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What emergency remote teaching revealed about how we treat international students

by Cosmin Nada, Thais França and Biana Lyrio

Universities around the world, and particularly in postcolonial contexts, are investing significantly in international student attraction. International students feature prominently in brochures, recruitment campaigns, and institutional rankings. But what happens when this spotlight fades and students are left to navigate systems that were never truly designed for them? Our recently-published article, The pandemic as a ‘revelatory crisis’ – the experiences of international students during emergency remote teaching in a postcolonial context, suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for HE stakeholders to continue turning a blind eye to the epistemic injustice and systemic exclusion of international students.  

The research examined the experiences of international students during the abrupt shift to emergency remote teaching (ERT) in Portuguese higher education (HE). Interviews were conducted with degree-seeking students from China, Brazil, Syria, and Portuguese-speaking African countries (Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe), alongside focus group discussions across four Portuguese cities. To capture institutional perspectives, HE staff members were also interviewed. Drawing on critical pedagogical theories, rooted in the work of Paulo Freire and bell hooks, the article analyses how the pandemic did not merely create new problems but rather exposed and amplified inequalities that had been there all along.

One of the most striking findings of the article concerns the persistence of what Freire famously called the banking model of education: the idea that teaching means depositing knowledge into passive students. For international students, this dynamic takes on an added layer: it is not just any knowledge being deposited, but knowledge rooted in Western and Eurocentric frameworks, which is automatically positioned as inherently superior. The rich cultural, linguistic, and academic backgrounds that international students bring with them are routinely ignored or, worse, treated as deficits in need of correction. This is not merely a pedagogical shortcoming: it is a form of epistemic violence, rooted in colonial logics that continue to structure how knowledge is valued in most HE institutions worldwide.

The study also reveals that international students are often navigating educational systems that were not built for them. From curricula that assume a uniform cultural background to assessment methods that penalise linguistic diversity, HE institutions in Portugal – as in many other postcolonial contexts – treat international students as problems to be ‘managed’ rather than as valued members of the academic community. During ERT, these pre-existing deficit views and institutional stereotypes were dramatically amplified. Already struggling with the complexities of studying abroad, international students found themselves either invisible in the digital classroom or exposed to rigid pedagogies unadjusted to their needs. Moreover, the support systems that might have partially compensated for these failures in face-to-face settings vanished almost entirely in the online environment.

Rather than pointing the finger at individual HE staff, the study calls for a more systemic interpretation. Many of the HE educators we spoke with were themselves struggling, overwhelmed by the sudden transition to online teaching, often lacking both the digital skills and the pedagogical training to deal with diverse classrooms, while receiving minimal to no institutional support. This points to a significant elephant in the room in HE: in many contexts, including Portugal, academics become educators with little or no previous structured training in how teaching and learning works, let alone in how to engage meaningfully with diversity in the classroom. In other words, the decision to recruit international students is typically made at institutional level, yet the consequences of that decision fall on individual staff members who are given few resources and almost no preparation to adapt to the needs of diverse students.

Even well-intentioned educators, when operating within the colonial atmosphere that persists in most HE institutions and while lacking the pedagogical knowledge to do otherwise, end up reproducing oppressive practices. The findings show how transmissive, lecture-based, and non-interactive teaching methods – already dominant before the pandemic – were simply transferred to the online environment. When care, empathy, and dialogue are absent from pedagogy, even educators who genuinely seek to support their students can inadvertently reinforce the very exclusion they aim to prevent. Without deliberate and informed efforts to build inclusive classrooms, the default mode of teaching may be perpetuating the marginalisation of those who do not fit the assumed ‘norm’.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable finding of this study is what the pandemic revealed about contemporary internationalisation. Portuguese HE institutions – like many across the world – actively recruit international students following a neoliberal logic, treating them essentially as revenue sources. For instance, Portugal’s new International Student Statute marked a shift from viewing students from former colonies as beneficiaries of educational cooperation to positioning them as fee-paying customers. Yet, in this process, the pedagogical and institutional structures remained largely unchanged (and hence equally unwelcoming). During ERT, this contradiction became impossible to ignore: institutions prioritised continuity over quality, maintaining revenue streams while effectively abandoning any potential commitment to care-informed, culturally responsive teaching. Students repeatedly reported that, in such circumstances, their international mobility experience simply ‘wasn’t worth it’.

The article is clear that minor adjustments will not suffice. What is needed is a fundamental transformation of how HE institutions approach international students. Institutions must invest in equipping academic and non-academic staff with the necessary knowledge and competences in diversity and care-based pedagogies. In addition to staff training, it is fundamental that they create participatory structures where international students’ voices are heard and where they can actively contribute to curricular and pedagogical decisions as equal co-creators of knowledge.

The pandemic has passed, but the challenges it exposed remain. As universities now face new pressures – from the widespread use of artificial intelligence to geopolitical uncertainties, and to the reversal of internationalisation and cooperation agendas – the lessons from this crisis are more relevant than ever. If HE institutions are to remain meaningful actors in forming future generations of workers and citizens, they must stop treating students as commodities to be recruited and start working towards the provision of a truly meaningful and powerful learning experience for all.

Cosmin Nada is an education expert and researcher based at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa. With over a decade of experience in conducting research on education, he focuses on migration and education, diversity and inclusion, internationalisation of higher education, social justice, educational policies, and wellbeing in education.

Thais França is an Assistant Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa. Her research focuses on the everyday experiences of racialised and gendered subjects. She is Vice Chair of the European Network on International Student Mobility and Coordinator of the Inclusion+ project (2024–2026): Tackling the Challenges of Erasmus+ Mobility Inclusion and Diversity at HE Level.

Biana Lyrio is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT-Portugal). She is a doctoral student in Urban Studies, a joint programme between Iscte-IUL and the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of NOVA University Lisbon.


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Snakes and Ladders: gamifying educational research to enhance practice

by Lucy Panesar

I write here about an example of higher education research that has been gamified to enhance inclusive practices at the University of Kent. The original game of Snakes and Ladders had its origins in a ritual Indian game of knowledge, evolving to entertainment, and now again to education.

Student Success Snakes and Ladders is a University of Kent staff development game I created with research associate Dr Yetunde Kolajo in 2024, to support colleagues to understand student barriers and identify appropriate solutions. It takes the classic Snakes and Ladders board game and adds cards explaining the reason for a student downfall or advancement. These scenarios were derived from longitudinal research by Hensby, Adewumi and Kolajo (2024) that tracked the higher education journey of 25 students in receipt of the Academic Excellence Scholarship (AES) at Kent. The AES research reveals factors influencing student retention, continuation and attainment along with associated institutional supports.

We adapted Snakes and Ladders to gamify the AES research findings in a way that develops inclusive student support practices. Our version of the game rests on principles of “serious play” (Rieber et al, 1998), in the way that it supports players to understand and respond to the real lives of students with care, respect and a sense of collective responsibility. The classic Snakes and Ladders game we’ve adapted has a rich history in both entertainment and educational contexts, and this encouraged us to adapt it for our purposes.

We have run Student Success Snakes and Ladders with over 200 colleagues now. When we ask who’s played Snakes and Ladders before, nearly everyone says yes, whatever their background, due to the game’s international popularity. And like many popular traditions in British culture, the game made its way to the UK via British colonialism. As a half-Indian Brit, it was a pleasure but no surprise to learn from Wikipedia that Snakes and Ladders originated in ancient India as Moksha Patam and came over to the UK in the 1890s.

The image is a Jain version of Snakes and Ladders called Jnana Bazi or Gyan Bazi from India, 19th century, Gouache on cloth (Wikicommons).

Mehta (cited in Aitken, 2015) explains: “Just as the board game of chess was designed to teach the strategies of war, so Snakes and Ladders was played ritually as Gyanbaji, the Game of Knowledge, a meditation on humanity’s progress toward liberation.” Topsfield (2006) explains how variants have been found across Jain, Hindu and Sufi Muslim sects in India and describes how: “… pilgrim-like, each player progresses fitfully from states of vice, illusion, karmic impediment, or inferior birth at the base of the playing area to ever higher states of virtue, spiritual advancement, the heavenly realms, and (in the ultimate, winning square) liberation (mokṣa) or union with the supreme deity.”

