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Frontier perspectives and insights into higher education student success

This paper introduces the complex field of research on student success and surveys the 12 papers published in this special issue. We offer guidance for shaping future development of the research field, and its contribution to helping a growing and diverse number of students succeed. How can higher education help students succeed? This question speaks to a basic assumption of student success research that universities should support learners in their efforts to learn because a core function of higher education is to educate people. Student success is often evoked to signal a commitment to students amid a sometimes chaotic higher education landscape unclear of its place or purpose in the modern, technologically disrupted and globally interconnected world. Student success is an umbrella topic that offers the promise of drawing together important threads. For instance, the idea comes through in research that is focused on student engagement, teaching practices, learning outcomes, curriculum development, admissions policies, transition, student experience, graduate employment, student satisfaction, socio-economic health and mental health. While student success is about students, what it means is wrapped in broader considerations. For instance, how a given university fosters student success is dependent on what that university understands to be the purpose of higher education. Such understandings are shaped by the beliefs of stakeholders such as institutional governing authorities, the broader public, prospective students both locally and in foreign countries, and alumni. We were motivated to curate an ‘open international call’ Special Issue on this complicated topic, not because we thought we could offer coherence and convergence but rather to welcome critical and potentially contradictory views on a pathway toward frontier perspectives. To this end, we drafted a specification that sought a diverse range of contributions and called widely for papers. A shortlist of papers proceeded through a process of multiphase double-blind review, and 12 articles were selected for publication. Our different research profiles, experiences and editorial perspectives shaped this Special Issue. Hamish Coates undertakes institution and policy-level research on leadership, academic work and student outcomes (e.g., Coates, 2016, 2017, 2018; Coates, Kelly, & Naylor, 2017; Coates, Kelly, Naylor & Borden, 2017; Kelly, Dollinger, & Coates, 2017). Kelly Matthews’ applied research explores professional learning, curriculum development related to learning outcomes and engaging students as partners in learning and teaching (Bosanquet, Mailey, Matthews, & Lodge, 2017; Matthews, 2016, 2017; Matthews, Cook-Sather, & Healey, 2018; Matthews, Dwyer, Hine, & Turner, 2018). We share a commitment to ensuring that student perspectives inform policy and practice in higher education. Seen broadly, student success can embrace almost any facet of higher education and even the broader community. Researchers often focus on aspects of student admissions, student experiences or graduate destinations. However, teaching can also be viewed through the prism of student success, for instance in terms of the preparation of tertiary teachers, teaching practices or the kind of experiences and artefacts produced through teaching. Assessment and