From High Expectations To Huge Disconnections: How Can Personal Tutoring Deal With A Problem Like Student Disengagement?

Martin, Vicky and Shephard, Catherine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2805-4943 (2025) From High Expectations To Huge Disconnections: How Can Personal Tutoring Deal With A Problem Like Student Disengagement? In: Annual Conference of the Socio-Legal Studies Association 2025, 15 April 2025 - 17 April 2025, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper explores the barriers to student engagement across the student experience, and the role of Personal Tutoring in providing solutions. It outlines how the student body and corresponding student need has continued to change (Dawn et al 2008) and advocates for a radical rethink of what we offer as support to students, and how. Drawing on research conducted with staff and students, it asks two key questions: (i) what do students need and want from their university experience including their personal tutoring provision and (ii ) are we, as academics, the best resource for universities to deliver this? Structured around what can at first seem to be different perspectives of staff and students, it contextualises the intersectional issues including massification and marketisation of higher education (Cantwell, Marginson and Smolentseva 2018), governance, the impact of COVID and the wellbeing agenda. The paper explores key emerging themes of caring, community and priority, observing how they can sometimes come into sharp conflict with each other. It reveals what is in fact common ground between staff and students, including the perceived fight against institutional barriers “within the large inflexible infrastructure that is higher education” (Detweiler 2022). Exploring this issue from a holistic, compassionate perspective the paper concludes by recommending a toolkit to support students to support themselves (Bleasdale and Humphries 2019) that is fit for purpose in the contemporary context and will help to prepare them for sustainable professional practice.