Sally Baker

The individual has never been more important in society – in almost every sphere of public and private life, the individual is sovereign. Yet the importance and apparent power assigned to the individual is not all that it seems. As ‘Responsible Citizens’ investigates via its UK-based case studies, this emphasis on the individual has gone hand in hand with a rise in subtle authoritarianism, which has insinuated itself into the government of the population. Whilst present throughout the public services, this authoritarianism is most conspicuous in the health and social welfare sectors, such that a kind of ‘governance through responsibility’ is today enforced upon the population.

The individual has never been more important in society – in almost every sphere of public and private life, the individual is sovereign. Yet the importance and apparent power assigned to the individual is not all that it seems. As ‘Responsible Citizens’ investigates via its UK-based case studies, this emphasis on the individual has gone hand in hand with a rise in subtle authoritarianism, which has insinuated itself into the government of the population. Whilst present throughout the public services, this authoritarianism is most conspicuous in the health and social welfare sectors, such that a kind of ‘governance through responsibility’ is today enforced upon the population.

Academic Talk for Higher Education brings together several current debates around oracy, dialogic teaching, and the role that academic talk can play in both widening access to higher education and creating more equitable learning opportunities. Exploring the notion that a focus on purposefully using academic discourse in university classroom settings can support students to better engage, argue, and connect with their learning, peers, and educators, Academic Talk for Higher Education examines the relationship between academic discourse, equity, and student preparation for higher education and provides a theoretical and empirical account of enabling education, policy drivers, and widening participation cohorts. Working with extensive prior research conducted by the authors focused on ‘alternative pathway’ teaching contexts—Enabling Education in Australia and Foundation Programmes in the UK, chapters draw on teachers’ and students’ perspectives and experiences of academic preparedness to conceptualise the need for more explicit pedagogic focus on academic talk. Concluding with an agenda for both policy and practice to value academic talk as a vehicle for equity, the authors offer recommendations for how to explicitly embed academic talk into the higher education curriculum, particularly in preparatory and foundation courses. This is significant at a time of great turbulence in the higher education sectors in both the UK and Australia, and when activities to support widening participation, retention and progression of all university students are needed more than ever.

Academic Talk for Higher Education brings together several current debates around oracy, dialogic teaching, and the role that academic talk can play in both widening access to higher education and creating more equitable learning opportunities. Exploring the notion that a focus on purposefully using academic discourse in university classroom settings can support students to better engage, argue, and connect with their learning, peers, and educators, Academic Talk for Higher Education examines the relationship between academic discourse, equity, and student preparation for higher education and provides a theoretical and empirical account of enabling education, policy drivers, and widening participation cohorts. Working with extensive prior research conducted by the authors focused on ‘alternative pathway’ teaching contexts—Enabling Education in Australia and Foundation Programmes in the UK, chapters draw on teachers’ and students’ perspectives and experiences of academic preparedness to conceptualise the need for more explicit pedagogic focus on academic talk. Concluding with an agenda for both policy and practice to value academic talk as a vehicle for equity, the authors offer recommendations for how to explicitly embed academic talk into the higher education curriculum, particularly in preparatory and foundation courses. This is significant at a time of great turbulence in the higher education sectors in both the UK and Australia, and when activities to support widening participation, retention and progression of all university students are needed more than ever.

This book explores questions of care in higher education. Using Joan Tronto’s seven signs that institutions are not caring well, the authors examine whether students and staff consider universities to be caring institutions. As such, they outline how universities systematically, structurally, and actively ‘undercare’ when it comes to supporting students and staff, a phenomenon which was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on scholarly ideas from the sociology of care, higher education, social justice, and feminist critique, and in dialogue with empirical insights gathered with people who work and study in universities in Australia, South Africa, and the UK, the book questions why people care, as well as why adopting a caring position in higher education can be viewed as radical. The authors conclude by asking what we can do to counter that view by thinking carefully about the purpose, power, and plurality of care, before imagining how we can create more caring universities.

Despite growing attention and focus, the issues with refugee access, participation, and success in higher education detailed in the first edition stubbornly remain, magnified by intensifying international conflict, as well as the impacts of COVID on universities. The second edition of Refugees in Higher Education contains new sections focused on issues of race and racialisation, treatment of people seeking asylum in both national contexts, and international efforts to respond to issues with refugee access to higher education, including international educational complementary pathways, and national sanctuary movements. Offering an up-to-date review of the international literature, this new edition captures the contemporary forced migration, displacement, and resettlement policy and practice landscape – internationally and in the specific resettlement countries of the UK and Australia the ‘post-COVID’ higher education context – and what this highlighted about the participation of refugee students. A new case study brings real experience of educational pathways for refugees, alongside a greater focus on ethical engagement. This updated edition of Refugees in Higher Education provides a much-needed contemporary account of the context in which refugee education scholars, advocates, and students themselves are operating in, detailing how universities in Australia and the United Kingdom can extend access to refugee education globally.

