Introduction: Student Support Services in an Overall Ecology for Learning

This is the overall introduction to the volume, in which we outline the rationale behind the volume and its conceptualization. It poses the central question that was part of the initial call for chapters: are students customers of higher education, or are they learning in higher education? The authors of the more than 40 chapters in this volume all address this question to varying degrees. In this introduction we draw on our previous work in that we conceptualize learning as part of an overall ecology for learning. This is attractive in a book about student support services as it allows us to map such services into an ecology for learning, thereby focusing on the wide range of elements involved, and thus the role of student support services in an overall ecology for learning. We argue here that student support services are a crucial element in this ecology for learning and the more than 40 chapters in this book together reinforce their importance, albeit from a range of different angles.