Student protests,media and the university in India

Over the past several years there have been widespread student protests across universities in India. These protests have received considerable mainstream media coverage. This article focuses on media reportage of student protests in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, looking specifically at charges of sedition brought against a few students. The article considers the ways in which the media created narratives of the ‘anti-national’ student (and teacher) that helped to consolidate a particular sense of Indian identity. These narratives are linked to the corporatisation of Indian higher education, whereby the spaces for public debate are reduced and the idea of the university as a public good is threatened.     

‘It’s one of the first times I’ve felt fully engaged’: developing student engagement using blogging as a form of assessment

There is a widespread debate in higher education about how best to support students in becoming more active and engaged learners. Geographers have occupied a central position in these debates having long been concerned with understanding and creating teaching spaces that encourage active and experiential learning. Recent pedagogical innovations have seen a movement away from a reliance on lecturing as the key pedagogical method and a redefinition of the roles of both teacher and learner. In this paper, we look at the role that assessment, specifically assessed blogs, can play in enhancing student engagement. Drawing on interviews with Course Organizers from two case study courses, student focus groups, and course evaluation surveys we show the various ways in which blogs enhance engagement. We draw attention to how blogging enabled students to personalize their learning and make it more meaningful to them, as well as to foster greater engagement with the course materials including making connections across the course as a whole. Further, we show how blogging enabled students to develop transferable skills that would stand them in good stead for the rest of their time at university and in their future professional lives.     

The Epistemological Challenge of Higher Education Student Volunteering: “Reproductive” or “Deconstructive” Volunteering?

Abstract: This paper addresses student volunteering as an important socio‐cultural trend which is generally taken for granted and un‐interrogated. We explore tensions inherent in the practice and articulation of higher education student volunteering, via biographical narratives of contrasting student volunteers and employ Rose's (1993, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press) theory of “paradoxical space” to unpick and understand these narratives, as this has proven a generative approach to re‐conceptualising students’ engagement with universities and communities. Building on this theoretical approach, we propose a new conceptual framework to analyse students’ learning and understanding of social justice through volunteering. This framework contrasts reproductive altruism, or volunteering which reproduces social inequalities, with a deconstructive form that provides students with resources to recognise and challenge power relations and inequality in society.     

Negotiating time and space on a study abroad program in South India

This paper investigates the context of student learning in study abroad programs, drawing on ethnographic research on a semester long study abroad program in South India. We show how students use multiple constructions of time and space as a framework for understanding cultural differences and for understanding what it means for them to “experience” India. We argue that students' conceptualization of space and time in the study abroad location also impacts what kinds of activities they consider to count as valuable forms of learning. Students' ideas about India shape their expectations of what the pace, workload, and activities of the study abroad program in India should entail. Their concepts of Indian time and space lead them to privilege “experience”-based learning over classroom-based or scholarship-based learning. In conclusion, we show how these insights have implications for study abroad pedagogy. Here, we suggest that student learning that is entirely based on “experience” outside the classroom is inherently limited and that students need to contextualize their field-based learning experiences with insights from critical, historical and social science research.     

Appropriate remedial action? medical students, medical schools, and smoking and health education in New York and the United States, 1964-87

The Surgeon General's 1964 report on smoking and health, which declared that cigarette smoking was a cause of lung cancer, is considered a landmark in the history of medicine and public health. This article examines the impact of the report on medical student education by reviewing how the relationship between smoking and lung cancer was presented in medical school textbooks and syllabi between 1964 and 1987, changes in hospital smoking regulations and doctors' attitudes toward smoking following the publication of the report, and medical students' smoking patterns and attitudes toward cigarette smoking in the years after 1964. Although it provided some advanced students with additional insight into mechanisms of pathogenesis related to smoking, the education that many medical students received seems to have been neither a primary influence on their smoking patterns nor an important source of their scientific understanding of the causal link between smoking and lung cancer for at least a decade following the publication of the Surgeon General's report.     

On making noise: Hokkolorob and its place in Indian student movements

This article focuses on the 2014 Hokkolorob (‘Let there be noise’) movement at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, in the state of West Bengal, a student agitation that ultimately led to the forced resignation of a vice-chancellor after intervention by the Chief Minister of the state. This movement has passed into campus folklore, with a Wikipedia entry devoted to it signposting its distinctive cultural features, including public art and hashtag activism. However, in many ways Hokkolorob did not entirely fit the pattern of student protests at other Indian universities, not only because it achieved short-term success, drawing the wider public into openly expressed sympathy with the agitating students, but also because it eschewed party politics and opened the way for new expressions of dissent. Moreover, it drew attention to the problem of providing safe spaces on campuses to students across genders and orientations. Unique among the many upheavals in the Indian higher education landscape over the past few years, Hokkolorob needs to be understood in the context of a crisis that affects both the public university and the Indian polity.     

