Arguing for an understanding of belonging in higher education as relational, complex and negotiated, particularly in reference to non-traditional students, Rethinking Student Belonging in Higher Education counters prevailing assumptions for what it means to belong and how institutional policy is shaped and implemented around traditional students. Bringing theoretical insights into institutional areas of policy and practice, this book: considers what it means to belong as a non-traditional student in a higher education environment designed for traditional students; presents the argument for belonging in line with theoretical insights of Bourdieu, Brah and Massey; illustrates belonging through case studies drawn from empirical research; and presents the argument for a borderland analysis of belonging in higher education, identifying key features and advantages of this theoretical framework. Reframing belonging within a neo-liberal, marketised higher education sector, Rethinking Student Belonging in Higher Education is a topical and accessible point of reference for any academic in the field of higher education policy and practice, as well as those involved in ensuring widening participation, equality, diversity, inclusion and fair access.

Arguing for an understanding of belonging in higher education as relational, complex and negotiated, particularly in reference to non-traditional students, Rethinking Student Belonging in Higher Education counters prevailing assumptions for what it means to belong and how institutional policy is shaped and implemented around traditional students. Bringing theoretical insights into institutional areas of policy and practice, this book: considers what it means to belong as a non-traditional student in a higher education environment designed for traditional students; presents the argument for belonging in line with theoretical insights of Bourdieu, Brah and Massey; illustrates belonging through case studies drawn from empirical research; and presents the argument for a borderland analysis of belonging in higher education, identifying key features and advantages of this theoretical framework. Reframing belonging within a neo-liberal, marketised higher education sector, Rethinking Student Belonging in Higher Education is a topical and accessible point of reference for any academic in the field of higher education policy and practice, as well as those involved in ensuring widening participation, equality, diversity, inclusion and fair access.

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)'s aims, implementation and effect on the English higher education sector remains a controversial and often contested subject. This text offers a stimulating and wide-ranging interdisciplinary discussion of the implications of the TEF on the UK's fast-moving policy environment, and increasingly neoliberal higher education sector. Questioning the basic premise of the TEF, the authors tease out how students and staff are affected in different and often unfair ways by its implementation. Whilst acknowledging that the TEF has focused management attention on ways in which a diverse student population is, or is not, supported in their learning, this book highlights how it remains problematically silent on other kinds of diversity in the system such as specialised courses, diverse teaching styles, and varying institution sizes. Offering readers ways of rethinking and resisting 'teaching excellence', this book provides a timely examination of how, in various ways, the TEF, treated as an exclusionary quality assurance system, is likely to reinforce extant structural inequalities and competitive hierarchies in the sector.