The challenges of diversity

1
The challenges of diversity equity for teaching
learning in HE a critical perspective on
research practices pedagogies

• Miriam E. David, AcSS, FRSA
• ESRC TLRP
• Institute of Education London
• m.david_at_ioe.ac.uk
• www.tlrp.org

2
Summary

• Review of diverse and challenging research on
  social change and higher education (HE) in the
  21st century
• Personal perspective as a feminist sociologist
  and educational researcher and through TLRP role
  on social diversity and higher education
• Expansion, massification and diversification of
  HE globally and nationally
• Transformations of social and educational
  research on/in HE and methodologies
• Changing conceptualizations of social diversity
  and inequality or inequity in research and policy
  e.g widening participation and access
• Sociological research on policy-relevant themes
  on HE, equity diversity
• from context of international/US literature on
  changing research perspectives on/in HE
• TLRP projects on widening participation to, and
  in, HE and lifelong learning in the UK
• Future challenges of researching pedagogies,
  practices and policies in HE for social diversity
  and from a feminist perspective

3
Introduction

• TLRP role is to synthesise research on social
  diversity, and also work with 12 projects on
  higher education (HE), including widening
  participation (WP) and lifelong learning.
• 7 projects on WP in HE commissioned just over 2
  years ago in context of constantly changing
  policy debates about HE
• Policies on WP now being revised and augmented,
  eg HEFCE John Denham, Secretary of State for
  DIUS, announced
• March 2008 20 new HE centres based on FE colleges
  in towns without universities
• April 2008 new framework for access regulator to
  universities
• Review for British Journal of Sociology of
  Education (2007 28 (5) 675-690) on Equity and
  diversity towards a sociology of higher
  education for 21st century
• Deem (2004) argued that no sociology of HE
  despite increasing engagement by social
  scientists in research.
• Now contested and diverse social and feminist
  critical research about teaching and learning,
  pedagogies, academic practices and policies of
  HE.

4
Conceptual considerations

• Contested meanings of post-compulsory or
  post-secondary further education or HE versus
  Universities
• Different notions of access to or participation
  in HE
• Troubling concepts of diversity, equity and
  inclusion from ethnicity or race to social
  class, gender, sexualities and dis/abilities and
  age (young vs mature ug students)
• Changing notions of education, teaching and
  learning and pedagogies and/or academic
  practices, including personalised learning as a
  new approach
• Contexts of globalization, market economy,
  marketization and/or academic capitalism

5
Transformations in global higher education and
research in the 21st century

• Massive global social and economic changes in
  21st century influencing conceptualizations
• What counts as post-compulsory, post-secondary or
  higher and/or university education contested
• Divisions between teaching and research in higher
  education and the role of quality assessments of
  both
• Transformations within the social sciences and
  role of disciplines and inter-disciplinarity
• Changing methodological approaches to academic
  inquiry and/or research
• Professionalization of academic or educational
  development and/or notions of teaching and
  learning, pedagogies, personalisation and
  academic practices

6
Main themes on diversity equity in policies
research on/in HE

• Themes about individuals
• Equity, equal opportunities, social
  stratification and role of HE in relation to
  social mobility
• Diversity includes ethnicity or race, social
  class and/or disadvantage, age, but rarely now
  gender
• Question of role of HE institutions -
  universities or colleges in relation to these
• about stratification or diversification
• teaching and learning, critical or feminist
  pedagogies and academic practices.

7
Research on transformations in HE in
international contexts

• In 21st century moves to neo-liberalism and
  globalization, marketization and knowledge
  economy impact on UK HE
• Critiques of massification and choices of HE
  developed in UK by (feminist) sociologists (Brine
  2006 Clegg David 2006 Evans 2005 Hey 2004
  Morley 2003 2007 Reay, David Ball 2005 Langa
  Rosado David 2006)
• Notion of academic capitalism developed by
  sociologists in USA (Slaughter Rhoades 2004)
• Changing discourses about learning and teaching
  or pedagogies (Maher Tetreault 2007 Maclean
  2007)
• Comparative international studies of expansions
  of HE in changing economic and global contexts
  (Shavit, Arum Gamoran eds 2007 Rhoads Torres
  eds 2006)