Identity and Image of Indian Geography: The People's Perspective

Geography is among the late beginner subjects at higher education level in India. As revealed in scholarly writings, this discipline had been subjected to discrimination for colonial reasons and continues to lurch even today. There have been many academic writings on Indian geography. This paper is an attempt to look at the discipline from the people's side. Against the backdrop of a brief history of Indian geography and current debates therein, various issues are discussed as revealed by ordinary people during a questionnaire-based survey across different sections of society and also focused informal discussions.     

'The Body Evidencing the Crime': Rape on Trial in Colonial India, 1860–1947

The history of rape on trial in colonial India sheds new light on the colonial civilising mission and the claims made by white men about saving brown women from brown men. Through an analysis of almost a century of case law, this article concludes that the modernisation of law and the development of a new medico-legal understanding of rape introduced evidentiary standards that placed a heavy burden on Indian women seeking judicial remedy in colonial courts. The fear imported from Britain of false charges combined with colonial views about Indian culture to make native female complainants doubly dubious. The colonial jurisprudence has survived to devastating effect in postcolonial India and Pakistan in ways that are explored and explained by the author.     

An examination of student veteran education pathways at an American university

Military veterans are enrolling in higher education at the highest rates since the Second World War. This research seeks to examine how military experiences related to student experiences within the discipline of Geography. We use a survey instrument to measure student motivations, attitudes, and aspirations for declared Geography majors. Given a high presence of military connected students, we then examine the similarities and differences in motivations, attitudes, and aspirations between military connected and non-military students. Findings suggest that there are similarities between military and non-military students with regard to motivating factors for selecting Geography as a major, there are differences with regards to attitudes towards cultural geography, and differences in how students perceive their future interactions with the environment. Differences in demographics and travel experiences also are identified and likely contribute to shaping undergraduate geography experiences. The results offer useful insight on current Geography student needs, and assist faculty and departments in tailoring learning based on student experience.     

Learning across distances: an international collaborative learning project between Berlin and Turku

Many geographers graduating from universities enter an international and project-based professional life, which includes working in geographically dispersed project teams. In Europe, the Bologna process aligned study programs and supported student mobility to prepare students for such a work environment. However, research on higher education has reported few examples of international courses that include collaborative learning during which students have experience of both co-location and geographical dispersion. This paper reports on a pilot course that implemented international student-led research projects in two Geography Departments: the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University of Turku. We monitored the students’ learning processes via a survey that was administered at the beginning, middle and end of the course, complemented by observations, informal discussions and student team reports. We analysed the survey and observations within a proximity-distance framework to identify the key challenges and good practices for supporting collaborative learning. We developed a model for organising an international course that applies both geographical distance and co-location.     

Schools of resistance – a brief history of student activism in Kashmir

This article traces the unique stance and nature of student politics in Kashmir. Drawing from an historical overview, it will argue that student activism in Kashmir is largely different from activism in India as it does not restrict itself to advocacy of student issues. Rather, it places itself squarely in the people’s struggle for self-determination and counter-colonial sentiment in the Kashmir Valley. Setting out from the pre-colonial era, the article first traces the evolution of Muslim political consciousness and the key role of education in this process. These changes will be drawn against the historical evolution of the Kashmir conflict to highlight the context in which the specificities of student activism in the Valley can be drawn out. The second section, which forms the bulk of the article, traces the history and nature of activism in Kashmir, drawing on major historical events, interviews with erstwhile and contemporary student leaders, and local memoirs. In doing so, the article aims to present the conjoining of student politics and a larger politics of self-determination in Kashmir post-independence, which is an important aspect of the emergence of Muslim identity in conflict with the occupying state.     

Please mind the gap: students' perspectives of the transition in academic skills between A-level and degree-level geography

This paper explores first-year undergraduates' perceptions of the transition from studying geography at pre-university level to studying for a degree. This move is the largest step students make in their education, and the debate about it in the UK has been reignited due to the government's planned changes to A-level geography. However, missing from most of this debate is an appreciation of the way in which geography students themselves perceive their transition to university. This paper begins to rectify this absence. Using student insights, we show that their main concern is acquiring the higher level skills required for university learning.     

How and why we should encourage undergraduate geography students to participate in the Erasmus programme

Studying or working abroad during the course of an undergraduate degree has been associated with many positive outcomes and benefits. Despite this, there is scant literature on the role higher education institution (HEIs) play in encouraging outgoing student mobility. There is subsequently limited practical guidance for individuals within HEIs wishing to increase student participation in mobility programmes. Using evidence from the existing literature, and primary research conducted for a PhD study, this paper addresses this gap and offers guidance for encouraging students' participation in the European region action scheme for the mobility of university students (Erasmus). This paper focuses on the mobility of geography students who underperform in terms of participation in the Erasmus programme.     

