Higher Education Equity Literature Database

"Transitions are widely held to be fundamental features of social life" (p.xvii) - theorising about transition = hallmark of contemporary social thinking (see Bauman, Giddens et al.) As a result, research into transitions = growing.
Individualisation and the lifecourse - "in Western countries, individuals' lifecourses are characterised by increasing variety and range of transition routes" (p.xviii); however there is a paradox as "individual transition pathways have collective consequences" (p.xviii). Neoliberalism and choice = sustained (despite the obvious failings of individualism) because "People seem to value the existence of at least the potential for change, embracing the idea that who they are right now, what they are doing right now, is not how things always have been and always will be. Their future self is possibly an incomplete project..." (p.xix)
"In so far as transitions are seen as troubling, they are usually treated as personal troubles requiring individual responses" (p.xxi). "The collective dimension to transitions, and to the experience of transitions, has often been neglected in the literature" (p.xxii).
Linearity: "The idea of transition does not necessarily imply unilinear change, but that is how it has predominantly been studied" (p.xix). Late modernity = characterised by non-linearity.

Transition = multilevel, multifaceted and multidirectional.

Context: Post-Dearing Report in UK - widening participation agenda and New Labour WP targets. Massification of HE = increase in provision of HE in FE colleges. Examines partnerships/ successful collaboration between further education and higher education. Paper based on collaboration between Teesdale University and FE colleges and creation of 'Preparation for Higher Education' 20 credit Level 4 module - main focus = enhance coursework and research skills and to remove perceived barriers to entering HE. By Sep 2009, PHE = offered in 5 FE colleges.
Aim: To present findings from second stage of longitudinal project (evaluation) examining collaborative project; to present challenges in the collaboration; "to gain an understanding of key issues and identify practices which require further development to enable the partnership to progress and highlight to other institutions how they might proceed with similar activities" (p.5)
Theoretical frame:
Methodology: Second stage of evaluation = interviewing colleges involved and following students who moved to HE: 6 x focus groups with students (n=63) studying the module - comparison between groups from different colleges. In-depth interviews conducted with 3x students who had moved into HE
Findings: PHE = successful in terms of partner uptake and partnerships, and useful tool for recruitment for Teesdale University. Colleges = consensus that module works best when embedded into programs and attendance on university campus. Flexibility = driver for growth and its perception as contributing to WP agenda (esp. non-traditional students). Perceived multiple benefits to students. However, also disparity in views between university and college lecturers: university sees it as collaborative but it more resembles a franchise - assumption that university practices are superior = complex relationship

Context: Increased international concern and institutional attention to the prevalence of mental health difficulties among university and college students (e.g. Bayram and Bilgel 2008; Stallman 2010; Royal College of Psychiatrists 2011; Eisenberg, Hunt, and Speer 2013). Sample and data collection occurred at a large metropolitan university in Melbourne, Australia amongst students from six faculties and graduate schools, ensuring a mix of undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking professional and general academic programmes.
Aim: Investigation of (a) the prevalence of severe forms of psychological distress among university students in a range of disciplines or fields of study, using a well-validated measure that would enable comparisons with general population and other university samples; and (b) demographic and situational correlates of severe levels of symptoms associated with depression, anxiety and stress, including field of study and students' time commitments.
Theoretical frame: None explicit
Methodology: Quantitative - surveys were administered via an email from students' Dean or Associate Dean, which included an embedded link to the relevant survey housed on Survey Monkey and were timed in each cohort to avoid peak interim and summative assessment periods. Each cohort received a slightly different version of the survey, containing common items and a limited number of questions specific to the particular cohort. Incentive prizes were offered through a random draw in each participating cohort. The survey used in all faculties/programmes was adapted from the Student Well-being and Course Experience Survey developed by Larcombe and colleagues for use with law students and included two measures of mental health: the 21-item Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) (Lovibond and Lovibond 1995) was used to measure forms of psychological distress associated with negative mental health, and Ryff's Psychological Well-being Scales (Ryff and Keyes 1995) were used to measure factors associated with positive mental well-being.
Findings: Results indicated a relatively low percentage of student participation in paid work, potentially due to the demands of their academic programmes. Participants also indicated family care responsibilities, which may factor into lack of paid work. High proportions of students reported severe or extremely severe levels of stress and anxiety. Levels of student stress and anxiety are higher than levels reported by a 'general population' sample from a recent Australian study (Crawford et al. 2011). Though severe levels of student psychological distress were reported across diverse academic programmes, there are particular stressors associated with some fields of study. Further, the odds of reporting any form of severe distress did not vary substantially by year level within degree.
Core argument: The mental well being of tertiary students is a serious public health issue and there are common factors affecting university students globally. There is a particular need to target mental well being information and strategies to students aged 18-24 years.

