Widening participation in higher education: the role of professional and social class identities and commitments

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and ‘massification’ of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an increasingly important role in redressing the under-representation of certain social groups in universities. Taken together, these trends neatly capture the twin goals of New Labour’s programme for education reform: economic competitiveness and social justice. But how do WP professionals negotiate competing demands of social equity and economic incentive? In this paper we explore how the hegemony of neoliberal discourse – of which the student as consumer is possibly the most pervasive – can be usefully disentangled from socially progressive, professional discourses exemplified through the speech and actions of WP practitioners and managers working in British higher education institutions.     

Travels in extreme social mobility: how first-in-family students find their way into and through medical education

ABSTRACT

Higher education is understood as essential to enabling social mobility. Research and policy have centred on access to university, but recently attention has turned to the journey of social mobility itself – and its costs. Long-distance or ‘extreme’ social mobility journeys particularly require analysis. This paper examines journeys of first-in-family university students in the especially high-status degree of medicine, through interviews with 21 students at an Australian medical school. Three themes are discussed: (1) the roots of participants’ social mobility journeys; (2) how sociocultural difference is experienced and negotiated within medical school; and (3) how participants think about their professional identities and futures. Students described getting to medical school ‘the hard way’, and emphasised the different backgrounds and attitudes of themselves and their wealthier peers. Many felt like ‘imposters’, using self-deprecating language to highlight their lack of ‘fit’ in the privileged world of medicine. However, such language also reflected resistance to middle-class norms and served to create solidarity with community of origin, and, importantly, patients. Rather than narratives of loss, students’ stories reflect a tactical refinement of self and incorporation of certain middle-class attributes, alongside an appreciation of the worth their ‘difference’ brings to their new destination, the medical profession.     

When the demand for educational equality stops at the border: wealthy students,international students and the restructuring of higher education in the UK

In the context of the increasing internationalisation of higher education, there is a pressing need to think through how demands for educational equality and justice, that currently tend to be framed at the national and sub-national level, should be conceptualised at a global level. This article compares two recent media and policy debates in the UK, over admitting wealthy students off-quota to university and restricting international student visas, in order to demonstrate the contradictions that are created when demands for educational equality stop at the national border. Based on a discussion of these debates, the article calls for the principle of educational equality to be extended outwards, beyond the national border, to apply to domestic and international students alike.     

Widening participation,the instrumentalization of knowledge and the reproduction of inequality

According to Michel Foucault, modernity is predicated on the emergence of an instrumental idea of knowledge, which does not affect the constitution of the individual as a subject. This article aims to explore this thesis in the context of British Higher Education through a problematization of widening participation policies, and how they have been increasingly constructed in economic-instrumental terms. This approach suggests two main considerations within the framework of Foucault's argument. First, widening participation initiatives have contributed to reinforce an idea of knowledge as an instrumental set of notions external to the subject rather than a process of transformation of the self. Second, widening participation initiatives have been dominated by a neoliberal approach to the problem of inequality which has turned students into seemingly equal consumers of knowledge. However, it will be argued, this approach contributes to reproduce in different ways the inequality gap between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds.     

英国扩大高等教育参与政策的实施及其成效

英国扩大高等教育参与政策旨在高等教育规模扩张的同时,着重提高来自弱势群体家庭、团体和社区学生接受高等教育的比例,使他们有机会参与高等教育并从中受益,同时也关注不同族裔、不同性别、残疾学生和贫困家庭学生所学的学科、学习方式和就读高校类型的多样性,其本质是实现社会正义。通过该政策的有效实施,扩大了英国高等教育的参与,增进了社会和谐。     

Non-traditional students and critical pedagogy: transformative practice and the teaching of criminal law

This article explores the practical implication of adopting critical pedagogy, and more specifically critical legal pedagogy, in the teaching of non-traditional students in higher education context. It is based on the teaching of criminal law at Birkbeck School of Law, addressing learning tasks which have been designed to enhance students’ learning experience. The proposition put forward in this article suggests that exactly because many of the non-traditional, mature students do not intend to pursue an ad hoc legal profession, the teaching approach should be geared towards widening the social context of learning and the acquisition of transferable skills, but mainly towards fostering students’ social ‘transformation’.     

