The Experiences of Higher Education Students in Further Education Colleges: A Post-Structural Analysis

The overall aim of this thesis was to consider and critically analyse the discourses that shape students’ experiences of HE-in-FE. This research analysed the discourses drawn upon by students and staff within a small FEC to describe their experiences in order to analyse how such discourses enable and constrain the experiences of the students. The research aimed to trouble the taken for granted discourses, in particular, those of widening participation, vulnerability and support, to highlight how such discourses may be enabling and constraining the HE-in-FE students’ experiences and identities. The drive to increase participation in HE in England and the focus on widening participation in HE has resulted in the expansion of the provision of HE-in-FE. Such provision traditionally attracts non-traditional students, that is, those from working class backgrounds who are usually first-generation entrants to HE. The widening participation discourses within which these non-traditional students are located shape their experiences as students. There is little research which analyses how these students’ experiences are shaped by the discourses. In order to meet the research aims a post-structuralist approach was taken to the research. A case study was conducted within a small Further Education College (FEC) in the north of England. A range of research methods were employed within the study including interviews, non-participant observations, photo elicitation group interviews and documentary analysis. Using this data, the discourses used to describe the experiences of HE-in-FE students were captured and analysed using discourse analysis. The findings of this research suggest that that the widening participation discourse shapes the experiences of HE-in-FE students in contradictory ways. HE-in-FE students have been placed within a deficit discourse which influences the students’ confidence and self-esteem, shaping their identities and experiences. This works to reproduce social disadvantage and as such the provision of HE-in-FE may act as a new mechanism for maintaining inequality. At the same time however, widening participation positions students as having potential. This has the contradictory effect of shaping students’ identities positively. Students construct an identity characterised by a sense of independence and determination to improve

Catalyzing Equity in STEM Teams: Harnessing Generative AI for Inclusion and Diversity

Collaboration is key to STEM, where multidisciplinary team research can solve complex problems. However, inequality in STEM fields hinders their full potential, due to persistent psychological barriers in underrepresented students' experience. This paper documents teamwork in STEM and explores the transformative potential of computational modeling and generative AI in promoting STEM-team diversity and inclusion. Leveraging generative AI, this paper outlines two primary areas for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. First, formalizing collaboration assessment with inclusive analytics can capture fine-grained learner behavior. Second, adaptive, personalized AI systems can support diversity and inclusion in STEM teams. Four policy recommendations highlight AI's capacity: formalized collaborative skill assessment, inclusive analytics, funding for socio-cognitive research, human-AI teaming for inclusion training. Researchers, educators, policymakers can build an equitable STEM ecosystem. This roadmap advances AI-enhanced collaboration, offering a vision for the future of STEM where diverse voices are actively encouraged and heard within collaborative scientific endeavors.Comment: 21 pages, 0 figure, to be published in Policy Insights from Behavioral and Brain Science

‘This trade of Death’: war and the figure of the soldier in Gothic fiction, 1764-1823

This thesis explores the British Gothic fiction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with particular focus on those authors publishing in the aftermath of the French Revolution and during the years of the Revolutionary Wars. Although there has been significant critical study into the Gothic as a literature of terror, responding to the political climate after the fall of the Bastille, very little academic study has interrogated the Gothic’s origins as a literature of conflict. This thesis argues that the conventions begun by Horace Walpole in 1764 and continued by writers such as Ann Radcliffe into the 1790s were used within Gothic novels to engage with social anxieties relating to and surrounding war. These novels repeatedly use soldiers as both heroes and villains, employ war as a backdrop to the plot, or place their narrative in a time specifically defined by war. By analysing the work of Walpole, Radcliffe, Francis Lathom, Regina Maria Roche, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley alongside contemporary pamphlets, poems, songs, and treatises this thesis explores how the Gothic, in the wake of the Seven Years War and on into the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, engaged with concerns about conflict, the army as an ideological body, and with the soldier himself. Drawing on ideas of chivalry and a growing trend towards nationalism, this thesis explores the ways in which the Gothic was used to discuss notions such as masculinity and national identity whilst reacting to the ever-changing realities of a nation at war

Collaboration and contestation in further and higher education partnerships in England: a Bourdieusian field analysis

Internationally, ‘College for All’ policies are creating new forms of vocational higher education (HE), and shifting relationships between HE and further education (FE) institutions. In this paper, we consider the way in which this is being implemented in England, drawing on a detailed qualitative case study of a regional HE–FE partnership to widen participation. We focus on the complex mix of collaboration and contestation that arose within it, and how these affected socially differentiated groups of students following high- and low-status routes through its provision. We outline Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ as a framework for our analysis and interpretation, including its theoretical ambiguities regarding the definition and scale of fields. Through hermeneutic dialogue between data and theory, we tentatively suggest that such partnerships represent bridges between HE and FE. These bridges are strong between higher-status institutions, but highly contested between lower-status institutions competing closely for distinction. We conclude that the trajectories and outcomes for socially disadvantaged students require attention and collective action to address the inequalities they face, and that our theoretical approach may have wider international relevance beyond the English case

Role of orexin A signaling in dietary palmitic acid-activated microglial cells

AbstractExcess dietary saturated fatty acids such as palmitic acid (PA) induce peripheral and hypothalamic inflammation. Hypothalamic inflammation, mediated in part by microglial activation, contributes to metabolic dysregulation. In rodents, high fat diet-induced microglial activation results in nuclear translocation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NFκB), and increased central pro-inflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). The hypothalamic neuropeptide orexin A (OXA, hypocretin 1) is neuroprotective in brain. In cortex, OXA can also reduce inflammation and neurodegeneration through a microglial-mediated pathway. Whether hypothalamic orexin neuroprotection mechanisms depend upon microglia is unknown. To address this issue, we evaluated effects of OXA and PA on inflammatory response in immortalized murine microglial and hypothalamic neuronal cell lines. We demonstrate for the first time in microglial cells that exposure to PA increases gene expression of orexin-1 receptor but not orexin-2 receptor. Pro-inflammatory markers IL-6, TNF-α, and inducible nitric oxide synthase in microglial cells are increased following PA exposure, but are reduced by pretreatment with OXA. The anti-inflammatory marker arginase-1 is increased by OXA. Finally, we show hypothalamic neurons exposed to conditioned media from PA-challenged microglia have increased cell survival only when microglia were pretreated with OXA. These data support the concept that OXA may act as an immunomodulatory regulator of microglia, reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines and increasing anti-inflammatory factors to promote a favorable neuronal microenvironment

Collaboration and contestation in further and higher education partnerships in England: a Bourdieusian field analysis

Internationally, ‘College for All’ policies are creating new forms of vocational higher education (HE), and shifting relationships between HE and further education (FE) institutions. In this paper, we consider the way in which this is being implemented in England, drawing on a detailed qualitative case study of a regional HE–FE partnership to widen participation. We focus on the complex mix of collaboration and contestation that arose within it, and how these affected socially differentiated groups of students following high- and low-status routes through its provision. We outline Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ as a framework for our analysis and interpretation, including its theoretical ambiguities regarding the definition and scale of fields. Through hermeneutic dialogue between data and theory, we tentatively suggest that such partnerships represent bridges between HE and FE. These bridges are strong between higher-status institutions, but highly contested between lower-status institutions competing closely for distinction. We conclude that the trajectories and outcomes for socially disadvantaged students require attention and collective action to address the inequalities they face, and that our theoretical approach may have wider international relevance beyond the English case

The global subject of precarity

Peer reviewedPostprin