Teaching ‘Excellence’ and pedagogic stratification in higher education

This paper discusses how dominant discourses of neoliberalism intersect with teaching and learning practices, and considers the implications of this for both widening participation goals and for social equity agendas in higher education. Drawing on the concept of ‘pedagogic stratification’ we examine the discourses of ‘teaching excellence’, as these are enacted in interviews with senior academics across 11 universities in England. We describe how the pervasive discourses of neoliberalism prioritise market-oriented objectives, inciting university leaders to evidence ‘world-class’ teaching through rigid assessment frameworks. Engaging a Foucauldian analysis, we discuss how a discourse of ’teaching excellence’ can function as a ‘regime of truth’ that operates to discipline (institutional and individual) practices and subjectivities, restricting conceptions of teaching, and limiting opportunities for critical pedagogies. We argue that the neoliberal discourses of teaching excellence identified in our analysis resonate across an increasingly globalised and marketised international higher education landscape and are enacted in tension with widening participation and equity goals not only in England but also more widely

Translating close-up research into action : a critical reflection

This paper argues that simple dissemination models do not work. One of the strengths of close-up research, with its emphasis on depth and understanding, is that it can identify why things are as they are and by extension when we identify wrongs seek to challenge them. The paper suggests, however, that making a difference is fraught with contradictions and that the translation from research to action is far from straight forward. We illustrate these tensions by reflecting on our experiences of conducting four projects for the UK Higher Education Academy. At the same time as exploring the slippages of translation and loss of criticality, however, we want to defend notion of praxis as theoretically informed change for critical social purposes. This involves a view of making a difference and research that moves beyond thinking of research as a discrete act and invokes the significance of corporate agency and the possibilities of acting collectively

‘It is like school sometimes’: friendship and sociality on university campuses and patterns of social inequality

Whilst most social and educational research on friendship focuses on children at school, it remains a crucially important factor for students in higher education – and can play a key role in the maintenance, exacerbation or subversion of dominant forms of social inequalities. This paper explores the complexities of such dynamics in relation to friendship and social life at university, utilising data from an in-depth qualitative study of HE students at a UK campus university. Students stressed the importance of friendship for comfort and a sense of ‘belonging’. Nevertheless, students describe the continuation of cliques, hierarchies, and exclusions that are more commonly linked to sociality at school. Despite the conception that friendship is an individual experience, it is very much influenced by social positionings such as gender, class, age, and ethnicity – having significant repercussions for students in relation to happiness and wellbeing at university

An inter/national strategy for developing more equitable policies and practices in higher education

Editoria

The relational navigator: a pedagogical reframing of widening educational participation for care-experienced young people

Young people in state care not only lose support, usually at 18 years of age, but also experience unequal participation in post-secondary education. This has raised concern about the importance of widening participation (WP) for care-experienced young people (CEYP). However, CEYP are often institutionally stigmatised and this could be worsened by WP interventions that are framed by deficit discourses. Weaving together social pedagogies and social justice theories, the article aims to reframe WP away from deficit discourses through recognition of the systemic, structural and cultural inequalities that most CEYP must navigate to access formal education. We introduce the concept of the relational navigator, in which a pedagogical relationship enables the navigator to ‘pilot’ through complex systems and transitional processes in collaboration with, and through ‘walking alongside’, the CEYP with respect to their lived contexts and experiences. This article draws from the reflections of WP navigators situated in two small-scale WP projects, one in an English museum and the other in an Australian university. Our analysis of the reflections of the WP project navigators is offered as a preliminary exploration of the potential the relational navigator as a way to shift deficit discourses and work towards a reframing of WP through a social pedagogical perspectiv

It’s About Time: working towards more equitable understandings of the impact of time for students in higher education

Higher education experiences are increasingly intensified by competing imperatives of study, work, and personal commitments. However, despite significant change, the assumption persists that time is a neutral and linear framework in which all students are equally positioned. This report documents our research into how experiences of ‘time’, as well as dominant discourses about ‘time management’, impact on the attraction, retention, and performance of students in higher education. The study engaged 46 students from undergraduate programs at three regional universities, one in Australia and two a small regional town in the United Kingdom, where the student population includes significant cohorts of equity groups including students from regional and rural backgrounds

Pedagogic stratification and the shifting landscape of higher education

This report presents research funded by the Higher Education Academy as part of its open call that looks at ‘The impact of the shifting UK HE landscape on learning and teaching’

The influence of curricula content on sociology students’ transformations: the case of feminist knowledge

Previous research identifies the importance of feminist knowledge for improving gender equity, economic prosperity and social justice for all. However, there are difficulties in embedding feminist knowledge in higher education curricula. Across England, undergraduate sociology is a key site for acquiring feminist knowledge. In a study of four English sociology departments, Basil Bernstein's theoretical concepts and Madeleine Arnot's notion of gender codes frame an analysis indicating that sociology curricula in which feminist knowledge is strongly classified in separate modules is associated with more women being personally transformed. Men's engagement with feminist knowledge is low and it does not become more transformative when knowledge is strongly classified. Curriculum, pedagogy and gender codes are all possible contributors to these different relationships with feminist knowledge across the sample of 98 students

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