This paints quite a different picture to the fun game of chance most of us played as children. Topsfield outlines how the game developed from its Indian spiritual origins into a more moralistic English children’s game in the late 1800s and then into the modern simplified derivatives familiar to us now.

While the game is still played mainly for fun, it has continued to serve educational purposes across the globe. Snakes and Ladders is used to teach Jawai script in Malaysian primary schools (Shitiq and Mahmud, 2010); to promote moral education learning systems in Nigeria (Ibam et al, 2018); for Covid awareness training (Ariessanti et al, 2020), sex education (Ahmad et al, 2021) and to promote healthy eating in Indonesia (Thaha et al, 2022). An article on Snakes and Ladders being used for anatomy training in Iran concludes that the method “can excite the students, create landmarks for remembering memorizing methods and can improve their team work” (Golchai et al, 2012). In the UK, Snakes and Ladders has been used to facilitate Dignity in Care training by Caerphilly Council (2024).

Inspired by these other examples of ‘serious play’ (Rieber et al, 1998), Yetunde and I adapted the game to develop inclusive student support practices at Kent. We bought existing copies of the board game and added bespoke snake and ladder cards, each with different scenarios from the AES research. When players fall on a snake or ladder, they read a corresponding card to understand the scenario leading to that advance or decline.

Before sliding down any snakes, players can use a blank “Catch” card to propose an intervention to mitigate the snake and allow the student to stay put. This element prompts colleagues to collaborate to enhance inclusive and equitable practices, reinforcing values inscribed in the Advance HE Professional Standards (2023). If players fall on a yellow square, they can pick up a “Campus” card to reveal and discuss an aspect of campus life in relation to student success.

Student Success Snakes and Ladders has been well received by Kent staff, including academics, and has proved to be an effective way of using institutional research to enhance student support practices. Our next step is to embed the game within mandatory training for academic and support staff across the university, to ensure that more students are supported to avoid slippery snakes along their higher education journey.

Dr Lucy Panesar is a UK-based educator and educational developer focused on the development of inclusive and equitable higher education practices. Her first teaching role was at the University for the Creative Arts and her first educational development role was at the University of the Arts London, where she led various projects promoting curriculum decolonization. Since 2022, she has been a Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Kent, supporting academic and curriculum development across the disciplines.


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Changing landscape of international student mobility

by Hans de Wit, Philip G Altbach and Lizhou Wang

In its many diverse forms – including degree study, credit earning, branch campuses, and others – mobility remains a major aspect of international higher education. But mobility patterns are shifting. While the South-North movement remains primary at the world level, new patterns and modes are emerging. This blog describes these new patterns and their rationales. It is based on our chapter ‘International student mobility in a changing global environment: key issues and trends’, in: Simon Marginson, Catherine Montgomery, Alain Courtois and Ravinder Sidhu (eds), The Future of Cross Border Academic Mobilities and Immobilities: Power, Knowledge and Agency, published by Bloomsbury.

Notably, student and scholar mobility has become a mass enterprise, with more than six million students studying outside their countries in 2021 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2024). But, although global student mobility is a significant factor and at the core of internationalisation efforts, it is limited to a small and mainly elite sector of the global student population. Six million global students represent a small proportion of the 254 million students pursuing higher education worldwide. Nevertheless, the mobility of learners, teachers, and scholars has always been a key dimension of higher education.

‘Internationally mobile students’ often refers to degree-mobile students who move to a foreign country for educational purposes and receive a foreign tertiary/higher education degree on a student visa. The predominant pattern of degree mobility at the world level has been from the Global South to the Global North, although there is also significant degree mobility within the Global North, in particular within Europe, and from the United States to Europe, as well as the reverse. Initially, the South to North flow consisted largely of small numbers of elites from colonies to the imperial countries. This movement increased significantly after independence, for example, students travelling to the UK and France. This kind of mobility also extended to other key Anglophone countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, which have maintained a dominant destination position. On the supply side, the fastest growth in outgoing students has been from Global South countries. From 1995 to 2010, the main sending countries worldwide were China, India, and Malaysia.

Shifting mobility patterns

While South-to-North and, to some extent, North-to-North mobility remain numerically dominant, there is a trend towards multipolarity and intra-regional student mobility. According to Van Mol et al (in E Recchi and M Safi (eds), (2024) Handbook of Human Mobility and Migration (pp 128–47). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishers), the past fifteen years have witnessed a challenge to the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon and Western countries, with new educational hubs gaining prominence. A more diverse set of countries now exerts greater relative influence in the overall student mobility network.

In particular, intra-regional mobility is growing in the South, from low-income towards middle-income countries. For China, the top senders are neighbours South Korea, Thailand, and Pakistan. For Russia, the top senders are nearby Kazakhstan, China, and Uzbekistan. Likewise, South Korea and Japan have become top study destinations for students from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. For Argentina, all the top sending countries are also from South America: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Interestingly, some of the sending countries present themselves as new destinations, for instance, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. What drives these changes?

Macro-level drivers for international mobility

In the dynamic landscape of international higher education, macro-level factors, beyond the control of individual countries, higher education institutions (HEIs), and students, wield significant influence in changing mobility patterns. In many sending countries, the enhancement in higher education quality, along with economic development, plays an important role. For example, in East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, the national higher education systems have now achieved excellent quality and become attractive study destinations for international students. And other countries follow.

Economic and financial considerations

Another global factor shaping the mobility landscape is the increasing commodification of education. Anglophone high-income countries have particularly benefited financially from this market. For example, in the academic year 2022–3, over one million international students at US colleges and universities contributed more than $40 billion to the US economy and supported more than 368,000 jobs (NAFSA, 2023). For the UK, the figure for the total economic contribution was £41.9 billion in the 2021/2 academic year (Higher Education Policy Institute, 2023).

At the same time, high living and tuition costs, coupled with increased xenophobia and visa and other restrictions in the Global North, have driven many students from the South to pursue education in non-Western nations where tuition and living costs are less expensive. These economic pull factors make the emerging study destinations attractive to many international students, especially those from middle-income and lower-income families.

Soft power and cultural influences

Many countries and institutions prioritise international student recruitment as a key target in their strategies for the internationalisation of higher education because of the value they place on securing soft power, cross-border cultural influence, and improved university rankings.

At the national level, countries utilise strategic policies and national agencies to promote international student recruitment and subsidize inbound mobility. Activities and initiatives involve various national actors that aim to build a comprehensive ecosystem in supporting immigration regulation, university cooperation, language training, and scholarships. Examples include the Indian government, which launched the Study in India flagship project in 2018 in collaboration with various government departments to enhance its global identity through international education initiatives. Similarly, the Education Plan in China’s Belt and Road Initiative showcases the political and diplomatic motivations behind its internationalisation strategy and international student recruitment.

Demographic change, labour market, and migration

For many countries in the Global North, significant demographic decline and the need for skilled labour have made it challenging to find sufficient talent domestically. Attracting talented international students, faculty, and professionals, as well as encouraging student retention, are often crucial strategies for higher education in high-income and middle-income countries.

Important in the above-mentioned factors are the many ways in which migration and student mobility cross over. Education functions as a significant migration doorway for a large minority of students moving from the Global South to the Anglophone countries. Tensions and controversies arise regarding international students’ post-study options, labour market needs, and immigration policies.

Complex and multilayered

In the words of Van Mol et al (2024, p141), international student mobility is ‘complex and multilayered’. It is influenced by a variety of changing contexts and related push and pull factors. There is no such archetype as ‘the international student’, as there are different forms of student, stakeholder roles, and motivations for mobility. In degree mobility, one can observe a gradual shift from a predominantly South-North movement towards a more diverse movement, with dominant sending countries, particularly in Asia, increasingly becoming receiving countries.

Revenue generation remains a dominant pull factor in the Anglophone higher education sector. Another key consideration is increasing the stay rate of international students so as to better meet skilled labour needs.

