Students' Experiences of Psychosocial Problems in Higher Education: Battling and Belonging

Description

Around the world, students in higher education suffer from and deal with psychosocial problems. This phenomenon is universal and seems to be increasing. A vast number of students enter higher education with problems like stress, anxiety or depression, or develop them during their student lives, due to, for example, loneliness, family crisis, mental health or study environment issues. Battling, belonging and recognition are the focal points of this book’s analyses, showing how students faced with psychosocial problems experience high degrees of stigma and exclusion in the academic communities and society as such. The book is based on research situated in a welfare society, Denmark, where students have relatively easy access to higher education and to public support for education as well as special support for students with psychosocial problems. Taking a student perspective, the book provides in-depth, qualitative analyses of what characterizes student life, which specific psychosocial and other problems students experience, how problems are constructed, represented and become significant in relation to studying, and, not least, how students deal with them. It will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of educational psychology, sociology of education and higher education. It will also be of interest to supervisors and administrators in higher education. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents List of contributors Acknowledgements 1 Battling and belonging. Students’ psychosocial problems and the experience of higher education 2 Higher education as a battlefield. Contradictions in the Danish educational context 3 The orientation towards a student perspective. Methodological framework 4 “If I look at myself . . .” Poetic representations of students’ negotiations of self 5 “Like everyone else can.” Shameful identities and the narrative of the ‘good student’ in higher education 6 “I cannot even set the pace.” Asynchronicity and inequality in an accelerated educational system 7 “If you don’t feel at ease socially.” Recognition, loneliness and communities in higher education 8 “I see it as an extra job I have.” Students’ extra work in making higher education accessible 9 From battling to belonging in higher education Appendix Index