Recovering the student voice: retention and achievement on foundation degrees.

The first year student experience has a very high profile as a topic in contemporary higher education but how much do we know about what our students really think about their first learning experiences on their Foundation degrees? Recovery of the student voice is an area that Foundation degree practitioners need to consider as part of our strategy to improve the quality of student learning. Our research is located within a form of the interpretivist tradition. Although we would not wish to deny the importance of structural factors in society, we regard knowledge as being constructed through an understanding that different people and groups, in different power relationships, experience the world in different ways. As we argue later, it is important to give voice to the experience of the least powerful.

Draft version