Troubling ideas for widening participation: how higher education institutions in England engage with research in their access agreements.

This article explores how higher education institutions in England engage with research in their access agreements. Through an analysis of access agreements from 2014-15 to 2016-17, a picture of how research is understood, undertaken and documented emerges. A lexical analysis of the texts was used to establish the different ways research is being referred to or funded as part of the access agreement process. The analysis shows a productive relationship between national policy and institutional activity. But there appears to be a lack of infrastructure at an institutional and sector level to join up sustained and rigorous research with widening participation activity and policy. This means that, even after ten years of access agreements, widening participation is not fully embedded into the academic practice of higher education. We argue that research undertaken as part of the access agreement process can provide much needed evidence of impact and situate activity within an institution-wide context. However, we also suggest that widening participation research has the potential to offer productive troubling ideas to dominant rhetoric and, in so doing, shape new ways of thinking about, and doing, widening participation within institutions and across the sector

First- and second- generation design and engineering students: Experience, attainment and factors influencing them to attend university.

Challenges for students who are ‘first in family’ to attend university have been discussed within widening participation discourse. However, in the UK, ‘first in family’ or first-generation students have frequently been conflated with those experiencing poverty or from lower socio-economic groups. This research integrated survey data with assessment data from final-year design and engineering students in a UK university to examine students’ attainment, the influences on why students decide to attend university, and students’ experiences during their degree programmes. Analysis of the data showed variations in the reasons for first- and second-generation students wanting to go to university, particularly a significant difference in the influence of parents. First-generation students described significantly less parental influence on the decision to attend university than second- or subsequent-generation students. Smaller differences in students’ experiences and attainment in university were also noted. While first-generation students reported differences in study habits, their attainment was, on average, marginally higher than that of their peers. Building on others’ theoretical work, which suggests the importance of social capital within higher education, this research highlights the difference in social influences both on university application and expectations of university for those with and without a family history of tertiary education. Further research is needed to explore, in larger samples, whether the social influences on an individual’s perception of higher education are in turn shaped by whether or not their parents attended university, and further, what impact this may have, not only on degree outcomes but on the broader benefits typically associated with graduate experience

Asking the right questions: Opportunities and challenges of survey methods in widening participation research

The development of an institution-wide survey at one English university raised questions for the researchers in relation to how to ask students about their background. The survey was to focus future widening participation (WP) practice. A detailed iterative process was undertaken to design the institution-wide survey, which included pilot-testing and qualitative focus groups with students, from which the results of this paper are drawn. We highlight two areas for consideration: the first, consists of issues of survey design and deployment in an education context generally, and the second, of specific issues relating to survey methods in widening participation research and practice. Students willingly participate in a survey when its aims are clear, when it is easy to complete and when it is perceived to be of ultimate benefit to them. Students in this study did not mind responding to questions about their widening participation status but needed the reason for these questions to be overt and the question to be phrased in a manner that is straightforward and easy to understand. A key learning point from developing the survey was that, in our attempts to use what we thought was more positive, politically correct language, we used euphemistic terms which had the unwanted effect of causing confusion amongst the students. We question whether the use of euphemism clouds the potential reality of inequality and that to uncover and act upon this inequality – surely the aim of WP practice – we need to directly ask students about their experience of disadvantage. Our reluctance to ask direct questions was to avoid offending students and based, problematically, on our underlying assumptions about the shame and stigma attached to disadvantage. These unconscious beliefs about shame and stigma need to be brought into conscious awareness and challenged if we are to address inequality in higher education

Feminist criticism and Plato's Timaeus-Critias : rethinking chora

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

USE of Railway Analysis Tools from an Australian Perspective

Railway operations, Analytical tools, Freight trains,