Higher Education Equity Literature Database

Context: Presents data from PhD study. Examines women's experiences of accessing HE through the lens of the mother-daughter relationship and intergenerational perspectives (young women and their mothers), read through the political/ analytic lens of the increase in tuition fees in 'unsettled' HE system (see p.626) England in 2012. Works from premise that neoliberalism = creates more division that opportunity. Focus on familial experiences/ structures = argued for (p.625) - in middle class families, who (she argues) have more limited opportunities, and for working class families (she argues against the idea of choice for people whose financial circumstances make entering higher education undesirable/ impossible. Author scopes context of tuition fees (post Dearing report in 1997 in England), noting neoliberal shift = positioned HE as 'choice' and opportunity to 'buy in' = resulting in class gain for middle classes in job market (see Skeggs, 1997). Changes resulted in push to individual responsibility: "Financing access to university entry is now an independent problem to be solved within family, rather than a collective issue to be resolved through government policy" (p.628).
Aim: To provide "an insight into the transference or otherwise of available capital within the family, that would not be apparent by interviewing only mothers or daughters" (p.625)
Theoretical frame: Bourdieu (capital, habitus)
Methodology: Qualitative, inter-generational. Semi-structured interviews with 39 women (18 mothers, 21 daughters) = snowball recruitment. 10 of mothers are studying in HE as PG students or had previously done a degree. 19/21 daughters =studying in HE at the time of data collection. Data = manually coded. Article focuses on narratives of 4 dyads (see p.630)
Findings:
1) Using capital as currency to access HE: two of mums = PG study (MA/ PhD), neither = traditional students and attended uni when before tuition fees implemented. One mum -Fran - made herself 'fully conversant' with funding possibilities for her daughters, which "translate[d] into powerful cultural capital and a subsequent rewarding economic return" (p.631). Other mum - Sam (PhD) - has dyslexia and was able to navigate system through support from school; she has used her knowledge to help her severely dyslexic daughter with her university studies. Daughter now has 36,000GBP debt and is doing unpaid internship in hope of getting a job in her field.
2) Perception: loan or debt? Repayment of debt = differs according to economic status. Women in study perceived loan as 'long term debt' and all bar 2 = worried about level of debt and repaying it. Women, especially mums = debt-averse. Mums invested a lot of emotional capital in daughters' education, as well as financially supporting. With middle class participants, regular reference made to working class students receiving support that middle class/ higher earning families could not access ('middle-class positional suffering and anxiety', Atkinson, 2012; p.634)
3) WP/ vocational debate = author discusses stratification of system and cites David Starkey's article in The Guardian about the myth of assuming all degrees are valued the same. Data from participants reflects this attitude (too many rubbish courses, not enough jobs for graduates); two mums "the broad choice of university courses and pathways with the dilution of the worth of a degree" (p.635) - both privately educated their children. Cites argument that mums = 'status mainteners of middle class advantage' (Ball, 2003; Brooks, 2004).
Core argument: Middle class mothers views of higher education of themselves and their daughters in context of tuition fees. Findings in paper "exacerbate the argument that if middle-class families have concerns, the repayment of tuition fees will prohibit working class families from accessing HE, who by default are on a lower income. Factors such as choice and motivation to attend university will be determined by familial classification and the working class will continue to struggle, using Bourdieu's analogy, to 'play the game', being unable to compete against middle-class capital" (p.637)

