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Challenging discourses of aspiration: The role of expectations and attainment in access to higher education
... It appears that studies which are more specific only seem to have an influence on specific outcomes and fail to increase both hard and soft outcomes. Widening participation programmes have been criticised in the past for increasing students' aspirations but not giving the young people the skills necessary to realise these aspirations and goals (Harrison & Waller, 2018;Markus & Nurius, 1986). Multidimensional programmes take a holistic approach to widening participation, thus catering for the many factors influencing young peoples' decision making about and enrolment in college. ...
... In terms of accessing higher education, both outcomes often go hand in hand and educational aspirations have been shown to be important in predicting the final post-school destinations of young people (Johnston et al., 2014). Harrison and Waller (2018) have also highlighted the need for WP programmes to move away from raising aspirations and focus on raising students' expectations, which is more focused on students' 'possible selves' than the aspirational 'like to be' (Harrison & Waller, 2018;Markus & Nurius, 1986). It would be useful to analyse the longitudinal impact of these interventions and to differentiate between student aspirations and expectations to see whether either measure translate into higher college enrolments over time. ...
... In terms of accessing higher education, both outcomes often go hand in hand and educational aspirations have been shown to be important in predicting the final post-school destinations of young people (Johnston et al., 2014). Harrison and Waller (2018) have also highlighted the need for WP programmes to move away from raising aspirations and focus on raising students' expectations, which is more focused on students' 'possible selves' than the aspirational 'like to be' (Harrison & Waller, 2018;Markus & Nurius, 1986). It would be useful to analyse the longitudinal impact of these interventions and to differentiate between student aspirations and expectations to see whether either measure translate into higher college enrolments over time. ...
A major challenge for universities across the globe is to address the lack of diversity within higher education. Widening participation (WP) programmes can vary between in‐reach and outreach programmes. Some initiatives focus on either pre‐entry stage (primary or secondary schools) or post‐entry stage (helping students adapt to university life). This systematic literature review provides an analysis of the effectiveness of widening participation outreach programmes, a topic that is relatively unexplored, particularly at school level education. By examining empirical studies of widening participation interventions, the paper allows for the investigation of the educational outcomes measured in these programmes. A total of 19 studies were included, which analysed quantitative or mixed‐method data. The findings indicate a growth in the evidence base for widening participation programmes for second‐level students over the last decade. Interventions identified in the literature were categorised by their approach, which included guidance‐based interventions, multidimensional interventions or pedagogical interventions. The findings confirm some positive effects for widening participation outreach programmes on a range of outcomes including students' college readiness, educational aspirations and college enrolment. The review argues for consistency in the way in which educational outcomes are measured, as well as the need for cross‐collaboration and sharing of data between schools and universities, to enable more effective measurement of widening participation programmes in future research.
Context and implication
Rationale for this study
This study gives an up‐to‐date synthesis of outreach interventions in secondary schools which aim to widen participation at higher education. A review of its kind has not been conducted in the last decade.
Why the new findings matter
Findings highlight the most effective new interventions, as well as, the challenges in defining success, research design and collecting accurate data across secondary and tertiary educational institutions.
Implications for educational researchers and policy makers
This systematic review provides an overview for widening participation WP practitioners of what types of outreach interventions are out there, offering templates and ideas for introducing these kinds of initiatives in other universities and partnership schools. The paper highlights to policy makers, the need to create policies that enable cross‐collaboration and sharing of data between schools and universities. Implications for researchers include discussion around how success is being defined, what outcomes are being measured, the need for longitudinal studies with larger sample sizes as well as the collection of baseline data of participants.
... Additionally, the impact of student attitudes upon actual participation is unclear. Student aspirations (the desire to attend university) appear to be high across all socioeconomic groups (Croll & Attwood, 2013;Goodman & Gregg, 2010;Harrison & Waller, 2018;St. Clair, Kintrea, & Houston, 2013) and there is little evidence that aspirations actually influence university participation (Gorard et al., 2012). ...
... Clair, Kintrea, & Houston, 2013) and there is little evidence that aspirations actually influence university participation (Gorard et al., 2012). However, the related but distinct attitude of expectations (whether students think they will be able to go to university), may be a more important influence upon attitudes and decision making towards university (Harrison & Waller, 2018), and expectations have been found to be lower among disadvantaged students (Boxer et al., 2011). Thus, the potential impact of widening participation interventions is uncertain; even if programmes designed to raise aspirations to university are successful, they may not impact actual university attendance unless other factors like expectations and academic attainment are also increased. ...
