The benefits of student–faculty interactions are substantial in fostering undergraduate students’ social and intellectual growth throughout their academic pathways. In particular, out-of-class interactions offer several opportunities for students to engage meaningfully with faculty members in the campus environment. This study employs a qualitative approach to investigate how students interact with faculty outside the classroom and how students interpret faculty’s accessibility for out-of-class interactions. It also seeks to understand the challenges faced by students during these encounters. The findings of this study indicate that students seek out faculty outside the classroom for several reasons, but most of all for grade-related issues. While some students experienced a positive perception of faculty behaviour during informal contacts, the issue of infrequent interactions was emphasized as one of the challenges. The study indicates a variety of situations causing hesitancy and preventing students from seeking help outside the classroom.

Student participation in university classrooms plays a pivotal role in student learning and success in higher education. We conducted a qualitative study to comprehend how students navigate complex classroom environments. Our aim is to understand how students perceive class participation and interactions with teachers and how they interpret teaching practices vis-à-vis their participation. Data from 23 undergraduate students at one university in Mozambique were collected and analysed. The findings indicate nuanced views and experiences regarding student participation and interactions with faculty. Deterrents to classroom participation and interactions were identified. Contextual and cultural factors were paramount in revealing the types and qualities of interactions and classroom participation reported in this study. Furthermore, innovative teaching practices and faculty’s caring attitude and behaviour were linked to more active participation and positive feelings about learning.

This paper addresses how emotionally challenging experiences during work-basededucation may influence the professional becoming of student teachers and medicalstudents. We conducted a qualitative analysis of eight focus group interviewswith undergraduates from two universities in Sweden who studied to become eitherphysicians or teachers, and interpreted their experiences through Wenger’s theory ofcommunities of practice. The findings show that students’ ideal view of how to becaring in their aspiring professional role as physician or teacher collided with existingpractices, which affected them emotionally. In particular, the students found itchallenging when norms and practices differed from their values of professionalismand when the professional culture within practices reflected hardness (physicians) orresignation (teachers). Both medical students and student teachers experienced thatprofessional decision making and legitimacy challenged them emotionally, howeverin different ways and for different reasons. This study makes visible both generaland specific aspects of how students view their future role in the welfare sector andchallenging dimensions of professional practice. The findings bring into focus thequestion of how professional education can support students’ professional becomingin relation to their emotional challenges.

Digital technology offers several ways to change and fundamentally transform higher education practices. In this chapter, we illuminate digital transformations associated with the use of digital technology to assess student learning. Using qualitative interview data from teachers at two Universities in Sweden, we discuss teachers’ design decisions as they redesigned assignments and courses and introduced automated assessment. The use of digital technology affected teachers’ role and assessment work process in several ways, such as bringing forward and distributing assessment design decisions. We interpreted the possible epistemic consequences of what kind of knowledge teachers assessed with the use of digital technology and found examples of how digital technology facilitated teachers to rethink and create open-ended assignments allowing different ways for students to demonstrate their abilities (divergent assessment). However, against their intentions teachers mainly created pre-defined closed right-or-wrong answers (convergent assessment) resulting in less transparency of student (mis)understanding. Thus, the implementation of digital technology may innovate assessment practices, which in this sense is moving forward. From a pedagogical perspective, teachers’ adaptations of assessment using digital technology imply retrogression rather than innovation regarding how to capture student capabilities.

In this phenomenographic study, we contribute with a critical view on teachers’ understanding of the use of digital technology in education. By analysing engineering teachers in Sweden’s qualitative different ways of experiencing teaching-learning in virtual learning environments (VLEs) pre-COVID-19 pandemic, we found three different approaches: (A) increased transmission possibilities, (B) outlined trail and (C) forced compromises. Based on our findings, the tensions between the possibilities in the virtual learning environment and teachers’ teaching-learning intentions are discussed, and teachers’ decreased room for action to design for learning is problematised. Notably, teachers with an increased breadth of awareness of teaching-learning appear to experience the greatest tensions, forcing them to compromise their student-centred intentions.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate changes in empathy during medical education, as well as to identify promoters and inhibitors of empathy and analyse their roles. Methods: We used qualitative content analysis to examine 69 critically reflective essays written by medical students as a part of their final examination at the end of the medical program. The essays were based on previous self-evaluations performed each term and represented retrospective reflections on their professional development. Results: A majority of the students felt that their empathy did not decrease during medical education. On the contrary, many felt that their empathy had increased, especially the cognitive part of empathy, without loss of affective empathy. Many of them described a professionalisation process resulting in an ability to meet patients with preserved empathy but without being overwhelmed by emotions. They identified several factors that promoted the development of empathy: a multiplicity of patients, positive role models, and educational activities focusing on reflection and self-awareness. They also identified inhibitors of empathy: lack of professional competence and a stressful and empathy-hostile medical culture. Conclusions: Our analysis of these retrospective reflections by students suggests that empathy can be preserved during medical education, despite the presence of important inhibitors of empathy. This finding might be due to the presence of more potent promoters and/or to the fact that educational activities might result in a decreased susceptibility to empathy-decreasing circumstances.

This full research paper reports on a study of social dimensions when students learn to program. The aim of this study is to investigate students' experiences of social dimensions in learning to program as novices in a pair-programming lab setting. Data was collected by means of individual interviews with seven students mid-way through the course. A questionnaire to 77 students gave a background of the class as a whole and was used to select students for the interviews. The interview data were analyzed using an inductive content analysis method and interpreted theoretically from a pragmatist and transactional perspective on learning. Our results show different ways that the social dynamic between the students in a pair affected 1) the emotions experienced, 2) the extent to which students actively wrote code and interacted with the computer environment, and 3) how students perceived their competence. Interviewed students report that failure and success in a programming task result in an emotional roller coaster, and that in this turbulence, the social context is of utmost importance and weighs in when students consider if they are going to pursue a programming profession.

Student teachers have to cope with distressing emotions during teacher education. Coping is important in relation to both attrition and bridging the gap between being a student teacher and starting work. The data consist of semi-structured interviews with 25 student teachers, which were analysed using a constructivist grounded theory framework. The aim of the current study was to examine student teachers' perspectives on distressing situations during teacher education, as well as how boundaries were established as a way of coping with emotions related to these situations. The findings show that the student teachers' main concern was to make sense of the imbalance between resources and the demands placed by distressing situations. As a coping strategy, student teachers established professional boundaries linked to emotional labour and relationship maintenance.