Beyond the Data: The Politics of Care in Student Experience and Engagement

Abstract

Student experience and engagement have emerged as key components of pedagogic strategies and agendas in higher education institutions in many parts of the Global North since the turn of the twenty-first century.  We argue that the academy should understand student engagement as a collective re-figuring of pedagogic values to be more affective. Key to this, we argue, is a holistic notion of care, which manifests in multiple and multivalent ways: care for the individual student, care for the programme, care for the institution, and care for the sector.  This case study outlines the work undertaken at Newcastle University (UK) in the past half-decade, which is predicated upon a holistic view of student experience, rather than a reactionary approach to the data alone.  Student experience is the solid foundation for all education discussions and decisions, and the student voice has been centred alongside the data so that we are not driven by the annual cycle of review which the National Student Survey has mandated.