Retention and attainment across

the disciplines: Philosophy and

Religious Studies

David Mossley, Independent Consultant

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Contents

Section Page

1. Executive summary 3

2. Retention and attainment across Philosophy and Religious Studies:

an introduction 4

2.1. Disciplines and concepts 4

2.2. Understanding student diversity in the PRS disciplines 5

3. Curriculum, culture and custom in Philosophy and Religious Studies 6

3.1. Threshold concepts and the student journey 7

3.2. Cultures and customs, values and ethics: diversity in debate and in the classroom 8

3.3. Future trajectories: perceptions of value and future employability 10

3.4. Attainment cultures: understanding learning gain in Philosophy and

Religious Studies 12

4. Gaps and areas for future research 12

5. Recommendations 13

6. About the author 14

7. References 14

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1. Executive summary This report addresses issues in retention and success in a range of disciplines under the general

heading of ‘Philosophy and Religious Studies’. It is part of a series exploring discipline-specific concerns.

1. The disciplines covered by ‘Philosophy and Religious Studies’ (PRS) are not homogenous, with a

particular split between Philosophy and related disciplines on one hand, and Theology,

Religious Studies and similar disciplines on the other. However, they do share characteristics in

learning and teaching as a ‘family resemblance’ of approaches; and the personal engagement

of thoughts, values and beliefs required of students asked to consider profound questions

about themselves, others and the world is found across Philosophy and Religious Studies.

2. The profile of the PRS group from analysis of the UK 2010-11 undergraduate cohort suggests

PRS students are, on the whole, from more educated middle-class backgrounds than their

peers, and are more likely to succeed if they are not of BME origin.

3. Understanding the nature of the motivation to study disciplines that potentially question,

challenge and change the individual can be helpful in exploring retention issues for PRS. This is

facilitated by examination of the threshold concepts the PRS disciplines introduce as the

cognitive framework that brings about that change.

4. Helping students recognise their own thresholds in their learning and their coming to accept

that they occur as a fundamental part of engagement with PRS disciplines, rather than being

something to avoid or to regard with suspicion, may help students who are unused to

challenging conventional ways of thinking or authority.

5. Despite a diversity of techniques available in teaching PRS, with good examples from across the

sector, most teaching tends to rely on traditional models of delivery and engagement in

dialogue and discussion, whether in person or mediated by technology. Assumptions are often

made that students have already understood how this mode of more open learning operates.

6. Particularly in Philosophy, there is a dearth of role models in teaching staff that are not white

and male which raises questions about students’ motivations to continue with current study

and to take up further study. The impact of this is not wholly understood or consistently

researched across PRS per se.

7. The place of PRS disciplines and their nature, while a mainstay of academic debate, is not

always presented to students in a way that allows them continuous refinement of their reasons

for study at a deeper level. The role of the PRS disciplines in higher education as cultivation of

global citizenship is a possible model for beginning debate.

8. Employability is often presented as a matter of skills acquisition. Presentation of higher-level

capabilities, and the longer-term benefits to students of PRS in an internationalised market is

not always done well. This too should form part of the self-awareness that students are

explicitly encouraged to develop throughout a PRS programme of study, rather than it being

assumed.

9. Learning gain, from the combination of self-reflection, challenge and change and higher-level

capability acquisition is very high in PRS disciplines, yet this is not often clear from proposed

measures currently under review in the sector. Further work should be undertaken to explore

this for the benefit of students looking at their reasons for studying Philosophy and Religious

Studies.

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2. Retention and attainment across Philosophy and

Religious Studies: an introduction The Higher Education Academy (HEA) report on undergraduate attainment and retention across the

disciplines (Woodfield 2014) highlights Philosophy and Religious Studies as one discipline cluster for

comparison and comment. This supplementary report explores some of the findings in more detail and

suggests some of the sources of differences in retention and attainment for the disciplines covered;

and it points to other possible areas of research that might improve future development of retention

and attainment at a discipline level. It should be read in conjunction with that original report.

This introduction briefly explores some of the classification and conceptual issues that underlie analysis

of attainment and retention in Philosophy and Religious Studies. It sets out some of the key findings of

Woodfield (2014) with regard to those disciplines.

