presentation by Lisa Lucas at the SOTL @ UJ Seminar Series on Social Justice in Higher Education

1. Access and Equity in Higher Education:
an International Perspective
Dr Lisa Lucas
Graduate School of Education
University of Bristol
Contact: Lisa.Lucas@bristol.ac.uk

2. Bristol, England
The University of Bristol

3. Session Outline
 Introduction
 Access and Equity in Higher Education?
 EC ACCESS4ALL Project
 WUN ‘Challenges of Access and Equity’ Project
 ESRC/NRF SARiHE Project
 Some Discussion Points

4. About Me…
 Sociologist (Glasgow, York, Warwick)
 Research Assistant - Oxford Centre for Staff
Development (Professor Graham Gibbs) in 1990s
 Research Fellow – Education and Professional
Development, University College London, 2001-2002
 Lecturer/Senior Lecturer – Graduate School of Education,
University of Bristol, 2002-

5. Funding and Evaluation Policies in Higher
Education
 Impacts of RAE/REF on
university management and
academic work
 Global league tables and the
idea of the World Class
University
 Academics responses to
Policy Change in Higher
Education

6. Academic Work, Early Career Academics and
Doctoral Education
 Doctoral education in the Social
Sciences and Sciences
 Donald Bligh project on Early
Career Researchers into Higher
Education
 Australia/UK collaboration on
Academic Work, Careers and
Identity

7. Access and Equity in Higher Education
 WUN – Challenges of Access
and Equity: the curriculum
answers back
 EU – ACCESS4ALL with a
Consortium of 7 European
countries.
 Southern African Rurality in
Higher Education (SARiHE)
– SA/UK Partnership

8. Access and Equity
 “The promotion of
social mobility through
university credentials is
becoming a challenge in
both developed and
emerging economies…”
(Mok & Neubauer, 2016)

9. Access4All- Laboratory for Policies and Practices of Social Development in Higher
Education
(2015 1 ES01 KA203 015970)‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

10. Background

11. EC ERASMUS+ Project – “ACCESS4ALL”
 There are 4 specific objectives:
 to establish a map of the institutional policies for attending to under
represented groups in relation to academic access and success
 to establish guidelines to be implemented by higher education
organisations to promote initiatives aimed to encourage the access and
successful development of students who are under-represented in universities
 to co-create strategies and measures promoting the access, continuation
(and success) of vulnerable students and non-traditional learners at
university
 to create a laboratory for the creation of innovative and flexible
strategies in order to promote the commitment of Higher Education
institutions to the most vulnerable student groups
 http://access4allproject.eu/

12. Consortium

13. A4A Toolkit
A4A
Training
package

14. ACCESS4ALL – ‘Good Practices’ Database and
Formal Criteria
 A FORMAL CRITERIA
 A1. ACCESS TO INFORMATION:
 A2. TIMEFRAME:
 A3. NUMBER OF STUDENTS:
 A4. SCALABILITY: Has it been or can it potentially be scaled
up and practiced in a wider scale?
 A5. TRANSFERABILITY: Has it been or can it potentially be
transferred and applied to different (a) target groups, (b)
institutions, and (c) societies?
 A6. ASSESSMENT: How has it been evaluated?
 A7. CONTACT

15. ACCESS4ALL – ‘Good Practices’ Database
Content Criteria (incl - ‘Social Justice Principles’)
 B CONTENT CRITERIA
 B1. SOCIAL JUSTICE PRINCIPLES (see Nelson & Creagh, 2013):
 B1.1 Self-determination: Have students participated to its (a) design, (b) enactment
and (c) evaluation? Is it possible to make informed decisions about the participation?
 B1.2 Rights: Are all participants treated with dignity and respect? How have their
individual cultural, social and knowledge systems been recognised and valued?
 B1.3 Access: Has an active and impartial access to the resources (e.g., curriculum,
learning, academic, social, cultural, support, and financial resources) been provided?
 B1.4 Equity: Does it openly demystify and decode dominant university cultures,
processes, expectations and language for differently prepared cohorts?
 B1.5 Participation: Has it led to socially inclusive practices?
 B2. COLLABORATION:
 B3. STUDENT SATISFACTION:
 B.4 STUDENT WELLBEING:

16. A4A Self-Assessment Tool

17. ACCESS4ALL Template for Inclusion – ‘Pyramid
Inclusion Model’
 Environment - what do we
have (including context,
policies, practices,
stakeholders and resources)?
 Aspirations - what do we
want (what are our
aspirations as an HEI for
inclusion)?
 Evaluation - how will be
evaluate our activities and
practices?

