Gartland, C. (2014) STEM strategies: Student ambassadors and equality in higher education. IOE press: London (original) (raw)

Masculinity, subjectivity and neoliberalism in men’s accounts of migration and higher educational participation

Gender and Education, 2011

In this article, I explore men’s educational experiences and aspirations in the context of UK policy discourses of widening participation and migration. Critiquing discourses that oversimplify gendered access to higher education, I develop an analysis of the impact of masculine subjectivities on processes of subjective construction in relation to be(com)ing a university student. Neoliberalism and self‐regulation emerge as significant themes by which the men make sense of their educational experiences and aspirations. Widening participation policy discursively constructs the subject as ‘disadvantaged’, ‘with potential’ and responsible for self‐improvement through participation in (alternative forms of) higher education (HE). The concept of diaspora illuminates the complex ways the men reconstruct their traumatic experiences in terms of hope and possibility, across different cultural spaces and expectations. A key question is how do the men construct and make sense of their masculine subjectivities in relation to diasporic experiences and aspirations to become HE students?

The underrepresentation of white working class boys in higher education: the role of widening participation

This report explores why white working class boys are underrepresented in higher education and what widening participation practitioners can do to tackle the problem. The report responds to the government’s call, in February 2016, for universities to specifically target white working class boys in order to increase their participation in higher education, as part of a wider drive to improve the social mobility of disadvantaged groups. The report aims to provide widening participation practitioners with a comprehensive overview of white working class boys’ underrepresentation in higher education, from its causes to its potential solutions. In order to do so the report draws together findings from a literature review, an academic and practitioner roundtable and a set of university case studies, allowing insights from academic research and the perspectives of practitioners from primary through to HE to be brought together in one place.

Horizon Scanning Report: Widening Participation

2013

Executive Summary This report provides a review of literature and examples of good practice throughout the full range of widening participation (WP) activities from outreach, induction and retention to employability. The WP agenda has developed over the past decade from mainly involving outreach activities for young non-traditional learners (and monitoring of attendance at outreach events) to a wider range of activities, a more strategic approach, and more sophisticated evaluation of impact. The advent of Access Agreements ...