‘Widening Access’ to higher education: the reproduction of university hierarchies through policy enactment

Patterns of participation in higher education (HE) in the UK, as elsewhere, have been marked by social inequalities for decades. UK Governments have responded with a plethora of policies and agendas aimed at addressing this broad social issue. However, little is known about how higher education institutions (HEIs) interpret and ‘enact’ these policies in relation to institution-specific contexts. Drawing on concepts from policy sociology this paper examines how HEIs in one nation state, Wales, enact its Government’s policy on ‘widening access’ to higher education. Interviews with a range of ‘policy actors’ along with analyses of institutional ‘widening access’ policy documents, reveal divergences between HEIs in how this policy agenda is interpreted and delivered. These differences reflect institution-specific contexts – not least their internal politics and assumptions about the type of students they admit, but also their interests and priorities in relation to their positions within a global, marketised, HE system. The implications of this for the reproduction of university hierarchies in the UK, as well as social inequalities more generally are brought to the fore.     

Using multidimensional methods to understand the development,interpretation and enactment of quality assurance policy within the educational development community

Policy texts are representations of practice that both reflect and shape the world around them. There is, however, little higher education research that critically analyses the impact of higher education policy on educational developers and educational development practice. Extending methods from critical discourse analysis by combining textual analysis of a policy text with in-depth interviews with policy-makers and policy users, this article seeks to better understand the process of production, interpretation and implementation of policy. The article focuses on a leading national UK quality assurance policy in relation to the educational development community in order to uncover how policy is played out in practice. The findings paint a picture of a text that presents a version of higher education that is portrayed linguistically as universally accepted. Yet, the methodological approach enables the uncovering of the complexities of the policy process that go beyond the text’s words by highlighting the debates that shaped its development and the interpretations of its textual form that subsequently shape its enactment. Looking specifically at the constraints of policy boundaries, word choice and calls to educational development action (or inaction), the policy text is analysed in light of educational developers’ contexts and institutional positioning, surfaced through the research process itself. The article concludes by arguing that the combination of data collection and analysis methods used provide greater insights into how policy is played out in practice than the employment of any one of these methods individually could have achieved.     

Implementing disability policy in teaching and learning contexts – shop floor constructivism or street level bureaucracy?

Since 1995 the UK higher education sector has been required to implement national disability related legislation. This paper reports on a study which explored the role that policies play in influencing how staff support disabled students. In particular the extent to which staff in HE behave in similar ways to those described as street level bureaucrats by (Lipsky, M. 1980. Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation). Semi-structured interviews undertaken with 34 staff in the case study university provided the substantive data. Although there was little evidence to show that policy had a direct influence on practice, it was clear that staff made considerable efforts to support disabled learners and these efforts were based on values associated with providing an equitable experience for all students. Additionally, staff were able to exercise discretion in the way they responded to disabled students and constructed responses to policies without significant influence from institutional managers, national legislation or broader policy discourse.     

Using action,reflection and modelling (ARM) in Malaysian primary schools: connecting ‘the ARM theory’ with student teachers’ reported practice

This article presents Malaysian student teachers’ reports of using an action, reflection and modelling (ARM) pedagogical approach during their placements in Malaysian primary schools. The ARM approach was designed to support the implementation of the Malaysian primary school mathematics curriculum, which involved changing classroom practice in learning and teaching. It was developed and used during a Malaysia–UK collaborative project to construct a Bachelor of Education (Honours) degree programme in Primary Mathematics for a cohort of 120 student teachers in Malaysia. The three principles integral to the ARM approach were repeatedly made explicit to the student practitioners who were engaged in learning and teaching on the new degree programme. Using findings from surveys carried out with the students at the end of their first and final placements, this article provides examples of the way some of them described ARM and recounted how they had used the approach in the classroom. Four of these narratives are used as ‘vignettes’ to illustrate the students’ perceptions of using new ways of learning and teaching in primary schools and to inform and enable a discussion of the relationship between theory and practice in teacher education.     