18. ACCESS4ALL – Next Steps
 Developing the ‘training programme’ for staff at
each university
 Trialling of the training programme in Summer 2017
(mix of online and face to face activities)
 Dissemination Activities with key stakeholders
 Multiplier events
 Conferences

19. WUN – Challenges of Access and
Equity: the curriculum answers back

20. Introduction – WUN Project
 Worldwide University Network (WUN) project involving
four countries – Australia (Dr Tai Peseta, University of
Sydney, lead partner), New Zealand, South Africa and
England.
 Concern to explore the concepts of access and equity
through ‘curriculum’ in two relatively under-represented
areas – doctoral education and academic professional
learning.
 Guiding Research Questions
 How is curriculum conceptualised in doctoral education and
academics’ professional learning?
 What understanding of access and equity are driving decisions
about higher education curriculum in doctoral education and
academics’ professional learning?
 How do people involved in shaping doctoral education and
academic professional learning contexts understand themselves and
others in relation to access and equity?

21. WUN Project – access and equity in higher
education: the curriculum answers back
Gale (2014) points to the OECD’s
urging of its member states to expand
HE participation so as to increase the
number of knowledge workers, bolster
economies and maintain a competitive
advantage against other (non-OECD)
economies such as China. Whatever
the motivator, the aspiration
“presumes that current forms of HE
constitute a universal good and that
equity can simply be achieved by
extending equal opportunity for access
to all”
“Although the tendency in HE
policy has been “to see equity
in terms of just access, rather
than to consider what is
being accessed” (Gale, 2014,
p.15), our analysis suggests that
the issue of access and equity
may be moving into new
territory at least in the three
post-colonial societies discussed
here (if not in the metropole,
where the moves may be more
limited).”

22. Access and Equity in Doctoral Education
 “Diversity, then, should feature prominently in conversations about the
changing nature of doctoral education. Who is involved in the process is just
as important as the process itself” (Holley, 2013: 100)
 “Issues of social equity remain high on policy agendas across the UK…access
to education has long been seen as one of the key areas by which social equity
can be measured” (McCulloch & Thomas, 2013: 2016)
 Doctoral Education as an ‘Elite’ Forum
 “Participation in postgraduate study, especially research degrees, does appear
to be heavily skewed towards those from higher socio-economic
backgrounds” (HEPI, 2010 cited McCulloch & Thomas, 2013: 219)
 There are “major gaps in our knowledge of doctoral education” (ibid)
 ‘Curriculum’ appears not to be given attention

23. Curriculum: ‘a tangle of content and pedagogy’
 Curriculum - “…a structure of knowledge, identity and pedagogy…” (Green,
2012: 16)
 “Alongside such an explicit curriculum, there are many more or less hidden
processes that mould the research student into a recognizable
scholar/researcher/advanced professional – that one noun won’t suffice is
suggestive of the multiple outcomes sought from the research education
and consequently the multiple sources from which curriculum flows.
These include messy affective processes… that are often
unacknowledged in higher education generally. And, to return to an
earlier point, if we think of curriculum as what is currently known, there is the
expectation that the doctoral student will produce an original insight or
finding. In other words, she or he will redefine the existing boundaries of
curriculum-as-knowledge, of what could be taught in the future.” (Grant,
2011: 260)
 ‘A Living Curriculum’ (Keesing-Styles et al, 2014: 498) – “reframe learning as
a ‘conversation’ and develop programmes that are integrated with the world
and genuinely dynamic”

24. Methodology
 Focus Group Discussions within one
Faculty of Social Sciences
 Focus Group A –5 Doctoral
Researchers (Lucy, Ingrid, Diane,
Soo-jin,Trinh )
 Focus Group B – 6 Doctoral
Researchers (Luis, Tomasz, Sofia,
Annabel, Saira and Maria)
 3 (UK) and 8 (EU and International)
 2 (male) 9 (female)
 9 (funded) and 2 (self-funded)
 All in 2nd
3rd
or 4th
year of study
 Exploratory questions focused on their
perceptions of access and equity and
their idea of participation within a
doctoral curriculum
 Thematic analysis

25. Curriculum - Themes
 Importance of doctoral
researchers in determining
curriculum
“We have a lot of knowledge and
background that we’re not
sharing with the University in
terms of experience…it’s (the
University) losing
opportunities to learn and the
School is much, much richer
and interesting because of
people than is in the curricula
or the official curricula” (Luis)
 Desire to ‘legitimize’ or
‘support’ aspects of
informal learning
“We did do it for about six
months where we set up
sessions and then people were
going to speak about an item
of their research because a
couple of us organised it and
it was just, I think the feeling
that sometimes people didn’t
come along to it, couldn’t all
get together at the same
time… people were under
pressure” (Diane)

26. Preliminary Conclusions
 Access and Equity in Doctoral Education
 Perceived lack of transparency in admissions procedures
 Funding crucial to access and opportunities during study
 Struggles with differentiation of languages and cultures and feelings of
inadequacy
 Doctoral Education – ‘a living curriculum’
 ‘Curriculum’ not on their radar (initially)
 Want the elements of formal taught programme to continue throughout
the doctorate
 Greater involvement for doctoral researcher in determining the
curriculum
 Greater support and legitimization of ‘informal’ curriculum activities
 Greater access to courses and opportunities across the university and
elsewhere