At the same time, geopolitical tensions, national security concerns, and nationalist anti-immigration sentiments and policies are becoming important obstacles to international student mobility. While international students and the revenues they generate are important in a few countries, perhaps more important to the global economy as a whole are patterns of high-skilled immigration related to student mobility. These patterns contribute to inequalities, impact remittances, influence scientific collaboration, and affect many other factors in numerous countries.

As countries navigate these complex dynamics, the strategic management of international student flows and integration of skilled graduates into the labour market will be crucial for maximising the benefits of global education and fostering international collaboration. Ultimately, understanding the evolving nature of international student mobility is essential for policymakers and educators who seek to enhance the internationalisation of higher education and address the broader challenges and opportunities it presents.

Hans de Wit is Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Fellow of the ‘Center for International Higher Education’ (CIHE) at Boston College. He is IAU Senior Fellow in the International Association of Universities (IAU) and Co-Editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education (SRHE).

Philip G Altbach is Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, where from 1994 to 2015 he was the Monan University Professor.

Lizhou Wang is an Assistant Professor at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Japan. Lizhou conducts research on the internationalisation of higher education, including international mobility and research collaboration.


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Consumer rights and complaints in English higher education: a new form of student agency?

by Rille Raaper

A year ago I wrote a blog post inviting the SRHE community to reflect on what it means to be political for today’s students. That piece was a thought experiment exploring political agency beyond traditional notions of student activism or protest. I now want to extend this thinking by considering whether student-as-consumer complaints can also be understood as a form of political agency.

Consumerism has increasingly invaded new sectors of society, including higher education. In the UK, consumer rights and relationships are actively promoted through higher education policy, which frames students as consumers and universities as providers. The Office for Students, the main regulator in England, encourages students to understand their consumer rights with statements such as: ‘Knowing your consumer rights should help you to be protected if things go wrong on your course’. Although the phrase “things going wrong” remains ambiguous, universities must comply with consumer protection law by providing accurate, up-to-date information about their offerings and maintaining internal complaints and appeals processes for students who wish to raise concerns about their experience. These processes are broadly similar across institutions, typically moving from informal resolution to formal complaints, and, if unresolved, escalation to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) – the body responsible for reviewing unsettled student complaints in England and Wales.

While it may be a ‘chicken and egg’ question as to whether the rise in complaints or the introduction of formal procedures came first, what is clear is that student complaints have grown significantly. Although university-level complaint data is confidential, we know that the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) received 3,613 complaints in 2024 – an increase of over 130% compared to 2016. The financial implications are notable: £677,785 was awarded to students following a “Justified” decision, and an additional £1,809,805 was offered as part of settlements in 2024. It is reasonable to assume that university-managed complaints have experienced a similar surge.

This peak in complaints and related institutional procedures raises an important question: should we view complaints not merely as an inconvenience or evidence of institutional shortcomings, but as a process that activates certain forms of agency within the student experience? Specifically, could this agency represent a new form of political agency in a context where students may be reluctant to engage in traditional activism for fear of jeopardising their academic success and financial investment?

In my broader work, I adopt a wide lens on political agency, drawing on works from Michel Foucault, Sara Ahmed, and Jouni Häkli & Kirsi Pauliina Kallio. From this perspective, political agency encompasses ‘a variety of individual and collective, official and mundane, rational and affective, and human and non-human ways of acting, affecting and impacting politically’. Complaints, while largely individual, can be both rational and affective, making them a compelling example for expanding our understanding of political agency. When considering complaints as political agency, I propose we start by reflecting on the following:

Institutional inequalities

Most student complaints originate – at least from the perspective of those making them – in response to perceived institutional failure or wrongdoing. Complaints are therefore generally directed against some form of injustice. While students can raise concerns about a wide range of issues, the OIA statistics indicate that service-related complaints, eg poor teaching quality, undelivered services, or misleading marketing, account for roughly one third of all cases handled by the OIA.

Courage

Like any form of political action, making a complaint requires considerable courage and perseverance. Sara Ahmed’s work highlights how raising a complaint can make the complainant vulnerable, positioning them as the locus of an institutional problem. Similar ideas resonate with Foucault’s notion of parrhesia – truth-telling as a courageous act that is both risky and potentially transformative for the individual.

Social spillovers

Although a student complaint is typically an individual act, it carries an element of publicness. Complaints can create opportunities for students to engage with their broader social context and advocate for fairness in higher education. This ethical stance may ripple outward, influencing others and contributing to wider institutional change; for example, when a single complaint leads to policy or practice reforms.

While we may debate whether student complaints are a ‘necessary evil’ in market-driven higher education, I invite readers to consider whether raising a complaint might also be a courageous and transformative experience for our students. If we allow ourselves to think this way, complaints could become an important lens for understanding how today’s students exercise their political agency.

For more details, please see my book published as part of the SRHE and Routledge book series Research into Higher Education:

Raaper, R (2024). Student Identity and Political Agency. Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights Oxon: Routledge

Professor Rille Raaper is in the School of Education at Durham University. Rille’s research interests lie in the sociology of higher education with a particular focus on student identity, experience and political agency in a variety of higher education settings. Her research is primarily concerned with how universities organise their work in competitive higher education markets, and the implications market forces have on current and future students. The two particular strands of Rille’s research relate to: a) student identity and experience in consumerist higher education; b) student agency, citizenship and political activism. rille.raaper@durham.ac.uk


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Teaching students to use AI: from digital competence to a learning outcome

by Concepción González García and Nina Pallarés Cerdà

Debates about generative AI in higher education often start from the same assumption: students need a certain level of digital competence before they can use AI productively. Those who already know how to search, filter and evaluate online information are seen as the ones most likely to benefit from tools such as ChatGPT, while others risk being left further behind.

Recent studies reinforce this view. Students with stronger digital skills in areas like problem‑solving and digital ethics tend to use generative AI more frequently (Caner‑Yıldırım, 2025). In parallel, work using frameworks such as DigComp has mostly focused on measuring gaps in students’ digital skills – often showing that perceived “digital natives” are less uniformly proficient than we might think (Lucas et al, 2022). What we know much less about is the reverse relationship: can carefully designed uses of AI actually develop students’ digital competences – and for whom?

In a recent article, we addressed this question empirically by analysing the impact of a generative AI intervention on university students’ digital competences (García & Pallarés, 2026). Students’ skills were assessed using the European DigComp 2.2 framework (Vuorikari et al, 2022).

Moving beyond static measures of digital competence

Research on students’ digital competences in higher education has expanded rapidly over the past decade. Yet much of this work still treats digital competence as a stable attribute that students bring with them into university, rather than as a dynamic and educable capability that can be shaped through instructional design. The consequence is a field dominated by one-off assessments, surveys and diagnostic tools that map students’ existing skills but tell us little about how those skills develop.

This predominant focus on measurement rather than development has produced a conceptual blind spot: we know far more about how digital competences predict students’ use of emerging technologies than about how educational uses of these technologies might enhance those competences in the first place.

Recent studies reinforce this asymmetry. Students with higher levels of digital competence are more likely to engage with generative AI tools and to display positive attitudes towards their use (Moravec et al, 2024; Saklaki & Gardikiotis, 2024). In this ‘competence-first’ model, digital competence appears as a precondition for productive engagement with AI. Yet this framing obscures a crucial pedagogical question: might AI, when intentionally embedded in learning activities, actually support the growth of the very competences it is presumed to require?

A second limitation compounds this problem: the absence of a standardised framework for analysing and comparing the effects of AI-based interventions on digital competence development. Although DigComp is widely used for diagnostic purposes, few studies employ it systematically to evaluate learning gains or to map changes across specific competence areas. As a result, evidence from different interventions remains fragmented, making it difficult to identify which aspects of digital competence are most responsive to AI-mediated learning.

There is, nevertheless, emerging evidence that AI can do more than simply ‘consume’ digital competence. Studies by Dalgıç et al (2024) and Naamati-Schneider & Alt (2024) suggest that integrating tools such as ChatGPT into structured learning tasks can stimulate information search, analytical reasoning and critical evaluation—provided that students are guided to question and verify AI outputs rather than accept them uncritically. Yet these contributions remain exploratory. We still lack experimental or quasi-experimental evidence that links AI-based instructional designs to measurable improvements in specific DigComp areas, and we know little about whether such benefits accrue equally to all students or disproportionately to those who already possess stronger digital skills.

