relationship between students' metacognition and academic performance; Measurement of students knowledge of cognitive processes and cognitive results; Factors affecting metacognition.

Roots and background of the Israeli university: the Hebrew University (1925) and the Haifa Technion (1924) reflect the twin roots of Israeli HE, the revitalisation of Jewish culture and the Zionist programme of building tip the country physically. Germany provided the academic models for both institutions. The emphasis was on research; there was little need for professional training since many immigrants were already well qualified professionally. The American private university provided the organisational model. The emergence of a university system in the fifties and sixties: five more institutions were founded between 1949 and 1972; they tended to imitate each other, and the two older institutions, in style. The universities had to adapt to the educational needs of a steadily increasing number of students. The research tradition, however, remained strong. Students emerging from the selective Israeli high school system also appreciated the value of research. The country, however, was too small to sustain up-to-date research institutions on its own. Israel was able to benefit from American aid and many research workers received part of their training abroad. The institutional structure of the Israeli university: Israel's involvement, through American aid, in a cosmopolitan system of learning enabled her universities to avoid the utilitarian approach of first degree and professional mass higher education and retain a commitment to research. Academic appointments are based on research attainments and publications, and institutions are marked by academic self-government. The academic profession and research: the growth of the academic profession in Israel since 1948 has been one of the most rapid in the world. The fact that many Israeli research workers have done part of their training abroad has ensured that there was little need to recruit directly from abroad or by lowering standards at home. It has also reinforced the research tradition of the Israeli university, although some of the best research work undertaken by Israelis is done abroad. The higher education system cannot support seven research universities, yet each is organised as a research university. This perpetuates dependence upon foreign universities as research centres. There is a need for more emphasis on teaching as a career in higher education. Students and studies: the transition between school and university for those academically qualified is relatively easy in Israel. Degree courses in professional subjects, however, are oversubscribed. The system worked well until the early sixties since those matriculating were a select group with intellectual interests. Student numbers have since increased and student interest has changed. Universities have responded by developing professional studies. The changing character of the student body and of career opportunities has developed since 1963 a flexible programme of studies for the Israeli first degree. Since the end of the rapid growth in student numbers in 1972/73, universities have tried to attract students by satisfying student demand for the development of professional courses. The oversubscribed professional courses are able to take the best students, which results in the most able students being taught in departments which do not present them with an intellectual challenge. The basic disciplinary departments, where most of the research workers teach, are full of students who cannot cope with the intellectual challenge. The decline in student numbers means that these disciplinary departments cannot recruit staff which in turn threatens their research programmes. … [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem-based learning is argued to be the most effective means of developing the general qualities of mind of the student, to securing an integration of academic and operational approaches to higher education and to instilling a high level of motivation and a capacity for active learning. Examples are given of the successful adoption of problem-based learning. Conditions necessary for developing a general model for problem-based learning are examined and the possible structure of a model is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of educational institutions in building the character of an individual. It is observed that one is very strongly affected by features of ones education beyond the formal realm of the curriculum. The kinds of academic impact, discussed in the article, are derived not from the focused activities related to teaching and learning themselves but from the context in which they occur. There is not only an educational foreground but also a relatively unchanging background. Students are mostly concerned with attending to the foreground, but much of what they do and think about while in the institution is governed by the background. The department is of higher education is viewed as a home within the institution department that provide the intellectuals with the developmental stages from fresher to finalist. There are numerous approaches for teaching staff to conduct investigations of the education department. The departmental orientations form a part of the students' academic surroundings.

Seven dimensions for characterizing a curriculum in higher education are suggested. The first two, prior knowledge and institutional response to prior knowledge, relate to antecedent aspects of the curriculum. Three others, primary teaching mode, rates of learning, and styles of learning, refer to transactional aspects, while the dimensions of content openness and assessment are associated with outcomes of the curriculum characteristics. When these dimensions are applied to chemistry courses in a variety of institutions for higher education, similarities and differences are objectively defined; and changes in particular courses over a period of time can be easily monitored. Courses are found not to be polarized between universities and non-universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the course called "Themes in 20th Century History" developed by the author within the History Department at Monash University, Melbourne, in 1975. It is based on the unstated assumption that the function of a university is to provide a general education in the culture as well as training in particular disciplines. The lack of intellectual rigor in the course as alleged by other departments in the university was the major impediment to its implementation. Other departments in the university were mainly concerned with the possible effect of the new course on comparative enrolments. It was observed that a course like this can work only in case of a good rapport among staff as well as between staff and students. The author's central idea about the course involved co-operative group work rather than competitive individual work. According to him, the pooling of knowledge and ideas, critical discussions and even some organized division of labour and exchange of notes improve the performance of students.