... Investigation of the reasons and mechanisms for such changes could also add to the evidence base for such interventions. Analysis which makes reference to theoretical constructs such as self-determination theory, whereby an intervention may be understood through its effects upon increasing autonomous motivation for example (Ryan & Deci, 2016), or through helping students to broaden and redefine their possible or probable "future selves" (Harrison & Waller, 2018) would underpin evaluations with an understanding of not just if they work, but why. ...
University participation gaps between free school meals (FSM) and non-FSM students have remained largely stable in the UK since 2006. The efficacy of UK widening participation (WP) interventions in changing attitudes towards university and increasing participation of disadvantaged students is uncertain. Some approaches have shown to be effective in other countries e.g. the US, but the educational experience of pupils and markers of disadvantage may be different to the UK. Previous reviews have indicated poor-quality evidence and a lack of peer reviewed experimental evaluation in a UK context. The range and quality of evidence using a non-experimental or qualitative approach is unclear. Understanding how effective WP interventions are in changing attitudes and behaviours towards university in the UK is an important part of addressing the participation gap. This study used a systematic review approach to examine the evidence base of peer-reviewed evaluations of UK WP programmes for school children aged 16 and under in the last 20 years. Inclusion criteria encompassed a range of quantitative and qualitative study designs to gain a picture of the efficacy of interventions and the type and quality of the evaluation evidence. Findings indicated that controlled experimental evaluation of UK interventions remains very limited. Evaluations were largely mixed methods. Quality of evidence was judged moderate overall due to multiple issues with bias and lack of clarity in methods. Approaches that appeared to offer the most potential were those that helped students to develop new skills with tangible outcomes, and exposure to role models.
... We construct a framework using the concept of 'possible selves' (e.g. Harrison, 2018;Harrison & Waller, 2018) and by drawing upon, extending, and adapting positional conflict theory (e.g., Brown, 2000;. We argue that there are clear differences between urban elite students and their counterparts in envisioned 'possible selves'. ...
... A key contribution of this perspective is an emphasis on the relationship between expectations and aspirations. It highlights that the expectations (or probable selves) and aspirations (or ideal selves) of young people are frequently misaligned, and thus aids in revealing the role of expectations in tempering aspirations (Harrison & Waller, 2018). Related to this is 'elaboration', which refers to how clearly individuals 'elaborate' both the imaginaries of future selves and the steps required to achieve them (Harrison & Waller, 2018;Jones et al., 2021). ...
... It highlights that the expectations (or probable selves) and aspirations (or ideal selves) of young people are frequently misaligned, and thus aids in revealing the role of expectations in tempering aspirations (Harrison & Waller, 2018). Related to this is 'elaboration', which refers to how clearly individuals 'elaborate' both the imaginaries of future selves and the steps required to achieve them (Harrison & Waller, 2018;Jones et al., 2021). The more wholly imaginaries of possible selves are formed, the more they can be linked to specific strategies which may serve to regulate behaviour (Oyserman et al., 2004). ...
The term neijuan (in English ‘involution’) has captured feelings of perpetual competition and anxiety among university students in China preparing for their post‐graduation careers. In this article, we develop a neo‐Weberian reading of neijuan to construct a framework using positional conflict theory and the concept of ‘possible selves’. We investigated how final‐year university students from three social class factions—rural, urban non‐elite and urban elite—envisage, plan and strategise for their future careers. We draw on in‐depth interviews (n = 100) and a post‐graduation survey (n = 97) with students at two public universities, one elite and one lower‐tier, in a metropolitan city in Guangdong province. The findings underscore marked differences in the nature and clarity of students’ envisaged future selves along the lines of social advantage and disadvantage. We demonstrate how social class is deeply connected to the scale of the competition—national or global—that students perceive themselves to be implicated in. In doing so, we draw attention to social class differences in expressions of and capacities to realise what we term ‘globally orientated possible selves’, which involved escaping both the sense of entrapment and the prospect of failure evinced by neijuan.
... Research suggests that augmenting expectations may be a more fruitful approach for outreach practitioners aiming to widen participation to HE, than focusing on aspirations which has been the tradition. It is acknowledged, however, that the term 'aspiration' is used very loosely in the outreach community to cover a range of outreach activities (Harrison and Waller, 2018) and some of these may in reality deal with similar concepts such as expectations and providing accurate advice and guidance about future career pathways. ...
... Even the most intensive activities described by interviewees tend to consist of no more than a one hour interaction per week for ten to twelve weeks. This issue was touched upon in one of the recent guidance report discussed at the beginning of this chapter (Harrison et al., 2018). Here practitioners raised concerns in interviews that the metrics used to show impact on attainment (e.g. ...