Context: To reflect on relationship between OU and Bridges Programmes in Glasgow, which sought to "build on refugees and asylum seekers' existing skills, qualifications, hopes and ambitions in the process of social inclusion and economic integration" (abstract). OU = long-term relationship with Bridges (match-funded 3 year project, 2008-2011) and offers educational information and guidance, and through 'Openings program' and Bridges' 'Women's Empowerment Course', many women students come to know about opportunities for higher education offered by OU. Bridges = funded by National Lottery (Scotland).
Aim: "We were interested in finding out more about the transition process and the movement from a situation of 'in-between-ness' and of potential isolation, to one of engagement in the social space of education, training and employment" (abstract). To find out more about role of social networks and informal learning in community context.
Theoretical frame: Third space (Bhaba, 1994) and Gutierrez et al. (1999). Authors understand third space as 'in-between space' to understand relationship between migration and identity. Bhaba = focus on location and privileging of dominant culture, with cultural difference reinforced; hybrid third space = "a state of flux with the inherent potential to challenge, creatively resist or disrupt dominant social, political and historical narratives" (1994: 38; on p.93). In contrast, Gutierrez et al interpret hybridity of third space as discourse space in which to disrupt/ play with competing discourses and practices to develop new understandings; "as the negotiated interplay of official and unofficial elements and where hybridity is creatively incorporated into pedagogic praxis" (Gutierrez et al, 1999: 286-7; on p.93). Both theories of third space = underpinned by valuing of cultural diversity and difference, which are opportunities for new learnings that act as bridge to 'mainstream'
Methodology: Ethnographic study called Women Learning: Women's Learning with 14 participants recruited from May 2009 cohort of Women's Empowerment Course. Participants = from Africa and Middle East, from 23-66 years old, different educational backgrounds, range of proficiency with English language, range of work experiences. 10 = asylum seekers; 6 = suffering severe stress because of asylum application; two had significant mental health issues; 2 had disabilities, majority had suffered depression
Findings: Two readings of 'third space' led to a macro and micro analysis. Overview:
- "the women's articulation of a 'starting place' in terms of their position as refugees and asylum seekers
- their engagement in activities during the course
- their repositioning of themselves in its final stages" (p.96).
At start ('where I am'), most women talked about isolation, loss of confidence, negative feelings, especially for those with low levels of English proficiency: "Many of their stories reflected the problematic, 'in-between' position of refugees and asylum seekers in a host country, where the definition of who they are, the kinds of resources that are available to them and what is expected of them as new or potential citizens, serves to complicate and fragment identity and sense of self (Bhabha, 1994)" (p.96).
Aspirations ('where I want to be'), students wanted to learn new knowledge, develop more confidence and capabilities, developing English language proficiency.
Little evidence of hybridity (Gutierrez et al version) in class talk/ interactions: "no instances were evident of the dominant discourse being challenged by competing texts in order to produce new knowledge" (p.100).
Offers case studies (p.99)
Core argument: Recommendations based on importance of hybrid educational spaces (p.100-101) - recommendations = extend program/ be benchmarked about Scottish QF to help with 'what next' question.

Context: Transitions into 'elite' higher education for working class students in England. Set against a literature review that reminds us of the significant mismatch in expectations between students (particularly from working class backgrounds) and middle class institutions, meaning working class students' transitions "are constructed by risk and chance as much as by calculation and rational choice_making. Their habitus is characterised by uncertainty, lack of entitlement, and low confidence" (p.2)
Aim: To explore the transitions of 'educationally successful' working class students
Theoretical frame: Bourdieu (field, habitus, capital) - as a set of tools to expose the privilege and relational disadvantage that students have/ expose the 'rules of the game'
Methodology: Literature review; reference to data collected in Reay, Crozier & Clayton (2009)
Findings: Themes from earlier study for 'educationally successful' students:
Disappointment/ disheartening experience of Freshers' Week, often characterised by awkward interactions and which exposed the relational difference from other students and being positioned as 'outside within' (p.7) and not fitting in. With reference to other studies, the author writes "The habitus of working class students in both studies can be seen to be striated by dispositions of discomfort, ill_ease, and self_deprecation" (p.8). This results in 'weak integration' into university social life (p.8). Challenges of social life and belonging played out in the academic domain: "The interplay between incentives of the academic field and the disincentives of the social field, together with an already highly_motivated academic habitus, meant that success in academic work became the individual's main source of positive identity" (p.8).
Feeling lost/ unanchored and with no support = described by 'Jim' and interpreted as if he "were inhabiting a parallel universe, one that is infused with indiscernible mysteries, an esoteric inaccessible world that he still struggles to be part of" (p.9). Transition = experienced by many working class students (as per the literature review) as a 'trial'
Core argument: "working class transitions to university reveal the failure of the English educational system to provide anything like a level playing field to support working class young people who are seen to be educational successes" (abstract).
"The fight for a successful academic identity often means forfeiting a successful social identity" (p.9)
Exclusion = "a consequence of the middle class and upper class institutional culture in Russell Group universities in the UK rather than being attributable to deficits or self_exclusion in the individual working class student" (p.11). Universities must engage in 'radical change' but rather than imposing arbitrary quotas, author argues that universities need to invest in "A more egalitarian, democratic system with a fairer distribution of funds, less hierarchy both between and within universities and a recognition that higher education is both racist and classist, and has to transform both its values and culture, not simply policies and practices" (p.11).