Learning outcomes in professional contexts in higher education

With the policy of developing a, transparent and competitive European higher education sector, learning outcomes (LOs) are attributed a foundation stone role in policy and curriculum development. A premise for their implementation is that they bear fundamental similarities across national, institutional or professional/disciplinary contexts. In contrast, detractors suggest that LOs cannot communicate precisely across programmes or national boundaries. With this as a backdrop, this article analyses how LOs are used to communicate what students are to learn and the extent to which their use drives standardisation. The analysis is based on a case study of how LOs are formulated in study programme documents in two professional education programmes in Norway and the UK. The findings indicate that LOs can be considered to drive standardisation through the same presentation using bullet points. The study also finds that LOs are framed in different ways in the two countries and within the different study programmes and in a web of interconnected documents. This ‘local’ structural use of LOs disrupts their ‘foundation stone’ role as a vehicle for standardisation and weakens the establishment of sameness across institutions and nations.     

An Australian study of graduate outcomes for disadvantaged students

Whether or not disadvantaged students are realising the same benefits from higher education as their peers is of fundamental importance to equity practitioners and policymakers. Despite this, equity policy has focused on access to higher education and little attention has been paid to graduate outcomes. The Australian study reported here used national data to investigate relationships between disadvantage and graduate outcomes. The study provides critical insights into how access to higher education does, or does not, lead to improvements in post-graduation equity. The study reveals that outcomes are not equal for all students and that higher education disadvantage persists for many students after they have completed their studies. Whilst the specific findings relate to the Australian university sector the broader discussion of the article is relevant to higher education policy more generally, especially in terms of how governments align institutional processes to measure and scrutinise achievement in relation to public policy objectives.     

The role of higher education in national integration in Nigeria

This paper discusses the machinery for higher education policy formulation and implementation in Nigeria with particular reference to the university system. It identifies the goal of national unity and national integration as a new addition to the university's traditional roles of manpower production, research and teaching. An analysis of the implementation of measures aimed at achieving national integration with emphasis on student recruitment is attempted. Two features are apparent, both of which are counter-productive to national integration. First, universities recruit their students mostly from the states and geopolitical regions in which they are located. Secondly, inter-regional migration of students is a one-way traffic - mostly from South to North. Measures to improve the achievement of national integration are also suggested.     

National service: A form of societal cost recovery for higher education?

The paper considers the case for making use of a broader form of cost recovery for higher education than is current in practice, in the literature or in policy debate: repayment in kind through service to the community. The focus of the paper is on developing country experience. While shemes of national and community service for students or graduates are in place in many developing countries, they are concerned for the most part with the personal development of the individual rather than with the potential contribution to society. The paper analyses the aims and content of a broad sample of existing service schemes and considers how they may be refocussed to constitute a from of cost recovery. A final section discusses implementation issues.     

英国高等教育国际化策略:留学生视角

高等教育国际化是一种全球性趋势,留学生是高等教育国际化的重要体现。从留学生的视角分析了英国高等教育国际化的策略,认为英国大力扩展留学生数量的主要动因是经济利益和确保英国世界一流的学术地位,其成功之道在于政府和大学的高度重视、注重教育质量和品牌优势、制定和完善相关政策、加大境外宣传力度、积极参与国际交流与合作等。     

Mapping generic skills curricula: outcomes and discussion

Generic skills development is increasingly being embedded into UK higher education curricula to improve the employability and lifelong learning skills of graduates. At the same time universities are being required to benchmark their curricular outcomes against national and employer standards. This paper presents and discusses the results of a study mapping the outcomes, delivery, learning and assessment of an embedded generic skills curriculum and benchmarking these against externally agreed standards. By collecting data from students, supervisors and curriculum documentation across the whole five year course in a UK medical school it evaluates the success of the generic skills programme in achieving its objectives. It goes on to discuss how data from the maps might also be used to encourage student learning. It recommends the adoption of this methodology to map embedded skills curricula with the aim of highlighting skills delivery for curriculum designers and skills development for students.     