8
Equity, Social Stratification and Mobility the
role of HE

• Traditional sociology of education about social
  mobility and the labour market eg Banks 1955
  Halsey et al 19561980 and the late Trow 2005
  Lauder et al 2006 in traditions on social class
  Devine (2004)
• Yossi Shavit, Richard Arum Adam Gamoran (2007)
  Stratification in Higher Education A comparative
  study
• International empirical evidence from higher
  education systems in 15 different countries
• TLRP projects on improving learning in HE focus
  on social class/disadvantage and social mobility
  as key themes eg
• Brennan et al SOMUL and Fuller et al on Disabled
  Students
• All 7 WPinHE projects Crozier et al Hayward et
  al Vignoles

9
Globalization social change in HE academic
capitalism?

• Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) on academic
  capitalism.
• At the turn of the 21st century the rise of the
  new global knowledge or information society
  calls for a fresh account of the relations
  between higher education institutions and
  society. Our analysis of these relations has led
  us to develop a theory of academic capitalism
  which explains the process of college and
  university integration into the new economy. The
  theory does not see the process as inexorable it
  could be resistednor corporatizedsees
  actorsas using a variety of state resources to
  create new circuits of knowledge that link higher
  educational institutions to the new economyit
  moves beyond thinking of the student as consumer
  to considering the institution as marketer.
  (2004 p.1)
• New discourses to specify the shifts and changes
  as colleges and universities shifting from a
  public good knowledge/learning regime to an
  academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime
  (2004 p.7)

10
Slaughter and Rhoades Academic Capitalism and the
New Economy Markets, States HE (2004 p.10-11)

• Develop their theory from Slaughter and Leslie
  (997) about globalization and its global reach in
  higher education.
• The aim of their new study is to concentrate on
  how academic capitalism in the US is blurring
  the boundaries among markets, states and higher
  education (2004 p.11).
• Whilst they argue that the new economy is
  central to the rise of academic capitalist
  knowledge regime it is not causal. Universities
  find it difficult to separate from the new
  economy because they richly contribute to its
  development (2004, p.15).
• Even more dramatically they argue that the
  growth of the internet and world-wide web which
  originated in academia has intensified the global
  dimension of scholarship and half of all
  graduate students in science and engineering are
  foreign nationals, constituting a global labor
  force in US universities (2004 p.17)

11
Privilege and Diversity in the Academy by Frances
Maher and Mary Tetreault (2007).

• drawing on Dorothy E. Smiths institutional
  ethnography (1999),
• we have chosen the terms privilege and diversity
  as a framework for our work. For much of the past
  30 years, discussions of these issues have taken
  the form of a rhetorical opposition between the
  supposed two poles of diversity and excellence,
  where excellence is a code word for commonly
  agreed-on high standards of academic performance
  in other words, rigorous scholarship with
  universal applicability and a deservedly high
  stature for those who meet these standards.
• Diversity has then meant a spreading out of, a
  dilution of, and a threat to those standards.
  However, to us the use of the term excellence is
  employed not so much as a mark of quality as a
  mark of privilege that is, the power of elites
  to control the norms of the scholarly enterprise
  in such a way as to keep new people, new topics,
  and new methodologies at bay (2007, p. 3-4).

12
Privilege and Diversity in the Academy by Frances
Maher and Mary Tetreault (2007).

• privilege is embedded in normal practices
• It means rarely having to be conscious of your
  gender, race, class or sexuality. A pervading
  emphasis on individual experience and achievement
  (2007, p.4)
• They provide a careful and intricate analysis of
  three very different and distinctive American
  universities
• an elite private university (Stanford),
• a research intensive public university (Michigan)
  
• a comprehensive and diverse public university
  (Rutgers)
• Their individual and institutional struggles
  around diversity and excellence/privilege
• New discourses and meanings of diversity within
  each university,
• Conclusions around how these lead to different
  engagements with new research and educational
  agendas for the twenty-first century.

