scholarly journals Reframing widening participation towards the community: a realist evaluation

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-204
Author(s):  
Adam Formby ◽  
Anna Woodhouse ◽  
Jemma Basham

This article draws on an evaluation of Go Higher West Yorkshire (GHWY) Uni Connect – an initiative by the Office for Students (OfS) to reduce educational inequalities through collaborative widening participation (WP) outreach across West Yorkshire. It contributes to wider debates on widening participation policy through demonstrating how Higher Education Progression Officers (HEPOs) normalised 'progression' based on community and learners' needs. We deploy realist evaluation to examine the role of HEPOs in a range of educational contexts where young people historically do not progress on to higher education (HE) at the same rates as their peers when GCSE results are taken into account. While there are complexities around the introduction of WP resources in such communities, the article highlights the importance of contextualised WP, and offers a new model of community-focused WP that incorporates learners' needs, educational institutions and the wider community space in which they reside.

Author(s):  
Ingrid Schoon

This article reviews the evidence on young people in the UK making the transition from school to work in a changing socioeconomic climate. The review draws largely on evidence from national representative panels and follows the lives of different age cohorts. I show that there has been a trend toward increasingly uncertain and precarious employment opportunities for young people since the 1970s, as well as persisting inequalities in educational and occupational attainment. The joint role of social structure and human agency in shaping youth transitions is discussed. I argue that current UK policies have forgotten about half of the population of young people who do not go to university, by not providing viable pathways and leaving more and more young people excluded from good jobs and employment prospects. Recommendations are made for policies aimed at supporting the vulnerable and at provision of career options for those not engaged in higher education.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Byrom

Whilst there has been growing attention paid to the imbalance of Higher Education (HE) applications according to social class, insufficient attention has been paid to the successful minority of working-class young people who do secure places in some of the UK’s leading HE institutions. In particular, the influence and nature of pre-university interventions on such students’ choice of institution has been under-explored. Data from an ESRC-funded PhD study of 16 young people who participated in a Sutton Trust Summer School are used to illustrate how the effects of a school-based institutional habitus and directed intervention programmes can be instrumental in guiding student choices and decisions relating to participation in Higher Education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-168
Author(s):  
Cherry Canovan ◽  
Rory McDonald ◽  
Naomi Fallon

The role of peer and friendship-group conversation in educational and career choices is of great relevance to widening participation (WP) practitioners, but has been little studied in recent years. We interviewed young people and WP practitioners in Carlisle, an isolated city in the UK, to interrogate this subject. We found that young people were clearly discussing their future choices, sometimes overtly and sometimes in 'unacknowledged conversations'. However some topics and ambitions were seen as 'too private' to discuss; all of our young people had a plan for the future, but many believed that some of their friends did not, possibly because of this constraint. We also discuss the role of older students in informing choices, the phenomenon of 'clustering' that can lead to young people funnelli ng into certain options, and the role that geographical isolation might play in exacerbating some effects. Finally we give some recommendations for WP practice based on these findings.


2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Graham Brotherton ◽  
Christina Hyland ◽  
Iain Jones ◽  
Terry Potter

Abstract This article brings together four different perspectives which explore the way in which various policy initiatives in recent years have sought to construct young people resident in the United Kingdom within particular policy discourses shaped by neoliberalism. In order to do this it firstly considers the way in which the assumptions of neoliberalism have increasingly been applied by the new Coalition Government to young people and the services provided for them; it then considers the particular role of New Labour in the UK in applying these ideas in practice. Specific examples from the areas of young people’s participation in youth services and higher education policy are then considered.


Author(s):  
Linda Corrin ◽  
Tiffani Apps ◽  
Karley Beckman ◽  
Sue Bennett

The term “digital native” entered popular and academic discourse in the early 1990s to characterize young people who, having grown up surrounded by digital technology, were said to be highly technologically skilled. The premise was mobilized to criticize education for not meeting the needs of young people, thereby needing radical transformation. Despite being repeatedly discredited by empirical research and scholarly argument, the idea of the digital native has been remarkably persistent. This chapter explores the myth of the digital native and its implications for higher education. It suggests that the myth’s persistence signals a need to better understand the role of technology in young people’s lives. The chapter conceptualizes technology “practices,” considers how young adults experience technology in their college and university education, and how their practices are shaped by childhood and adolescence. The chapter closes with some propositions for educators, institutions, and researchers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheryl Clark ◽  
Anna Mountford-Zimdars ◽  
Becky Francis

