Abstract:This research explores the experiences of five professional practitioners from disciplines including teaching, youth work, sport and health who had become lecturers in Higher Education. Their experiences are considered using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and tentative conclusions are reached on the meaning of such experiences for the individuals. The work extends previous studies (Shreeve 2010(Shreeve , 2011 Gourlay 2011a Gourlay , 2011bBoyd & Harris 2010) to consider the relationship between knowledge and influence and how institutional preference for knowledge gained from research impacts on the validity of knowledge derived from professional experience. The research finds shared feelings associated with inauthenticity and loss arising from concerns that the contribution of the professional in Higher Education is undervalued. The research challenges the assumption that professional practitioners adopt the professional identity of a lecturer in Higher Education instead finding that they create their own professional identities in the liminal space between the professional and academic domains, but points to difficulties associated with constructed nature of such professional identities within the institutional structure of a Higher Education institution.
The study considers the retention of 708 students studying for higher education awards at further education colleges in [2008][2009]. The study challenges the relevance of literature on retention at higher education institutions, to students studying at partner colleges. Using data provided on registration and end of year status, the study considers individual factors identified by Yorke & Longden (2008) that relate to withdrawal in the first year of study. The findings of the study suggest that the diversity of students and high degree of variability between courses, means that the institutional habitus (Thomas 2002) of partner colleges is highly contextual. Consequently, the relationship between individual factors and withdrawal is seen as both complex and contextual.
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