Student engagement is an expectation of UK quality enhancement processes. It is not without its challenges in a marketised higher education sector where students are increasingly treated as consumers of an educational product. Nowhere is this more the case than in curriculum development. This encompasses engagement in learning and teaching, in identity and in governance. As such, it demands a lot of both students and tutors. This paper reports a case study of student participation in curriculum development. Analysis of data from students who were involved in the process, complemented by information from students who did not engage, suggests that meaningful engagement requires a revision of the culture and processes of university curriculum decision making. Moreover, it concludes that engagement needs to be a consistent part of the student experience and not just an activity that occurs in a particular quality enhancement activity such as curriculum design.
The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of the record. Please see the repository URL above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.