The report explores three main areas where student retention, and some aspects of attainment, could

be improved by consideration of the motivations of students to study PRS disciplines; their cognitive

journey and personal experiences of encountering troublesome and personally challenging concepts;

how the PRS disciplines present themselves to students through role models and engagement with

views of wider society and the nature of higher education itself; and through consideration of how

students benefit from studying PRS and what learning gain they actually experience.

The intended readership for this report is teachers of Philosophy and Religious Studies; those with a

strategic concern for enhancing attainment and retention at the departmental and institutional level,

and those specifically interested in the discipline perspective. It has been written to be accessible to any

reader interested in the issues Woodfield (2014) raises.

2.1 Disciplines and concepts

The first thing to note concerns the disciplines themselves. The data from the Higher Education

Statistics Agency (HESA) groups disciplines by the Joint Academic Coding System (JACS 3.0) used for

applications to higher education (HE) in the UK. For Woodfield the clusters of those disciplines

compared for analysis are based on the HEA’s disciplinary division of higher education into 30 groups.

While this is eminently useful for the practical support of a diverse higher education sector it inevitably

concatenates and confounds smaller disciplines where important differences in academic identities,

learning and teaching cultures, student demographics, and approaches to attainment exist. This is

particularly true of the grouping ‘Philosophy and Religious Studies’ (originally ‘Philosophical and

Religious Studies’ for the Subject Centre) used here, where superficial similarities can be dissolved by

examination of curriculum content, some aspects of the teaching methods, student intake,

expectations and achievement available in the UK higher education sector. Curriculum components

range from the analytical study of formal systems in logic and metaphysics to the comparative

exploration of social religious practices, and from hermeneutics of the Torah to meta-ethics in public

policy and medical treatment. Additionally, the destinations of students for employment or further

study show a great deal of diversity, alongside some commonalities that occur across the Humanities.

At a finer level, the Subject Centre for these disciplines also recognised other important academic

identities falling under biblical studies, philosophy of science, and history of science, medicine,

technology and mathematics. Consequently, it is recognised here that within the ‘Philosophy and

Religious Studies’ cluster there are a wide range of academic identities, and at least the potential for

significant differences between attainment and retention within those disciplines. There is an argument

to be made that at best PRS disciplines are only recognisable through Wittgensteinian ‘family

resemblances’ as opposed to essentialist definitions that attempt to set out necessary conditions for

inclusion in the group – see Paul Trowler’s recent work for a discussion of this (Trowler 2014).

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While the need for differentiation of the two main clusters of disciplines pulls in one direction, the fact

that these disciplines are most likely to be found in combination with other subjects, ranging from

Computer Science to French, from Economics to Music, exerts tension in another, and rules out the

possibility of completely definitive accounts of all the factors affecting attainment, and especially

retention, based on the data alone. On top of this there are, of course, questions to be asked about the

nature of disciplines per se.

However, for the purposes of this report, the split in the cluster of disciplines is most obvious at level

two of JACS, distinguishing those programmes of study that are classified as Philosophy (JACS 3.0, V5)

from those classified as Theology and Religious Studies (V6). Therefore, where there is significant

divergence between these two groupings it will be noted in the body of this report. Where the

differences are not significant in the data available from Woodfield (2014). the grouping of Philosophy

and Religious Studies will be taken to be adequate for this level of study.

From a conceptual point of view, a second point worth mentioning is that retention is a measure

applied to institutions, designed to quantify their success (or not) in addressing the potential for student

withdrawal; whereas attainment is understood as the achievement, or otherwise, of students

themselves in their chosen programme of study; even where institutions regard aspects of low

attainment to be their own failure, the attainment is assigned to the students. These two ideas are

being treated together in this report, and at the level of the student experience, and in the

development of policy for enhancing both there are many areas of overlap. However, care needs to be

taken in interpreting the data and the implications derived from them given the implied institutional

and student perspectives they carry. Taking only a surface understanding of either of these concepts

(as ‘students in’/‘students out’ and degree classifications sliced by demographics) would not provide

much insight to underlying causes of difference, nor how these data are being applied by institutions

themselves to develop polices for improvements.