13
Privilege and Diversity in the Academy by Frances
Maher and Mary Tetreault (2007).

• Maher Tetreault draw on Slaughter and Rhoades
  (2004) concept of academic capitalism.
• we are both puzzled and energizedabout how to
  explain the wide discrepancies between the
  warnings sounded by national publications about
  the kept university or academic capitalism
  versus the sense of autonomy and scholarly
  integrityas for progress of diversity
  initiativesanother perspective shows that the
  35 years between the sex discrimination suits of
  the 1970s and today is too short a period of time
  to overcome long-entrenched sexism and racism of
  the academyIt may take the innovators of this
  generation, of faculty and administrators to
  fully institutionalize diversity. (pp 194-5)

14
Shavit et al 2007 Stratification in Higher
Education A comparative study

• research on social stratification, particularly
  on the relation between education and
  stratification, has for decades recognized the
  importance of cross-national comparisonsMuch of
  this past work was carried out by members of the
  Research Committee on social stratification
  (RC28) of the International Sociological
  Association, an important intellectual forum for
  the exposition and discussion of ideas and
  findings contained in this scholarshipthe
  distinctive focus of this book is on higher
  educationand changes in stratification and
  higher education through the 1990sin light of
  conceptual developments in the last decade
  (Shavit et al 2007 p.xi).

15
Shavit, Arum Gamoran 2007 Stratification in
Higher Education A comparative study

• as sociologists as editorspresent a range of
  different hypotheses about the relationships
  between expansion and differentiation and
  whether higher education expansion is primarily
  a process of diversion (sic), channeling members
  of the working class to lower-status
  postsecondary opportunities in order to reserve
  higher-status opportunities for the elite (Brint
  and Karabel 1989) or a .process of inclusion
  (ibid p. 5-6).

16
More Inclusion Than Diversion Expansion,
Differentiation, and Market Structure in HE

• diversified systems of Israel, Japan, Korea,
  Sweden, Taiwan and the US (Arum et al,
  Introduction pp 1-35)
• binary systems of Great Britain (sic), France,
  Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland
• unitary and other systems of Australia, The Czech
  Republic and Italy.
• The key question about educational expansion is
  whether it reduces inequality by providing more
  opportunities for persons from disadvantaged
  strata, or magnifies inequality by expanding
  opportunities disproportionately for those who
  are already privileged (Arum et als editorial
  introduction 2007, p.1)

17
Shavit et al 2007 Stratification in Higher
Education A comparative study

• Conclusions match previous studies of comparative
  educational systems.
• But do not include any countries in Latin America
  (cf Rhoads Torres eds 2006 The University,
  State, and Market The Political Economy of
  Globalization in the Americas - includes Rhoades
  Slaughter)
• Expanding education and opportunities may lead to
  maintaining broad social inequalities, despite
  the changing economic and social structures and
  systems.
• Greater diversification or diversion (to coin
  their terms) for both individuals and
  institutions.

18
Shavit et al 2007 Stratification in Higher
Education A comparative study

• findings from this project provide evidence of
  the relations among institutional expansion,
  differentiation and privatization, and
  stratification of individual educational
  opportunity.(2007, p. 27).
• They find overall persistent inequality (sic)
  (ibid p.29) but that it may have policy
  implications about how to transform class
  inequalities in an expanding situation where they
  reach a more optimistic conclusion (ibid p.29).

19
Shavit et al a note on gender inequality
(2007, p.25-6).

• although it was not the main focus of our
  inquiry, we would be remiss if we did not mention
  the findings related to variation in gender
  inequality (my emphasis) consistent with other
  researchers our findings indicate that mens
  advantages in educational attainment declined
  dramatically during the second half of the
  twentieth century. The erosion of male advantage
  is especially pronounced for participation in
  postsecondary education. In all countries for
  which data are available, and in both the
  conditional and unconditional models, mens
  relative advantage declined
• In sum, our data show an average widening of the
  gender gap in higher education favoring women,
  and indicate that the gap expanded fastest in
  systems where attendance rates expanded most.
  While there are differences across systems in the
  rate of change, overall there is a fairly uniform
  pattern of womens increasing participation in
  higher education, closing the gap, and then often
  coming to outperform men in higher education
  enrollment (2007, p 25-7).