Context: Student resistance and teacher response/ mitigation in the context of 'shut down', particularly in exchanges with students that foreground privilege and equity. Authors argue that when students (predominantly white, female) shut down, they miss out on "valuable opportunities to experience transformational learning... [leading to this] When education students shut down, teacher education programs reinforce society's inequities" (p.58). As such, teacher educators must "learn, at the very least, how to orchestrate honest conversations among our students which address privilege and power in the classroom" if we are to shift the persistent patterns of inequity and disadvantage that characterize western societies/ education systems (p.59)
Aim: To offer a hitherto underexplored area of teacher education regarding critical, ethical and embodied care, responding to this RQ: "How do teacher educators create opportunities for students to contemplate rationales for justice-minded teaching and claim social justice goals for themselves?" (p.361). Focusing specifically on the case study of Letitia (Author 2), authors responded to these framing questions: "(1) To what extent does Letitia engage her students when teaching about systems of social oppression in the United States? (2) How does she avoid the shut-down?" (p.361)
Theoretical frame: Ethical care (Noddings, 2003), embodied care (Hamington, 2001), critical care (Antrop-Gonzales & de Jesus, 2006).
Embodied care involves caring knowledge, caring habits, caring imagination. Authors argue there is little research on embodied care in the field of education.
Critical care = "a mixture of having high expectations and truly caring for students" (p.360-1)
Methodology: Interpretive study of Letitia's teaching/ experience of avoiding 'shut down'. Data collected via focus groups with students, Letitia's analytic journal, interviews with Letitia, student course evaluations/ course syllabi for 5 years.
Findings: Letitia's teaching = found to be effective in terms of engaging students when teaching about social oppression. She achieves this through:
Helping students to embody care via newcomer stories, field trips, her own stories, private and public processing, careful sequencing of content and activities.
Two competing tensions emerge in caring teaching:
1) desire to honour students' ideas
2) need to teach specific content
Core argument: Article offers examples of how Letitia engages in embodied critical care, and opens and holds a space to unpack privilege and discomfort; "The shut-down is real. Yet avoiding conversations about power and privilege should not be the alternative. Letitia' s practice offers an example of how to facilitate open and honest conversations when teaching for social justice" (p.368).

Context: Examines notion of threshold crossing = "moments of moving through and beyond the 'stuck' places, through liminal spaces of change and development" (p.235) in context of doctoral writing, and 'stuck moments' (Lather, 1998) or preliminarity before transformation into embodied, articulated writing.
Aim: To answer these RQs:
(1) Identify significant factors \ of the processes and practices that could facilitate (1) the management and overcoming of barriers to writing; (2) overcoming and getting through 'stuck' places towards the achievement of the writers' own voices; and (3) successfully articulating through writing.
(2) Isolate factors that contribute towards 'stuckness':
(3) Locate and identify strategies for overcoming 'stuckness' and for developing confidence in articulation through writing
(4) Identify the kinds of strategies that are re-employed if and when 'stuckness' occurs again, and what new strategies are developed.
Theoretical frame: Writing process (cites Lea, 1999 and Ivanic, 1998) - writing through and finishing; threshold concepts (Land & Meyer, 2006)
Methodology: Narrative inquiry: semi-structured interviews (40 staff, 20 students)
Findings: Perception of participants that 'stuck places' = necessary and sometimes helpful stages of writing process. Two classifications: 1) ontological insecurity; 2) "Levers through the conceptual threshold: (a) patchwriting; (b) valuing preliminality; (c) the vision of a possible movement through a portal" (p.241).
Ontological insecurity = questioning relationship between self to real world (related to identity and security): "feeling troubled and insecure in one's sense of being in the world" (p.241) - about being recognized and self-recognition as a writer [similar to imposter syndrome?]
Strategies/ levers = patchwriting (see p.242-3); valuing preliminarity (normal part of process, space for reflection).
Discussion of writer's block (p.244-5)