Finally, whereas attainment may be taken to mean measured achievement within the higher education

system, particularly with regard to formal summative assessment, more generally the concept of

‘learning gain’ is the subject of renewed debate within the UK sector. This is an understanding of the

overall impact of higher education on students across a wider range of characteristics and measures,

including longer-term employment, and a student’s creative, moral and personal development

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) defines learning gain as “the ‘distance

travelled’: the improvement in knowledge, skills, work-readiness and personal development

demonstrated by students at two points in time” as part of a significant three-year investigation of how

best to capture the notion (HEFCE 2015). The idea of measureable learning gain lies behind some of the

interpretations and explanations for disciplinary differences in retention and attainment explored here,

because it would be impossible to consider the factors affecting engagement with, and achievement in,

PRS without concern for issues of motivation, personal change, commitment and value over a longer

time period than a single programme of study, and a wider range of context than the data alone allow.

(This issue is discussed further under ‘Attainment cultures: understanding learning gain in Philosophy

and Religious Studies’.)

2.2 Understanding student diversity in the PRS disciplines

The findings from Woodfield (2014) suggest that, on the whole, compared with the national averages of

the complete cohort analysed (2010-11), PRS students are more likely to be from the Office of National

Statistics (ONS) socio-economic classification (SEC) class one or two, from households where one or

more parent has a first degree, and they are slightly less likely to come from a non-white ethnic

background. They also are more likely to have higher UCAS scores on entry (12% with 340 points or

more, compared with 7% for the cohort overall where data was available). On average, PRS students do

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not differ greatly in terms of age, gender split, or disability compared with their peers in other

disciplines, nor in the split between full-time and part-time students. PRS students are slightly more

likely to be UK students, rather than from the EU or beyond, but they are more likely to be studying

away from home rather than at a local institution.

When we consider retention, overall PRS students are comparable with the sector as a whole, with

slightly higher numbers of students continuing on to further study. However, mature students are

twice as likely to leave without completing their study as those classified as of ‘traditional’ age, which is

higher than the cohort average. And when the study looked at ethnic distribution and withdrawal,

compared with the rest of their PRS peers, students from black backgrounds, particularly the

classification ‘Black or Black British Caribbean’ were more likely to leave without completion of their

qualification (24% for the Black British Caribbean group compared with 6% for the White group).

Similarly, for those students who entered university with fewer than 340 UCAS points their chances of

leaving before completion were over three times higher. Overall, the PRS disciplines score lower on

reasons for leaving stated as non-completion and failing academically where there are below average

results, but score quite highly on ‘other personal’ reasons (32% compared with 22% on average for the

whole cohort sample).

On attainment, the sector as a whole recorded 65% of students achieving an ‘upper degree’ (first or

upper second class honours), with the Arts and Humanities scoring more highly across the board. In

PRS, the percentage reaching a higher degree was 75%. Overall, students from ONS SEC classes one

and two performed better than other classes, notably so in PRS where 80% achieved a higher award.

There was no significant imbalance in gender differences and higher awards. However, consideration

of BME students shows that non-white students scored lower achievement by significant margins (only

42% for ‘Black or Black British African’ for example); given that these groups already show poorer

retention, the attainment figures suggest that there is a pressing issue to address here and not just for

Philosophy and Religious Studies, but higher education as a whole.

On the figures presented, Scotland scores highest of the nations of the UK, with 85% of PRS students

achieving upper attainment degrees.

The picture presented is that, if we view Philosophy and Religious Studies overall, the students are

more likely to come from white, middle-class, better-educated backgrounds than the average, and are

more likely to succeed at the higher attainment levels if they do. PRS students are more likely to give

‘other personal’ reasons for leaving higher education without a degree.

3. Curriculum, culture and custom in Philosophy and

Religious Studies The following sections briefly outline several ideas for exploring some of these differences in retention

and attainment for PRS students. The frameworks chosen are ones that have real and interesting

applications in the Humanities, and the PRS disciplines more specifically, and which go beyond

instrumental measures of success or failure. However, they are not intended to be a complete survey

of current research, nor comprehensive, but suggestions for how future curriculum development and

student support could be shaped to improve retention and attainment. More than in other areas, PRS

disciplines tend to generate a high and sustained level of self-reflection on the nature and content of

the disciplines themselves, and many of the content-specific issues are already the locus of debate.