Context: The mass of scholarship that exists about the increased pressure on academic working conditions due to reforms influenced by neoliberal ideologies, marketization and performative regimes and the response of Harmes et al. to this "deluge of misery about academic workplaces" in the form of "invited contributions that focused on pleasure within and despite neoliberal ideologies, market forces, audit practices, performative regimes and crisis rhetoric. The intention was not to deny or erase such pressures but, rather, to open new pathways to multiply and complicate the ways we might think about academic subjectivities, practices and temporalities" (48).
Aim: To consider the ways that academics engage in moments of resistance by mobilising resources beyond those of critique, particularly "joy and positive affect in the everyday moments of academic life" (48). To operate as "an experiment in thinking differently together, one which uses collective biography as a feminist methodology that invites attention to the embodied, affective and relational labour of everyday academic life" (48).
Theoretical frame: Affect studies (specifically the "'affective turn' announced by Clough (2007)...inspired by Deleuze, Spinoza and others" and "important publications investigating philosophies, methods, critiques and experiments in writing otherwise [e.g. Ahmed, 2010; Anderson, 2009, 2014; Gregg and Seigworth, 2010; Knudsen and Stage, 2015; Stewart, 2007, 2011]" [49]; feminist methodology of collective biography ("offers a flexible, generative and creative approach to interrogating lived experience and the formation of subjectivities" and "emphasises the moment to moment formations and affective and discursive encounters that produce bodies, objects, subjects and through which they come to cohere" [49]).
Methodology: Essay - utilizing a "strategic attention to positive affect by focusing on joy in the everyday moments of academic life" (48). The stories are presented as data in a collective biography, which traces the "affective atmospheres enveloping and producing bodies, objects and encounters and their mutability from moment to moment" (48).
Findings: "'A culture of being continually 'on', available and responsive, leaves little opportunity to experience the pleasure in thinking cognitively and deeply as university researchers should' (Collins, 2017, 126)" and "The 'sense of potentiality' (Stewart, 2011, 452) recorded in our stories urging change, is an urgent call to us to change how we practice" (54).
Core argument: "joy is founded upon connections with others [and] arises in different academic spaces and that it can lead to revised knowing of ourselves" and "[various] glimpses of joy...provoke affective attunement within the everyday, sensitizing us to other fragments of joy and providing strategies to strengthen that resistance" (48).

Discussion: Points for debate: starts from outlining HEPPP (from Bradley review). Uses term 'working class'. Focuses specifically on supporting working class students - comments on meta-survey of 35 studies (included 62,000 students) - mostly US studies. Findings suggest a "significant positive relation between social class and social integration" (p.431), with working class less likely to integrate socially, such as "membership and participation in campus-based clubs, societies, and organizations (e.g., athletics, student governance, halls of residence activities)" (p.431). Claims this is significant because working class students tend to do worse in studies/ drop out more than middle class peers. Better/ more social interaction could help by "provid[ing] access to social and informational support, as well as motivational role model" (p.432)

Context: Looks at the 'double transition' of enabling education, looking specifically at enabling students moving from Open Foundation into teaching UG courses
Aim: To examine the 'double transition' - into and out of enabling programs.
Methodology: Mixed methods: enabling educators and UG education lecturers sharing of Blackboard sites/ attending a lecture of the other/ input from counselling + focus group interviews with past OF students and separate focus groups with 20 staff (enabling/ UG education)
Findings: Cross-level communication helps staff at each level to understand better what the other is doing and to better support students through the double transition (p.23-4)
Core Argument: Double transition/ blue-print for collaboration between enabling-faculty