... In this approach, evidence from RQ2, which meets high criteria according to OFFA's (2017a) guidance on how to evaluate, would surely be considered robust evidence, and yet my interview participants felt that the outcomes observed were not entirely attributable to outreach. Although this guidance has now been superseded (Harrison et al., 2018;OfS, 2019), the real value of HEAT's tracking data may lie elsewhere. ...
The issue of social class related inequalities in access to Higher Education (HE) has been high on the political agenda for nearly two decades. In spite of significant funding, channelled through university-led outreach activities to encourage disadvantaged young people into university, the social gap in HE participation persists. As a result, universities are under increasing pressure to provide hard evidence of 'what works' in terms of the outreach they deliver under the Government's Widening Participation (WP) agenda. Recent large-scale research identifies prior attainment at Key Stage 4 (GCSE) as the main barrier to HE access for disadvantaged students, and as a result the Office for Students (OfS) now require universities to raise students' pre-entry attainment. This research examines the potential for university-led outreach activities to help disadvantaged students over this attainment hurdle. Two of the three research questions posed draw on big data collected through HEAT, a system whereby universities in England record data on the students engaged in their outreach activities, tracking their subsequent progress in terms of school attainment and eventual HE entry. Research question one examines the extent to which outreach delivered in the past has been targeted towards the 'right' students, most in need of assistance with this level of attainment. I find a considerable amount of resource has been mis-targeted. In the second research question, I devise a quasi-experimental method that makes the best use of HEAT's collective tracking data to explore whether outreach activities are able to raise students' attainment. Results show a positive impact on attainment, although this is accompanied with a 'health warning' regarding the important unresolved issues of epistemology associated with my approach. The third research question moves away from HEAT's quantitative data and draws on qualitative methods to understand the specific activities universities are delivering to raise attainment, and how these might be expected to work. Content analysis of institutional Access Agreements provides a good starting point, and from this I generate a typology of attainment-raising activities being delivered by universities. This line of enquiry is extended through interviews with WP managers from 30 universities where Academic Tutoring delivered by student ambassadors emerges as the most common attainment-raising activity. This choice is seemingly driven by the demanding requirements on universities to show hard evidence of impact on exam results. However, closer examination of the processes and mechanisms through which Academic Tutoring activities are expected to work are not sufficiently theoretically convincing. ii I conclude the research with a series of recommendations for policy. These include lessening the strict requirements on universities to demonstrate impact when it comes to raising attainment in schools. This may encourage more creative activities, less reductionist in their approach than Academic Tutoring which appears to replicate what is already happening in schools. I also suggest that HEAT should be utilised for its monitoring capacity rather than being a 'scientific' predictor of impact evaluation. Government should investigate using HEAT as a mechanism to provide the OfS with data on the types of students receiving outreach and where they live in the country. Further research is also needed to better understand the circumstances under which Academic Tutoring outreach activities, which are already being delivered by universities, may be able to add value to the complex issue of raising attainment in schools. iii
... In the UK, graduates and their families look to universities to provide a launchpad to future career success (Harrison and Waller, 2018). There is increasing pressure for universities to be seen to deliver positive graduate outcomes in rapid and monetised ways, which ignores labour market research which suggests that it can take longer to settle into a career (Purcell et al., 2013), as well as backgrounding the more subjective benefits gained by having a degree (Green and Henseke, 2016). ...
... Their words share something of what Loveday (2015) has written about in terms of individuals who do not want to turn their backs on their backgrounds. Robert challenges the aspirations-deficit discourse (Harrison and Waller, 2018) that has been present in public policy. They demonstrate a tentative social class solidarity as they consider their lack of advantage with regard to 'positionality'. ...
... They articulate the perceived deficiencies of parents, who are unable to help them in securing an aspirational mobility 'narrative' (Brooks and Waters, 2017;Finn and Holton, 2019); while also appearing to put pressure on their sons to live up to parental hopes that their offspring will be socially mobile. In contrast, Charlie and Robert-who show similar awareness of a disadvantaged 'positionality'-are crafting ways to position their families as 'characters' in their stories more positively, with indicators of class consciousness that can embrace some solidarity and reject an aspirations-deficit discourse (Harrison and Waller, 2018). The construct of 'positionality' suggests that individuals require understanding of how they are positioned (which close family status does tend to exemplify), if they are to be agentic. ...
