A Family Affair?Conceptualising First Generation Entry to University

1
A Family Affair?Conceptualising First Generation
Entry to University

• Professor Jocey Quinn
• IPSE

2
Families and Universities

• Some common assumptions
• Students are individuals and university is about
  individualisation and differentiation from the
  family
• Middle classHelicopter parents are both
  powerful consumers and irritants
• Working class parents are passive and dont
  exercise choices for their children

• Some consequences
• Students are viewed in isolation, not as part of
  familial networks
• Students are judged by how far they can escape
  the family-intellectually and geographically
• Families are judged as uncaring or too
  involved-basically a problem

3
What does it mean to be a first generation
entrant?

• Implicit in widening participation research but
  little specific focus-
• No theoretical conceptualisation or empirical
  analysis
• First Generation Entry an International Study
  draws on international meta- analysis of evidence
  from 10 countries, empirical UK study and theory
  from socio-cultural theory on the family to
  address this

• We define first generation entrants as as those
  for whom the older responsible generation(not
  necessarily biological parents) has not had an
  opportunity for university study at any time of
  their lives
• This definition recognises changes in the
  family/changes in HE participation/ interrelation
  with social class

4
First Generation Entry and Family Theory

• First generation families are diverse but also
  often structurally and discursively stuck. Not
  the fluid, untraditional (Giddens) familypeople
  in the valleys they havent got much confidence
  as a community you knowyou get a sense of being
  knocked down and your family are the same,not
  good enough,not good enough

• But they are not necessarily fragmented (Mason)
  or individualised (Beck)
• Our research supports
• theories of reciprocal and moral
• relationships within families
• (Ribbens McCarthy)
• As much as I was enjoying
• the course and everything it was starting
• to upset me as well as my mum
• I think for her I had to leave

5
Transition to HE as a Situated Practice

• So-Democratisation, individualisation not most
  useful concepts
• Nor collapse of family/decay of society-these
  families showed cohesion
• Rose (1996)challenges linear idea of
  detraditionalisation
• suggests look at situated practices by which
  families are made subjects

• Transition to HE as a Situated Practice
• Internationally seen as time of attrition,
  probation, risky stressful
• In UK-culmination of aspirations, Part of
  youthful seamless path to success and citizenship
• shed the old inadequate self-become someone
  new-the first generation entrant is one who must
  allow themselves to be changed-therefore emphasis
  on access and retention
• But our research suggests they are permanently in
  transition-as we all are- and what we need is a
  flexible HE system that mirrors this

6
Social Capital and First generation entry

• First generation entry fits a dynamic reciprocal
  model- it operates at multi-levels on family and
  its development
• They are pivotal/totemic figures for family and
  culture
• They have to-perfect themselves as educated and
  employable, reassure family it has invested
  wisely, open horizons of family and community,
  represent a triumph of egalitarianism-everyone
  can make it.

• How is it the degree branded-(Skeggs)
  desirable, even obligatory-but also likely to be
  not an eliite subject or institution. Compelled
  to buy something that may ultimately be of little
  value-but cant afford to be without it?
• In the UK social capital may not lie in the
  degree itself but in prevailing discourse of
  aspiration and mobility.
• First generation students prove they are winners
  not losers-insiders of educational project
  brought into the fold and with them the
  family-can now be social capitalists and barter

7
Different forms of social capital

• Bonding social capital-first generation entry can
  cause fractures not glue-but over time can help
  new sets of values within the family-perhaps more
  critical but useful to renewal of the family
• Bridging social capital-first generation entry
  predominantly seen as opening student up into the
  world-but bridges structurally easier for some
  than others. Theoretically university important
  means for connecting with difference and making
  ideas strange and new in our culture
• Linking social capital-Inhibited by lack of
  knowledge of He and how it works. But being
  deprived of links to HE can decrease social
  capital eg in workplace
• Imagined social capital- can be produced by
  shared outsider knowledge and imagined links with
  mythological communities-Potentially first
  generation entrants well placed to generate this.
  But only capital that is legitimated counts so
  this is problematic
• First generation entry generates diverse forms of
  social capital-but messy and problematic