Changing practice in Malaysian primary schools: learning from student teachers’ reports of using action,reflection and modelling (ARM)

Curricular and pedagogical reforms are complex inter-linked processes such that curricular reform can only be enacted through teachers teaching differently. This article reports the perspective of emergent Malaysian primary teachers who were expected to implement a Government reform that promoted active learning. The 120 student teachers were members of a single cohort completing a new B.Ed. degree programme in Primary Mathematics designed by teacher educators from Malaysia and the UK. They were taught to use a tripartite pedagogical framework involving action or active learning, supported in practice through reflection and modelling. Drawing on findings from surveys carried out with the student teachers at the end of their first and final placements this article examines evidence for the premise that the student teachers were teaching differently; illustrates how they reported using active learning strategies; and identifies factors that enabled and constrained pedagogic change in the primary classroom. The students’ accounts of using action, reflection and modelling are critiqued in order to learn about changing learning and teaching practice and to contribute to understanding teacher education and early teacher development. The students’ reports suggest diversity of understanding that emphasises the need to challenge assumptions when working internationally and within national and local cultures.     

Assessment and learning without grades? Motivations and concerns with implementing gradeless learning in higher education

The relationship between assessment and learning in higher education often comes down to a single thing: a grade. Despite widespread criticism of grades as inexact tools, whose overemphasis undermines student learning and negatively affects student well-being, they continue to be the norm in the assessment of student learning. This paper analyses an alternate form of assessment: so-called ‘gradeless learning’. This study theoretically and geographically contextualises the recent implementation of a gradeless learning policy at a large public university in Asia, and presents findings from a student opinion survey about the policy. The paper shows that respondents overwhelmingly understand and often agree with the central claims of gradeless learning, including its potential to ease students into college life, allow them to make more daring choices in their studies and even develop as lifelong learners. However, the aim of relieving stress among one group of students has increased stress for others. The study explains the circumstances that create this divergence in student stress levels, which are both locally specific and common to all gradeless systems. The paper concludes by discussing the effectiveness of the gradeless system in achieving its aims and suggesting future research avenues.     

Performativity and enjoyable learning

This paper takes critical lenses to interpret what students find enjoyable in their learning in specific ‘subject’ environments within the prevailing socio-economic climate in higher education. It considers student dispositions that emerged from dialogues with two groups of students attending a non-traditional university and taking vocational degrees within England, UK. We argue that although each higher education institute can become its own destiny, it can only do so within the boundaries of state policy and its technologies. Higher education, when affected by cultures of ‘performativity’, is arguably focused less on knowledge for ‘emancipation’ and its own sake and more on the ‘use value’ of its products. This paper argues that what is valued by these particular students in their learning and what gives them positive feelings as they engage with this process of learning is not altogether independent of the current governances shaping higher education.     

The national gridfor learning: a case study of new labour education policy-making

Involving around £1 billion of expenditure over a five-year period, the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) initiative embodies the fast growing influence of both market and technological forces in UK education. The formation of the initiative can, therefore, be seen as a pivotal signpost for the direction of New Labour education policy-making, particularly with regard to the increased roles of the private sector and quasi-governmental actors in the development and eventual implementation of educational policy. Based on data gathered from a series of in-depth interviews with ‘key actors’ in the formation and initial implementation of the NGfL, this paper details the formation of the initiative and explores the mechanisms and structures of power and decision-making employed during its formation. Adopting the analytical frameworks of ‘policy community’ and ‘policy network’, the emergence and ‘roll-out’ of the National Grid for Learning is discussed in three distinct phases: the origins of the initiative; its initial policy formation; and, finally, its ongoing implementation and first stages of becoming a policy-in-practice. The paper concludes by discussing the NGfL as an example of current UK education policy-making and examines the national and global precedents underlying the nature of its formation.     

Money for nothing: Estimating the impact of student aid on participation in higher education

Understanding how higher education (HE) finance policy can affect HE decisions is important for understanding how governments can promote human capital accumulation. Yet there is a severe lack of evidence on the effectiveness of student aid in encouraging HE participation outside of the US, and none at all for the UK. This paper exploits a reform that took place in the UK in 2004, when maintenance grants were introduced for students from low income families, having been abolished since 1999. This reform occurred in isolation of any other policy changes, and did not affect students from relatively better off families, making them a potential control group. We use a difference-in-difference framework to estimate the effect of the reform on HE undergraduate participation. We find a positive impact of maintenance grants, with a £1000 increase in grants leading to a 3.95 percentage point increase in participation.     

