Constructing the university student in British documentary television

Calver, K. and Michael-Fox, B. (2021) Constructing the university student in British documentary television. In: Brooks, R. and O'Shea, S. (eds.) Re-imagining the Higher Education Student : Constructing and Contesting Identities. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Calver_etal_Routledge_2021_Constructing_the_university_student_in_British_documentary_television (327kB)

Item Type:	Book Section
Abstract:	As the number of university students in Britain has expanded so has public interest in them, expressed across a range of media. This chapter investigates how university students are conceptualised and represented in recent British documentary television. Conceiving of television as a space in which people experience and engage with complex social understandings, this chapter explores how these televisual representations reflect and negotiate a range of prominent socio-cultural concerns about students. We examine how excessive, distorted and caricatured notions of the student have led to representations that are often polarised, with students positioned as either ‘at risk’ and in need of protection or as posing ‘a risk’ to themselves, to other students, and to the university sector. In a context of shifting understandings about university students in Britain and when the expansion, cost, ‘worth’ and ‘value’ of higher education are all under scrutiny, this chapter analyses the ways in which media representations can both serve to highlight and evade the complex lived realities of university students. The documentaries examined here offer sometimes contradictory constructions of the higher education student that correspond to broader social and cultural shifts in the ways in which the university student is understood in contemporary Britain.
Creators:	Calver, Kay and Michael-Fox, Bethan
Editors:	Brooks, Rachel and O'Shea, Sarah
Publisher:	Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:	Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > Education, Children and Young People
Date:	17 March 2021
Date Type:	Publication
Title of Book:	Re-imagining the Higher Education Student : Constructing and Contesting Identities
Language:	English
ISBN:	9780367426538
Status:	Published / Disseminated
Refereed:	Yes
Related URLs:	https://pure.northampton.ac.uk/en/public...
URI:	http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/14598

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