8
The Ambivalence of First Generation entry

• First Generation entry is contested, paradoxical
  and ambivalent
• It involves students working on themselves to
  become disciplined bodies who will do whats
  expected and want to do it
• But also evokes counter-memories and
  counter-narratives
• sociological ambivalence(Connidis and McMullin,
  2003)
• simultaneously holding opposing feelings or
  emotions that are due in part to countervailing
  expectations about how individuals should act.
  Thus ambivalence reflects the contradictions and
  paradoxes of social experience
• Moments of crisis and disruption make ambivalence
  visible
• Parents want children to go to university/they
  fear the abandonment of the family
• Children dont want to go to university/they feel
  they must fulfil parents ambitions and compensate
  for past inequalities
• educated person/loyal family member
• True to class and history/free to take family
  further
• Enacted within socio-economic framework where
  access has replaced traditional industry-but no
  means clear this provides adequate compensation
  or reward

9
Findings from the empirical study

• Parents/carers had not had opportunities for any
  university education but wanted it for their
  children-they welcomed the opportunities for
  family mobility but at the same time only wanted
  children to be happy
• They did not lack aspiration, but could not
  ignore the constraints of poverty and class.

10

• Back then when my parents were in education
  they never really had the opportunity to go, it
  was straight into a job and that was it
• They think it will make me go further, give me
  more opportunities job wise? My grandad says if I
  finish my degree I can be anything. I could pack
  shelves if I wanted to. I can have the choice,
  whereas if I dont do my course I wont have the
  choice. You can go down, but I cant go up.

11
Families setting limits

• They wanted children to have access to He that
  protected family survival and sustainability and
  therefore had to set limits as to where and how
  children could study and live

12

• I had to live at home because they couldnt
  afford anything else. Go to school come home, go
  to university come home, nothing different
• The people who lived in Halls were part of the
  environment whereas I felt like a bit of an
  outsider-even though I lived round here and it
  was my town.

13
You dont have to go to university

• University education was by no means considered
  essential to a happy or fulfilled life
• It was seen in terms of doing something useful
  rather than becoming someone different

14

• my family have a working attitude. They didnt
  really mind what I did as long as I wasnt
  sitting around the house doing nothing. If I was
  doing something with my life they were happy
  enough supporting me.
• You dont have to have a degree to be
  intelligent do you? My father is a highly
  intelligent man and hed read all the classics
  and hed be constantly learning

15
Negative impacts

• Parental lack of opportunity for HE and lack of
  knowledge about university norms and systems
  impacts negatively upon student ability to
  progress and even stay in HE

16

• I just felt like I was out there and I was on
  my own and there were not a lot of people who
  could help me in any way
• We got the induction at university at the
  beginning and there was some talk about it
  (student support) but we were never told who it
  was so if I ever needed I wouldnt know where to
  find them
• It was like this is your course and you are in
  it-no-one told me you could change

17
Family support

• Parents however, attempted to help and support
  their children as best they could
• It was parents who students turned to and trusted
  for guidance when it came to decisions about
  both entering and leaving early

18

• Were your family interested in what you were
  doing at university? Did they ask you about it?
• Yes they didnt understand a lot of it but they
  were keen to try
• Do you feel they supported you when you were
  there?
• Yes they tried to help me when I was stuck or if
  I needed any help. Again they didnt really
  understand it.

19
Family responses to withdrawal

• Parents displayed flexibility and contingency
• Both parents and students desired more flexible
  options rather than being tied irrevocably to 3
  years uninterrupted study
• Are they the real lifelong learners?

20

• They are pretty broad mindedshe said if I
  wasnt happy I should just do what I wanted to
  do
• They said they would support my decision
  whatever it was
• Obviously they havent been to university and
  they have got on with life and everything without
  it
• It just made me realise there are other areas
  to be explored

21
Conclusion

• Research on families needs multilevel analysis
  that connects interactions within families to
  social structure and culture, the importance of
  viewing conflict as a central feature of social
  life, the need to focus on relationships and
  families rather than on individuals exclusively
  and the necessity to consider diversity in family
  life
• (Connidis and McMullin, 2003)
• .
• Rather than trying to fit the family to the
  university we should focus on responding to the
  family recognising how it is socially and
  culturally constructed
• On a deeper level -a much more flexible and
  responsive HE needs to be developed which will
  meet the needs of diverse families