Context: Writing, writer identity; writing as an act of identity. Time/ timing = essential for meaning making (Zerubavel, 1981). Context = adult education in England
Aim: To identify different timescales of aspects of writer identity with two steps: "[it] distinguishes aspects of [Ivanic's discoursal] writer identity according to the timescales over which they develop; second, it proposes interrelationships
among the different aspects.
Theoretical frame: Timescales/ process as unit of analysis/ heterochrony (Lemke, 2000); Ivanic (1998) = discoursal construction of writer identity; identity = understood as "something that is not unitary or fixed but has multiple facets; is subject to tensions and contradictions; and is in a constant state of flux, varying from one time and one space to another" (p.232).
Methodology: Ethnographic study of adult literacy classes in further education college (E3/ L1 classes) - all participants were women aged 30-50 + 1 retiree. Data collection (participant observation/ interviews with tutor and 5 students/ fieldnotes/ curriculum documents/ student writing/ teaching materials) = carried out over 4 months. RQ = how do discourses construct identities in adult literacy classes?
Findings: Most texts are heterochronous artefacts because they coordinate timescales and meaning (written in short-term; persist into longer term)
See p.235 for diagrammatic representation of writer/reader discoursal positionings

Context: Transition as loss experience - student identity discontinuity as a result of 'knowledge about' rather than 'knowledge of' university. Scopes literature that has pointed to negative aspects of educational transition (lack of connection, dissatisfaction, loneliness and isolation, alienation), leading to attrition. Transition = "a process entailing the loss of taken-for-granted realities and associated identities" (p.224; see Milligan, 2003). Authors situate paper in context of neoliberal/ 'lean and mean' higher education system of 'late modernity'. Scopes theories that help to explore transition (Tinto, Van Gennep, Bourdieu)
Aim:
Theoretical frame: Schutz (1964) - symbolic interactionist framework. Schutz's argument = people use 3 sources of information (reference schema) to define situations: previous experience, present goals and interaction with others - leading to 'knowledge about' (outsider) rather than 'knowledge of' (insider) information. Students' familiarity with university divides knowledge into 'layers of relevance'. Offers conceptual discussion of identity (taking a situational and processual view)
Methodology: Questionnaire-based ('First Year Students' Experience of Loss & Academic Performance Questionnaire'), but qualitatively written. Research conducted in 6 faculties in several diverse universities. Participants = first-year students (n=602). Q'naire distributed at end of semester 1. 27 students participated in follow-up individual interviews (demographic profile on p.229).
Findings:
When student encounter transitional challenges = largely due to reliance on past experiences: "These experiences, however, do not prepare students for the learning context of the university nor for the kinds of students they are expected to become. The reason for this is, as we have argued earlier, that they lack the all important 'knowledge of ' the university context, having instead only naive 'knowledge about' the university" (p.230). This was also true of students who entered via university-based alternative pathway.
Students found it difficult to connect with staff because of their perceived remoteness (compared with 'teacher as friend' at school): "When students feel that they are only a number and the lecturer is no longer a friend, then they suffer identity displacement and a sense of loss for past learning situations" (p.232). Also, students reported struggling with inadequate communication of academic expectations/ feedback.
Students' loss of identity = related to initial feelings of anonymity (shifting from school friends/ being known). Participants also signaled that the diversity of students = confronting [my word]. Mature age students made more comments about age.
Core argument: Unfamiliarity with new learning context = poses significant challenges for students. Students "experience feelings of loss of continuity as they leave behind familiar learning contexts and make the transition to university" (p.237).

