When students enter higher education, they not only start learning and studying but begin a journey of becoming someone new in relation to themselves and to society. Scholarly research has increasingly emphasised this transformative element of higher education yet, to date, the role of assessment has received little attention in the processes of…

Professional identity formation (PIF) is an integral part of educating professionals. A well-formed professional identity helps individuals to develop a meaningful professional self-understanding that facilitates their transition to and sustainability in professional work. Although professional identity and its formation are well theorized, it is…

Drawing upon the mutually constitutive notions of possible selves and agency, this study illuminates how maintaining a future orientation in doctoral education acts to supply candidates with a pivotal sense of direction and drive their experimentation with disparate pathways to realise their academic career aspirations. In-depth analysis of two…

Black males continue to be underrepresented in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Some of the barriers to representation are due to lack of exposure, academic expectations, lack of belief in one's ability, and opportunity gaps. The purpose of this article is to discuss how homeplace (Black joy, authenticity, and…

Black men's experiences in education are often marked by isolation, imposter syndrome, and racial microaggressions. This qualitative case study, guided by the five enactments of Cross and Fhagen Smith's (2001) model of Black identity development, explored the experiences of 20 Black men doctoral students as they navigated and continually redefined…

Purpose: Highly developed and agile learners who can clearly convey and call on their skills are sought in all walks of life. Diverse demand for these capacities has called attention to how the skills and knowledge gained during doctoral study can be conveyed, translated and leveraged in non-academic settings; however, the complex learning reality…

While leader identity development (LID) and meaning making are interwoven and essential for student development, little research has explicitly explored their intersection. In this article, we briefly summarize the work of two research projects that explored the intersection of LID and meaning making, including a review of the findings that…

This qualitative descriptive study examined the process of purpose development of nine (seven females, two males; M[subscript age] = 20.2, age range 18-21 years) college students who completed interviews in fall 2017 and spring 2019 at a private university. Across the two time points, participants engaged in an iterative process that led them to…

Despite its presence on many colleges and universities and substantial financial investment in higher education, very little research has explored whether and how participation in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) shapes college students' experiences and development. Using data from interviews with 20 cadets in one U.S. Army ROTC…

Assessment of student learning is commonly understood as a seemingly objective measurement of learning outcomes. It is seen as fair that assessment targets students' abilities -- not their identities or personalities. This idea fails to acknowledge how assessment transforms its object, the students, often in unintended ways. While higher education…

In this research, we examine learning within doubly authentic learning designs, which combine the sociocultural perspective that classrooms should be congruent with professional practices, along with a humanistic perspective that suggests students' identities should be aligned with what they inquire about in class. Our work is situated in a…

Student success is an integral part of systemic change research. However, students' lived experiences and voices are often subdued in this programme, leaving the change that occurs to be evaluated upon measures that do not capture a holistic view of the experiences students and their shifting identities during the roll-out of those changes. These…

First-generation students, a population that makes up one-third of all college and university students nationwide, and expected to grow, have lower retention and graduation rates than continuing-generation students. They also have been identified as the population of marginalized students that have the least developed sense of belonging.…

This study, based on the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS), examined pathways to pluralism orientation among more than 5,700 students who attended 118 U.S. colleges and universities between 2015 and 2019. Grounded in Critical Religious Pluralism Theory (CRPT), the analysis elevated the role of identities…

In discussing the functions of education Gert Biesta distinguishes qualification, socialisation and subjectification. In subjectification higher education facilitates the evolution of students as distinctive self-determining persons. This paper foregrounds and discusses 'student self-formation', a paradigm of subjectification with fecund…