The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) is a UK-based international learned society. They bring together researchers in the field of higher education, run several themed networks, and deliver a programme of events showcasing research into higher education and supporting researchers.
This year’s annual conference has been designed as a hybrid event; with a free one-day online conference on Monday 4 December, and an in-person event later this week.
The event opened with a plenary session from Dame Nicola Dandridge, who challenged delegates to consider how can research and policy be more connected? How can we make our research outputs more available to those working in policy? What more do we need to do to directly shape policy? For those interested in the relationship between research and policy-making, the following book by Lesley Saunders may be of interest – Educational research and policy making: exploring the border country between research and policy (available as an eBook in University of Bristol Library).
The rest of the day involved a series of parallel sessions, symposiums and opportunities to meet the network convenors. I had the pleasure of chairing a session with contributions from Australia and China.
Research into student experience
I attended several presentations about the student experience. The first shared findings from analysing a national student experience survey in Australia, comparing the responses for international students and domestic students. Core findings were that there were some aspects that are more negatively experienced by international students, especially “learner engagement”. A key take-away for me was a finding that international students from some regions actually have a more positive experience than their domestic peers. The second presentation shared findings from a systematic literature review of orientation and transition programmes. A key finding was that most of the literature comes from the United States, so there is a clear gap in the research available from a UK and Australian context. The existing research in the US demonstrates that structured orientation programmes have a positive impact on student retention and student achievement.
Other parallel sessions explored the student experience, including subjects of refugees, disabled students, doctoral students, engagement with resits and interruptions, belonging.
Research into staff experiences and academic work
I also attended sessions that shared research into staff experiences in higher education, with contributions from the UK, New-Zealand, Finland and China. From research into crisis leadership, I gained some fascinating insight into how decisions were made within higher education institutions during a crisis, the influence of different staff groups, and the ability to make rapid decisions. From the presentations on academic experiences, I really enjoyed the sharing of practice using creative methods, particularly photo elicitation, which is such an inclusive way to generate data and to allow participants to express themselves in ways other than spoken words. The following article was recommend for more insight into visual methodologies, and inspiration for other creative methods such as attentive walks around campuses. And I learned about the experiences of international academics cultural assimilation into Chinese Universities, an area of higher education research that was completely new to me.
Other parallel sessions explored the staff experience from other perspectives, including resistance, imposter syndrome, leadership, curriculum design, leadership, curriculum design, delivering online learning, geopolitics and university rankings.
Newer researchers in higher education
The newer researchers network is designed for postgraduate students researching higher education as well as established researchers within their discipline who moving into pedagogic research. As one of the convenors for the newer researchers’ network I also had the chance to chat with newer researchers at the online conference and share the plans for the network this year, which includes a webinar series which is currently open for proposals. Personally, I was really pleased to meet more higher education researchers who have a background in professional services roles. It was also great to hear what would be useful support in this space, including “demystifying theoretical frameworks for HE research” “what counts as research and impact in HE research” and “what data sets already exist to for HE research”.
It was brilliant to see the huge range of higher education research taking place. You can view the whole programme of abstracts here. I hope others will consider attending the conference next year, or share their research in this space.
If you would like to know more about the SRHE, including the newer researchers’ network, please do get in touch charlotte.verney@bristol.ac.uk
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