Context: Examines roles of parental human and social capital in (aspiring to/ choosing) university education. Canada typically had European migration but significant increases in 'racial minorities' between 1991-2001 - According to the 2001 census, Chinese, south Asians and Blacks constitute two-thirds of the racial-minority population (p.186) - raised concern about integration. Long-term impact of immigration/ increasing diversity = determined by degree young immigrants/ children are able to participate fully and equally in economic, social and cultural life, with university education a key marker. Generally speaking, foreign born students have higher levels of educational attainment/aspirations (Asians = get aspirations from parents; students from Caribbean/ Oceania lagging behind). Human capital = parents' SES/post-secondary educational backgrounds (inc. access to 'good' schools), skills levels (in professional terms). Also language proficiency. Social capital models emphasise social networks/ relationships - 2 forms of social capital: bonding (close ties) and bridging (distant ties)
Aim: To "examine the extent of racial inequality in university educational attainment (p.187)
Methodology: Quantitative analysis of 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey (EDS) conducted by Statistics Canada in partnership with the Department of Canadian Heritage - draws on subset of 10,908 respondents (18-34 years old. Used following classifications for analyzing data: children of Canadian born parents ('third generation'), Canadian-born children of one/both parents born outside Canada ('1.5 generation') and identified 3 biggest minority groups: Chinese, south Asians, Blacks (rest = 'non-White')
Findings:
- Larger proportion of the older age groups attaining a university education than those in the 18-26 age group.
- 36% of females obtained a university education compared to 30% of males
- HE: Chinese (57%), south Asians (48%), and other minorities (39%), while just nearly one-third of Whites attained a university education
- 28% of Blacks had university degree (not much difference between Whites and Blacks)
- 38% of Blacks, 19% Chinese, 21% Asians = VET
Conclusions: Except for Blacks, racial minorities have higher educational attainments than White students: "the lower educational attainment among Blacks may reflect the disadvantages faced by the parental generation... In particular, unemployment rates were especially high among the Ethiopians, Ghanaians and Somalis at 24.4, 46.8 and 23.6 percent, respectively" (p.201)
- Females consistently higher attainment than males - young immigrant women = 60 times more likely = university educated
- Parents' educational backgrounds = important predictor of post-secondary attainment
- Close intergenerational relations in the family are conducive to the pursuit of higher education among the children of immigrants (p.202)
- Retention of minority language at home while growing up is found to be beneficial for attaining a university education (p.202)
- Involvement in organisations is also beneficial for the attainment of a university education (p.203)
Core argument:
"We find that the sense of trust is an important factor in explaining the educational disadvantage observed among Black youth. It appears that academic success is linked to the degree that this group have trustful relations with networks that provide them with valuable sources of support and information" (p.203).

The Putting Students First: Moving on from NAPLAN to a new educational assessment system evaluates NAPLAN against evidence-informed benchmarks and recommends significant changes to ensure that national assessments are designed to better support student learning, provide better information to parents and government while minimising the harmful side effects of the current NAPLAN process.

The report recommends a new national assessment system that would have different types of assessments for student, school and parental information purposes, and sample-based standardised tests for governments’ system monitoring and accountability purposes.

Given that students are at the heart of our education system the report considered the most fundamental questions upon which to design a national assessment system. Those questions are:

1. What do students need from a national assessment system?
2. What information do teachers and schools need to support students?
3. What information do parents need to support their children and schools?
4. What is the necessary minimum information that governments need for accountability purposes and to support all of the above?

The report also reviewed international case studies from Ontario (Canada), Scotland, Singapore and Finland in order to further inform the recommendations for a new assessment system.

The report recommends that the new national assessment system should come with more regular and detailed reporting to parents through a validated, formative classroom-based Assessment Resource System (ARS) that includes a national library of quality assessment tasks for Year 3 through Year 10 that are linked to the curriculum and the teaching in schools. This will improve the information to parents about their child’s learning and growth at school according to national standards and benchmarks.

These assessment resources can be used by teachers at the time of their choosing and results can be presented to parents in a visual and understandable format. This would allow reporting students’ performance in a broader range of knowledge, skills and competences over time better than occurs with NAPLAN.

A key recommendation of the report is to replace the current multi-purpose census-based literacy and numeracy testing in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 by sample-based assessments in Years 4, 6, 8 and 10 for monitoring education systems performance and complement that by formative teacher-led assessments in schools to inform students, schools and parents about students’ performance and growth.

Sample-based assessment method used in many other countries allows governments to monitor education system performance without the often harmful side effects to students and schools that are common with census-based tests. It is also more cost-effective allowing governments to shift resources from testing to support teaching and learning in schools.

Read the report

Context: Australian higher education/ University of Wollongong's 'Curriculum Transformation Project' (CTP)
Aim: To describe UoW whole-of-curriculum transition intervention; to extend notion of transition pedagogy
Theoretical frame: Kift's transition pedagogy
Contribution: Description
Findings:
UOW CTP = 3 design principles: transition, synthesis, broadening, with sub-principles of assessment (assisted by Chris Rust and David Boud), co-curricular award program, CPD.
Proposed additions to transition pedagogy:
1) Narratives of purpose - make relevance of particular curricula choices so students can see overarching narrative of degree/ higher education
2) Reflection
3) Assessment literacy - developmental view of assessment (beyond dichotomy of formative/ summative)
4) Capacity building .
Transition pedagogy = embedded in following ways at UOW (see p.78):
FYE
My Portfolio
Hybrid Learning
Connections Subjects
Capstone Experience
Core argument: Updated version of transition pedagogy proposed by authors = p.77
- "recognises and facilitates the needs of diverse student cohorts;
- is facilitated by focused capacity building opportunities for both staff and students;
- introduces and develops knowledge, skills, and attitudes through a linked sequence of learning opportunities;
- builds engagement and belonging through active and collaborative learning;
- builds assessment literacy that develops student's capacity to self assess and engage in sustainable lifelong learning;
- establishes closure at key points of the learning journey to allow students to integrate and synthesise knowledge, skills, and attitudes;
- facilitates reflection that allows students to recognise, assess and integrate their capabilities and performance;
- creates transparent sense-making narratives through negotiating clear objectives and learning processes and making explicit links between a range of learning activities to build a sense of purpose ;
- creates integrated pathways between curricular and co-curricular learning opportunities and supports;
- integrates a variety of monitoring processes that include subject-based formative feedback and subject and
- course-based data analytics to enable tracking of individual student experience and tailoring of appropriate support; and
- engages in a rigorous cycle of evaluation and renewal that measures effectiveness of the curriculum and informs its iterative redesign".

