This issue focuses on the question of learning in higher education by using methods and concepts from the sociology of work. This heuristic perspective seeks to make visible all the activities and dimensions of student work.
This approach focuses on their practices, their own rationales, which may or may not lead to success. This perspective highlights the various constraints which weigh on students' learning and how they renegotiate them, both individually and collectively. It also allows us to see that part of this negotiation not only revolves around narrow questions of knowledge, but that it also involves broader relationships to studies, ethos and activities linked to knowledge and to the hidden curriculum (time management, effort, emotions). In short, referring to the sociology of work for subjects which are usually the preserve of the sociology of education and higher education enables us to shed light on rationales and practices which are often not visible in scholarly-focused approaches.