Knowing Where to Study? Fees, Bursaries and Fair Access

This study investigates the impact of financial considerations on sixteen to twenty year-old students’ decisions about participation in higher education. It focuses on intentions to live at home whilst studying at university and the extent to which bursaries influence institutional choice. The results are based on questionnaire and interview data drawn from a large sample of school and college students from two large urban areas in the Midlands

Contextualising nonattendance of eligible students to Global Game Jam locations

In this paper we discuss the attitudes to the Global Games Jam, not from the students that do take part – but the ones that don’t. With a successful track record of hosting Global Game Jam locations, at Staffordshire University it has become apparent that the same students attend year on year. This proposed research sets out the setting for Staffordshire University’s game related courses, and the areas that will be addressed by questioning the students that’s don’t attend the 2014 Global Game Jam event. keywords: Engagement, Motivation, Game Jam, Community, Attendance

Reconceptualising Conflict and Consensus within Partnership Working: The Roles of Overlapping Communities and Dynamic Social Ties

Partnership is a dominant theme of public policy and service provision in England and in other western countries. It is also a concept that remains relatively under-researched and under-theorised, especially with respect to conceptualising underlying relational processes that can shape conflict and consensus within partnerships. This thesis draws on a richly textured ethnographic study, using an in-depth casestudy of a voluntarily-founded, network-like, cross-sectoral partnership, which aimed to develop and implement a community learning centre in the village parish of Broadley, located in the English Midlands. The research sees fieldwork conducted over twenty-four months, using multiple methods of qualitative data-generation including the observation of partnership meetings and activities, semi-structured interviews and the collection of partnership artefacts (meeting minutes, funding bid document, emails). It presents an ethnographic view of the inner workings of one partnership and follows its entire lifecycle. This partnership was not sustained and did not realise the vision to which it aspired. A central concern of this thesis is to investigate the development of conflict and consensus within partnership practice. The contribution of the thesis is to tease out how these elements are understood. This study challenges naive texts that prescribe simplistic, recipe-based formulas for achieving partnership success. Instead, it illustrates what can happen when partners do not develop sufficiently strong and balanced sets of social ties between one another. Consequently, this thesis sets up a new research agenda focusing more specifically on issues of community overlaps, identities and social ties. This thesis has value in terms of providing a deeply relational account of challenges facing the development of one cross-sectoral, network-like partnership. It draws together insights from partnership literature, community literature and fieldwork,and provides a strong basis from which further research can be developed

Variation in local career trajectories of young people sharing a similar low socio-economic background in one geographic community

This paper uses a life history approach to examine the decision making of six young people around what to do when leaving compulsory education. They all share similar social backgrounds and are located in one geographic place - a deprived, working class, urban area in English midlands - but the six individuals have opted to follow three different post-16 pathways, even though they all achieved GCSE qualifications that would have enabled them to enter further education, and therefore potentially higher education. These different post-16 routes include employment without formal training (the workers), employment with formal training (the apprentices) and studying in higher education (the students). All the participants (and their families) are historically ‘rooted’ in the local area and this paper explores the influence of the social learning that takes place within local communities of practice – in the form of friendship groups, families and school communities – on the young people’s different, yet all resolutely local, early career trajectories

Learning brokerage: Building bridges between learners and providers

Learning brokerage offers a means to tackle the UK’s ‘learning divide’, by helping learning providers to reach adults excluded from learning. This report presents early findings from a study on how brokerage works in communities and the workplace, and implications for post-16 learning and skills provision. Based on a literature review and wide consultation, it analyses the key functions and stages of learning brokerage, pointing to conditions that promote or hinder success. It challenges assumptions about the kinds of learning opportunities most likely to attract and support ‘new’ learners and includes a directory of examples

Learning brokerage: Building bridges between learners and providers (Report on phases 2 and 3 of the project)

Learning brokerage offers a way to tackle the 'learning divide’ by helping learning providers to reach adults excluded from learning. This report presents findings from the final stages of a study of how brokerage works in communities and the workplace. Case studies reveal innovative partnerships that have succeeded in opening uplearning opportunities. Six stages of brokerage are described, with questions to help readers review and improve practice. The authors argue that learning brokerage could flourish within existing systems, but changes are needed – new funding mechanisms, more responsive learning providers, training for brokers and effective ways to measure achievement