This gap matters. If digital competences are conceived as malleable rather than fixed, then AI is not merely a technology that demands certain skills but a pedagogical tool through which those skills can be cultivated. This reframing shifts the centre of the debate: away from asking whether students are ready for AI, and towards asking whether our teaching practices are ready to use AI in ways that promote competence development and reduce inequalities in learning.

Our study: teaching students to work with AI, not around it

We designed a randomised controlled trial with 169 undergraduate students enrolled in a Microeconomics course. Students were allocated by class group to either a treatment or a control condition. All students followed the same curriculum and completed the same online quizzes through the institutional virtual campus.

The crucial difference lay in how generative AI was integrated:

  • In the treatment condition, students received an initial workshop on using large language models strategically. They practised:
  • contextualising questions
  • breaking problems into steps
  • iteratively refining prompts
  • and checking their own solutions before turning to the AI.
  • Throughout the course, their online self-assessments included adaptive feedback: instead of simply marking answers as right or wrong, the system offered hints, step-by-step prompts and suggestions on how to use AI tools as a thinking partner.
  • In the control condition, students completed the same quizzes with standard right/wrong feedback, and no training or guidance on AI.

Importantly, the intervention did not encourage students to outsource solutions to AI. Rather, it framed AI as an interactive study partner to support self-explanation, comparison of strategies and self-regulation in problem solving.

We administered pre- and post-course questionnaires aligned with DigComp 2.2, focusing on five competences: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, safety, and two aspects of problem solving (functional use of digital tools and metacognitive self-regulation). Using a difference-in-differences model with individual fixed effects, we estimated how the probability of reporting the highest level of each competence changed over time for the treatment group relative to the control group.

What changed when AI was taught and used in this way?

At the overall sample level, we found statistically significant improvements in three areas:

  • Information and data literacy – students in the AI-training condition were around 15 percentage points more likely to report the highest level of competence in identifying information needs and carrying out effective digital searches.
  • Problem solving – functional dimension – the probability of reporting the top level in using digital tools (including AI) to solve tasks increased by about 24 percentage points.
  • Problem solving – metacognitive dimension – a similar 24-point gain emerged for recognising what aspects of one’s digital competences need to be updated or improved.

In other words, the AI-integrated teaching design was associated not only with better use of digital tools, but also with stronger awareness of digital strengths and weaknesses – a key ingredient of autonomous learning. Communication and safety competences also showed positive but smaller and more uncertain effects. Here, the pattern becomes clearer when we look at who benefited most.

A compensatory effect: AI as a potential leveller, not just an amplifier

When we distinguished students by their initial level of digital competence, a pattern emerged. For those starting below the median, the intervention produced large and significant gains in all five competences, with improvements between 18 and 38 percentage points depending on the area. For students starting above the median, effects were smaller and, in some cases, non-significant.

This suggests a compensatory effect: students who began the course with weaker digital competences benefited the most from the AI-based teaching design. Rather than widening the digital gap, guided use of AI acted as a levelling mechanism, bringing lower-competence students closer to their more digitally confident peers.

Conceptually, this challenges an implicit assumption in much of the literature – namely, that generative AI will primarily enhance the learning of already advantaged students, because they are the ones with the skills and confidence to exploit it. Our findings show that, when AI is embedded within intentional pedagogy, explicit training and structured feedback, the opposite can happen: those who started with fewer resources can gain the most.

From ‘allow or ban’ to ‘how do we teach with AI?’

For higher education policy and practice, the implications are twofold.

First, we need to stop thinking of digital competence purely as a prerequisite for using AI. Under the right design conditions, AI can be a pedagogical resource to build those competences, especially in information literacy, problem solving and metacognitive self-regulation. That means integrating AI into curricula not as an add-on, but as part of how we teach students to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning.

Second, our results suggest that universities concerned with equity and digital inclusion should focus less on whether students have access to AI tools (many already do) and more on who receives support to learn how to use them well. Providing structured opportunities to practise prompting, to critique AI outputs and to reflect on one’s own digital skills may be particularly valuable for students who enter university with lower levels of digital confidence.

This does not resolve all the ethical and practical concerns around generative AI – far from it. But it shifts the conversation. Instead of treating AI as an external threat to academic integrity that must be tightly controlled, we can start to ask:

  • How can we design tasks where the added value lies in asking good questions, justifying decisions and evaluating evidence, rather than in producing a single ‘correct’ answer?
  • How can we support students to see AI not as a shortcut to avoid thinking, but as a tool to think better and know themselves better as learners?
  • Under what conditions does AI genuinely help to close digital competence gaps, and when might it risk opening new ones?

Answering these questions will require further longitudinal and multi-institutional research, including replication studies and objective performance measures alongside self-reports. Yet the evidence we present offers a cautiously optimistic message: teaching students how to use AI can be part of a strategy to strengthen digital competences and reduce inequalities in higher education, rather than merely another driver of stratification.

Concepción González García is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), Spain, and holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Alicante. Her research interests include macroeconomics, particularly fiscal policy, and education.

Nina Pallarés is Assistant Professor of Economics and Academic Coordinator of the Master’s in Management of Sports Entities at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), Spain. Her research focuses on applied econometrics, with particular emphasis on health, labour, education, and family economics.


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Widely used but barely trusted: understanding student perceptions on the use of generative AI in higher education

by Carmen Cabrera and Ruth Neville

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools are rapidly transforming how university students learn, create and engage with knowledge. Powered by techniques such as neural network algorithms, these tools generate new content, including text, tables, computer code, images, audio and video, by learning patterns from existing data. The outputs are usually characterised by their close resemblance to human-generated content. While GAI shows great promise to improve the learning experience in various disciplines, its growing uptake also raises concerns about misuse, over-reliance and more generally, its impact on the learning process. In response, multiple UK HE institutions have issued guidance outlining acceptable use and warning against breaches of academic integrity. However, discussions about the role of GAI in the HE learning process have been led mostly by educators and institutions, and less attention has been given to how students perceive and use GAI.

Our recent study, published in Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, helps to address this gap by bringing student perspectives into the discussion. Drawing on a survey conducted in early 2024 with 132 undergraduate students from six UK universities, the study reveals an impactful paradox. Students are using GAI tools widely, and expect their use to increase, yet fewer than 25% regard its outputs as reliable. High levels of use therefore coexist with low levels of trust.

Using GAI without trusting it

At first glance, the widespread use of GAI among students might be taken as a sign of growing confidence in these tools. Yet, when students are asked about their perceptions on the reliability of GAI outputs, many express disagreement when asked if GAI could be considered a reliable source of knowledge. This apparent contradiction raises the question of why are students still using tools they do not fully trust? The answer lies in the convenience of GAI. Students are not necessarily using GAI because they believe it is accurate. They are using it because it is fast, accessible and can help them get started or work more efficiently. Our study suggests that perceived usefulness may be outweighing the students’ scepticism towards the reliability of outputs, as this scepticism does not seem to be slowing adoption. Nearly all student groups surveyed reported that they expect to continue using generative AI in the future, indicating that low levels of trust are unlikely to deter ongoing or increased use.

Not all perceptions are equal

While the “high use – low trust” paradox is evident across student groups, the study also reveals systematic differences in the adoption and perceptions of GAI by gender and by domicile status (UK v international students). Male and international students tend to report higher levels of both past and anticipated future use of GAI tools, and more permissive attitudes towards AI-assisted learning compared to female and UK-domiciled students. These differences should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence that some students are more ethical, critical or technologically literate than others. What we are likely seeing are responses to different pressures and contexts shaping how students engage with these tools. Particularly for international students, GAI can help navigate language barriers or unfamiliar academic conventions. In those circumstances, GAI may work as a form of academic support rather than a shortcut. Meanwhile, differences in attitudes by gender reflect wider patterns often observed on academic integrity and risk-taking, where female students often report greater concern about following rules and avoiding sanctions. These findings suggest that students’ engagement with GAI is influenced by their positionality within Higher Education, and not just by their individual attitudes.