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3.1 Threshold concepts and the student journey

There is evidence that student retention is closely related to a combination of both motivation and

ability (Alarcon and Edwards 2013). And recent investigations in the Humanities have shown that while

individual interest plays an important role in students’ commitment to study, it requires a future goal to

truly retain student engagement (Mikkonen et al. 2011). So it would seem that understanding what

motivation might consist in for students in PRS should provide some insight into factors affecting their

engagement with programmes of study and the reasons for disengagement and withdrawal. With

generally higher UCAS scores compared with their peers, and generally lower numbers for ‘lack of

progress’ as a given reason for failure to complete across all Humanities, ability is probably less

significant; although we return to this later.

One obvious feature of PRS is the potential for these disciplines to challenge students at a deep level of

their worldview; often this is what attracts students to study these disciplines. This can occur as

challenges and changes to a student’s ethical commitments, epistemic frameworks, religious beliefs,

and political and metaphysical convictions. Students may find a course of study results in profound

change and that they leave university with radically different views of the world, knowledge, science,

faith, society and, in particular, themselves, as a consequence. While this may also be true of other

disciplines, the fundamental nature of the conceptual questions at the heart of PRS present a much

greater range of possible points of challenge and change. For example, in the inter-disciplinary courses

run by the University of Glasgow at the Dumfries Campus, there was particular stress on the place of

Philosophy as central to students’ personal development and notion of individual authenticity

(Hanscomb 2007).

However, it remains possible that these challenges become as unwelcome and unacceptable to some,

as they are often uncomfortable even for those who embrace them. It is possible that a withdrawal for

‘personal reasons’ includes students who, finding the challenges thus presented, prefer not to

undertake the journey and the changes involved, or are not fully supported when this occurs. The

levels of uncertainty that a deep learning of the knowledge and concepts contained within PRS present,

require a student to regularly experience subjectively perplexing forms of thought and belief about

fundamental questions. For example, the UK student who on encountering the idea of absolute

scepticism embraced it and left higher education altogether, fearing there was therefore nothing more

to learn. Of course, there are other concepts that are less personally challenging, but which present

intellectual difficulties too. Understanding how and why certain difficulties occur will be of benefit in

addressing issues of retention for PRS.

In Theology, an understanding of the place of faith in academic study has been explored by Sabri et al.

(2008) among others. They model the development and appreciation of a student’s own faith and that

of others on Perry (1970). The model gives a widening recognition of aspects of epistemic relativism

and an openness to the views of others in a learning context. While this has merit for discussion of

religious faith, Perry’s acceptance of epistemic relativism might well be challenged for wider application

in PRS.

More generally for PRS, the idea of threshold concepts could be helpful in making some sense of how

cognitive development can be mapped in order to highlight those points in a module that are most

likely to present the most challenges for students, both academically and personally. However, there

would need to be some caution in doing this in a rigid way, since individuals will have their own

particular notable threshold points.

The idea of threshold concepts has been of increasing value in understanding higher education

attainment, and learning gain more generally, over the past 15 years or so. There is a growing body of

pedagogic research in the application of threshold knowledge and concepts, and troublesome

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knowledge and its successful application in other disciplines (see e.g. Rodger et al. 2015) as well as

cases in PRS. Some of these are discussed in one of the key texts on the subject: Threshold Concepts and

Transformational Learning (Meyer et al. 2010).

Threshold concepts can be characterised as:

transformative – a mastered threshold concept changes the understanding of the discipline itself;

for example, understanding the concept of virtue and its relationship to character will often

transform an understanding of what moral theory is about;

irreversible – threshold concepts are often difficult to ‘unlearn’ once acquired, that is the

transformation cannot be undone; for example, hermeneutics as a perspective for understanding

texts;

integrative – learned threshold concepts connect apparently disparate ideas for the student often

in a bounded conceptual space;

discursive – threshold concepts tend to open up the use of new vocabulary in a particular field,

once mastered;

reconstitutive – threshold concepts, because they are transformative and discursive, are likely to

involve a shift in the learner’s subjectivity. In some accounts this is taken to be more obvious to

others than the learner herself to begin with, and to occur over time;

troublesome – threshold concepts are often ‘troublesome’ or difficult to grasp, potentially seeming

counter-intuitive or even apparently incoherent when first encountered.

Further support for the idea that this might be an approach worth considering arises from the relatively

high levels of attainment in PRS. There is evidence that positive emotional experiences in learning lead

to higher assessment outcomes and attainment (Trigwell et al. 2011). Students who successfully

navigate the plethora of threshold concepts in PRS disciplines will have affective responses alongside

cognitive ones (Walker 2013).

