Evaluating Equity and Widening Participation in Higher Education


Book Description

This collection considers relationships between research and evaluation, and the ethical and moral dilemmas raised when evaluating equity and widening participation in higher education. The framework of praxis the editors have created helps justify government funding towards university-led equity initiatives and ensure appropriate use of resources.




The Right to Higher Education


Book Description

The landscape of higher education has undergone change and transformation in recent years, partly as a result of diversification and massification. However, persistent patterns of under-representation continue to perplex policy-makers and practitioners, raising questions about current strategies, policies and approaches to widening participation. Presenting a comprehensive review and critique of contemporary widening participation policy and practice, Penny Jane Burke interrogates the underpinning assumptions, values and perspectives shaping current concepts and understandings of widening participation. She draws on a range of perspectives within the field of the sociology of education – including feminist post-structuralism, critical pedagogy and policy sociology – to examine the ways in which wider societal inequalities and misrecognitions, which are related to difference and diversity, present particular challenges for the project to widen participation in higher education. In particular, the book: focuses on the themes of difference and diversity to shed light on the operations of inequalities and the politics of access and participation both in terms of national and institutional policy and at the level of student and practitioner experience. draws on the insights of the sociology of education to consider not only the patterns of under-representation in higher education but also the politics of mis-representation, critiquing key discourses of widening participation. interrogates assumptions behind WP policy and practice, including assumptions about education being an unassailable good provides an analysis of the accounts and perspectives of students, practitioners and policy-makers through in-depth interviews, observations and reflective journal entries. offers insights for future developments in the policy, practice and strategies for widening participation The book will be of great use to all those working in and researching Higher Education.




Access to Higher Education


Book Description

How do we understand and explain who has access to higher education? How do we make sense of persisting and new forms of inequality? How can global, national and institutional policymakers and practitioners make higher education more inclusive? Access to Higher Education: Theoretical perspectives and contemporary challenges seeks to update thinking on these questions, combining new voices and emerging perspectives with established writers in the field. This pioneering text highlights the contribution of social theory to issues of access to education, with chapters introducing and drawing on the works of key interdisciplinary thinkers including Pierre Bourdieu, Margaret Archer, Amartya Sen and Herbert Simon. It then moves to examines how theoretical perspectives can be applied to the contemporary challenges of forging more equal access, with examples drawn from a wide range of contexts, including the UK, the US, Australia, South Africa and Japan. Global in scope, this book documents the shared nature of the access challenge in a period when higher education is growing rapidly, but inequalities continue to be stark. It concludes by proposing a new direction for research and a reassertion of the role of the researcher as a social activist for disconnected and disadvantaged groups, equipped with the thinking tools needed to move the agenda forward. Access to Higher Education is a rigorous text for the global research community, with relevance to policymakers, practitioners and postgraduate students interested in social justice and social policy. It provides those with an academic interest in access and a commitment to enhancing policy with theoretical and practical ideas for moving the access agenda forward in their institutional, regional or national contexts.




Access, Participation and Higher Education


Book Description

With issues such as student fees and high drop-out rates still political hot-potatoes, this book is a timely and important survey of the real issues behind participation, and non-participation, and is sure to be as controversial as it is useful.




High Participation Systems of Higher Education


Book Description

Within a generation we have seen an extraordinary global expansion of Higher Education. By focusing on systems and countries with near universal participation, and by developing a series of propositions about high-participation in Higher Education, this volume explores a transformation in education and society.




Improving Learning by Widening Participation in Higher Education


Book Description

Improving Learning by Widening Participation in Higher Education presents a strong and coherent rationale for improving learning for diverse students from a range of socio-economic, ethnic/racial and gender backgrounds within higher education, and for adults across the life course. Edited by Miriam David, the Associate Director of the ESRC’s highly successful Teaching and Learning Research Programme, with contributions from the seven projects on Widening Participation in Higher Education (viz Gill Crozier and Diane Reay; Chris Hockings; Alison Fuller and Sue Heath; Anna Vignoles; Geoff Hayward and Hubert Ertl; Julian Williams and Pauline Davis; Gareth Parry and Ann-Marie Bathmaker), this book provides clear and comprehensive research evidence on the policies, processes, pedagogies and practices of widening or increasing participation in higher education. This evidence is situated within the contexts of changing individual and institutional circumstances across the life course, and wider international transformations of higher education in relation to the global knowledge economy. Improving Learning by Widening Participation in Higher Education also considers: the changing UK policy contexts of post-compulsory education; how socio-economically disadvantaged students – raced and gendered – fare through schools and into post-compulsory education; the kinds of academic and vocational courses, including Maths, undertaken; the changing forms of institutional and pedagogic practices within higher education; how adults view the role of higher education in their lives. This book, based upon both qualitative studies and quantitative datasets, offers a rare insight into the overall implications for current and future policy and will provide a springboard for further research and debate. It will appeal both to policy-makers and practitioners, as well as students within higher education.




High-impact Educational Practices


Book Description

This publication¿the latest report from AAC&U¿s Liberal Education and America¿s Promise (LEAP) initiative¿defines a set of educational practices that research has demonstrated have a significant impact on student success. Author George Kuh presents data from the National Survey of Student Engagement about these practices and explains why they benefit all students, but also seem to benefit underserved students even more than their more advantaged peers. The report also presents data that show definitively that underserved students are the least likely students, on average, to have access to these practices.




Radical Solutions and Open Science


Book Description

This open access book presents how Open Science is a powerful tool to boost Higher Education. The book introduces the reader into Open Access, Open Technology, Open Data, Open Research results, Open Licensing, Open Accreditation, Open Certification, Open Policy and, of course, Open Educational Resources. It brings all these key topics from major players in the field; experts that present the current state of the art and the forthcoming steps towards a useful and effective implementation. This book presents radical, transgenic solutions for recurrent and long-standing problems in Higher Education. Every chapter presents a clear view and a related solution to make Higher Education progress and implement tools and strategies to improve the user’s performance and learning experience. This book is part of a trilogy with companion volumes on Radical Solutions & Learning Analytics and Radical Solutions & eLearning.




Stratification in Higher Education


Book Description

The mass expansion of higher education is one of the most important social transformations of the second half of the twentieth century. In this book, scholars from 15 countries, representing Western and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Israel, Australia, and the United States, assess the links between this expansion and inequality in the national context. Contrary to most expectations, the authors show that as access to higher education expands, all social classes benefit. Neither greater diversification nor privatization in higher education results in greater inequality. In some cases, especially where the most advantaged already have significant access to higher education, opportunities increase most for persons from disadvantaged origins. Also, during the late twentieth century, opportunities for women increased faster than those for men. Offering a new spin on conventional wisdom, this book shows how all social classes benefit from the expansion of higher education.




Universal Design in Higher Education


Book Description

Universal Design in Higher Education looks at the design of physical and technological environments at institutions of higher education; at issues pertaining to curriculum and instruction; and at the full array of student services. Universal Design in Higher Education is a comprehensive guide for researchers and practitioners on creating fully accessible college and university programs. It is founded upon, and contributes to, theories of universal design in education that have been gaining increasingly wide attention in recent years. As greater numbers of students with disabilities attend postsecondary educational institutions, administrators have expressed increased interest in making their programs accessible to all students. This book provides both theoretical and practical guidance for schools as they work to turn this admirable goal into a reality. It addresses a comprehensive range of topics on universal design for higher education institutions, thus making a crucial contribution to the growing body of literature on special education and universal design. This book will be of unique value to university and college administrators, and to special education researchers, practitioners, and activists.