Different interpretations of institutional guidance

Discrepancies by gender and domicile status go beyond patterns of use and trust, extending to how students interpret institutional guidance on generative AI. Most UK universities now publish policies outlining acceptable and unacceptable uses of GAI in relation to assessment and academic integrity, and typically present these rules as applying uniformly to all students. In practice, as evidenced by our study, students interpret these guidelines differently. UK-domiciled students, especially women, tend to adopt more cautious readings, sometimes treating permitted uses, such as using GAI for initial research or topic overviews, as potential misconduct. International students, by contrast, are more likely to express permissive or uncertain views, even in relation to practices that are more clearly prohibited. Shared rules do not guarantee shared understanding, especially if guidance is ambiguous or unevenly communicated. GAI is evolving faster than University policy, so addressing this unevenness in understanding is an urgent challenge for higher education.

Where does the ‘problem’ lie?

Students are navigating rapidly evolving technologies within assessment frameworks that were not designed with GAI in mind. At the same time, they are responding to institutional guidance that is frequently high-level, unevenly communicated and difficult to translate into everyday academic practice. Yet there is a tendency to treat GAI misuse as a problem stemming from individual student behaviour. Our findings point instead to structural and systemic issues shaping how students engage with these tools. From this perspective, variation in student behaviour could reflect the uneven inclusivity of current institutional guidelines. Even when policies are identical for all, the evidence indicates that they are not experienced in the same way across student groups, calling for a need to promote fairness and reduce differential risk at the institutional level.

These findings also have clear implications for assessment and teaching. Since students are already using GAI widely, assessment design needs to avoid reactive attempts to exclude GAI. A more effective and equitable approach may involve acknowledging GAI use where appropriate, supporting students to engage with it critically and designing learning activities that continue to cultivate critical thinking, judgement and communication skills. In some cases, this may also mean emphasising in-person, discussion-based or applied forms of assessment where GAI offers limited advantage. Equally, digital literacy initiatives need to go beyond technical competence. Students require clearer and more concrete examples of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable use of GAI in specific assessment contexts, as well as opportunities to discuss why these boundaries exist. Without this, institutions risk creating environments in which some students become too cautious in using GAI, while others cross lines they do not fully understand.

More broadly, policymakers and institutional leaders should avoid assuming a single student response to GAI. As this study shows, engagement with these tools is shaped by gender, educational background, language and structural pressures. Treating the student body as homogeneous risks reinforcing existing inequalities rather than addressing them. Public debate about GAI in HE frequently swings between optimism and alarm. This research points to a more grounded reality where students are not blindly trusting AI, but their use of it is increasing, sometimes pragmatically, sometimes under pressure. As GAI systems continue evolving, understanding how students navigate these tools in practice is essential to developing policies, assessments and teaching approaches that are both effective and fair.

You can find more information in our full research paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13603108.2025.2595453

Dr Carmen Cabrera is a Lecturer in Geographic Data Science at the Geographic Data Science Lab, within the University of Liverpool’s Department of Geography and Planning. Her areas of expertise are geographic data science, human mobility, network analysis and mathematical modelling. Carmen’s research focuses on developing quantitative frameworks to model and predict human mobility patterns across spatiotemporal scales and population groups, ranging from intraurban commutes to migratory movements. She is particularly interested in establishing methodologies to facilitate the efficient and reliable use of new forms of digital trace data in the study of human movement. Prior to her position as a Lecturer, Carmen completed a BSc and MSc in Physics and Applied Mathematics, specialising in Network Analysis. She then did a PhD at University College London (UCL), focussing on the development of mathematical models of social behaviours in urban areas, against the theoretical backdrop of agglomeration economies. After graduating from her PhD in 2021, she was a Research Fellow in Urban Mobility at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), at UCL, where she currently holds a honorary position.

Dr Ruth Neville is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), UCL, working at the intersection of Spatial Data Science, Population Geography and Demography. Her PhD research considers the driving forces behind international student mobility into the UK, the susceptibility of student applications to external shocks, and forecasting future trends in applications using machine learning. Ruth has also worked on projects related to human mobility in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic, the relationship between internal displacement and climate change in the East and Horn of Africa, and displacement of Ukrainian refugees. She has a background in Political Science, Economics and Philosophy, with a particular interest in electoral behaviour.


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Reading time: discovery, meaning-making and resistance in the accelerated academy

by Fadia Dakka

The increasing exposure of higher education sectors worldwide to market mechanisms (eg privatisation in and of higher education, platformisation and assetization) generates market-making pressures, technologies and relations that are changing university missions and academic practices in both research and teaching, altering not only forms of knowledge production but also academic identities (Lewis et al, 2022).  These corporate, competitive systems operate in and through regimes of time acceleration and compression (Rosa & Trejo-Mathys, 2013; Wajcman & Dodd (eds), 2017) that enable capitalist accumulation via a proliferation of calculative practices and surveillance techniques driven by instrumental logics. In essence, the timescapes of the ‘accelerated academy’ (Vostal, 2016) have come to be not just dominated but defined by the linear rhythms of knowledge production, accumulation, consumption, and distribution.

In this context, ever-present tensions continue to pit institutional time scarcity/pressure against the often non-linear times, rhythms and practices that characterise the craft of intellectual work. These are acutely visible in doctoral education, which is considered both a liminal space-time of profound transformation for students and a rite of passage through which doctoral candidates enter the academic community.

Doctoral students in the accelerated academy experience tremendous institutional pressures to complete their research projects within tight timeframes punctuated by developmental milestones. At the same time, they are pressed to publish and participate in externally funded projects before completing their course of studies, to secure a positional advantage in a hyper-competitive, precarious job market.

In such a climate, pressures to develop core academic skills such as academic writing abound, as a quick glance at the vast literature available to both novice and accomplished researchers to help them improve the quality and quantity of writing reveals (eg Sword, 2017, 2023; Murray, 2025; Wyse, 2017; Moran, 2019; Young & Ferguson, 2021; Thomson, 2023; Sternad & Power, 2023). 

Much less attention is devoted to reading as an autonomous practice in relation to educational research. Reading is generally approached instrumentally for research and mostly equated with a strategic, extractive process whereby academics retrieve, survey or review the information needed for writing to maximise efficiency and speed (Fulford & Hodgson (eds) 2016; Boulous Walker, 2017).

Doctoral students are taught to tackle the volume of readings by deploying selective, skim and speed-reading techniques that ‘teach’ them a practical method to ‘fillet’ publications (Silverman, 2010 p323) or ‘gut(ting) an article or book for the material you need’ (Thomas, 2013 p67). Without dismissing the validity of these outcome-oriented techniques, I argue that reading should be approached and investigated as research, which is to say as a philosophical orientation whose intimate relation with thinking (meditation and contemplation) and writing (as a method of inquiry) constitutes a conjuncture with transformative potential for both the reader and the text (Hoveid & Hoveid, 2013; Dakka & Wade, 2018). [RC1] [FD2] 

In 2024, I was awarded a BA/Leverhulme grant that allowed me to examine, in collaboration with Norwegian colleagues, the under-researched area of reading habits, rhythms and practices among doctoral students in two countries, the UK and Norway, characterised by a markedly different cultural political economy of higher education. The project set out to explore how a diverse group of doctoral students related to, made sense of, and engaged with reading as a practice, intellectually and emotionally. Through such exploration, the team intended to examine pedagogical and philosophical implications for doctoral education, supervision, and, more generally, higher education through a distinct spatiotemporal lens.

The project experimented with slow reading (Boulous Walker, 2017) as an ethico-political countermovement that invites us to dwell with the text and reflect on the transformations it can produce within the self and the educational experience tout-court. Examining the practice of reading is, therefore, vital to foster the development of the criticality and creativity that inform the students’ thinking and, ultimately, their writing, helping to create better conditions for meaningful educational engagement.

As briefly mentioned earlier, there is a dearth of literature in educational research focused explicitly and directly on reading as a research practice. Conversely, Reading Theory and Reader-Response criticism (Bennett, 1995) are well-established strands in literary studies.