An alternative approach to mapping the teacher’s expectations of threshold knowledge would be to

teach students about the basic idea of threshold concepts in their own learning processes. Such an

approach would encourage students to recognise those points in their learning where they feel

challenged, perplexed, or stuck as precisely those liminal, boundary moments that have genuine worth

in resolution. This may be of particular value for students from cultures and communities unused to

challenging accepted authorities and traditional ways of thinking, to help them understand that such

perplexing responses in PRS are acceptable in themselves as part of the learning process. Doing so will

go some way to addressing those parts of the student journey in PRS that some individuals find

uncomfortable and help to turn unwelcome change into a more conscious opportunity for flourishing

and growth.

3.2 Cultures and customs, values and ethics: diversity in debate

and in the classroom

The challenges that the PRS disciplines face in improving retention and attainment for students who

are not in the currently successful demographic groups, may require some consideration of how they

differ from their peers and a concern for the cultures and values of less ‘traditional’ groups starting out

on PRS programmes of study. Academics in Theology and Religious Studies have engaged with this as

an ongoing dialogue around the nature of their disciplines for some time from within the curriculum.

For example, Reddie has championed the teaching of Black Theology in the UK (2009); feminist

philosophy and theology are established areas of study (McAvoy 1998); and even from within

philosophy of language it is possible to explore why and how communication based on diverse cultural

assumptions fails (Nodby 2008). But more generally we can enquire into how well PRS responds to

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different approaches to debate and dialogue, to values and cultures that students may bring to the

seminar room and lecture hall. If we do accept that the nature of the PRS disciplines involves students

in a personal commitment and the possibility of changes of focus, intensity and depth in their thoughts

and beliefs about themselves, others and the world, at least in some aspects of their study,

consideration of how well the PRS disciplines support, challenge and critique across different cultures

and value systems arises. In the absence of more fine-grained studies that can be compared across the

range of PRS disciplines, this is difficult to address consistently. So that while there are good examples

of staff working on issues of race, gender and class in all the PRS disciplines, there is less consistent

discipline-specific investigation of students’ diversity and their views on their subject-specific learning

experience available from the UK.

However, the lack of diversity in Philosophy teaching staff specifically has become well documented

(Ratcliff and Shaw 2015). Despite the relative equality of undergraduates’ gender balance in PRS this is

not true of teaching staff in Philosophy: in the UK, only around 29% of the academic posts in

philosophy are occupied by women (the situation is even worse in the US where only 17% of posts are

held by women). While the impact of this on the discipline’s content might be debated, it does mean

that there are fewer role models for female students considering further study in the subject. The

imbalance has produced significant comment and does need to be addressed (see Alcoff 2003;

Hutchison 2013). Further, the gender imbalance across academia has deeper roots than the content of

the syllabus and is reproduced in bias in the examination of productivity and output (Aiston and Jung

2015). The situation is worse when we consider ethnic diversity with only five black philosophers in the

UK reported. Again, the lack of role models may be a significant factor in student withdrawal rates.

The white male middle-class dominance of philosophy in the UK may also further perpetuate the idea

of a model of debate that stresses antagonistic discourse where philosophical ‘discussion’ is not

rigorous and constructive, but a zero-sum game of attack and defence. Thankfully, this mode of

Philosophy is becoming much less common. Contra outside perceptions, there is now a diverse range

of teaching methods and approaches to pedagogy in PRS overall, from engagement with whole texts in

Philosophy (Crome and Garfield 2004) to uses of field investigations of religious practices in Religious

Studies (Robinson and Cush 2010). However, it is true to say that the majority of teaching relies on the

use of lectures, seminar discussions, and discussion, whether peer or teacher led, even where all this is

mediated by technologies. Some of the higher withdrawal of students from minority groups may be

accounted for by a lack of support in transition to more open self-directed forms of learning. This is not

a PRS-specific issue. It is something for higher education as whole to address, which it is continuing to

do.

If we look more broadly, we can ask how the PRS disciplines present their role in society and practical

engagement with the world.