To combat physical nasties we need a strong immune system. To combat negative life events we need resilience. Here award-winning therapist Sally Baker gives us a practical guide to developing a wider understanding of resilience and to fostering it so that we have the essential perseverance and drive to emerge successfully when confronted with life's inevitable and often unexpected challenges. The book explores some of the key family dynamics that can result in unhelpful ways of thinking about oneself which may undermine the natural development of resilience and in its place impose a cycle of self-sabotaging behaviour. Coping strategies such as heightened anxiety, non-confrontational behaviour, people-pleasing habits, along with `adult failure to thrive', are just a few of the learnt strategies often originally forged out of powerlessness in response to less than ideal early life experiences. These strategies however can be re-assessed and the misplaced guilt, shame and self-blame that have affixed these behaviours often for many years, can be resolved and released, making way for the getting of resilience from the inside out. Based on extensive experience and case studies from Sally Baker's own therapy practice working with many clients over the years, this book provides gentle, perceptive insight along with tried and tested self-help therapeutic tools, free additional online resources and the expert guidance needed to take the reader through the stages from negativity to self-empowerment.

This book explores questions of care in higher education. Using Joan Tronto’s seven signs that institutions are not caring well, the authors examine whether students and staff consider universities to be caring institutions. As such, they outline how universities systematically, structurally, and actively ‘undercare’ when it comes to supporting students and staff, a phenomenon which was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on scholarly ideas from the sociology of care, higher education, social justice, and feminist critique, and in dialogue with empirical insights gathered with people who work and study in universities in Australia, South Africa, and the UK, the book questions why people care, as well as why adopting a caring position in higher education can be viewed as radical. The authors conclude by asking what we can do to counter that view by thinking carefully about the purpose, power, and plurality of care, before imagining how we can create more caring universities.

This book examines the key debates relating to the rights, responsibilities, policies and practices of the higher education sector when dealing with students from refugee backgrounds. Exploring the political context of forced migration to countries of settlement, including the impact made by media rhetoric, Refugees in Higher Education identifies how such global issues frame and position the efforts of universities to open access to, and enable the participation of, refugee students. Focusing on the UK and Australia (representing a past colonising and a colonised country) and including a series of individual case studies, it asks challenging questions about the discourses around forced migration, and how these play out for students on a personal level. With unprecedented levels of forced migration, and the growing strength of anti-immigration arguments as more power is conceded to alt-right conservative governments, Refugees in Higher Education is both a timely and much-needed contribution to its field.

Are overeating and staying over-weight unconscious 'survival decisions' for you or someone you care about? If they are, no matter how many tried-and-tested diets you follow, you will not succeed. Therapists Sally Baker and Liz Hogon offer this practical guide to understanding the emotional reasons for overeating and how to overcome them.

Despite the great changes that the twentieth century brought to the lives and roles of the women of rural Wales, there has been scant attention paid to the topic by social scientists and historians, even within Wales. "Mothers, Wives and Changing Lives" rectifies that mistake, drawing on a wealth of family stories about women's roles in education, the church, and the family in order to address significant gaps in our knowledge of women and Welsh culture.

Most people who work and study in universities will be aware that they are changing. Yet few have so far grasped the extent of this change or have attempted to put it in a coherent intellectual framework. This volume provides new ways to understand how the university workforce in developed nations is being encouraged to change itself, and how the social role of these institutions has shifted from places of higher learning toward being agents for social change and the promotion of human welfare. Moreover the demands that are being placed on institutions and the kinds of graduates they are required to produce has changed too, with the emphasis on a new brand of vocationalism and a reinvigorated focus on skills and employability. This volume provides a theoretically informed, philosophically sophisticated account of what universities in developed nations are being encouraged to do, and the impact this has on their staff, students and the societies of which they are a part.

Research in higher education could be more useful, innovative and better designed if we were clearer about the philosophical and epistemological basis of the theories that underlie our research methods. People who have to interpret research would do a better job if they were able to interrogate research more critically and appreciate its strengths and weaknesses. This volume provides this information for an audience of researchers, policymakers, students and lecturers in higher education. The authors seek to create a dialogue with the reader about issues relevant to the philosophy of research and stimulate interest in how philosophy plays out in the real, everyday, political world, not least in education. Unlike many existing volumes on the market, this book creates a space in which readers can use the tools for thinking that the authors describe to interrogate their own experience.