Context: Discusses use of contextual data in admissions processes in UK HE. Offers example of practice in School of Pharmacy in Manchester. Contextual data = "data that puts academic attainment in the context of circumstances in which it has been obtained" (p.77), including school background/ SES/ care background. Contextual data can identify applicants with 'merit'. Most universities collect contextual data but few use it for admissions = absence of shared understanding, methodology,
Aim: To describe how contextual data can be used to widen participation to students with 'potential' who do not meet academic entry requirements
Theoretical frame: None explicit
Methodology: Published as 'Innovative Practice' paper: description of pilot project (2007, School of Pharmacy, Uni of Manchester)
Discussion: Process = based on key principles:
- that each applicant would be considered on their own merits;
- that decisions would be evidence-based, verifiable and reliable and relevant to the admission-decision making process;
- that such mechanisms would only be used to complement and enhance existing selective mechanisms; and
- that what, how and when information is used will be transparent to applicants (p.79).
4 indicators = predicted A-level results, area of disadvantage, first in family?, care background (self-report)? Contextual analysis 'flags' students for further consideration.
Pilot study details: 1261 applicants = 27% = satisfy contextual requirements. 20 invited for interview. 13 offers made, 5 accepted (but one did not get grades and could not start). 3 completed MPharm with 2:1 and one left due to personal circumstances. Process of using contextual data also led to creation of Pharmacy Foundation Year.
Core argument: Using contextual data in admissions processes = part of WP agenda; it "generally aligns with an HEI's aim to widen access to higher education and to achieve and maintain excellence" (p.82).

Context: Examines re-articulation of social justice as equity in schooling policy through large scale (national = NAPLAN/ global = OECD/PISA) testing systems and data infrastructures.
Aim: To document discursive changes in Australian educational policy and to examine the roles of NAPLAN and PISA as "technologies of measurement, comparison and governance" (p.724)
Theoretical frame: (re)spatialisation of education(al governance); 'becoming topological/ topological of culture' (Lury, Terranova and Parisi, 2012)
Methodology: Trace discursive conceptions of social justice as equity through two tools of measurement (NAPLAN and PISA)
Findings: Proliferation of data-driven accountability has changed meaning of 'equity': "multiple layers of technical and numerical mediation to measure equity" serve to abstract complex set of phenomena that cause/represent (in)equity into "graphs, grids, league tables and indices" (p.711).2
Measurements such as NAPLAN (Aus) & PISA (OECD) offer/shape very narrow definition of equity, although they do help to focus attention on 'equity'. Equity measures in contemporary education policy are "highly reductionist" (p725) and inequitable - the collapsing of measurement into competition (who does best/worst) means that schools in impoverished communities need to work harder at improving test results than higher SES schools, thus narrowing opportunities for young people from poor families (p.726). NAPLAN and PISA deny a 'politics of recognition' - no space created to acknowledge different 'starting posts' (SB's words) the discourse of fairness hides/ dismisses individual circumstances (ethnicity/culture). NAPLAN and PISA operate in topological rationality - "ever-changing spaces of calculative correlations" which "untethers social justice in schooling from implicit values and norms embedded in the cultural and political traditions of particular places" (p.713).
Core argument: "...social justice and equity are being transformed through the national and global reworking of education into a field of measurement and comparison" (p.711). The prevalence of numbers/ quantification of equity and schooling "has weakened the influence of conceptual-discursive accounts of what constitutes social justice in schooling." (p.712)