Context: There are currently over 40,000 children and young people living in out-of-home care in Australia. Young people transitioning from out-of-home care are known to have poor educational outcomes compared to their non-care peers. However, little is known about the experiences or needs of the small numbers of Australian care leavers who enter higher education.
Aim: To critically examine current research on the participation and completion of HE among care leavers, and highlight the significant knowledge gap about care leavers in Australia.
Methodology: The literature review targeted key local and international literature on care leavers' access to HE, and was guided by the lead author's involvement in the Transitions to Adulthood for Young People Leaving Public Care International Research Group (INTRAC), and the participation of all three authors in a recent Australian Research Council grant application on a similar topic.
Findings: The literature review: 1) established that poor educational outcomes are common for care leavers in Australia and internationally 2) highlighted factors that promote or hinder HE access for care leavers: Pre care experiences - abuse & neglect, highly disadvantaged family backgrounds; in-care factors (which hinders access) - instability in placements and schools; low expectations from social workers, teachers and carers; limited assistance with homework; a lack of supportive relationships with caring adults; inadequate personal and financial support; lack of collaboration between child protection agencies and education, and attitudinal and social problems at school, including discrimination and bullying from students and teachers, lack of interest in study and general unhappiness; in-care factors (which promotes access) - strong personal motivation and resilience, having a close supportive adult, stability in care and school placements that facilitate continuity in school attendance, satisfactory accommodation and financial help; ongoing emotional support, encouragement and advocacy from carers, teachers, family members and social workers, and integrated child welfare and education case management; transition from care factors - abrupt transitions that involve withdrawals of government support at a fixed chronological age of 18 years, when young people are finishing or about to finish school. 3) identified international research about the participation of care leavers in HE: England - by 2009, an estimated 7% of all 19-year-old identified care leavers entered HE (from 1% in 2003); 2012: most recent Department for Education figures suggest a slight decline from 430 young people in higher education in 2012 to 400 in 2013, or 6 per cent of all former care leavers aged 19 years (Department for Education, 2013); Sweden, Spain & Hungary - an estimated 6% of all care leavers have entered HE; Denmark: much lower figures at age 20, but 7% have completed HE by the age of 30; US - an estimated 10% enter and complete HE compared to their non-care experienced peers; Israel - largest percentage of care leavers transitioning to HE; Australia - no precise figures available
5) provided an overview of programmes designed to improve access: USA: The Chafee Education and Training Voucher (ETV) programme, introduced in 2001, provides care leavers with financial assistance of up to US$5000 until the age of 21 years, for both college and training programmes; The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 extended eligibility for the ETV to young people who enter kinship care or adoption after 16 years; College Cost Reduction Act of 2009 provides care leavers with increased opportunity to apply for financial aid (Day et al., 2011).
Discussion: This review of the literature highlights the lack of policy making in Australia in relation to supporting care leavers' access and participation in HE, and suggests that a range of targeted personal and structural supports are needed to improve the participation of Australian care leavers in HE (Jackson & Cameron, 2012).
Recommendations: 1) Extend state care obligations beyond 18 years 2) ensure that every care leaver had a post-18 educational support plan, based on a partnership between child protection and education (McDowall, 2009). 3) establish a post-18 national database similar to that maintained by the English Department of Education 4) all universities should have a formal policy for enrolling and supporting students from an out-of-home care back- ground, including a specific student services officer who has specialist knowledge of the impact of state care experience 5) generous and reliable financial support to assist care leavers entering higher education: removal or reduction of fees and/or deferral of Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) repayments, the provision of a small number of quarantined places for care leavers, and the availability of scholarships to meet educational and living costs. Australia should follow the lead of the UK government in offering a major bursary for each care leaver undertaking higher education, and associated support including: living and maintenance allowance for term time and vacations, an accommodation grant and assistance with the cost of stationery, books and a computer (Department for Education, 2014; National Care Advisory Service, 2012). * assistance should not be limited only to care leavers aged up to 25 years, but should also be available for those older care leavers who elect to return to education later in life.
Core argument: Specific policy and practice reforms are required to enhance opportunities for Australian care leavers to participate in and complete HE.