Two contributions inspired the project in the cognate fields of philosophy, pedagogy, and education ethics, underpinning the theoretical and methodological framework adopted: Aldridge (2019), exploring the association between reading, higher education and educational engagement through the phenomenological literary theorisations of Rita Felski (2015) and Marielle Macé (2013). Reading here is considered as a phenomenological ‘orientation’ with ontological character: the entanglement of body, thought, and sense makes reading an ‘embodied mode of attentiveness’  with ‘rhythms of rapprochement and distancing, relaxation and suspense, movement and hesitation’ (Felski 2015, p176). Lastly, Boulous Walker (2017) introduces the concept of ‘slow reading’, or reading philosophically against the institution. This practice stands in opposition to the institutional time, efficiency, and productivity pressures that prevent the intense, contemplative attitude toward research that is typical of active educational engagement. The author calls, therefore, for slow reading, careful reading, and re-reading as antidotes against institutional contexts dominated by speed and the cult of efficiency.

Bridging cultural sociology and philosophy of education, the project combined Hermeneutic Phenomenology (Schutz, 1972; Ricoeur, 1984) and Rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre, 2004) to gain insight into the lived experiences, embodied and cognitive processes of meaning-making, and spatiotemporal (rhythmic) dimensions of reading among doctoral students.

The complementarity of these frameworks enabled a richer and deeper understanding of the phenomenon from a socio-cultural and philosophical perspective. The rhythmanalytical dimension drew on the oeuvre of the French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre. Conceived as both a sensory method and a philosophical disposition, Rhythmanalysis (2004) foregrounds the question of the everyday and its rhythms, offering insightful takes on repetition, difference, appropriation and dwelling. Lefebvre’s analysis of the conflicting rhythms of the social and the critical moments that revive/subvert the humdrum of the quotidian pivot on the experience and resonance of bodies in space-time, their imbrication with the fabric of the social and the multiplicity of their perceptual interrelations with human and more-than-human environments. Methodologically, Rhythmanalysis enabled a closer look at the students’ reading habits, rhythms and practices in relation to their doctoral studies. The emphasis on spatio-temporality and (auto-)ethnographic observations made it possible to register and grasp the tensions that derive from clashes between meso institutional constraints and demands (eg set timeframes for completion; developmental milestones), micro individual responses and circumstances (eg different modes of study, private and/or professional commitments) and macro societal context (eg cognitive, extractive capitalism).

The phenomenological facet of the project drew on the hermeneutic, existential, and ontological dimensions found in Ricoeur’s and Schutz’s philosophy, which are concerned with grasping experiential meanings and understanding the complexity of human lifeworld.  Acknowledging the entanglement of being and Dasein as an ontological standpoint, human lived experiences are situated within a contingent spatiotemporality and understood through an interpretivist epistemology founded on intersubjectivity, intentionality and hermeneutics.

This phenomenological-rhythmanalytical inquiry was therefore designed to explore students’ cognitive and affective experiences and practices of reading as they unfolded in the spaces and times of their doctoral education. The project involved two groups of doctoral candidates based in the Education department of, respectively, a teaching-intensive university in the West Midlands of England (Birmingham, UK), and a large, research-intensive university in Norway (Trondheim).

The first phase of data collection involved Focus Groups and Reflective Diaries. It foregrounded the times, places, and rhythms of reading, considering reading modalities and patterns of doctoral students in the context of institutional demands vis-à-vis personal and professional constraints. Rhythmanalysis was employed both as a method (reflective diaries) and as an interpretive, diagnostic tool to uncover and critically reflect on arrhythmias (ruptures) and/or eurythmic pockets in the reading patterns of doctoral students.

The second data collection phase relied on hermeneutic phenomenological techniques, such as Episodic Narrative Interviews (Mueller, 2019), to delve deeper into the affective, material, and cognitive experience that connects and transforms students and their readings.

The final stage of data collection involved an experiment in collective slow reading and re-reading against the institution, inspired by Boulous Walker’s philosophical reading and Felman’s description of the interpretative process as a never-ending ‘turn of the screw’ (Felman, 1977) that generates a hermeneutical spiral of subsequent, ever richer, and different textual interpretations.

Initial findings point to a complex and layered reading time experience, captured in its nuanced articulation by a rhythmic analysis of the students’ everyday practices, habits and affective responses.

Commonsensical as it may sound, reading takes time. Engaging with a text to interpret and understand it is time-consuming, and most of our respondents in this project discussed this. Reading seems to project an experience of oneself as a slow reader, followed by a feeling of guilt for ‘just’ reading.

Interestingly, clock time and phenomenological time appear to be juxtaposed in the reading process, creating conflicts and productive tensions for most of the PhD students in the project. For example, the students often welcome writing deadlines, as they create a linear rhythm that provides structure to their reading time. At the same time, the idea that reading should be done quickly and targeted to extract material for their thesis hovers over many participants, generating performance-related pressure and anxiety. Procedural aspects of reading, particularly managing volume and note-taking, are treated as a sign of success or failure, reinstating Rosa’s neoliberal equation of fast-winner, slow-loser in the accelerated, competitive academy (Rosa, Chapter 2 in Wajcman & Dodd (eds), 2017).

However, a deeper engagement with reading both opposes and coexists with this tendency, evoking the notion of Barthes’ idiorrhythmy (Dakka, 2024) to describe the process of discovering and imposing one’s own rhythm. This rhythm typically resists linearity and dominant structure, requiring slowness as a disposition or a mode of intense attention to oneself and the world through the encounter with text. Even more intriguingly, slowness as heightened focus and immersion often occurs within short and fragmented bursts of reading, strategically or opportunistically carved into the students’ everyday lives, resulting from an incessant act of negotiation over and encroachments with personal, professional, and institutional times.

The project explored, examined, and interpreted the rhythms and practices of reading in contemporary doctoral education along three axes: times (institutional, personal, inner, tempo, duration); spaces (physical, digital, mental); and affects as ways of relating (joy, guilt, anxiety, surprise, fantasy, etc). Together, these elements combine in unique and shifting configurations of dominant rhythms and idiosyncratic responses (rhuthmόs or idiorrhythmy), exposing the irreducibility of students’ experiences to harmful binaries (eg fast versus slow academia) while revealing the pedagogic affordances of a rhythmic and phenomenological analysis for contemporary universities. Spotlighting different approaches to reading, thinking, and writing enhances awareness of and attunement to developing one’s voice, listening and resisting capacity.

Fadia Dakka is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education at Birmingham City University. Her interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, sociology and theory of higher education. She is currently working toward theorising Rhythm as a form of ethics underpinning critical pedagogy in higher education. She recently received a BA/Leverhulme small grant (2024-25) to examine doctoral reading habits and practices in the UK and Norway.


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A new way of addressing the enigma of student engagement

by Caroline Jones and Leonie Sweeney

Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) Theory as a Methodological Lens

Higher education is experiencing post-pandemic challenges which have increased pressure on students in multifaceted and interconnecting ways (Jones & Bell, 2024). Existing research suggests that post-pandemic, students’ mental health and wellbeing has been significantly impacted (Chen & Lubock, 2022; Defeyter et al, 2021; Jones & Bell, 2025; McGiven & Shepherd, 2022; Nunn et al, 2021). This indicates that research into the field of higher education is needed more pro-actively than ever before, especially given the diverse student market.

Currently there is considerable research in the form of critique of policy trends or evaluation of the effectiveness of changes in practice; however, the PATA theory lens suggests an approach to research centring on the educational psychologies and intricacies of the student and the enigma of student engagement (Buckley, 2018; Jones & Nangah, 2020: McFarlane & Thomas, 2017).

Our recent article presents the PATA theory as a methodological lens through which higher education student behaviours, characteristics, and demographics can be researched. Furthermore, it provides an explanation of the PATA theory with specific links to student engagement. The idea of the PATA theory was first explored by Jones in 2017 and developed further in 2020 and 2021 in response to recognised issues faced relating to student engagement in widening participation student demographics. This research establishes the theory which can be applied to investigating the complexities of student demographics, with the aim being to develop knowledge and understanding of issues affecting students such as post-pandemic engagement.