Context: Works from argument that improving quality of teaching = fix for student under-achievement. Focus on low SES students - but low SES students are not the only group who do not experience high-quality teaching. Assumption = locus of control/blame for less than satisfactory teaching is the teacher
Aim: To "draw attention to the context of students' schooling as one complementary explanation for students' academic achievement, particularly with regard to the achievement differences between students from different
socio-economic backgrounds" (p.240). Reminds reader of importance of context (ref to Whitty, 1997). Need to consider external constraints
Theoretical frame: Bourdieu: field,
Analytic frame: Critical discourse analysis
Methodology: Qualitative. Research in one secondary school in 'economically depressed rural town' (ex-mining town). 75% students from town, 25% from rural surroundings. 28% have learning difficulties; 24% = Indigenous. School has high staff turnover and staff are generally inexperienced. Conducted 23 interviews with teachers, parents, students = purposefully sampled (for gender, age, ethnicity, SES, academic achievement). Worked with school for 1 year to develop relationship
Findings:
Problematises egalitarian, social-equaliser view of education - notes relationship between low achievement and low SES (and related under-representation in higher education).
Examines student positioning
Students positioned as without resources (e.g. food = hunger; homes = homelessness; money = financial hardship). Teacher described situation where children had textbooks taken back (due to loan scheme) so she went to library and borrowed 12 copies in her name = "the institutional habitus of the school can work against students' access to resources, how teachers are positioned in this and the stances that are available to them; what they can and cannot do" (p.246). Resources = responsibility of individual rather than system: "The
connection between under-resourcing and failure seems to be built into the system" (p.247).
Students positioned without a working future: what happens when the traditional industry of a place is gone? Students = conscious of town's economic vulnerability - educational qualifications seen as passport to job/money/security, there is also disillusionment and the real value of schooling. After school only 2-3% of students proceed to tertiary education/ some apply for work/ 'many others' apply for unemployment benefit. Lack of occupational models.
Examines stances of school
Students not likely to do well and parents don't care: "In schools servicing disadvantaged communities, 'low expectations and aspirations for student achievements are often endemic features of school cultures' (Lingard et al. 2003, 131)", p.250. Low expectations and deficit views do not serve best interests of students
Academic curriculum = not everything: Idea that children in this school need 'hands-on alternatives' = communicates message of low expectations = deficit stance

Context: Explores future of equity-based initiatives (access and participation-focused), using mentorship program for Indigenous students in Media Studies at MQ. Mentoring program = HEPPP-funded and targeted at CALD students. Offers overview of European efforts/ commitments to WP (p.384). Authors question the generalised approach taken by governments (block funding) because it asks "universities to mediate the tension between the need for continuing investment in teaching and research activities, and diverting funding to support students from traditionally under-represented backgrounds" (p.385). Macquarie's Media Mentorship program = partnership between MQ and SBS - originally for NESB but then extended to Indigenous students. Mentoring program = focused on transition and success, diversification, visibility.
Aim: To draw from evaluation of Macquarie's Media Mentorship program
Methodology: Critical evaluation + essay
Findings:
Evaluation of Macquarie's Media Mentorship program suggested that it had met the first aim (transition and support): increased capacity, increased confidence and sense of belonging, increased motivation and increased social capital + 100% retention rate. 3 components that could be applied more broadly to WP work: evaluation, cross-sectoral collaboration and conceptual evolution.
Evaluation: has created a "reflective space in which evaluators and programme facilitators have worked together to translate research findings into programme development" (p.387). Authors make the case that dissemination of evaluation helps to maintain stakeholder interest; "evaluation serves as a critical tool for evidence-based advocacy" (p.387). But disseminators of evaluation needs to be aware of political climate and sensitive to contextual lived student experience. Authors notes that critical sociological work = useful for contestation but not for translating into the kinds of results that funders respond to: "In some sense the shift towards critical and constructivist epistemologies means social science research is at its most useful when deployed to critique and contest settled orthodoxies and status quos. It works less well when asked to translate what is in essence a 'best-fit' interpretive exercise into the kinds of 'scientific facts' on which governments can stake billions of dollars of taxpayers' money" (p.388).
Collaboration: Macquarie Media Mentorship = form of WiL. Many benefits include: better understandings of future careers in media, additional funding/resources offered. To be successful, program needs to align with goals of all partners. Authors note risks in top-down organisations (possible disconnects between managers and operational staff).
Conceptual evolution: "widening participation should not only adapt to political vicissitudes, but seek to actively bridge them, thereby retaining a constancy of purpose by engaging more deeply with non-political actors in civil society" - should make widening participation "everyone's business" (p.391). WP should be weaved into other policy/political agendas to broaden scope and possibilities (e.g. multicultural agenda) and with interests of
lobby and advocacy groups, charities, private and public industries or political campaigns.
Core argument: It's time for WP "to embark on a fundamental reappraisal of its function in society" (p.393). Argue for 1) more evaluation for program development and to build evidence base, 2) need more cross-sectoral collaboration, 3) should align widening participation with other societal goals

