This article focuses on student persistence in Higher Education. It examines qualities that enable students to persist in their studies despite the challenges they face, and key factors interplaying with and affecting these qualities. This study utilised the explanatory mixed-methods approach. It comprised a faculty-wide survey which explained the relationships between and across variables. Focus group interviews explored significant predictors of students’ persistence. Results from this study showed that, among other things, key drivers of student persistence were personal optimism, academic engagement, and positive relationships. Students’ decision to stay on and complete their studies determines their persistence; but there also remains a major role to be played by institutions. Successful student persistence tends to be a result of an intricate interaction between the student’s personal factors and their environment – and the institution is a key component of that environment.

Social sustainability is linked to finding new ways of living together and strengthening social capital and participation, as well as to social justice and equity in societies, and it is becoming increasingly important for diverse multicultural societies. In this article, we trace understandings of social sustainability as established in Early Childhood Education (ECE) policy documents by following the chains of meaning connected to sense of belonging, local place and cultural diversity and through ECE collaboration with children’s parents/caregivers. Critical discourse analysis has been applied to trace the chains of meaning attached to these concepts in ECE steering documents in Australia, Croatia, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Such analysis shows different ways in which the ECE polices indirectly work with social sustainability, as well as create critical distance from the sets of meanings established in each country (by proving a chain of meaning established in the policy documents of another country). In conclusion, we do not advocate in favour of any of the chains of meaning but argue for continual reflection and reflexivity, and we see research to be a particularly significant arena in which to unfreeze the taken for granted and sustainable notion.

After years of research and theorisation connected to education for sustainable development, the holistic core of sustainability seems to have disappeared within the frames of the social, environmental and economic pillars. This article suggests a post-humanism inspired understanding of a sense of belonging. Even though the phenomenon of belonging is ascribed to social sustainability, the post-human theoretical toolkit challenges the humanism-based understanding of a sense of belonging as a human-related phenomenon. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome and affect concepts and Barad’s concept of intra-action, we show the connections between the human and nonhuman elements constituting each other in our world. We conclude with the implications that using post-human language (to understand belonging) may have for policy, Early Childhood Education and care (ECEC) practice and theory.

The imperative to address the complex problem of degree awarding gaps within UK higher education institutions is multifaceted and messy. Various studies have continually highlighted this persistent undergraduate awarding gap (racial equity gap or/ethnicity gap) between White and racially minoritised students. This disparity in educational outcomes, where racially minoritised students compared to their White counterparts are less likely to graduate with good honours degrees, has gained considerable attention from policymakers and scholars. This underscores the need for comprehensive strategies that transcend conventional approaches and boundaries to achieve systemic change. Efforts to close the awarding gap have predominantly focused on decolonising the curriculum, which is vital. Still, it is also crucial to recognise personal tutoring (PT) as a pivotal and often underestimated role in addressing the awarding gap. The PT role, with its potential to provide a joined‐up experience for students, promoting student engagement and enabling them to navigate the ever‐changing academic landscape, can be a catalyst for racial equity and an antidote to the degree awarding gap. By reviewing the literature, empirical studies, policy frameworks and practical implementations, this paper sheds light on the diverse ways PT can serve as a potent tool for promoting equity and inclusion and enhancing equitable outcomes for all. Through a synthesis of existing literature and critical analysis, this scoping review highlights ways PT in higher education is conceptualised nationally and internationally and how it can drive transformational change in higher education when aligned with principles of equity.

This article proposes (re‐)thinking‐feeling the current Western‐centric metrics‐driven measurement of ‘quality’ in learning and teaching in higher education. We argue that ensuring ‘quality’ in learning and teaching is an undeniable imperative, as it not only cultivates possibilities for students to think critically and engage imaginatively in an ever‐shifting global environment. The challenge is not only the measurement but the confusion between what is measured and what is experienced and the neoliberal marketisation regime of higher education ( HE ) that has transformed institutional priorities, connecting ‘quality’ and the performance metrics that underpin it. Conversations with five academics who participated in this study within the UK context, reveal a consensus that applying a standardised, ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’ measurement of ‘quality’ in learning and teaching in higher education is fraught with difficulties. Each discipline must embrace tailored, contextually appropriate, and discipline‐specific approaches to conceptualising and evaluating ‘quality’. We argue that Ubuntu ethico‐onto‐epistemological philosophy and praxis, decoloniality and posthumanism can help us think about ‘quality’ differently, enabling ways to resist colonial paradigms and neoliberal logic and their impact.

Situated within a wider cross‐institutional research project, this article provides an in‐depth case study of one higher education (HE) institution, focusing on how personal tutors make sense of racialised degree awarding disparities for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, how they perceive their responsibilities, the challenges and opportunities to contribute to ‘closing’ the awarding gap, and how they experience the positioning of the personal tutoring role within institutional equity agendas. Using an explanatory mixed‐methods design, which included a survey of 166 personal tutors alongside in‐depth conversational interviews, this study illuminates ways in which institutional structures and logics create possibilities for transformative personal tutoring practise whilst also constraining in ways that positioning personal tutoring as a site of struggle with and against normalised and familiar ideas of what personal tutoring should and should not be. Findings indicate that personal tutoring is positioned as both a site of responsibility for addressing racialised awarding gaps and a form of labour constrained by institutional norms of professionalism, neutrality and care. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, the study demonstrates how racialised power relations shape personal tutors' sense of agency, risk and recognition, and argues for a re‐conceptualisation of personal tutoring as a structurally embedded practise central to equity work in HE. Quantitative findings are interpreted cautiously given subgroup size disparities and are used to illuminate patterns that are explored in depth through qualitative analysis.