Questions of minority,agency and voice: student protests in India in 2016

This article takes up issues around questions of minority, agency and voice in relation to the student protests sparked off in the capital city of India, Delhi, in 2016, with other student protests reverberating in the background across India on different campuses – in the east, at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, and in the south, at Hyderabad University. Focusing on the moment at midnight 2 March 2016 when the student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was released on bail and returned to Jawaharlal Nehru University campus to address a large gathering, the question is formulated here with respect to how the students of India, who are citizens of the country but who were in a minority in relation to the reigning political dispensation, were treated by their own government almost as stateless migrants are by the nation-states that seek to contain them. This moment of protest and agitation, beamed across the country on television and carried in newsprint and on social media is read here through song, metaphor and the notion of the stateless, reflecting on how the postcolonial was reconfigured when agency was snatched back by students repudiating the subaltern categories into which they had been corralled by the state.     

Curriculum reform: a transformation or consumption model for politics and international relations?

For decades, politics and international relations (PaIR) programs across Australia have taken a smorgasbord or student consumption approach to curriculum development. This article examines whether, with the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), there has been a systematisation and transformation of curriculum. It surveys 21 programs and majors in the field offered at 10 universities. It analyses directions in program structure, content and to a lesser extent delivery in order to discover whether there is a shared picture of graduate outcomes. The model of curriculum as a product students’ select elements of to consume has largely continued and there has been no disciplinary debate about direction. This may well result in marginalisation if PaIR cannot successfully attract enough new students or influence regulatory debates, which will likely expand given the ongoing massification of higher education in Australia.     

Teaching Introductory Geographic Information Systems through Problem-based Learning and Public Scholarship

This paper is concerned with the transition from school/college to higher education and discusses the outcomes of surveys of first-year undergraduates enrolled on geography degrees with respect to their experiences of field study as part of GCE Advanced level programmes prior to entry. Despite the core status given to fieldwork in the geographical training offered at Advanced level, the surveys show substantial variation among students in terms of field days, ranging from zero to 11 days. Consequently, each student cohort has a very uneven background of field study. Additionally, although students have developed generally positive attitudes to field study, a number of preferences and prejudices are identified. Many students have clearer recollections of data collection and recording techniques than of the character of the places in which investigations occurred. The resultant implications for field study within undergraduate programmes are discussed.     

建立融洽的师生关系 促进学生身心健康发展

师生关系直接影响教育效果;关爱学生是班主任搞好班级工作的前提;班主任要积极创造条件,主动亲近学生,细心体察、全面深入细致地了解学生的内心世界,为学生摆脱烦恼、化解困惑;对学生存在的问题多一点理解和宽容;用一颖平等的心与学生交往,尊重学生,促进学生身心的健康发展。     

Misunderstandings about Student Transitions to University: A Slow-Motion Dialogue between Staff and Students

This study is based on a stage-by-stage dialogue between four geography staff and seven students. Members of staff were asked to identify issues that reflect academically inappropriate behaviour in classes for students at university (as opposed to school) level. Students were then asked to comment on the staff's views. In general, the students felt that staff's comments showed a lack of understanding about what the students were going through in making the transition to tertiary education. Rejoinders from staff were notable for leading to new ideas, reinforcing positions or, in one case, feeling misinterpreted. The dialogue led to reflections on misunderstandings about student transitions to tertiary education.     

The drivers to Erasmus work placement mobility for UK students

This paper examines the drivers to UK student work placement mobility through the Erasmus programme (European Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students). This research was stimulated by the overrepresentation of UK students in the Erasmus work placement programme since its introduction in 2007. Using a multi-methods approach, based on student interviews and report analysis, five main drivers to Erasmus work placement mobility are revealed: employability, the economic downturn and subsequent failure to secure a placement in the UK, language, finance and personal factors. This paper discusses these five factors to reveal the complex and interlinked influences that encourage UK students to undertake an Erasmus work placement. Overall, employability is identified as the main driver to the mobility of Erasmus work placement students. It is argued that the neoliberal agenda in UK higher education, to streamline away from education for the public good, towards education for employability purposes, is a key factor in explaining the popularity of Erasmus work placements in the UK. Importantly, this paper argues that the drivers to work placement mobility are different to the motivations to study abroad. It is, therefore, essential that they are dealt with separately in order to explore the differences and similarities between sub-types of student mobility.     

Emergent Geographies of International Education and Social Exclusion

This paper explores the socio‐spatial implications of recent developments in the internationalisation of education, which includes the growth in numbers of foreign students and the establishment of offshore schools. It demonstrates the relationship between emergent geographies of international education in the “West” and social reproduction in both student “sending” and “receiving” societies. Drawing on fieldwork in Hong Kong and Canada, it argues that international education is transforming the spatial scales over which social reproduction is achieved: on the one hand, upper‐middle‐class populations in East Asia are able to secure their social status through the acquisition of a “Western education”, thereby creating new geographies of social exclusion within “student‐sending” societies. On the other hand, primary and secondary schools in Canada are able to harness the benefits of internationalisation in order to offset the negative effects of neoliberal educational reform, thereby facilitating local social reproduction.