Widening Participation in Higher Education: Exploring factors that prevent secondary school students, from disadvantaged/non-traditional backgrounds, from engaging in Higher Education with ‘elite’ universities

Abstract

This thesis set out with the aim to create change by finding new ways to improve the Higher Education system and promote a more socially inclusive environment. ‘Widening Participation is not only about increasing the numbers of entrants to higher education, it also involves engaging learners from currently under-represented groups’ (Gordon et al. 2010:169). This research involved 10 months of data collection with 12 students within two schools. The schools were in an urban and a rural area. The data collection involved in-depth qualitative research through a variety of research instruments including: interviews over three timepoints, a variety of narrative elicitation tasks and journal work. This was in an attempt to better understand the decisionmaking of students when thinking about their post-18 choices. The sample of students included: four middle class students and 8 working class students. Of this sample 6 were male and 6 female. The students volunteered to participate in the study following a presentation and/or introduction at each of the schools. The methodological approach of the study was advocacy ethnography, therefore, the students’ voluntary involvement and continued involvement over the 10 months was essential. Students were given opportunities to comment on or change certain areas of data collection in order to ensure their voices were appropriately recorded where possible. Following with the theme running through the thesis of an advocacy ethnographic approach, the students’ names are anonymised with pseudonyms of their choosing. The results of the study drew out four main themes. These key themes from the findings of this study were: Student Aspiration; The Role of Schools; Knowledge about Higher Education; and Open Days. The findings indicate that open days were vital to some students’ final decision making around university choice. The role of schools were invaluable to working class students in particular. Student aspiration for the working class students and their families was found to be, contrary to much of the literature, high when considering post-18 choices. Lastly, important knowledge about higher education should be more readily available to working class students and schools and universities may be able to assist with this.