How do young graduates view the role of immediate families in influencing/supporting them as they start their working lives and how do those reflections affect how they think of themselves as graduates? Social, political and economic changes have led to many young people being dependent on family for longer, but how does this play out in their reflections? This article addresses these questions by reporting upon findings from qualitative research with 14 young people from working‐class backgrounds, who were part of a larger study of recent graduates. Figured Worlds theory illuminates data, with a consideration of the role that family plays in the ‘space of authoring’ and understanding of ‘positionality’. Findings capture vivid stories of the enabling but also limiting role of family. In our analysis of data, we borrow the words ‘salience’ from Holland and her co‐authors and ‘distinction’ from Bourdieu, which help capture different depictions of family. Both articulations of ‘salience’ and a search for ‘distinction’ emerge in how graduates’ stories respond to family. We argue for a greater appreciation of the differing family resources of working‐class graduates, and reject an emphasis on what they may lack, compared to their peers, which has tended to be the case in some media and policy commentary. There are implications for educators to foster student reflexivity about family sensitively, and to be aware of how family backgrounds may influence graduate career paths and students’ awareness of wider inequalities.
... This effect was found to be stronger in low GDP countries (Gamazo & Martínez-Abad, 2020). In other countries, differences in occupational aspirations between social groups were found to be lower than expected suggesting shifting the focus of policies and practices from the conventional 'aspiration-raising' approach to a more transformational approach that promotes academic attainment and high expectations from the early years of students' lives (Gore et al., 2015;Harrison & Waller, 2018). One could argue that students' SES may influence their occupational expectations, which can subsequently impact their academic achievement. ...
... Particular attention should be given to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to help them improve their academic standards and consider career paths outside of their family and social circles. A systematic effort is required to connect these aspirations with the educational process by providing ongoing support and promoting successive learning achievements (Gore et al., 2015;Harrison & Waller, 2018). During this process, differentiated teaching is likely to provide activities that are meaningful and goals that are equally attainable by all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background (Kyriakides et al., 2020). ...
Background: Research has shown that students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to have lower academic performance compared to children from better-off families. However, the way that socioeconomic status (SES) influences student learning outcomes has not yet been fully examined. Thus, this study explores the indirect effects of students’ SES on reading achievement through academic motivation. Specifically, the mediating role of the following three motivation elements is investigated: mastery-approach orientation of achievement goals, enjoyment of reading, and expected occupational status.
Methods: Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to test the hypothesized mediation model in each European country (n = 38) that took part in the PISA 2018 cycle. Specifically, data was obtained from 237,366 15-year-old students. Common measures for SES, academic motivation, and reading achievement were employed to examine whether the selected academic motivation elements have similar effects in each country. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to validate the factorial structure of mediators and test their measurement invariance across the samples.
Results: Within-country SEM analysis revealed that expected occupational status partially mediates the relationship between SES and reading achievement in all countries. Enjoyment of reading fitted well as a mediator in almost all countries (n = 37), whereas mastery-approach orientation of achievement goals only appeared as a mediator in 11 countries. The direct effect of SES on academic achievement was significantly reduced in all models.
Conclusions: This study provides evidence that enjoyment of reading and expected occupational status can be treated as mediators in the relationship between SES and reading achievement in European countries. Implications for research and theory for promoting equity in education are drawn. It is argued that schools and teachers should encourage students to participate in activities that foster their intrinsic motivation towards reading and raise their educational and occupational expectations, especially for those coming from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
... Indeed, narratives of widening HE participation from underrepresented groups is often encapsulated in political discourse by drives to 'raise aspiration' within said communities (Grant, 2017, p. 1;Morley, 2011). Yet within higher-income contexts, levels of aspiration in underrepresented communities are not distinctly lower than comparatively privileged peers (Harrison & Waller, 2018;Stevenson & Willott, 2007). Reduced HE participation is assumed to indicate declining aspiration, rather than engagement, along lines of inequality and intergenerational poverty. ...
... Indeed, whilst HE aspiration enrollment predicts grade attainment in secondary school, correlation does not prove causality, or indeed causal direction. Contrarily, attainment may in turn generate higher reported levels of aspiration where continued educational engagement appears increasingly possible (Harrison & Waller, 2018). ...
This research explores determinants of higher education (HE) expectation in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. Survey data includes 2,039 randomly selected responses from school-attending adolescents, from June 2017. HE expectations were indicated by 77% of girls and 68.7% of boys, privately schooled adolescents more frequently (78.5%) than publicly schooled peers (67.6%). Akaike Information Criterion was utilised, modelling HE expectation. Logistic regression indicated that female gender (OR=1.569), private schooling (OR=1.747), perceived comparative school performance (OR=1.776), increased studying time (OR=1.436), greater parent valuation of studies (OR=1.526), and parental warmth (OR=1.092) predicted HE expectation. Student-teacher conflict (OR=.546) and school disenfranchisement (OR=.755) negatively predicted HE expectations. Comparison with previous research in socioeconomically distinct higher income settings suggests consistently predictive and contextually influenced determinants of university expectation.