In Cultivating Humanity, Nussbaum set out an agenda for reform of liberal education (in the sense of a

broad, Humanities-rich curriculum) as central to the future of higher education. She stated that in

educating future citizens of the world:

This education must be a multicultural education, by which I mean one that acquaints

students with some fundamentals about the histories and cultures of many different

groups. These should include the major religious and cultural groups of each part of the

world, and also ethnic and racial, social and sexual minorities within their own nation.

Language learning, history, religious studies, and philosophy all play a role in pursuing

these ideas. (Nussbaum 1997, p. 68)

Her aim is to show the value of PRS as a driver for examination of the diversity of human values and

ways of thinking about the deepest of questions, and that ultimately this is the true benefit of higher

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education. Often this wider vision is lost in the details of module learning outcomes. If students

understanding of PRS were to be enhanced by a fully articulated view of the place of PRS in the world

then students with goal-oriented motivations for study and from backgrounds that encourage such an

approach would be supported. Even if they chose to find their own goals and to disagree with such a

liberal multicultural agenda in order to explore more radical options, there would be engagement with

a wider view.

Nussbaum says of philosophy:

Philosophical questioning arises wherever people are … students are discovering that

philosophy is not an abstract, remote discipline, but one that is woven, as Socrates’

arguments were woven, into the fabric of their daily lives, their discussions of life and

death, abortion and revenge, institutional justice and religion. Philosophy breaks out

wherever people are encouraged to think for themselves, questioning in a Socratic way …

philosophy supplies something that formerly was lacking – an active control or grasp of

questions, the ability to make distinctions, a style of interaction that does not rest on mere

assertion and counterassertion – all of which they find important in their lives with

themselves and one another. (Nussbaum 1997. pp. 17-18)

More needs to be done to help students reach these kinds of insight in PRS generally. While it can

sometimes be assumed that students from backgrounds with existing insights into the role and

purpose of higher education can make this journey, it cannot for others. Exploring practical application,

if only as examples within a lecture environment, will be of benefit. For example, in discussing abstract

questions of probability in the philosophy of mathematics, issues can be raised about risk, perceptions

and risk, and real world public policy (Wolff 2011): how probability is understood has real impact on

how it is applied.

What this implies is that just as the PRS disciplines are particularly self-reflective on their own nature,

students should be offered the means and opportunity to join this debate for themselves more

directly. Questions about ‘What is x for?’ where x is any of the PRS disciplines, are more often asked

without the core syllabus, in the context of employability concerns (see the next section). Making it

central to the student experience, and, crucially, providing frameworks for discussion, such as that

offered by Nussbaum, would potentially improve insightful motivation for continuing study within the

chosen programme and in the future. Covering this briefly at the beginning of the first year, or leaving

it until the end of the degree will not help those struggling to make PRS fit into their own life.

3.3 Future trajectories: perceptions of value and future

employability

An ongoing issue for the PRS disciplines concerns the perceived value of its qualifications for the future

employability of those achieving them. While considerable efforts have been made to improve the

information available, it is likely that part of the socio-economic profile of PRS students is the result of

concerns arising from misperceptions of the nature of the disciplines and the longer-term prospects of

successful students. Lacking obvious vocational pathways into work (besides religious ministry which

requires further training beyond a first degree in any case), for families and prospective students where

there is less knowledge and experience of higher education the PRS disciplines can appear abstruse

and arcane. Unless this is directly addressed both before and, crucially, during degree programmes

there will be an impact on completion rates among the groups already underrepresented in PRS.

(Higher Education Academy supports a wider conception of employability, see Cole and Tibby 2015.)

Guides to the future employability of PRS graduates usually focus on key primary skills and traits that

the disciplines foster, covering analysis, critical thinking, argumentation, communication, problem

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solving, empathy, practical judgement, and appreciation of diversity and values among others. Often

there are lists of the major employers that take up PRS graduates across the public, private and third

sectors. The skills the QAA Benchmark Statements for Philosophy, and for Theology and Religious

Studies outline are usually referenced, since they are the basis for the vast majority of the learning

outcomes captured in programme and module specifications. (At the time of writing the Benchmark

Statements are under review, but it is unlikely that the core skill sets will change significantly in the near

future.)