The coming and going: the work of educational developers when admission criteria and desired outcomes change simultaneously

Higher education is facing a conundrum relevant to the field of educational development: expectations regarding entrance criteria and graduation attributes are changing simultaneously. Biggs' model of constructive alignment can be used to analyze the challenges presented by these shifts in expectation and help educational developers understand their pedagogical implications. In the present article, an expanded model is proposed in which entrance requirements are added to Biggs' original conceptualization. In so doing, the length of the “learning journey” – from entrance to outcomes – can be charted. When entrance requirements and graduate attributes change simultaneously, higher education must accommodate learning journeys of varying lengths and nature. Moving targets such as these can engender a sense of frustration, if not helplessness, for academic staff responsible for curricular and pedagogical enhancement. However, rather than responding with a sense of helplessness, the educational developer should see these shifts as a real opportunity to support the implementation of a broader range of student-centred teaching/learning activities. Recommendations related to educational development consultations are offered.     

英国高校改革:学生资助与教育参与

英国工党上台后,奉行第三条道路的政治纲领.在高等教育领域,政府一方面延续了新自由主义的市场化政策,对大学生资助方式进行改革,进一步革除福利社会的弊端;另一方面又通过政府的管制,化解市场化造成的不良后果,扩大社会各界对高等教育的参与.本文从学生资助方式的改革和高等教育参与面的扩大两个方面介绍了英国高等教育改革的最新动向和措施.     

Cultural capital and educational strategies. Shaping boundaries between groups of students with homologous cultural behaviours

Rather than assessing its causal effect on educational attainment, the authors of this article aim to use the concept of cultural capital to define a huge, complex and interconnected collection of educational and school strategies adopted by students and families and to examine the way that these strategies are related to school inequalities. Data analysed come from the 2009 Italian survey for the Program for International Student Assessment run by the OECD. A Latent Class Regression Analysis has been applied to categorize four groups of individuals who share specific cultural habits, educational dispositions and choices, and social status; in short, the four groups differentiate individuals with a different endowment of the intangible asset, cultural capital. Moreover, using the socio-economic status as a covariate we link the latent class membership probability with individuals’ social standing and, consequently school choices.     

Discussing inclusive education: an inquiry into different interpretations and a search for ethical aspects of inclusion using the capabilities approach

Inclusive education emerged as an idea within United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Special Education Unit and was presented as a new way ahead at the ‘World Conference on Special Needs Education’ in Salamanca in 1994. Since then, it has been on the global agenda as the overriding political objective within education. In spite of this, the international agreement, on an ideological basis, was not initially founded on a common interpretation of the meaning of ‘inclusive education’. However, the Salamanca Statement reflected clearly the idea of overcoming the divide between regular and special education. After 20 years, a vast amount of research and numerous reports and national strategies for implementing inclusive education, there are in these a lack of agreement over a common interpretation of inclusive education. Since 1994, the concept inclusive education has explored the world, so to say, without having landed, and the effort of giving it a clear working definition has thus far been elusive. In order to create a possible common ground for the mutual interpretation of inclusive education, I argue that it is important to see inclusion as an ethical issue. It is crucial to ask again what the purpose of inclusion is. To this end, it is vital to see inclusive education not just as a social and structural matter about how various aspects of a school are organized to meet diverse children’s needs in terms of personnel, pedagogical methods, materials and cultural structures, but also to see inclusive education as an ethical issue. Inclusion impinges on ethical questions because it is for the purpose of something. It conveys something that is valuable. Consequently, I find it pertinent to investigate the ethical aspects of inclusion. I do so in this article, firstly, by juxtaposing different interpretations for inclusive education in the literature. Secondly, I suggest some ethical aspects of inclusion in light of the so-called ‘capabilities’ approach.     

