Daisy BAO* Student-staff partnerships have gained considerable interest from researchers and educational developers in higher education in the last twenty years (academic studies: Nesheim et al., 2007; Healey et al., 2014; Bovill, 2019; praxis regarding HE quality: Higher Eduacation Academy, HEA, 2014; The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, QAA, 2018; AdvancedHE, 2021). Evoked by […]

John Loewenthal*   Higher education may discursively promise the prospects of brighter, more mobile, global futures that are better paid and more fulfilling. Black and Walsh (2019) contrast this discourse to the disappointments, disillusionment, labour market struggles and debts that exist among contemporary university graduates. In this post, I share how the notions of ‘existential […]

Tiffany Pang*   With a focus on developing learners’ English communicative competence in a specific domain, the approach of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has attracted worldwide attention for nearly half a century. While multiple benefits of the ESP approach have been uncovered and discussed, perhaps unsurprisingly, there have been numerous skeptical voices regarding its […]

Neil M Speirs* Classism on Campus ‘You know Neil, classism is all over campus – but nobody wants to talk about it’.  That’s what one of our widening participation students told me the other week – she wasn’t the first to say that to me either.  I have 20 years’ worth of stories that testify […]

Andrew Drybrough* Back in 2012, while a ‘Visiting Professor’ in a state university in South Korea, I was asked if I was interested in teaching a liberal arts course to a class of undergraduate students on ‘Global Citizenship’. This was a one-semester course through English medium instruction that I ended up designing and teaching on […]