While all this is important, and such guides provide accurate and useful information to those who are

able to appreciate the place of these skills and traits, there are questions to be asked about whether

enough is done to go beyond a skills account of the PRS disciplines for those who may be unaware of

the wider potential benefits of their studies. After all, there are other disciplines that can cultivate the

skills that are often described, and there is often less information about why those particular skills are

important for students less familiar with the assumed intellectual and academic context of higher

education. Additionally, if the value of disciplines is reduced to skill sets and the short-term needs of

the labour market, then specific skills and knowledge from STEM disciplines are likely to have greater

appeal. The figures for retention and attainment may well be a demonstration that a great deal is still

being assumed about the value of the disciplines based on the experiences of previous generations. In

households where that knowledge may be lacking, something more is needed. If end goals do indeed

provide a key to motivation and success, a lack of information about the unique benefits available from

PRS study for those less ‘in the know’ is crucial to maintain ongoing engagement during degrees.

Many of these points have long been recognised, but it is an ongoing struggle to emphasise the deeper

importance of the humanities and the PRS disciplines in a market of other competing options. Crucial

to getting across the longer-term benefit of PRS is an engagement with their place in a wider globally

orientated education, as already noted in Nussbaum’s view of the Humanities. Of course, there are

issues to be addressed in presenting PRS as central to the development of global citizenship, as Clifford

and Montgomery discuss in a recent paper (2014). They point out that genuinely engaging with

internationalisation in this way requires a shift in the culture and curriculum that may not be easy and

certainly will be resisted, but there is a case to be made that the Humanities and PRS in particular are

further on in this debate than other disciplines given their tendency to examine their own

epistemologies and ontologies self-critically.

None of this is to say that students are not interested in the career development aspects of PRS: they

may be central. Included in such benefits should be the fact that qualifications in PRS are much less

likely to be time-limited in their usefulness the same way that STEM degrees; that they have application

in a global context; and that they demonstrate the development of higher-level cognitive capabilities –

such as decision-making in complex, value-laden contexts – as combinations of multiple primary skills.

These are precisely those capabilities that have been identified as crucial to success in the 21st century.

As Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive of the Association of Graduate Recruiters said of Philosophy in 2009:

A graduate today can fully expect to still be in the world of work in 2058. The one thing that

we can be certain of is that we will be applying skills that we haven't even thought of today.

We will have to relearn and relearn and relearn … Being able to think laterally, having good

analytical skills, being an effective communicator – these are the sorts of skills that most

good managers would be expected to have. I think employers are beginning to ask, ‘Where

are we going to find these skills?’ (Fearn 2009)

The answer is in PRS, but more needs to be done to help current students see this and fully grasp the

implications.

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3.4 Attainment cultures: understanding learning gain in Philosophy

and Religious Studies

Taking all these issues together points to a larger picture for understanding learning gain in the PRS

disciplines. The journeys that many students undertake in working through the challenges and changes

of fundamental threshold knowledge and concepts, the diversity of ideas and methods of thought and

belief they encounter, the significant and growing potential for enhanced future employability they

achieve, all point to a very high level of learning gain that may not be captured by current measures.

Attainment as a simple expression of whether a student falls above the upper second degree

classification line, employability measured by first destination salary, and students’ perceptions of value

in their learning read from NSS scores, fail to address holistically what is gained from the PRS

disciplines. Even the addition of measures of ‘mental muscle’ (such as critical thinking skills) would fail

to capture the range of issues described above (Grove 2015). As already noted, this provides a potential

explanation for the current profile of PRS students. But more significantly, the students’ own awareness

of their learning gain as it might be expressed in statements of self-assessment will be affected by the

measures they are most often asked to consider: which points to the need to devise measures that are

more sensitive to, or better tailored to the kind of study students undertake in PRS.

Therefore, we see again the need to look at how PRS disciplines present their potential to students.

Students need opportunities to reflect more broadly on their educational experience within an

informed context, that is, one where they have been able to see PRS in application alongside its

theoretical life. On the whole, Religious Studies is better at this than the other component disciplines of

the PRS cluster.

An example of application of PRS with a clear potential for developing learning gain can be found in

accounts of the University of Wolverhampton’s work on the development of entrepreneurship in

students of Theology and Religious Studies during the first decade of this century (Allen and Burke

2005). The deeper point of such programmes is not an engagement with an agenda of

entrepreneurialism as a capitalistic driver, but rather a real demonstration of the engagement of the

discipline with practical, real-world issues that have an impact on perceptions of future value and

employment in a way that allows the student to think about their discipline differently, away from the

usual abstract discussions.