20
The Context of Massification of HE Changing UK
rates of student participation

• Expansion of undergraduate student numbers over
  last 40 years in UK Higher Education
• from 0.5 million in 1960s to 2 million in 2005-6
• Questions of social class, gender, race,
  ethnicity, dis/abilities and age (young vs
  mature) remain central policy dilemma, now about
  diversity (cf Archer 2007 in Teaching in HE)
• Women have outnumbered men since 1996/7
• Women are 60 of full-time student population in
  British universities (Scottish, Welsh, Irish and
  English differences)
• Men remain the majority in overseas undergraduate
  and postgraduate enrolments in 2006-7

21
Massification of UK HE Rates of student
participation in 2005-6 versus 1992-3

• Women in 2005-6 as a percentage of
• part-time students 61.4
• mature students (over 21 years old) 64.2
• with qualifications to enter HE (2 or more A
  levels) 43
• (This is an increase from 1992-3 when 20)
• Men in 2005-6
• with qualifications to enter HE (2 or more A
  levels) 34
• (This is an increase from 1992-3 when 18)
• The femalemale performance gap in 2005-6 is 9
• compared to just under 2 in 1992-3 (15 years
  ago)!

22
Debate on Young participation in HE (HEFCE report
January 2005)

• Young participation versus mature students
• 53.7 of first year undergraduates were aged 21
  or over
• 5.7 of full-time and sandwich students known to
  have a disability
• The participation rate in HE of young people
  (aged 18 or 19) in England is around 30 at the
  end of the period studied in HEIs i.e.
  universities and HE colleges
• Inequality of the sexes in young (my emphasis)
  participation has risen steadily by the end of
  the period studied, young women in England are 18
  per cent more likely to enter HE than young men.
  This inequality is more marked for young men
  living in the most disadvantaged areas, and is
  further compounded by the fact that young men are
  less likely than young women to successfully
  complete their HE courses and gain a
  qualification

23
Hefce-funded evaluative studies of young
participation in HE

• 4 area/parliamentary constituency studies viz
  Birmingham (Hodge Hill), Bristol (South),
  Nottingham (North) and Sheffield (Brightside)
• Hodge Hill (Sandra Cooke et al) Nottingham North
  (Peter Kay et al) Sheffield Brightside (Helen Kay
  et al)
• A socio-cultural study of educational engagement
  by Lynn Raphael Reed et al (2007) on Bristol
  South. She argues that
• Wider economic and social regeneration and
  development of the local area will change to
  context within which young people make decisions
  about their learning pathways
• Aligning the interests and resources of schools,
  the LA, FE, HE, business and young people,
  their families and the wider community, has the
  potential to improve educational outcomes and
  progression. This is exemplified through a
  diversity of new interventions being planned
• Approaches which increase the confidence and
  engagement of young people and their families
  with learning are a priority
• These ..need to be based on respecting young
  people and their familiesand building their
  sense of ownership and agency as lifelong
  learners
• Need for more research on gender identities,
  cultures and educational outcomes

24
New UK policy debates about widening
participation and diversity

• Sutton Trusts study (2007 September) University
  admissions by individual schools reporting on
  how a few highly socially and academically
  selective 100 elite schools dominate
  admissions to the leading research universities
  (13 from one HE league table)
• Overall the top 200 schools and colleges made up
  48 of admissions to Oxbridge during the five
  years of the study (p.6)
• The Higher (Sept 21st 2007 p. 12) argued about
  the best, the brightest and the brutal truth
  but is it?
• Evidence from TLRP projects about HE and Widening
  Participation to/in HE and from other social
  research
• more complex about diverse relations between
  schools, families and higher education, including
  a stratified system of universities
• and the outcomes of HE and participation in
  graduate labour markets with little gender change
  - not debated by the media or policy-makers.

