Tony Hall, Professor of Education, School of Education & Director of Educational Design Research for Designing Futures, University of Galway, Ireland
Michelle Millar, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Program Lead for Designing Futures & Head of the School of Political Science and Sociology, University of Galway, Ireland
Abdellatif Atif, Postdoctoral Researcher, Designing Futures, University of Galway, Ireland
Introduction
This call for papers for a special issue of Information and Leaning Sciences: Design for Belonging and Engagement: Designing Inclusive Higher Education Futures welcomes submissions that examine and illustrate how we can design inclusive higher education futures that promote belonging and engagement for all students.
Empirical and theoretical submissions are invited that focus on inclusion, equity and diversity across academic disciplines (STEM, Arts and Humanities, Medicine, Teacher Education, etc.); at different levels (freshman to senior to graduate student); racially or ethnically under-represented, minoritized groups; LGBTQIA+; students with disabilities, first-generation students, mature students, international students, students from recently immigrated families, formerly incarcerated.
Contemporary society is faced with challenging and complex issues, including: "climate change disasters, public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, gun violence, wars, and growing societal inequality, instability, and unrest" (UNESCO, 2020; Liu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020) (Reynolds, 2024, p.315). This fraught prevailing context is having a significant impact on students' wellbeing and mental health. Furthermore, as they enter college and higher education, many are at a highly formative time in their lives, which underscores the duty of care that HE institutions and professionals have with respect to students' holistic development and their preparation for their future personal and professional lives: "they are often emerging adults undergoing a transitional developmental stage involving significant personal-level growth of self-understanding and the stabilization of one's own mental health and capacity" (Reynolds, 2023, p. 316-317). Meanwhile, and in tandem, the global challenges we now face necessitate that HEIs adapt existing and innovate new curricula, to support the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, placing students and educational institutions in a pressure cooker to prepare for these sweeping changes in altogether new ways , during vulnerable stages of students' lives, (2023).
Higher education (HE) is currently situated in a challenging context and moment. The return to campuses globally since the wholesale disruption wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic has been complicated by the emergence of AI and its impact on learning, assessment and academic integrity (Cotton et al, 2024). The pandemic has also raised foundational questions regarding the place and purpose of higher education, particularly the importance of a new conceptualization of care in education – for oneself, for others and for the planet (Lynch, 2022), with many students also managing significant caring responsibilities. The pandemic also represented a lever for change, and illustrated new possibilities, especially in terms of digital education futures and the potential of technology to mediate innovative learning, teaching and assessment (Hall et al, 2020; 2022; Reynolds & Chu, 2020).
Nonetheless, there has been significant learning loss as a consequence of the pandemic (Gage, 2023), resulting in students with new differing needs than previously existed, entering HE environments and requiring support. Further, higher education institutions and universities are increasingly expected to operate within a neo-liberal, globalized environment, framed by unnuanced coarse metrics and "learning analytics" (Lynch, 2015), along with pressure to address economic and fiscal objectives and austerities, while concomitantly protecting the essential notion of a higher education: the holistic development of the person as an active citizen who contributes creatively and critically to civic society (Hall et al., 2024). Universities and higher education institutions internationally are also subject to increasing scrutiny from funding agencies and organizations (Whitten at al., 2020).
The question framing this special issue thus arises: how can we design future higher education so that it supports and enhances students' belonging and engagement, particularly in this complex post-pandemic moment, when we are presented with opportunities to do things differently amidst significant challenges?
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