Browsing by Person "Taylor, Louise"

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Learners or consumers? Exploring the grade gap between widening participation and non-widening participation students
(Open Access Publishing Association, 2025-05-26) Jones, Sian; Taylor, Louise; Johnson, Karl
Students from widening participation (non-traditional) backgrounds are increasingly entering higher education, yet they are typically awarded lower grades than non-widening participation students. This gap was explored from a social identity theory perspective to examine two key student identities that impact performance: university student (positive impact), and educational consumer (negative impact). Students were studying in a mass-consumer cultural context, Scotland, United Kingdom. A moderated moderation model was used to test the hypothesis that a consumer identity would have a negative impact on the relation between university student identity and grades, and that this would be more harmful for widening participation students compared to non-widening participation students given their increased social identity conflicts. An online questionnaire was completed by 133 widening participation and 100 non-widening participation students (85% women, mean age 22.6 years). As expected, the model was significant. For widening participation students, the positive relation between university student identity and grades reduced (disappeared) when students had a stronger consumer identity. For non-widening participation students, however, there were no relations among the variables, thus the hypothesis was partly supported. These findings suggest that a consumer identity contributes to the grade gap between these student groups, and that institutions should support students to resist developing an educational consumer identity in mass-consumer cultural contexts.
Perceptions of feedback and engagement with feedback among undergraduates: an educational identities approach
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-08-22) Rose, Sarah; Taylor, Louise; Jones, Sian
Engaging with feedback has been widely shown to support learning, but levels of engagement with feedback among individual students varies considerably. This study assessed educational identities to understand this variation, while also seeking to confirm the distinct but related role of perceptions of feedback. Data from 170 undergraduate students in the UK completed an online questionnaire to assess their perceptions of feedback, engagement with feedback, learner identity, consumer identity, and discipline identity, as well as provide age, gender, ethnicity, and level of study. As predicted, perceptions of feedback was significantly positively correlated with engagement with feedback, and learner identity and discipline identity were also significantly positively correlated with perceptions of feedback and engagement with feedback. Data were subsequently analysed to test various hypotheses about the interactions among these variables. Critically, we found support for the proposed mediating effect of perceptions of feedback on the relation between learner identity and engagement with feedback, however, consumer identity did not moderate this effect. These findings suggest that students who demonstrate the greatest engagement with feedback are those with a strong learner identity, thus, interventions to promote learner identity may increase students’ engagement with feedback and ultimately improve their outcomes.