Context: Student capability (in terms of who is recognised as capable or not), equity, higher education + (hegemonic discourses of) time/ temporality. Assumptions abound in higher education about who has time, how people manage their time (or not), which are translated into messages about organisation/ commitment: "If people are not able to conform to traditional structural timeframes and to deliver on time, they are considered to be lacking both the ability and commitment to study, rather than being understood as occupying a different ' space-time' or ' timescape' that is tied to socio-cultural positioning and context" (p.2). However, such views deny the intersection and sociocultural/ socio-historic positionalities at play. People's experiences of time = relational: "Time does not exist apart from context, and it is not neutral. Time is embedded in the social and cultural dynamics of power and inequality" (p.4).
Aim: To deconstruct hegemonic conceptions of time in higher education
Theoretical frame: Higher education as a timescape (Adam, 1998) "in which participants manage their own and others' time according to normative frameworks" (p.2)
Methodology: Essay; draws on data from Capability study
Findings:
Students = connect capability with time management
Teachers = equate time management/ working hard with (lacking) capability: "Having the ' right attitude' and attending classes/accessing online systems were important in teachers' judgements about student capability" (p.9).
Discussion: Time management - overemphasis on instrumental supports (how to manage your time): "The rationality of remedial forms of support to compensate for individual ' deficit' often reinforces deficit discourses and is based on a disjointed, and inadequate, notion of time and development" (p.6).
Core argument: Time is relational; HE = operates through hegemonic version of time that does not align with the timescapes and temporalities of many students. "Education operates with many subliminal assumptions
and unexamined ' habits'" which reproduce inequity (p.11).

Context: In context of globalised neoliberal university and increased influence of individualising, competitive and marketised practices - notes warnings in literature about impact on sense of connectivity and belonging. Emergence of discourses of individualisation silence (pretend they don't exist) critiques of the constraints/ inequities of class, race, gender etc. Notes discussions of teaching excellence often couched in instrumental terms. Also, participation in HE = gendered and "has led to a reinforcement of the divisions between the rational and the emotional" (p.390) - whereby difference and emotion = conceived as "dangerous forces that require homogenizing and neutralizing via technologies of materialism and through the fixing of socially constructed categories" (p.390). This individualising push = promotes a limited view of identity and "increasingly restricts our pedagogical imagination" (p.391) and being emotional or caring become highly regulated/ controlled by disciplinary technologies [think erosion of possibilities to care with casual staff]. Discusses treatment of 'diversity' in HE (as marketing tool, as unproblematic and desirable) as different from 'difference'
Aim: To theorise 'emotional layers of pedagogical identities and experiences' in contemporary UK HE by examining past work published in TinHE on pedagogies, diversity, difference
Theoretical frame: Feminist/ Freirean perspectives: misrecognition;
Methodology: Literature review of articles in TinHE that explore feminist pedagogy/ emotion/ difference/ diversity - profiling 'exemplar papers'; also draws on data from GaP project (see p.393) = participatory methodology etc.
Findings: Misrecognition and shaming = diverse students (read: different) = "continually at risk of being relocated as 'undeserving' and 'unworthy' of higher education"... so that "The injuries of misrecognition are embodied, through the internalization of shame, and are tied to the emotional level of experience" (p.394). Feminist reading = shame is deeply connected to gender, class and race and politics of misrecognition (p.394) - see Foucault's dividing practices (relational, objectifying). Cites Ahmed's argument that shame is felt in and through body. Response of academy = remedial supports (e.g. study skills) - attached to anxieties about 'dropping standards' or being soft - that deny the embodied experience. Draws from Said's orientalism work re: positioning of 'Others' = students who are 'Other' = "often characterized then through a range of deficit disorders, including lack of confidence and are positioned by gendered, classed and racialized constructions" (p.397)
GaP project data suggests lecturers resist the feminized nurturing, caring role they feel is imposed upon them (e.g. 'I'm not their mum' quote on p.395)
Key ideas from literature from TinHE:
- pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, 1999; Boler & Zembylas, 2002);
- pedagogy of difference and trust (Barnett, 2011);
- emotion as disciplinary technology (Leathwood & Hey, 2009)
- new imaginations of difference (Chawla & Rodriguez, 2007)
Core argument: Need to find comfort in discomfort to engage in reflexive practice and build trust in pedagogic relationships - explicit engagement with emotion = important
Risky strategies (of engaging with anxieties, vulnerabilities, im/possibility/s (see Chawla & Rodriguez, 2007:707) = "rich in the promise of engaging students in generative, creative and optimistic ways of re/imagining with and through difference" (p.400).