25
Separate and parallel debate about widening
participation and diversity

• Higher Education Academys funded research on
  Embedding widening participation and promoting
  student diversity. What can be learned from a
  business case approach? launched October 11th
  2007
• Key finding is that taking forward a business
  case approach could be beneficial to the HE
  sector in facilitating a more consistent
  understanding of what embedding widening
  participation and student diversity might look
  like, bringing benefits to both individual HEIs
  and the sector as a whole (HEA 2007 Summary,
  p.3)
• The key issue this illustrates is diversity or
  stratification of the universities or what the
  HEA call the HE sector and the extent of
  marketization of the system of FE/HE.

26
Separate and parallel debate about diversity and
degrees

• Higher Education Academys funded research on
  Minding the Gap Ethnic Gender Disparities in
  Degree Attainments, launched January 2008,
  undertaken by Equality Challenge Unit of
  Universities UK and independent research
  consultants into
• understandings and perceptions of degree
  attainment variation across institutions and
  among academics and students
• ways in which current Race Equality Policies and
  Gender Equality Schemes helped HEIs in addressing
  issues of attainment variation
• relevant teaching, learning and assessment
  activities and issues.
• Found differences by minority ethnic groups and
  by gender, across diverse HEI mainly in
  post-1992 HEI.
• The report argued that while the project has
  identified some areas for further research, it
  urges immediate action and shared ownership of
  this issue by government, institutions and
  individuals to further address differential
  degree attainment.  

27
Researching Diversity and WP in HE Projects from
TLRP (end 2008)

• 7 projects commissioned by ESRC but funded by
  Hefce as policy relevant educational research
• Whilst not all sociological they do address
  question of social evidence through themes of
• policy and policy or practice changes around
  notions of HE and/or universities
• social diversity variables and practices about
  participation in types of post-compulsory
  education
• types of pedagogy or teaching and learning
  strategies

28
Researching Diversity and WP in HE Projects from
TLRP (end 2008)

• Dual systems/regimes of FE and HE Role of FE in
  HE and vice versa (Parry Bathmaker et al)
• Quantitative cohort studies of young people and
  stages of education (Vignoles et al)
• Degrees of success? Vocational Educational
  Training (VET) (Hayward et al)
• Maths Education as a demanding subject for HE
  student identities (Williams, Black Davis)

29
Diverse Access to/in FE-HE

• Professors Gareth Parry of Sheffield University
  and Ann-Marie Bathmaker of University of West of
  England have studied the impact of the dual
  structures of further education (FE) (college)
  and HE on strategies to widen participation in
  undergraduate education.
• Their main focus has been on the policies and
  practices of colleges of further education and
  their role in the expansion and diversification
  of higher education.
• They consider both wider changing education
  policy context and the specifics of institutional
  difference with the implications for student
  experiences of learning.
• They argue about the boundary paradox where
• Duality is associated with dependence and
  difficulty or
• Dual regimes have been permissive, with the
  boundary permeable and workable, leading to
  integration rather than elimination of sector
  regimes and territories.

30
Quantitative Analysis of HE

• Dr Anna Vignoles of the Institute of Education,
  London University and her team have undertaken a
  quantitative cohort analysis of widening
  participation in HE
• using an innovative linkage of newly available
  data sets and sophisticated modelling techniques
  to examine determinants of entry into and
  progress within HE.
• and have created a definitive baseline study of
  full- and part-time undergraduate students, their
  educational achievements in school and HE,
  demonstrating complex social class and gendered
  pathways.
• Aspects of their analysis have shown that neither
  poor (defined as Free School Meals) nor mature
  students perform academically less well than
  traditional students (aged 18 plus) in access to
  HE. Indeed mature students may get better results
  at the end of their HE courses.