Context: Editorial for SI of Aus Ed Res on youth aspirations - situates the SI in the context that youth aspirations and post-school transitions are a hot topic for researchers and policy makers alike, but that an SI of Critical Studies in Education (following NCSEHE symposium in 2010) pointed to how "the modern conceptualisation of 'aspiration' risks establishing disadvantaged young people with dreams that are different to the dominant culture as 'outcasts'" (p.133). National policy context = 'National Partnership Agreement on Youth Attainment and Transitions' requires all young people to remain in education or training until the age of 17, and income support for people aged 15-20 = conditional on this engagement. Moreover, DET made many career development resources available in 2014 (including 'My Big Tomorrow') to assist young people in making post-school
Papers:
Gale & Parker (2015): 'To aspire: a systematic reflection...' - critique of discourses underpinning aspirations; 4-concept clusters: social imagination, taste/distinction, desire/possibility and navigational capacity/archives of experience; draw on empirical data to argue low-SES students have less of specialized knowledge needed for navigation.
Gore et al. (2015): 'Socioeconomic status and career aspirations...' - draw on longitudinal aspirations survey to examine degree of certainty of career ambitions of students in Years 4,6,8. Findings suggest low SES students are more likely to base decisions on money rather than interest.
Galliott & Graham (2015): 'School-based experiences...' - draw on survey with 706 high school students (Yr 9-12); findings suggest students largely are uncertain about aspirations, experience a lack of curriculum diversity and have little/no exposure to careers advisory advice. Authors suggest that careers advice should be offered to all students prior to selection of elective subjects.
Sellar (2015): 'Unleashing aspiration...' - looks at promises made by policymakers with relation to social mobility and employability and higher education. Explores discourses of 'potential' (realization and waste) exploit learners' feelings; broken promises are often 'explained away' as a lack of talent or potential, rather than the unrealistic expectations set up by the discourse/ system.
Harwood et al. (2015) 'Recognising aspiration: the AIME program...' - explores possibilities of strengths-based approaches for individual aspirations to show how AIME (Aus Ind. Mentoring Experience) impacts on indigenous high school students.
Molla & Cuthbert (2015) 'Issue of Grad Employability' - explores assumptions in policy about graduate employability and the 'skills gap' between HRD graduates and labour market. Findings = skills deficit in dominant discourse = unfounded as most PhDs have worked prior to RHD and thus have already developed 'soft skills'
Gale (2015) 'Social imaginary' - examines social inclusion strategies in Aus HE agenda (Labor policies) and argues that there is a lack of social imagination in strategies, thus placing assumptions of deficit on students.

Context: Youth transitions, particularly educational transitions. Author argues that assumptions about linearity and choice are not reflective of more complex and nuanced transitions made by young people in the more precarious/ uncertain modern (at time of writing - this is much more dynamic and complex 16+ years later). At time of writing, schooling policy had been amended to encourage young people to complete secondary education, which had the effect of "contribut[ing] to a prolonged dependency of young people on education and on their parents" (p.244)
Theoretical frame: Transition understood as non-linear. Author argues that policy is based on two assumptions about transition to adulthood: linearity ("defined by markers such as leaving school, leaving home, getting a job and living independently", p.245), and individual choice (see idea of 'choice biographies'; Beck, 1992). Author offers critique of the idea of choice: "The idea of choice biographies, perhaps unintentionally, feeds a misleading discourse around individual responsibility, which ignores the constraints on the choices available to young people" (p.246)
Author notes critique of pathways metaphor for transition because it offers "a false impression of order, and being too linear, instrumental and individualistic" (p.245)
Methodology: Case studies of 'second chance' senior college students, asking two questions: "was their transition a failure, and was any perceived failure the person's own 'fault'?" (p.247)
Findings: Case studies illustrate non-linear transitions (unsurprisingly, given they were attending a secondary college, rather than school), and that events beyond the students' control shaped their trajectories.
Core argument: Transitions are rarely linear or decided through agentic decision-making, partly because "risks and opportunities are not evenly distributed" (p.254)
"This research aims to contribute to a re-conceptualisation of educational transition, in order for policy to better match transition experiences in contemporary society. Neither policy nor educational institutions can afford to ignore these changed experiences of transition" (p.254).