{"id":3768,"date":"2016-08-02T08:01:49","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T08:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cel\/?p=3768"},"modified":"2016-08-04T13:24:57","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T13:24:57","slug":"widening-participation-reaching-for-hope-and-solidarity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/2016\/08\/02\/widening-participation-reaching-for-hope-and-solidarity-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Widening Participation: reaching for hope and solidarity"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Silver<\/a>\n

Silver Clouds<\/a><\/em>, Billy Kruger and Andy Warhol 1966.<\/p>\n

The Government grants for students from low-income backgrounds to help provide support with living costs while in higher education have been replaced<\/a> by\u00a0repayable student loans.<\/p>\n

Participation rates\u00a0have been shown<\/a> to vary according to whether or not a student received free school meals at the age of 15 and a student who went to an independent school or college is still more likely to attend a highly selective university than their peers who went to state schools.<\/p>\n

This week\u00a0Peter Scott<\/a>\u00a0has written how\u00a0“Education no longer seems such a high road to hope”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hope, or even glimpse at a\u00a0silver lining, seems a scarce commodity for those who work to transform\u00a0higher education into fairer, more equitable and more socially just spaces\u00a0of learning.<\/p>\n

Scott teases out how,\u00a0as\u00a0<\/em>a sector<\/em>, we are not very good at working in solidarity with each other and that this has resulted in higher education being not for<\/em> everybody.\u00a0\u00a0Celebrating the institutions who do the most work to widen participation, Scott suggests, could\u00a0be one way to widen support – to get back on the road to hope – for higher education, particularly for those most disenfranchised.<\/p>\n

We need to be better at reaching out our arms for each other and for those hardest to reach.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>

I Extend My Arms<\/a> 1931 or 1932 Claude Cahun<\/p><\/div>\n

As part of the Fair Access Research<\/a> project we have published an article\u00a0<\/a>exploring the way that research is being engaged with as part of institutions’\u00a0access agreements<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We see research as one of the silver clouds for solidarity that we all might need at the moment. By drawing on the existing knowledge, sharing expertise and learning together<\/a>\u00a0we suggest that universities and colleges can embed a culture that works\u00a0for\u00a0<\/em>social justice as well as provide much needed understanding<\/a> about how to best work to widen participation.<\/p>\n

We have developed our thinking to\u00a0explore how the ideas, rhetoric and policies of widening participation are being learnt <\/a>in different organisations. To contribute to this research and share your learning, please do complete\u00a0our survey<\/a> for the sector to help understand this more. For more information about our organisational learning research email Dr Maggie Hutchings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hope can be a funny thing. It can can be hard and it can easily turn<\/a><\/em>, against itself, against youselves, against others. However, the\u00a0work of Jos\u00e9 Esteban Mu\u00f1oz<\/a>\u00a0can offer another way to practice hope:<\/p>\n

“Practicing educated hope, participating in a mode of revolutionary consciousness, is not simply conforming to one group\u2019s doxa<\/em> at the expense of another\u2019s…It is not about announcing the way things ought<\/em> to be, but, instead, imagining what things could<\/em> be. It is thinking beyond the narrative of what stands for the world today by seeing it as not enough”<\/strong> (from Duggan and Mu\u00f1oz<\/a>, 2009: 278).<\/p>\n

So much of what we’ve been exploring as part of our Fair Access Research has been about “imagining what things could<\/em> be” for widening participation research, practice and policy. That is why we\u00a0approach research as a practice of learning together, of solidarity with students, Students’ Unions, practitioners, policymakers and other researchers. If one of the\u00a0points of widening participation is to change the world of education, then reaching out for some hope seems like a good place to start.<\/p>\n

For more information about the Fair Access Research project please email the Principal Investigators Dr Vanessa Heaslip<\/a>\u00a0and Dr Clive Hunt.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Silver Clouds, Billy Kruger and Andy Warhol 1966. The Government grants for students from low-income backgrounds to help provide support with living costs while in higher education have been replaced by\u00a0repayable student loans. Participation rates\u00a0have been shown to vary according to whether or not a student received free school meals at the age of 15… Read more » about Widening Participation: reaching for hope and solidarity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,5,129],"tags":[110,17,59,61,126],"class_list":["post-3768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co-creation","category-news","category-widening-participation","tag-bu","tag-co-creation","tag-fair-access","tag-higher-education","tag-widening-participation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3768"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3837,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions\/3837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}