31
Degrees of Success?Vocational Educational
Training

• Drs Geoff Hayward, Hubert Ertl Michael
  Hoelscher of Oxford University investigated the
  development of vocational and educational
  training (VET), links with HE by institution
  (HEI) and subject.
• They studied students progression routes into,
  and through, HE and into the labour market.
• Analysis of large-scale datasets and case studies
  shows that
• for students institutional choice, GCE A levels
  remain the major route into more prestigious HEIs
  (mainly Russell group and pre-92 Univ)
• Students with VET backgrounds are more likely, on
  average, to start their studies at post-92 HEIs
• Rational choice models do not explain HEI choice
  well
• Subject choices are highly individualised, lead
  to different kinds of HEI, and also different
  subjects, connected with diverse wage premia in
  the labour market.

32
Mathematically Demanding Subjects for Higher
Education

• Professor Julian Williams, with Laura Black,
  Pauline Davis, Paul Hernandez-Martinez, Maria
  Pampaka Geoff Wake of Manchester University,
  focused on pedagogic cultures in relation to
  learning mathematics and mathematical identities,
  given the importance of mathematics to science,
  technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) in
  HE, especially pre-1992 universities with
  research.
• They studied over 1700 students on the cusp of
  participation in mathematically-demanding
  programmes in FE or HE ie students mainly at
  risk and studying for HEI access. Using 40
  students
• They found four distinct repertoires that
  students used to account for their aspirations
  for HE with influences and the role of maths
  and parental influences.
• These repertoires are strongly associated with
  socio-cultural backgrounds, albeit in complex,
  intersectional ways.
• Diverse students (class, ethnicity and gender)
  accounts, life aspirations and mathematical
  identities, important for understanding
  mathematical literacy.

33
Researching Diversity and WP in HE Projects from
TLRP (end 2008)

• Networks of intimacy and decision-making as an
  embedded social practice (Alison Fuller, Sue
  Heath Brenda Johnson at Southampton University)
• Socio-cultural and learning experiences of
  working class students (Gill Crozier, Sunderland
  University with Diane Reay of Cambridge
  University )
• Social Diversity and Difference academics
  engaging diverse students (Chris Hockings at
  Wolverhampton University with Sandra Cooke of
  Birmingham and Marion Bowl currently in Auckland
  New Zealand)

34
Networks of Intimacy routes to participation or
non-participation?

• Professors Alison Fuller and Sue Heath of
  Southampton University have studied choices of
  participation in HE by focusing on
• decision-making as an embedded social practice
  not individual
• the notion of networks of intimacy as a key
  theoretical concept linked to ambivalence as a
  nuanced concept in relation to continuity and
  change in family, community and the life course.
• They have produced 16 case studies of family
  decision-making around a key informant qualified
  to enter HE (level 3) and exploring their choices
  in relation to work and benefits of HE to
  subsequent lives in education, family and work.
• Heath (2007 BJSE) looked at GAP years and their
  relation to gaps in achievement by social class.

35
Socio-cultural Learning Experiences of Working
Class Students in HE

• Professors Gill Crozier, Sunderland University
  Diane Reay, Cambridge University studied the
  socio-cultural and learning experiences of
  students in contrasting HEIs, including one with
  further education.
• They interviewed 89 (mainly white British and
  female) middle working class students (parental
  occupations and/or first generation in their
  family to go to HE), followed the progress of 27
  working class students, interviewed key
  informants across the 4 diverse HEIs in 3
  geographical areas.
• The 4 HEI embody different missions, attracting
  different types of students with different
  learning dispositions, and they found that
• The middle class students have learned
  dispositions to fit with the university context,
  generate habitus through further social
  interactions.
• The working class students lives were often
  fragile and subject to disruption, although they
  may have been doing well academically.
• They argue in Different Strokes for Different
  Folks that the institutional or structural
  differences interweave with the middle class
  students capitals to perpetuate privilege and
  advantage classed privilege, links educational
  success to cultural behaviour. Whilst widening
  participation has opened up HE for working class
  students which hitherto they would not have had,
  inequalities continue, and impact on life chances
  within and across HEIs.