Project Transfer—Shifts in the social and cultural capital of Further Education construction students involved in constructing an artwork

The International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University has been investigating the impact of artists working with young people in cultural sites and schools. This paper focuses on Transfer by the artist Wolfgang Weileder; the construction and de-construction of a full-scale replica of Milton Keynes Gallery at Station Square, Milton Keynes by construction students. The art project involved collaboration between the artist, two Further Education colleges and a construction company involved in the training of construction students. This paper will investigate how the different cultures interacted during the creative learning experience, concentrating on the impact upon the construction students.Transfer provided training opportunities for the students, who simultaneously developed an understanding of contemporary artistic practice and began to take on ownership of the piece. Insights from this project will be presented in order to draw out implications for future collaborations.     

Children’s conversion of cultural capital into educational success: the symbolic and skill-generating functions of cultural capital

Abstract

A prominent explanation of intergenerational educational inequality is Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory. Indeed, previous studies have frequently shown that children’s cultural capital relates to academic outcomes. However, it remains unclear how children convert their cultural capital into achievement. While Bourdieu argued that cultural capital influences academic outcomes primarily by biasing teachers’ grades, other researchers have proposed the alternative explanation that children’s cultural capital absorption directly translates into academic skills. Using survey data on 2975 fifth graders from the German National Educational Panel Study, we disentangle these two mechanisms of children’s cultural capital conversion; and argue that the main conversion mechanism depends on the cultural capital dimension examined. The results of our structural equation model suggest that both mechanisms are at work and that the main conversion mechanism depends on the dimension of cultural capital examined.     

The development and recovery of social capital through community-based adult learning

This paper explores the connection between participation in community-based adult learning (CBAL) and the development of social capital. It is based on a life-history study of participation in community-based adult learning opportunities undertaken in two local authority areas in Scotland. A life-history approach was chosen in order to ensure that the learners' perspectives were at the heart of the research while taking account of the context in which learning took place. Two semi-structured life history interviews were carried out with each of 10 learners and data were analysed in three stages, which led to the identification of cross-cutting themes. The paper explores the learners' experiences of participating in CBAL as described by them. It confirms for CBAL what has been established previously for other types of adult learning, namely that participation can support the development of social capital for some learners. Furthermore, it is argued that other learners were able to recover decreased or lost social capital through their participation. The paper contributes to an understanding of community-based adult learning as part of the continuum of lifelong learning opportunities, as it illustrates the potential of CBAL not only to support the development of social capital, but also to help learners recover capital that might have decreased through their life circumstances.     

Learning when school is not in session: a reading summer day‐camp intervention to improve the achievement of exiting First‐Grade students who are economically disadvantaged

During the summer vacation children who are economically disadvantaged experience declines in reading achievement, while middle‐ and high‐income children improve. Previous research has demonstrated that the most widely implemented intervention – sending economically disadvantaged students to summer school – has not led to increases in reading achievement. In this longitudinal randomised trial, a randomly assigned group of exiting First‐Grade children who were economically disadvantaged was enrolled in a seven‐week summer reading day camp. The intervention students' reading achievement was then compared to control group participants at four time points. Results showed noteworthy differences for intervention students in reading comprehension.     

Parental networks,ethnicity, and social and cultural capital: the societal dynamics of educational resilience in Turkey

Resilience research has increasingly gained ground in the field of education research, due to its potential for ameliorating inequalities. This article deals with the emergence of educational resilience, with particular attention to parental network structure, by employing a Bourdieusian social and cultural capital approach. While much of the literature discusses resilience normatively as a personal trait, this article frames it as an outcome of larger societal processes. Drawing on a comparative study of the experiences of resilient student–mother and dropout–mother pairs living in inner-city areas of Istanbul, the article illustrates that the emergence of resilience is strongly linked to resources such as parental networks and that parental networks significantly differ along the nexus of ethnicity.     