4. Gaps and areas for future research As already mentioned, the way in which the PRS disciplines can be differentiated leads to a sense that

more work needs to be done to examine Philosophy and related disciplines, and Theology, Religious

and Biblical Studies as separate clusters. There are shared commonalities in some of the underlying

pedagogy, factors such as subject combinations in joint and combined programmes of study,

motivations for study, and personal faith commitments. However, differentiation in employment

prospects and destinations, and the distribution of departments, programmes and staff across

different HEIs make it likely that real differences might be discovered in the data from future study.

Relative underachievement among some BME groups in PRS and their poor retention and attainment

rates needs much deeper analysis. It remains to be seen whether this is a discipline-specific problem or

is more general. To what extent does a culture of studying ‘dead, white, males’ still persist, and is it a

barrier to engagement for some students? Additionally, it would be interesting to understand how

problems for retention and attainment fare when Theology and Religious Studies are differentiated

from Philosophy in this context. The impact on the student experience of gender and ethnic diversity

13

(or lack of it) in teaching staff in PRS, particular the male-dominance of Philosophy, needs to be

explored further.

Given the relatively high numbers of students who cite ‘personal reasons’ for non-completion of degree

programmes in PRS, further work should be undertaken to explore the connections between course

content, personal change and the impact this may have on choices about leaving courses of study. To

what extent is the impact of personally affective threshold concepts a determinant of the personal

motivation or demotivation to study? How might this be mapped and supported using threshold

concepts and troublesome knowledge in PRS?

5. Recommendations We see then that the PRS disciplines in the UK, taken as a whole, appear to present relatively strong

figures of retention and attainment, but that underneath the top-level there is more variation in

success. If the PRS disciplines are to improve the retention and attainment of those groups that

relatively do less well, attention needs to be given to what we assume of our current students and how

well they understand their own learning journeys and the nature of the disciplines they sign-up to

study. These assumptions are almost certainly not shared by all.

The following recommendations are not intended to be comprehensive but to suggest some strategic

directions for developing retention and attainment in the PRS disciplines.

1. Understanding what ‘personal reasons’ (from the HESA categories) means for students leaving

PRS study will be central to addressing issues of retention for the identified student groups that

are much more likely to.

2. That the PRS disciplines are difficult or ‘troublesome’ should not be underestimated. Adverting

to this and putting in place learning support for personally and academically challenging ideas

specifically within PRS disciplines should be routine, and will benefit all students, particularly

those new to, or less familiar with, open debate, dialogue and ambiguity.

3. Discipline leaders should make clear that threshold knowledge is likely to be encountered,

giving instruction in how it might be identified, and reassuring students that it is acceptable for

it be challenging should be a central part of that learning support.

4. Academic staff should explore fully with students the real place of PRS as disciplines in the world

(and in their world), their central role in developing a humane and long-term view of humanity

and our diverse beliefs and ways of living together; this should form a core part of all PRS

programmes. Assumptions about a background knowledge of the value of higher education

and the central place of PRS (and the Humanities more generally) should be replaced with more

explicit opportunities for reflection on the disciplines as part of PRS programmes of study.

5. The benefits of studying the wide range of PRS disciplines are often expressed in somewhat

instrumental terms: the development of particular primary skills. This should always be

supplemented with an account of the benefits in a globalised context where PRS study is seen

as central to the development of global citizens equipped with the capabilities needed to

succeed and to flourish in the 21st century where higher-level cognitive, social and self-

management skills are of rapidly increasing value. A project to rearticulate this for the higher

education sector in the UK would be welcome.

6. Learning gain measures should be brought into line with the potential for human flourishing

that the PRS disciplines provide. There would be considerable benefits related to reasons for

study, were this done appropriately.

14

6. About the author Dr David Mossley originally taught Philosophy, and History and Philosophy of Science at Durham

University and Birkbeck College, London. He was Academic Coordinator and later Centre Manager at

the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies from 2001 until 2010, where he edited

the peer-reviewed journal Discourse: Learning and Teaching in Philosophical and Religious Studies. He was

also Senior Advisor for the subject centre network and Academic Lead for Online Learning. Since 2012

he has been an independent consultant in the higher education sector and regularly contributes to HEA

projects: www.davidmossley.co.uk.

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