Overseas Students in the United Kingdom: Some Recent Developments

'At last overseas students are being taken seriously rather than for granted'. This assessment by a THES leader writer (4 April 1986) is a fair reflection of how the attitudes of both Government and Britain's higher education institutions have changed over the last few years. Until relatively recently, overseas students were regarded as little we than a fact of life whose presence here was very largely a reflection of Britain's post-imperial contacts and responsibilities. They occupied a far from central position either educationally or politically. Now, however, the overseas student question is firmly established on the political agenda und serous attempts are being made to develop coherent national and institutional policies. This paper casts some light on how this change has come about. It begins by outlining the ways in which British policy has evolved since about 1980 and goes on briefly to analyse recent trends in overseas student enrolment in this country .     

Student voice in higher education: Opening the loop

UK national policy and the practices of university course boards tend to reduce understandings of ‘student voice’ to a feedback loop. In this loop, students express feedback, the university takes this on board, then they tell the students how they have responded to their feedback. The feedback loop is a significant element of the neoliberal imaginary of higher education globally. This qualitative research study drew on interviews with course representatives in three universities in England, and on policy analysis, to explore the discursive construction and enactment of student voice. It uses the feedback loop as an analytical frame. Drawing on Foucault’s later work, the article aims to open up the feedback loop by exploring its manifestation in the mundane everyday practices of universities. In opening the loop, we identify the following effects of the student voice policy ensemble: students have to construct feedback as it is not just waiting to be gathered; it promotes a dividing practice, where reps are positioned differently to other students; there is a focus on problems; an ‘us and them’ is reinforced between staff and students; the loop closes down discussion; and a managerial logic obscures political processes. The article articulates its opening of the loop as a way of unmasking the modes of power which work through discourses of ‘student voice’, and hence seeks to create possibilities for resistance to being governed this way.     

Soft power as a policy rationale for international education in the UK: a critical analysis

This article presents the results of a textual analysis conducted on policy discourses on international students in the UK between 1999 and 2013. A number of rationales for and against increasing their numbers have been made, which have largely remained consistent over changing political administrations. One key rationale is that international students enhance the UK’s global political influence through its soft power. Critical analysis indicates that a number of unsubstantiated assumptions are made, representing international higher education and students in an outdated power relation predicated on Cold War politics. Key assumptions are that international students change their political attitudes and identify with the host country as a result of positive experiences. Later they are supposed to return home and reach positions of influence, which they exert in favour of the UK. They are represented to feel the same whether on scholarship or self-funded; and behave in predictable, similar ways. These representations of students as social subjects have disciplinary implications, which should be a topic for critical debate and potentially resistance in pedagogical contexts.     

Becoming an educable lifelong learning subject: adult graduates’ transitions in education and working life

Continuous learning and updating one’s competences and abilities have become requirements for staying ‘up-to-date’ and ‘at the top of one’s game’. Lifelong learning policy has been persuasive in its emphasis on equal learning opportunities for all: everyone has endless possibilities and capabilities to learn according to her/his needs and desires throughout life. This discourse has been especially encouraging for the eight Finnish general upper secondary school adult graduates followed in this study; they had received little formal education in their youth or had been labelled as ‘poor’ students at school through the assessment criteria maintained by the schooling system’s prevailing meritocratic discourse. In order to become lifelong learning subjects, they first needed to prove their ability and competence as students and learners, that is their educability. This was also the key for their transitions in further and higher education and working life. Consequently, half of the interviewees told ‘success stories’ about these transitions. Moreover, they continued to have faith in ‘the great salvation of education’ as well as their own educability. For the other half, however, these transitions turned out to be disappointing or perceived as a broken promise. These adults also started to doubt their own abilities as students and learners.