WP Professional Subjectivities and Practices

WP Workshop, London May 2012Tempus: Equal Access for All

Day Two, AfternoonProf Penny Jane Burke

Overview

• Aim – to consider the work in universities in relation to WP (drawing on Burke, 2012, ch 9)– How do different WP leaders and practitioners

construct their professional identities? – To explore the ways that this professional body

shapes, reinforces and/or contests hegemonic discourses of WP.

– To relate the analysis to relevant theoretical literature and to inform WP policy and practice

Methods

• Small scale qualitative project funded by NTF award• Interviews and reflective accounts with WP

professionals at 7 different HEIs• All participants given pseudonyms • Aim: to elicit data about the participants’ sense of

professional identity & how this shapes/constrains WP strategies & practices and access to resources

• I draw on the accounts of three of the WP professionals, all of whom are based at high status HEIs (Lisa, Sarah and Jack).

Peripheral • WP professionals tend to work on the periphery of

universities, in separate centres and outside of academic faculties and departments (Jones & Thomas, 2005).

• WP activities have been prioritized (e.g ‘raising aspirations’) -- yet such activities tend to be detached from the main work of universities

• arguably have ‘little or no impact on institutional structure and culture’ (Jones & Thomas, 2005: 617)

• How are WP professionals constructed and positioned? implications for the processes of decision-making, allocation of resources and the development of WP strategies?

Outside of main work…• WP professionals/units tend to be institutionally categorized as non-

academic • The status of WP professionals has significant implications for their work

across their institutions with other members of staff. • WP often outside of the main work of academic staff, profoundly limiting

the impact of widening participation policies and strategies• The knowledge that WP professionals bring to HE is likely to be placed at a

lower value than academic and disciplinary knowledge• might exacerbate the distancing between WP strategy and academic

identities in relation to developing institutional cultures and practices for WP, including admissions, pedagogies, curriculum and assessment.

• important to understand different forms of knowledge, experience and perspectives that WP professionals bring to HE -- impact of that on the cultures, values and practices within different institutional spaces

Marginalisation of WP workforce

• Many of the WP professionals I interviewed experienced marginalisation and exclusion, e.g.:– “It was unbelievable to me that people who claimed to believe

in WP should treat colleagues who had come from that background in such a bad way. Our big boss used to walk past me on the corridor and not even acknowledge me. I would go to meetings with colleagues in my team who were officially less qualified than me, yet if I spoke, they would talk over me or smile condescendingly then put my ideas across in a slightly different way, the ideas always seemed to be worth more if one of the others put them across” (Lisa, written reflection, July 2010).

WP = social justice in & transformation of HE

• Sarah’s classed experiences deeply shape her subjectivity as a woman professional

• She rejects the raising aspirations discourse as patronizing to working class young people

• the project of WP is one of social justice, transformation and the redistribution of life chances & opportunities.

• WP not about changing the attitudes & cultures of working class communities

• this profoundly shapes the kinds of activities & approaches she supports & promotes as a leader and manager of WP.

Participatory approaches to WP • Everything I do in my job is influenced by where I came from. I’ve never believed

that working class people lack aspirations. We don’t do tours of the university or anything like that because I don’t see the point, it just re-enforces young people’s (accurate) belief that we are just a load of posh people whose lives are nothing like them. I’ve tried to set up educational programmes and projects where young people become involved with us for months at a time on something that is helping them academically. That way they get to know us, and can make a decision about whether they think they want to apply to the university or not. Most do apply and are successful. It’s an amazing experience for me to see students at this university, including on world renowned courses, who came in through a WP programme, especially when they tell me how it’s changing their lives. I don’t think that HE is the be all and end all, and I certainly don’t subscribe to the patronising ‘civilising effect’ argument, I just think that ultimately it gives you more options in life.

• (Sarah, written reflection, February 2011).

Location & status of WP work…• My study shows: WP is differently conceptualized, structured &

undertaken across different English institutions-- highlights issues of inequity in relation to place & different provision, resources & opportunities available to students

• 7 HEIs studies -- size of WP teams varied from 4 to 38 staff members. • Some centrally based (more institutional authority and status?) –

others based in Recruiting or Marketing departments. • The institutional location of the main work of WP will have inevitable

implications for:– development of strategy, – ways that the WP team is able to work across the institution – ways that WP is contested and conceptualized within the institution.

Conflicts…

• I felt that it took me a while to feel confident enough to overcome my own personal issues to gain a strong voice for the WP cohort in my previous jobs and now I feel like I’m being stifled. I feel like I’m being told to get rid of my principles in order to fit into this department and that’s never going to happen. It’s such a conflict and I don’t know people like this so I don’t know how to reach them. They have no visible empathy with the groups not traditionally represented in HE and that’s the thing I find most difficult to understand (Lisa, written reflection, May 2011).