36
Diversity Difference in HE academic engagement?

• Dr Chris Hockings of Wolverhampton Universitys
  centre for excellence in teaching and learning
  (CoTL) focused on teaching or pedagogies for
  social diversity in different subjects
  (computing, biology, business, nursing social
  work) in 2 diverse HEI. Marion Bowl,
  co-director, wrote about Non-traditional Students
  in HE (2004) and Sandra Cooke, co-director, of
  Birmingham University worked with non-traditional
  students conducted the Hodge Hill study of Young
  Participation (Hefce, 2007)
• Using the concept of academic engagement, they
  explored the conditions under which students
  engage with, or disengage from learning, in the
  context of student diversity.
• They explored diverse pedagogies for learning,
  and in a case study focused upon uses of video
  methods among computing students.
• Over the 2 year course of the study the computing
  teachers
• Became more aware of their influences on
  engagement in classrooms
• Experimented with intervention strategies,
  including problem/enquiry based learning,
  collaborative/cooperative groups to personal
  knowing to socially identified knowledge to
  develop a climate of trust for inclusive learning
  environments.

37
Researching Students in FE/HE in TLRP some other
examples

• Disabled Students in HE (Mary Fuller, Sheila
  Riddell, Mick Healey et al)
• SOMUL (John Brennan, David Jary, Mike Osborne et
  al)
• Music Education in HE (Graham Welch Rosie
  Perkins)
• Enhancing teaching and learning environments in
  undergraduate courses (ETL) (Dai Hounsell et al)
• Learning Lives (Gert Biesta, Phil Hodkinson,
  Flora Macleod Paul Lambe)
• Learning and Working in Further Education in
  Wales (Martin Jephcote Jane Salisbury)
• Literacies for Learning in Further Education (Roz
  Ivanic, David Barton, Richard Edwards)

38
Diversities in Learning and Teaching Policy
Practice Implications

• TLRP projects focused more on equity or equal
  opportunities as social class or disadvantage and
  age than other diversities (gender, ethnicities)
  in relation to undergraduate students across
  subjects/disciplines and institutions
• In terms of WP and access, show that complex
  questions about individual or family choices,
  linked to class and gender (male rather than
  female), and subjects eg VET or maths, and about
  present, not imagined, future careers.
• Some about teaching and pedagogies which
  influences choices or pathways through prior
  experiences of education, eg Hounsell, Ivanic,
  Brennan and Hockings on engagement.
• Contexts and communities are very important in
  respect of when and how individuals participate,
  including networks of intimacy and prior
  educational experiences of socially just
  pedagogies, e.g. feminist or critical pedagogies
  (cf especially Alison Fullers project).

39
Conclusions Equity and Diversity in teaching and
learning in HE

• Rich and diverse studies of differing notions of
  access or participation of (undergraduate or
  first degree) students, researchers and/or
  academics
• diverse social science methods including
  qualitative/ethnographic
• Challenges about equity diversity, teaching
  learning or pedagogies
• Social and educational research evidence confirms
  that
• social stratification and individual inequalities
  maintained through diversified not inclusive
  forms of HE (Shavit, Arum Gamoran 2007)
• the diverse HEIs created are part of academic
  capitalism (Slaughter Rhoades 2004) in the new
  market economy with new teaching/learning regimes
• privilege rather than diversity maintained
  (Maher Tetreault 2007) eg using the term
  classed privilege (Crozier et al 2008).

40
Challenges of Diversity for Critical Feminist
Pedagogies in 21st century

• Processes have created and sustained social
  diversity across HE, creating new opportunities
  for socially just and personal pedagogies
• Inequality Diversity i.e. Age, Class, Gender,
  Race/Ethnic inequalities in relation to access to
  and participation in HE.
• Social divisions and inequalities across HEIs
  linked to a highly selective professional and/or
  graduate labour market but very little on womens
  participation in graduate or porfessional labour
  markets.
• What are graduate premia for many students and
  their future employment?
• How can our academic practices for teaching and
  research in the 21st century develop new forms of
  academic engagement and intellectual love
  (Rowland 2007 Clegg David 2006 forthcoming)?
• Can we meet the challenge of building upon the
  creative potential of critical and feminist
  pedagogies and practices for social diversity and
  social justice?