27. Barrow, M. et al (in review) Access and Equity in higher education
– moving consideration from access bodies to embodiment
 We trace out four national
framings of access and equity
in HE by analysing
government and institutional
policy documents from
Australia, England, New
Zealand and South Africa
and the institutional policies
of a single research-intensive
university in each of them.
 In South Africa the Draft Social Inclusion
Policy Framework recommends a range of
mandatory structural, financial and curriculum
interventions be implemented across HE.
The content-focused suggestions call on
universities and colleges to: “develop and
implement anti-racism and citizenship
curricular and extra-curricular education
programmes” (p. 16); expand content by
including programmes that deal with “gender
in education” (p. 16); include issues relevant
to the LGBTI community (p. 17); and use
curricula “to promote awareness of HIV and
AIDS” (p. 17). In this policy setting, the
curriculum is now seen as a site for
responding to equity groupings and issues
previously excluded or overlooked.

28. Barrow, M. et al (in review) Access and Equity in higher education
– moving consideration from access bodies to embodiment
 “It is, however, interesting that even in the elite ‘new-world’
institutions we considered, there are invitations to introduce a
new type of curriculum that is not copied from metropolitan
forebears and that instead of only framing the debate in terms of
‘problem’ students in need of special treatment in order to enter
(and succeed in) HE, there are some small but vibrant policy
invitations for new kinds of substantive curriculum – curriculum
previously excluded from the academy.”

29. Southern African Rurality in Higher
Education (SARiHE) Project

30. ESRC/Newton&NRF - SARiHE Project
 To understand the practices,
challenges and opportunities
for students from rural areas
accessing and participating in
higher education in Southern
Africa. We are also exploring
how curricula, which remain
imbued with colonialism, can
be reimagined and
reconfigured to build on and
value all (including rural) HE
student experiences.

31. ESRC/Newton&NRF - SARiHE Project
 The SARiHE project is conducting research over several stages. We
have adopted a participatory methodology, which can be argued to
be a ‘decolonising’ mode (Bozalek and Biersteker, 2011), as it
avoids a deficit positioning of under-represented students.
 Co-researchers are:
 Collecting accounts of everyday practices in the form of digital
documentaries.
 Contributing to discussions and focus groups
 Contributing to data analysis.
 Participating in presentations and academic writing, and
publishing both on the website and in print.

32. ESRC/Newton&NRF - SARiHE Project
 Data Collection with University Staff
 Individual interviews will be held with the Deputy Vice
Chancellor for learning and teaching and the Dean of
Students (or equivalents).
 Focus groups with six academics (Humanities and STEM) will
be held in each institution. Interviews will explore with
institutional representatives how institutions manage access,
support under-represented students and the issues around
rurality.

33. Some Discussion Points
 Challenges of access for under-represented groups?
 Developing an inclusive university culture and an
inclusive curriculum?
 The role of educational and staff development?

34. References
 Barrow, M. et al… (in review) Access and Equity in higher education – moving
consideration from access bodies to embodiment, Critical Studies in Education.
 Basit, T.N. & Tomlinson, S. (2012) Social Inclusion and Higher Education, Bristol,
Policy Press.
 Brew, A. & Lucas, L. (2009) (Eds) Academic Research and Researchers, Buckingham:
SRHE/Open University Press.
 Brew, A., Boud, D., Namgung, S, Lucas, L. & Crawford, K. (2016) Research
productivity and academics’ conceptions of research, Higher Education. 71, 5: 681-697.
 Dovigo F. et al (2016) (edited) Higher Education in Finland, Italy, Portugal, Romania,
Spain, and UK: A brief overview, ACCESS4ALL,
 Frølich, N., Huisman, J. (2013) A re-interpretation of institutional transformations in
European higher education: strategising pluralistic organisations in multiplex
environments, Higher Education, 65: 79-93.
 Gale, T. (2014). Reimagining student equity and aspiration in a global higher education
field. In H. Zhang., P.W.K Chan & C. Boyle (Eds.), Equality in Education: fairness
and inclusion (p. 9-22). Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

35. References
 Keesing-Styles, L., Nash, S. & Atres, R. (2014) Managing Curriculum change and
‘ontological uncertainty’ in tertiary education, Higher Education Research and Development,
33, 3: 496-509.
 Lucas, L. (2006) The Research Game in Academic Life, Maidenhead: SRHE/Open
University Press.
 Lucas, L. (2009) Research Management and Research Cultures: power and productivity
in Brew, A. & Lucas, L. (eds) Academic Research and Researchers, Buckingham:
SRHE/Open University Press.
 Lucas, L. (2015) Performance Based Research Assessment in Higher Education, Oxford
Bibliographies.
 Lucas, L. (2014) Academic Resistance in the UK: challenging quality assurance
processes in higher education, Policy and Society, 33: 215-224.
 Lucas, L. (2017) Evaluating Academic Research: ambivalence, anxiety and audit in the
risk university, S, Shore, C & Wright, S. (2016) Managing the Risk University, Oxford,
Berghahn Books.
 Wray, M. (2013) Developing an Inclusive Culture in Higher Education: final report,
York: Higher Education Academy