Contextual admissions processes• One of the most radical things we’ve done in the past few years is introduce contextual

data in the admissions process, so that we are actually understanding more about the context and the educational journey a young person has made, prior to applying to the university, and also that we can, using a battery of different indicators, build up a kind of a smorgasbord, if you like, of socioeconomic and educational indicators, additional things, information which is passed on to admissions tutors. So particularly in sort of tie-break situations where you receive many more applications than places, to understand that some of our applicant pool have achieved quite glittering academic achievement, despite all the statistics showing very few people from these sort of backgrounds or schools progress to university at all, we want to positively affirm that, and highlight that in the admissions process, so that’s what, as part of our fair admissions strategy, this is kind of the interception, the very important, and interesting, and I think radical intersection of widening participation with your admissions policy. So this is something which we introduced last year, it took a couple of years of planning, to make sure that we are doing it in a fair and consistent, transparent way, and I think that’s a really innovative part of what we do (Jack interview, July 2010).

adjusted grade criteria inadmissions process

• sets minimum entry points in relation to the average achievement level in that particular school

• particularly successful in recruiting students from non-white backgrounds, alternative entry programmes such as Access to Higher education and mature students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds

• as the student constituency has changed, there have been questions raised about the quality of their students

Lowering standards discourse…• In the last 5 years we’ve completely changed the kind of make up of the programme

so the students are now; last year our intake was 50% from non-white backgrounds; we had only 35% from A levels - and the rest were either mature and had done a degree before or were from an Access – from different backgrounds - but now we’re getting this little voice…’what’s happening to the quality of your students’…and that kind of fear that we’re not getting the same throughput – that students might take a little longer – they might think ok I can’t kind of cope with all this at this point in time – you know things that come with mature students – other commitments that they have and therefore they might not finish their first year and have to do some of that again in their second year but you know, I’m comfortable with that. It might be difficult for administrative purposes but its enabling - and thinking about the student learning across a period of time that is not structured to be just 3 years and being flexible about that is what I think we need to start to be more – but we get marks down if we haven’t reached a certain level [of progression and retention] (Chris, interview, June 2010).

Lack of interest in equity…• Lisa deeply concerned about the impact of the loss of Aimhigher

on work on WP in the local schools and communities:– “[WP] do not have any really strong links in the local community. There

is one manager who repeatedly tries to engage the local community but he is regularly not given the time or funding to develop his innovative projects enough for them to fully run. He is instead given lots of US linked projects which the Head [of WP] spends time in the States developing. My very cynical opinion is that without the input of Aimhigher who organised the more locally based initiatives, WP will become much more focused on international initiatives. I believe money/funding is the key driver in the WP strategy as opposed to any sort of real interest in building equity in HE” (Lisa, written relfection, May 2011)

Embedding WP• Lisa’s orientation to WP is transformative • BUT she works within an institutional context in which WP is on

the peripheries and is seen as potentially undermining quality and reputation.

• highlights that WP cannot be the work of any one individual or team;

• must be embedded in the ethos of the institution and recognized as a long-term project designed to dislodge deeply rooted exclusions and misrecognitions.

• requires a serious level of engagement with the large body of research that illuminates and exposes the complex operations and relations of power in educational institutions

Research underpinning practice

• Sarah & Jack are both strongly committed to drawing on research on educational equalities and WP to develop institutional approaches & strategies

• Sarah emphasizes the significance of having a theoretical understanding of educational equality and widening participation:

Lack of theoretical understanding

• Sarah: Well, working in a huge university, and nobody understands that issues of equality in education are highly theorised. So they go along making up these programmes off the top of their head without any kind of theoretical understanding (Sarah, interview, July 2010).

Scarce resources

• Sarah concerned that in new funding framework, universities will have greater responsibility in terms of the funds specifically identified for WP work

• Could intensify conflicts within institutions, as resources become scarcer in other areas.

• Without a developed understanding of the relationship between WP and complex inequalities, these funds might be mis-used in ways that further reinforce inequalities and misrecognitions:

Contested site…

• In the new funding regime, universities will have to spend more money on WP. I think that WP will become an even more contested site because there will be a fight over the money. There will be all this money and who is deciding how it is spent? Is it people with no understanding of educational theory - then there will be the argument that all this money has been spent and it hasn't made any difference at all, so the problem must be with the young people (Sarah, written reflection, May 2011).

Final reflections • Accounts of WP professionals highlight complex ways that WP

identities & practices are marginalized in different institutions• politics of authority, status and positioning in relation to

developing strategies and accessing scarce resources• highlights national inequities - what is available to different

students across different regions, places and spaces• Context of decreasing funds & resources --possible that

conflicts & struggles to secure resources will intensify• no guarantee that those resources will benefit the social and

cultural groups who have been historically underrepresented in HE

Final reflections• Embedding WP across the institution is crucial in moving

beyond utilitarian WP discourse • embedded approach requires understanding & support of

senior management, as well as academic, managerial and support staff

• works together with all staff & students to create participatory & inclusive practices.

• Embedded approaches acknowledge the crucial importance of bringing together theory and practice to challenge insidious inequalities, exclusions and misrecognitions in different HE institutions and contexts.