Rising tuition fees in England have been accompanied by a policy mandate for universities to widen participation by attracting students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This article focuses on one such group of high achieving students and their responses to rising tuition fees within the context of their participation in an outreach scheme at a research-intensive university in the UK. Our findings suggest that rather than being deterred from attending university as a result of fee increases, these young people demonstrated a detailed and fairly sophisticated understanding of higher education provision as a stratified and marketised system and justified fees within a discourse of ‘private good.’ Our analysis situates their ‘risk’ responses within the discursive tensions of the fees/widening participation mandate. We suggest that this tension highlights an intensified commodification of the relationship between higher education institutions and potential students from disadvantaged backgrounds in which widening participation agendas have shifted towards recruitment exercises. We argue that an ongoing effect of this shift has resulted in increased instrumentalism and a narrowing of choices for young people faced with the task of seeking out ‘value for money’ in their degrees whilst concurrently engaging in a number of personalised strategies aimed at compensating for social disadvantage in a system beset by structural inequalities.


Author(s):  
E.A. Jalmagambetov ◽  
◽  
E.Zh. Aziretbergenova ◽  

The Kyzylorda period in the development of the education system of Kazakhstan occupies a special place. The center's move to the city of Kyzylorda gave a new impetus to the political and public life of the region. Young people seeking education started coming to the city of Kyzylorda from other regions. After assigning the status of the capital in the city of Kyzylorda began to open up new educational institutions. The Kazakh Institute of education and medical schools moved from Orenburg. The city has opened educational schools of the first and second categories. Special boarding schools were opened for people living in remote areas. The work of boarding schools was constantly monitored by special commissions. In 1925, the famous writer Gabiden Mustafin worked and studied in the city of Kyzylorda. Also, S. Mukanov, A. Kenzhin and other representatives of the Kazakh intelligentsia worked in the education system.


Author(s):  
Lakshmi Sunil Prakash ◽  
Dinesh Kumar Saini

Higher educational Institutions all over the world are grappling with increased student population, several domains of learning and varied disciplines and instructors with varied experiences in using instructional design technologies. The chapter focuses on how it is possible to facilitate instructional design experiences for the stakeholders in higher education for creative learning. The chapter addresses the emergence of Instructional Design Technology (IDT). The role of IDT and its importance in higher educational institutions is studied with current practices in the field. The impact that this field had made in the evolution of instructional frameworks across the different layers of tertiary educational system is studied especially with regard to improving the teaching and learning experiences of educators and students respectively. The role of Creative Learning technologies' is discussed based on the success that these systems have enjoyed in improving instructional design.


2017 ◽  
pp. 983-1009
Author(s):  
Shalaka Parker

Higher Education in the post globalization knowledge economy is beset with a host of problems pertaining to quality. Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) are in a dire need of strengthening individual and institutional effectiveness in imparting higher education that meets the global quality requirements. In keeping with the current scenario of Higher Education, it is essential to understand the bi-focal role of Academic Entrepreneurship and Academic Leadership in enhancing the quality of Higher Education. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the symbiotic relation between the two and their role in enhancing the quality of higher education. It also attempts to propose an integrated framework of the Indian Higher Education System's entrepreneurial and leadership system and finally it attempts to devise or suggest strategies to be adopted by both in synchrony to act as catalysts' for Quality Higher Education.


Author(s):  
Pradeep Tomar ◽  
Shivani Verma

The future of higher education is intrinsically linked with developments on new technologies and computing capacities of the new intelligent machines. In this field, advances in artificial intelligence open to new possibilities and challenges for teaching and learning in higher education with the potential to fundamentally change governance and the internal architecture of institutions of higher education. The role of technology in higher learning is to enhance human thinking and to augment the educational process, not to reduce it to a set of procedures for content delivery, control, and assessment. With the rise of AI solutions, it is increasingly important for educational institutions to stay alert and see if the power of control over hidden algorithms that run them is not monopolized by tech-lords. This chapter will cover all the positive and negative aspects of AI technologies on teaching, learning, and research in higher education.


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