Analysing regional student engagement: identifying institutional strategies for student success

Karen Nelson, Kylie Readman, Ian Stoodley and Catherine Picton

Chapter 11 in Research Handbook on Student Engagement in Higher Education, 2024, pp 149-166 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Despite widespread reform arising from the 2008 Bradley Report, national data (https://www.education.gov.au/higher-education-statistics/resources/completion-rates-higher-education-students-cohort-analysis-20052021) shows that university participation and attainment rates for people in rural, regional and remote (RRR) areas of Australia continue to lag behind metropolitan areas. We believed that aligning the inherent characteristics and circumstances of RRR university students with their academic outcomes was masking a more complex and nuanced set of conditions affecting their engagement. We investigated these phenomena in a national study across eight institutions using quantitative and qualitative data. The conceptual and analytical foundation for the 3-stage research project was Kahu’s (2014) framework. The key findings are expressed as narratives. They emphasise the critical nature of first encounters and positive psychosocial experiences having a compensatory effect; mitigating previous disadvantage, increasing student engagement and outcomes, and building capacity for civic engagement and personal growth, and importantly that improved outcomes generate enduring change that bridges socio-cultural incongruity (Devlin, 2013).

Keywords: Education; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035314294.00021 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22430_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().