Context: Cross-national study involving New Zealand and the Netherlands measuring students' perceived preparedness for university before entering higher education. Framed in terms of demands for a 'highly educated workforce' and widening participation policy contexts which aim to improve access to higher education but do not necessarily lead to increased completions of degree programs. Focuses on attrition, transitions, academic preparedness and the first-year experience.
Aim: Research questions addressed: "Do students from the two countries differ in their overall self-perceived preparedness and in their self-estimated chances of success?" "Can we establish differences on aspects of readiness between the two groups of students?" "To what extent can we explain the perceived preparedness by readiness and self-estimated chances of success? Which factors differ and which factors can be considered to have a similar effect on perceived preparedness in the two countries?" (p. 4)
Methodology: Uses a survey instrument developed by the authors: The Readiness and Expectations Questionnaire (REQ) (2007; 2008) administered online and/or by hardcopy prior to the start of the academic year in each country. The survey was initially trialled in both countries, analysed and modified. The results reported in this paper are from the first iteration of the survey. Survey responses were statistically analysed. Responses: NZ, n = 458; Netherlands, n = 1490; Total, n = 1948.
Findings: RQ1: The study found significant differences in perceptions of preparedness between students in the two countries (the NS students had been in a non-differentiated school system, whereas the Dutch students were from a differentiated system and had completed schooling in a school with a curriculum designed specifically for students who seek entry to university). However, the NZ students expressed greater confidence in their future university success than the Dutch students.
RQ2: Differences were also found between the two groups in perceptions of their time management, information processing, written communication (where the Dutch students scored higher), and group work (where the NZ students scored higher).
RQ3: All aspects of readiness tested in the study except ICT skills were found to be significant contributors to students' perceptions of their preparedness for university.
Core Argument: While there were significant differences between the two cohorts studied and the high school systems they came from, many of those differences were not either not remarkable or not very significant. The university preparedness high schools in the Netherlands have not produced the desired effects. Therefore, the authors suggest greater attention be paid by universities to Transition Pedagogy (Kift 2008) and contextualised, embedded academic skills to better prepare students for university study.

Context: Seeks to showcase successful mentoring program which takes a different approach [from individualist-neoliberal, deficit-based programs] - takes a cultural wealth approach so as to inspire participants (resisting deficit approaches/ views) and recognise aspiration. AIME connects indigenous school students (Yr 7-12) with university students in 5 Australian states (18 universities in NSW, VIC, SA, WA, QLD and ACT). Program works from idea 'indigenous = success' and recognition of aspiration = foundational. Dominance of western cultural knowledge = imposes white middle class norms. Has produced series of materials; in university, mentors sit with mentees to help complete tasks (uni based); school based = AIME curriculum delivered in schools 2 hours from uni campus. In 2013, 1066 mentors & 2789 mentees = effective for improving school retention and engagement
Aim:
Theoretical frame: Engages with Appadurai's theory of the capacity to aspire/ Yosso's Community Cultural Wealth framework, especially 'aspirational capital' ( building on Bourdieu, 1986): "an individual's ability to maintain hope and dreams for the future despite real and perceived obstacles" (p.220)
Methodology: Ethnographic observations of 150 AIME sessions (over 56 days/ in 15 uni campuses) = repeat visits. 6 unis = single visit. Semi-structured interviews with 86 mentees and 79 mentors. Also, 91 mentees completed surveys (indigenous/culturally-sensitive)
Findings:
AIME "significantly and positively impacts Australian Indigenous high school students' aspirations to finish school and continue to further study, training or employment" (abstract)
Majority of mentees aspire to complete year 12 (89%)
44% aspire to go to university
74% have clear post-school aspirations
AIME= developing strong(er) sense of self-perception [but notes: no control group; difficult to make substantiated claims]
Qualitative data: macro level= all mentees sign contract: "The philosophy behind the practice is not one of compulsion, but rather, communicating a belief in the young people's capacity and right to completing their education and exploring further opportunities with employment, training and university" (p.277)
Mirco level = program sets high expectations in every AIME day: "At AIME, Stepping up is communicated as a means for developing confidence and skills that underpin success both at school and in future careers" (p.228).
Core argument: AIME celebrates aspiration capital of indigenous students by "perpetually link[ing] the past, present and future in aspirational terms, and in so doing, recognise the navigational capacity that the young people already possess" (p.230)