Guidelines from the QAA (2018) state that due to the demographic of the students who attend each institution, student engagement needs to be interpreted and encouraged in response to student/higher education institutional need. Therefore, student engagement can be interpreted in a variety of ways, examining the links between time, energy and other properties invested by HEIs and students with the aims of cultivating the student experience, strengthening educational outcomes, encouraging development and raising student achievement. Positive student engagement can lead to successful student outcomes, lower attrition rates and improved social mobility, demonstrating the importance of research for understanding and investing in student engagement practices.

The PATA theory sits under the umbrella of alienation theory: it considers the individual student’s psychosocial status (self-concept/self-esteem levels) and has identified links to academic trust levels (Jones, 2021), particularly for students from the widening participation demographics or those who have experienced socio-economic disadvantage, see figure 1.

Figure 1. PATA Theory (Jones, 2021)

The PATA theory fits as a methodology within the realms of phenomenology as it enables researchers to present a narrative to represent the phenomena studied to extract significant statements from the data to formulate meaning. Neubauer, Witkop and Varpio (2019, p91) believe it is imperative for the researcher engaging in phenomenological research to be familiar with the philosophical ‘interpretations of human experience’, whilst Morrow, Rodriguez and King (2015, p644) advise that ‘descriptive phenomenology is especially valuable in areas where there is little existing research’. An additional crucial aspect of phenomenology is understanding that social reality has to be grounded in an individual’s encounters in authentic social situations. The focal point of the PATA theory lens research is to understand how students’ psychosocial status affects the academic trust of their higher education experiences and the relationships that arise out of the social exchanges therein, permitting researchers to construe the associations that the participants make.

This article analyses the PATA theory potential range of research methods that can be employed and used in higher education practice and is supported by three case vignette examples with reflection points.  For example, we would usually see student disengagement relating to activities such as non-attendance, but the PATA theory shows us that the concept of student engagement is much more complex and encourages higher education institutions and professionals to view the issue in a more holistic student-centred way rather than homogenously.

Additionally, post-Covid there has been a significant rise in the number of students presenting with mental health issues, with students struggling to attend and engage with their programmes of study. Currently, the assessment strategies used by HEIs for capturing student engagement fail accurately to measure both student engagement and sense of belonging. However, using the PATA theory as the research lens would provide a deeper insight into the post pandemic issues faced, by focussing on student alienation and the strengthening of trust between the student and the institution. HEIs could then scrutinise their existing on-campus experiences to aid the re-engagement process, and practice could be adapted to increase the student experience, such as including more pastoral 1:1 support time within the timetable.

Some further practical illustrations of how the PATA theory might influence our understanding or make a difference in practice are:

  • To understand potential psychological barriers to student engagement based on demographics, behaviours and characteristics.
  • To identify success stories of positive engagement where good practice can be disseminated or shared to improve student outcomes.
  • To take a deep dive into higher education practices, course or programmes to find out if there are specific teaching and learning barriers affecting students.
  • Provides time and space to analyse intricate needs of specific demographics; behaviours and characteristics such as impact of low tariff on entry gaps or previous educational experiences.
  • Can lead to bespoke action to address potential equality and inclusion concerns.
  • Can be used as an early intervention tool to support students’ re-engagement potentially contributing to reduced attrition and improvements in social mobility.
  • Can be used to explore wider societal issues that affect engagement

The PATA theory has its limitations, being a new and emerging theoretical perspective, and is very much open to academic critique. However, this concept does bring new insight to the complexities of the student community, the higher education institutional and political landscapes and could be used as a methodological lens to develop deeper knowledge and understanding of student engagement challenges. Whilst the PATA theory is a complex idea applied to a range of complex student issues, when the phenomenon is understood well, there is the potential to really make a difference to the educational outcomes for students. Furthermore, existing theories do not make connections between psychosocial status and academic trust which is where the PATA theory can contribute to a stronger understanding of the student phenomena.

The article on which this blog is based is

Jones, C. S., and Sweeney, L (2025) ‘The Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) Theory: A new lens to research higher education student phenomena: behaviours, characteristics, and demographics’ Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, 6(1), 79–110 https://sehej.raise-network.com/raise/article/view/1240.

Caroline Jones is an applied social sciences teaching professional with extensive experience working in the children and young people field and lecturing/programme leading in Higher Education. Currently employed as a Tutor based within the Health and Education Faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University, having previously been a Lecturer at the University Campus Oldham and at Stockport University Centre. Also an External Examiner for Derby University/Middlesex University and a Peer Reviewer for IETI. Research interests include; leadership and management, social mobility and social policy, risk, resilience and adolescent mental health, young care leavers, widening participation and disadvantage, originator of the ‘psychosocial and academic trust alienation’ (PATA) theory.

Email: c.jones@mmu.ac.uk. LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/caroline-jones-1bab40b3. Twitter/X: @c_JonesSFHEA. Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Caroline-Jones-39?ev=hdr_xprf.

Leonie Sweeney is a teaching professional within the Applied Social Sciences faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University, with many years of experience working within the children and young people sector. Currently employed as a Higher Education Course Leader and Lecturer, delivering Children and Young People and Early Years degree courses. Additionally, is an External Examiner for University of Chichester and University of Sunderland. Research interests include: student engagement, social mobility, widening participation.

Email: leonie.sweeney@oldham.ac.uk


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What the experience of neurodivergent PhD students teaches us, and why it makes me angry

by Inger Mewburn

Recently, some colleagues and I released a paper about the experiences of neurodivergent PhD students. It’s a systematic review of the literature to date, which is currently under review, but available via pre-print here.

Doing this paper was an exercise in mixed feelings. It was an absolute joy to work with my colleagues, who knew far more about this topic than me and taught me (finally!) how to do a proper systematic review using Covidence. Thanks Dr Diana Tan, Dr Chris Edwards, Associate Professor Kate Simpson, Associate Professor Amanda A Webster and Professor Charlotte Brownlow (who got the band together in the first place).

But reading each and every paper published about neurodivergent PhD students provoked strong feelings of rage and frustration. (These feelings only increased, with a tinge of fear added in, when I read of plans for the US health department to make a ‘list’ of autistic people?! Reading what is going on there is frankly terrifying – solidarity to all.) We all know what needs to be done to make research degrees more accessible. Make expectations explicit. Create flexible policies. Value diverse thinking styles. Implement Universal Design Principles… These suggestions appear in report after report, I’ve ranted on the blog here and here, yet real change remains frustratingly elusive. So why don’t these great ideas become reality? Here’s some thoughts on barriers that keep neurodivergent-friendly changes from taking hold.

The myth of meritocracy

Academia clings to the fiction that the current system rewards pure intellectual merit. Acknowledging the need for accessibility requires admitting that the playing field isn’t level. Many senior academics succeeded in the current system and genuinely believe “if I could do it, anyone can… if they work hard enough”. They are either 1) failing to recognise their neurotypical privilege, or 2) not acknowledging the cost of masking their own neurodivergence (I’ll get to this in a moment).

I’ve talked to many academics about things we could do – like getting rid of the dissertation – but too many of us are secretly proud of our own trauma. The harshness of the PhD has been compared to a badge of honour that we wear proudly – and expect others to earn.

Resource scarcity (real and perceived)

Universities often respond to suggestions about increased accessibility measures with budget concerns. The vibe is often: “We’d love to offer more support, but who will pay for it?”. However, many accommodations (like flexible deadlines or allowing students to work remotely) cost little, or even nothing. Frequently, the real issue isn’t resources but priorities of the powerful. There’s no denying universities (in Australia, and elsewhere) are often cash strapped. The academic hunger games are real. However, in the fight for resources, power dynamics dictate who gets fed and who goes without.

I wish we would just be honest about our choices – some people in universities still have huge travel budgets. The catering at some events is still pretty good. Some people seem to avoid every hiring freeze. There are consistent patterns in how resources are distributed. It’s the gaslighting that makes me angry. If we really want to, we can do most things. We have to want to do something about this.

