scholarly journals A ‘home-international’ comparative analysis of widening participation in UK higher education

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Donnelly ◽  
Ceryn Evans
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
International Comparative ◽  
Uk Higher Education

scholarly journals Massification, Marketisation and Loss of Differentiation in Pre-Entry Marketing Materials in UK Higher Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 304
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Knight
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Equity Issues ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Student Cohorts ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Uk Higher Education

Since the mid-1970s, the higher education system in the UK has massified. Over this period, the government policy drivers for higher education have shifted towards a homogenised rationale, linking higher education to the economic well-being of the country. The massification of higher education has involved a widening of participation from traditional students to new and diverse student cohorts with differing information needs. The increased positioning of students as consumers by higher education means the student choice process has become complex. Drawing on a recently conferred doctorate, this article asks whether the messages sent by institutions about the motivation for undertaking a degree have changed during the recent period of massification of UK higher education. It asks how such changes are reflected, overtly or in coded form, in the institutional pre-entry ‘prospectus’ documents aimed at students. Taking a discourse-historical approach, the work identifies six periods of discourse change between 1976 and 2013, analysing prospectuses from four case-study institutions of different perceived status. The research finds that the materials homogenise gradually over the period and there is a concordant concealment of the differential status, purpose and offer of the institutions, alongside an increase in the functional importance of the coded signalling power of the differential prestige of undergraduate degrees within the UK. This research’s finding that the documents produced by institutions have become increasingly difficult to differentiate highlights equity issues in provision of marketing in terms of widening participation and fair access aims.

25. Diversifying Discourses of Progression to UK Higher Education Through Narrative Approaches

2020 ◽  
pp. 549-568
Author(s):  
Laura Mazzoli Smith
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Iris Murdoch ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Family Tradition ◽  
Participation In Higher Education ◽  
Uk Higher Education

Laura Mazzoli Smith considers widening participation in higher education in the light of Williams’ notion of resources of hope. Taking an autoethnographic approach, Laura demonstrates how her reading of Iris Murdoch as a young person facilitated her own entry into higher education. Through understanding Murdoch as someone who challenged orthodox worldviews, she found the confidence to develop a personalized counter-narrative to allow her to break with family tradition and open up new pathways of progression.

scholarly journals Re-imagining Diversity: Towards an Anthropology for Disruption in UK Higher Education

Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Alison Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Diversity Training ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Institutional Diversity ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Inclusive Learning ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Uk Higher Education

From Athena Swan accreditations to Access and Widening Participation agendas, diversity training and renewed pedagogic approaches to inclusive learning, the higher education landscape is now awash with the language of ‘diversity’ as policy and practice. The institutionalisation of ‘diversity’ is a welcome method of inclusion, yet it is often reproduced as ‘happy talk’ (Bell and Hartmann 2007) that pacifies the call for meaningful structural and institutional change, silencing and even reinforcing the inequality it seeks remedy (i.e. Ahmed, 2012; Alexander, 2005; Archer, Hutchings & Ross 2003; Kirton, Greene & Dean 2007; Mohanty, 2003; Puwar, 2004). Taking these paradoxical dimensions of diversity as ethnographic and conceptual points of departure, this special issue seeks to unravel some of the everyday experiences, practices and policies encoded in diversity ‘speak’ and ‘diversity work’ (Ahmed 2012) across anthropology departments in the UK. By giving credence to accounts of the daily graft of ‘diversity work’, together with embodied and lived experiences of what ‘being diverse’ entails on the ground, we strive to productively mobilise decentred ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway, 1988) in order to displace the continued centrality of white / elite / heteronormative / ableist reference points at the heart of much higher education institutional diversity strategies and inclusion agendas (cf. also Puwar, 2004). For us, the term ‘re-imagining’ is a call for positive political transformation in which we hope the difficult, uncomfortable - but hopefully - fruitful questions and critiques posed by papers in this special issue galvanise a space for diverse-led action. It is thus against this backdrop that we try to re-imagine diversity in a new light: to bear witness to those who live its effects and thereby reveal the potential to democratically and holistically re-structure anthropology from the ground up.

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