Context: Students' transitions into and through higher education - authors argue that transition is most commonly thought of as linear process, which "lends itself to the production of somewhat reductive and superficial accounts of students' lived experiences" (p.1), and secondly there is a dominance towards assimilation, which "downplays the complex relations and webs that students forge between what happens in their lives 'outside' the institution and what goes on within it" (p.1)
Aim: To draw on three elements of Deleuze and Guatarri's theory (assemblage, rhizome, becoming) to reconceptualise/ develop a more complex understanding of transition to higher education that is a "more fluid, emergent and multiple process" (p.1).
Theoretical frame: Draws on Deleuze and Guatarri to build on Gale & Parker's (2014) 3-part typology
Methodology: Draws on two transitions-focused projects from the UK (see p.4)
Findings:
Assemblage: = "an emergent, temporarily stable yet continually mutating conglomeration of bodies, properties, things, affects and materialities" or "how things combine together in complex configurations that seem momentarily stable, even though we are aware things are always changing, or just about to change" (p.5). Thinking about assemblage: "highlights transitioning as an active making and unmaking of the 'thing' called 'transition'. Transition is a process which draws elements into its orbit and fits them together in an 'arrangement'. This provokes us to attend to the elements that each student assembles within their individual transitioning, to how those elements work together, and how they are put to work via connections" (p.6). The focus is less on the constitutive parts, and more on how they combine to create individual conditions, which are not viewed as static but instead in constant motion (think Gale & Parker's T3).
Rhizome: "forms or beings which can spread in any direction and move through levels and scales" and which are used to "de-stablise root and branch, linear or hierarchical systems of organization" (p.7). Authors "activate the concept of the rhizome to rethink knowledge and knowing during transition" (p.7). "Thinking of knowledge and knowing via the concept of the rhizome shifts the focus from knowing as cognitive intellection to knowing as an embodied form of (be)coming-to-know, suggestive of an ongoing, unfinishable process in which the 'self' continually emerges in each new act of knowledgeing" (p.9).
Becoming: "Becoming is about change as ongoing flux and dynamic flow, as emergence and unfolding in micro-moments and instants. Becoming is the endless play of difference and it is difference that effectuates becoming. Becoming is the working of self-differentiation. It is not change 'within' an entity. Neither is it a change 'from' something 'to' something else" (p.9).
Core argument: Authors argue that their focus on "transition as experiential emergence through the interplay of microlevel events ... makes our approach distinct" (p.3).
1) drawing on D&G's work = helps to "foreground the fact that 'transition' does not have an essence; it is not a neat, unifying package containing skills or competencies, and neither is it a neutral description of a temporal or spatial linear process" (p.12)
2) helps to develop idea of transition as "dynamic, multiple, creative and mobile" (p.12), and deeply individual
3) use of verb = "constitutes transition as an emergent, dynamic event of transitioning, and encourages attention to the multiple ways which might help rupture the normative and normalising discourses" (p.12)
4) argues for focusing on individuals' experience
5) offers new forms of data analysis

Aim: To explore the interplay between reflexive modernization (Beck) and time social theory; to make explicit the temporal dimensions of modernity with references to the 5 Cs (creation of time to human design; commodification of time; compression of time; control of time; colonization of time)
Theoretical frame: Reflexive modernization = idea that anything that cannot be absorbed by logic of industrialisation creates ongoing tensions in the system: "Reflexive modernization recognizes that the continuity and intensification of the logic of modernity undermine their own base: discontinuity arises from continuity" (p.60). Naturalization = hegemony of the system (understood as given and unchangeable). Social time of modernization tends to be naturalized
Methodology: Essay
Discussion:
C1 - creation of time to human design: clock-time = invariable and precise (unlike natural time, which is variable and context-dependent). Development of first clocks aligned with conceptual design of linear perspective by Italian artists ("both are premised on abstraction, decontextualization, quantification and rationalization", p.62) = revolutionized ways that humans saw the world/ themselves in the world. In the industrial sphere (including human services like education), time is "decontextualized, spatial, invariant, quantifiable and external" (p.63), and this invariable and normative version of time is used to classify and structure variable and human (embedded) temporal activities (such as learning): "The periodic changing of the education system therefore can be never more than a fiddling at the edges as long as it ignores the contradictions and stresses of the competing temporal logics at the centre" (p.63-4)
Table 1 p.64

Imposition of naturalized clock time/ linear perspective also makes us observers (through abstraction) rather than participants
C2 - commodification of time: clock time + money = perfect pairing of abstractions "When 'time is money', then time costs money and time makes money because the economic practice of charging interest means that capital has got a built-in clock that is constantly ticking away. Every hour, every day, every month and every year brings profit on the invested sum of money. Equally, every hour, every day, every month and every year that money is borrowed has to be paid for in interest" (p.65-6).
C3 - compression of time: "When time is money, then faster means better" (p.67) - time compression = equated with efficiency and increased profits - see Virilio's argument about transport, transmission, transplantation
C4 - control of time: partly relating to human desire to recraft rhythms of life in ways that are uniform, invariable, decontextualized, predictable
C5 - colonization of time: global imposition of industrial time = colonization with time (e.g. dominance of Western, clock time) and of time (e.g. genetic modification: "refers primarily to the econo-political reach into, as well as the ab/use of, the past and future, that is, predecessors' and successors' presents", p.72)
Core argument: Reflexive modernization helps to understand how clock time (creation of time to human design) is "being undermined by the results of its own logic being taken to the limit" (p.73-4). Politics of time has no obvious locus (unlike democratic politics where voting can represent public opinion): "We have no institutions adequate and appropriate to our current temporal politics" (p.74) - there is "no governance of time. There are no democratically elected guardians of the future" (p.75).