A cross‐cultural examination of the impact of social,organisational and individual factors on educational technology acceptance between British and Lebanese university students

This paper examines the social, organisational and individual factors that may affect students' acceptance of e‐learning systems in higher education in a cross‐cultural context. A questionnaire was developed based on an extended technology acceptance model (TAM). A total sample of 1173 university students from two private universities in Lebanon and one university in England participated in this study. After performing the satisfactory reliability and validity checks, the hypothesised model was estimated using structural equation modeling. The findings of this study revealed that perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), social norms (SNs), perceived quality of work life (QWL), computer self‐efficacy (SE) and facilitating conditions (FC) are significant determinants of behavioural intentions (BIs) and usage of e‐learning system for the Lebanese and British students. QWL, the newly added variable, was found the most important construct in explaining the causal process in the model for both samples. Differences were found between Lebanese and British students with regard to PEOU, SN, QWL, FC, SE and actual usage; however, no differences were detected in terms of PU and BI. Overall, the proposed model achieves acceptable fit and explains for 69% of the British sample and 57% of the Lebanese sample of its variance which is higher than that of the original TAM. Our findings suggest that individual, social and organisational factors are important to consider in explaining students' BI and usage of e‐learning environments.     

Impact of a pre-college outreach programme on the academic achievements of higher education students: a case study of Chile

ABSTRACT

This research evaluated the impact on students’ academic achievements of a pre-college outreach programme implemented by a Chilean higher education institution. This programme benefits students in their last year of secondary education so they can better adapt to post-secondary education. Specifically, we assessed whether freshmen enrolled in 2017 in the institution that implemented this initiative and who attended this programme during 2016 as secondary school students performed better than students at this same institution but who did not take part in this scheme. A quasi-experimental design was applied using the method propensity score matching. The results showed that students who participated in this outreach programme had better average grades and attendance levels than those who did not take part in this initiative. In addition, it was found that this programme does not have a significant impact on student retention rates.     

A review of the role of national policy and institutional mission in European distance teaching universities with respect to widening participation in higher education study through open educational resources

The open educational resources (OER) movement is relatively new with few higher education institutions (HEIs) publishing or using them, and even fewer using them to widen engagement or participation in HE study. Although distance teaching universities have been in the vanguard of widening opportunities for HE study, they vary in how far they are doing so. Some use this informal learning through studying OER as a bridge to formal learning; others see it as an end in itself, often as part of a wider set of lifelong learning activities. Initial experiences of some European distance teaching universities indicate that OER are fine for confident and experienced learners but most people will require other support mechanisms to achieve participation. More effort may be needed to design and present OER in ways that are suited to the learners to support their learning, including developing new ways to recognize achievements through open study.     

The role of social capital in the explanation of educational success and educational inequalities

This article examines the role that social capital plays in school success and in the explanation of social and ethnic inequalities in the German educational system. Based on Coleman's well-known concept of social capital, different aspects of social capital are distinguished, including social network composition, parent–school interaction and intrafamilial social capital. In sum, the overall results indicate that the different aspects of social capital influence the school performance of pupils. In addition, social capital endowment is found to be of relevance for the explanation of inequalities in school grades between social classes and ethnic groups. In this respect, the analyses indicate that social capital endowment is part of the underlying mechanism responsible for educational inequalities.     

A Bourdieusian analysis of the participation of Polish students in the ERASMUS programme: cultural and social capital perspectives

In this paper we examine the perceptions of ERASMUS agents’ of Polish students’ participation in the EP. We provide a Bourdieusian analyse of the cultural and social capital acquisition of students based on the qualitative data, collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Erasmus agents, of a European research project. We argue that: Polish students’ participation in the EP has a positive impact on their academic achievement, cultural, social and linguistic capital, but, at the same time, it has a negative impact on degree completion of students as they get highly paid jobs, which prevent them from fully developing their cultural capital; ERASMUS Tourism has its value and place in the EP, because it provides students with the opportunity to develop their cultural, social and linguistic capital; and a Bourdieusian analysis of the experiences of ERASMUS students provides a better understanding of the impact student participation in the EP on their development.