Administrative inertia

Changing established processes in a university is like turning a battleship with a canoe paddle. Approval pathways are long and winding. For example, altering a single line in the research award rules at ANU requires approval from parliament (yes – the politicians actually have to get together and vote. Luckily we are not as dysfunctional in Australia as other places… yet). By the time a solution is implemented, the student who needed it has likely graduated – or dropped out. This creates a vicious cycle where the support staff, who see multiple generations of students suffer the same way, can get burned out and stop pushing for change.

The individualisation of disability

Universities tend to treat neurodivergence as an individual problem requiring individual accommodations rather than recognising systemic barriers. This puts the burden on students to disclose, request support, and advocate for themselves – precisely the executive function and communication challenges many neurodivergent students struggle with.

It’s akin to building a university with only stairs, then offering individual students a piggyback ride instead of installing ramps. I’ve met plenty of people who simply get so exhausted they don’t bother applying for the accommodations they desperately need, and then end up dropping out anyway.

Fear of lowering ‘standards’

Perhaps the most insidious barrier is the mistaken belief that accommodations somehow “lower standards.” I’ve heard academics worrying that flexible deadlines will “give some students an unfair advantage” or that making expectations explicit somehow “spoon-feeds” students.

The fear of “lowering standards” becomes even more puzzling when you look at how PhD requirements have inflated over time. Anyone who’s spent time in university archives knows that doctoral standards aren’t fixed – they’re constantly evolving. Pull a dissertation from the 1950s or 60s off the shelf and you’ll likely find something remarkably slim compared to today’s tomes. Many were essentially extended literature reviews with modest empirical components. Today, we expect multiple studies, theoretical innovations, methodological sophistication, and immediate publishability – all while completing within strict time limits on ever-shrinking funding.

The standards haven’t just increased; they’ve multiplied. So when universities resist accommodations that might “compromise standards,” we should ask: which era’s standards are we protecting? Certainly not the ones under which most people supervising today had to meet. The irony is that by making the PhD more accessible to neurodivergent thinkers, we might actually be raising standards – allowing truly innovative minds to contribute rather than filtering them out through irrelevant barriers like arbitrary deadlines or neurotypical communication expectations. The real threat to academic standards isn’t accommodation – it’s the loss of brilliant, unconventional thinkers who could push knowledge boundaries in ways we haven’t yet imagined.

Unexamined neurodiversity among supervisors

Perhaps one of the most overlooked barriers is that many supervisors are themselves neurodivergent but don’t recognise it or acknowledge what’s going on with them! In fact, since starting this research, I’ve formed a private view that you almost can’t succeed in this profession without at least a little neurospicey.

Academia tends to attract deep thinkers with intense focus on specific topics – traits often associated with autism (‘special interests’ anyone?). The contemporary university is constantly in crisis, which some people with ADHD can find provides the stimulation they need to get things done! Yet many supervisors have succeeded through decades of masking and compensating, often at great personal cost.

The problem is not the neurodivergence or the supervisor – it’s how the unexamined neurodivergence becomes embedded in practice, underpinned by an expectation that their students should function exactly as they do, complete with the same struggles they’ve internalised as “normal.”

I want to hold on to this idea for a moment, because maybe you recognise some of these supervisors:

  • The Hyperfocuser: Expects students to match their pattern of intense, extended work sessions. This supervisor regularly works through weekends on research “when inspiration strikes,” sending emails at 2am and expecting quick responses. They struggle to understand when students need breaks or maintain strict work boundaries, viewing it as “lack of passion.” Conveniently, they have ignored those couple of episodes of burn out, never considering their own work pattern might reflect ADHD or autistic hyper-focus, rather than superior work ethic.
  • The Process Pedant: Requires students to submit written work in highly specific formats with rigid attachment to particular reference styles, document formatting, and organisational structures. Gets disproportionately distressed by minor variations from their preferred system, focusing on these details over content, such that their feedback primarily addresses structural issues rather than ideas. I get more complaints about this than almost any other kind of supervision style – it’s so demoralising to be constantly corrected and not have someone genuinely engage with your work.
  • The Talker: Excels in spontaneous verbal feedback but rarely provides written comments. Expects students to take notes during rapid-fire conversational feedback, remembering all key points. They tend to tell you to do the same thing over and over, or forget what they have said and recommend something completely different next time. Can get mad when questioned over inconsistencies – suggesting you have a problem with listening. This supervisor never considers that their preference for verbal communication might reflect their own neurodivergent processing style, which isn’t universal. Couple this with a poor memory and the frustration of students reaches critical. (I confess, being a Talker is definitely my weakness as a supervisor – I warn my students in advance and make an effort to be open to criticism about it!).
  • The Context-Switching Avoider: Schedules all student meetings on a single day of the week, keeping other days “sacred” for uninterrupted research. Becomes noticeably agitated when asked to accommodate a meeting outside this structure, even for urgent matters. Instead of recognising their own need for predictable routines and difficulty with transitions (common in many forms of neurodivergence), they frame this as “proper time management” that students should always emulate. Students who have caring responsibilities suffer the most with this kind of inflexible relationship.
  • The Novelty-Chaser: Constantly introduces new theories, methodologies, or research directions in supervision meetings. Gets visibly excited about fresh perspectives and encourages students to incorporate them into already-developed projects. May send students a stream of articles or ideas completely tangential to their core research, expecting them to pivot accordingly. Never recognises that their difficulty maintaining focus on a single pathway to completion might reflect ADHD-related novelty-seeking. Students learn either 1) to chase butterflies and make little progress or 2) to nod politely at new suggestions while quietly continuing on their original track. The first kind of reaction can lead to a dangerous lack of progress, the second reaction can lead to real friction because, from the supervisor’s point of view, the student ‘never listens’. NO one is happy in these set ups, believe me.
  • The Theoretical Purist: Has devoted their career to a particular theoretical framework or methodology and expects all their students to work strictly within these boundaries. Dismisses alternative approaches as “methodologically unsound” or “lacking theoretical rigour” without substantive engagement. Becomes noticeably uncomfortable when students bring in cross-disciplinary perspectives, responding with increasingly rigid defences of their preferred approach. Fails to recognise their intense attachment to specific knowledge systems and resistance to integrating new perspectives may reflect autistic patterns of specialised interests, or even difficulty with cognitive flexibility. Students learn to frame all their ideas within the supervisor’s preferred language, even when doing so limits their research potential.

Now that I know what I am looking for, I see these supervisory dynamics ALL THE TIME. Add in whatever dash of neuro-spiciness is going on with you and all kinds of misunderstandings and hurt feelings result … Again – the problem is not the neurodivergence of any one person – it’s the lack of self reflection, coupled with the power dynamics that can make things toxic.

These barriers aren’t insurmountable, but honestly, after decades in this profession, I’m not holding my breath for institutional enlightenment. Universities move at the pace of bureaucracy after all.

So what do we do? If you’re neurodivergent, find your people – that informal network who “get it” will save your sanity more than any official university policy. If you’re a supervisor, maybe take a good hard look at your own quirky work habits before deciding your student is “difficult.” And if you’re in university management, please, for the love of research, let’s work on not making neurodivergent students jump through flaming bureaucratic hoops to get basic support.

The PhD doesn’t need to be a traumatic hazing ritual we inflict because “that’s how it was in my day.” It’s 2025. Time to admit that diverse brains make for better research. And for goodness sake, don’t put anyone on a damn list, ok?

AI disclaimer: This post was developed with Claude from Anthropic because I’m so busy with the burning trash fire that is 2025 it would not have happened otherwise. I provided the concept, core ideas, detailed content, and personal viewpoint while Claude helped organise and refine the text. We iteratively revised the content together to ensure it maintained my voice and perspective. The final post represents my authentic thoughts and experiences, with Claude serving as an editorial assistant and sounding board.

This blog was first published on Inger Mewburn’s  legendary website The Thesis Whisperer on 1 May 2025. It is reproduced with permission here.

Professor Inger Mewburn is the Director of Researcher Development at The Australian National University where she oversees professional development workshops and programs for all ANU researchers. Aside from creating new posts on the Thesis Whisperer blog (www.thesiswhisperer.com), she writes scholarly papers and books about research education, with a special interest in post PhD employability, research communications and neurodivergence.