... Rather than aspirations, research suggests that expectations may be a more useful concept for understanding progression to HE (Anders, 2017;Boxer et al., 2011;Harrison & Waller, 2018). Gutman and Akerman draw the distinction between aspirations, which 'involve desired ambitions and goals', and expectations, which 'connote a more realistic assessment of how much an individual believes he or she will actually achieve based on their own abilities and society's opportunity structures ' (2008, p. 5). ...
... For disadvantaged young people, the gap between their aspirations and expectations is a complex web of influences including family and community, and their understanding of structural constraints such as those provided by the education system and labour market (Harrison & Waller, 2018;Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1993, 1997. This is an effect Morgan terms 'rational fantasies,' positioning young people as rational but optimistic thinkers, whose decisions vary with the marginal cost and benefits of continuing education (1998). ...
This thesis examines the relationships between schools and universities regarding progression to higher education. It asks: what are the characteristics of school-university relationships in this sphere and how do they vary? It examines schools with different rates of progression to higher education, as defined by the Department for Education’s destinations data (Department for Education, 2019c) to frame a qualitative study. This thesis examines the relationships between schools and universities regarding progression to higher education. It asks: what are the characteristics of school-university relationships in this sphere and how do they vary? It examines schools with different rates of progression to higher education, as defined by the Department for Education’s destinations data (Department for Education, 2019c) to frame a qualitative study. This thesis makes several contributions to the academic literature. Empirically, the involvement of schools in progression to higher education is under-researched, with university-focused studies dominating the literature. Theoretically, the thesis draws upon partnership theory in order to understand the relationship between schools and universities, using policy sociology as an analytical lens. In doing so, it examines theory in a new space. Finally, this thesis focuses on an under-researched geographical area, the North East of England, in order to consider how university progression occurs in a particular physical area outside of London. This thesis may be of value to practitioners and policymakers, as well as contribute to the debate surrounding the access and participation agenda, and inequality discourses such as ‘levelling up’ and ‘closing the attainment gap’.
... Furthermore, in the UK, undergraduate student decision making may not be dominated by considerations of price because it is similar between institutions (there are more price variations at postgraduate level) and often payment is deferred. Instead, prior experiences and the social environment seem to exert more influence (Harrison & Waller, 2018). Decisions to enter HE are based around considerations of future careers, earning potential and the ability to benefit from the cost of borrowing money to pay for the tuition fees and maintenance costs. ...
... Those from lower incomes may expect to gain most from borrowing money to study, enabling them to move out of their low-income context, however these students seem disproportionately deterred by the costs incurred (Callander & Jackson, 2005). In addition, Harrison (2017) notes that students do not typically choose to maximise their choice university status (the highest ranked institutions they can attain) perhaps because of the social environment influences (Harrison & Waller, 2018), and the bounded rationality previously referred to. Many will be anxious about the extent to which they will fit-in and be able to mix with people like themselves. ...
Relying on the resource-based view and drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his key concepts of field, habitus and capitals, we scrutinise via student focus group reports, the perceptions of first year business undergraduate students, asking them what university and business school attributes they considered during the application process so that we can determine what attributes give business schools a competitive advantage. Our findings reveal the combination of attributes, what we call symbolic capital, that are essential to attract students to a UK based business school in a research-intensive Russell Group university. This combination of attributes and resources is critical to maintaining the position of a university and business school in the perceptions of applicants. Hence, we refer to the combination of factors as 'Business School Capital'.
... As education is considered one of the most important vehicles for upward social mobility, understating the factors that contribute the most to educational achievement is crucial. Numerous studies emphasize the key role educational expectations play in predicting students' achievement, relative to other significant factors such as educational aspirations, student motivation and parental educational background (Bozick et al., 2010;Froiland & Worrell, 2017;Harrison & Waller, 2018;Jacob & Wilder, 2010;Ou & Reynolds, 2008). ...
... The results in relation to the effect of students' educational expectation on achievement provided further evidence found in previous research about the important positive role of educational expectations as a predictor of achievement (Bozick et al., 2010;Froiland & Worrell, 2017;Harrison & Waller, 2018;Jacob & Wilder, 2010;Ou & Reynolds, 2008). It seems that higher levels of educational expectations are significantly associated with higher achievement. ...
The study draws on the theory of ‘migrant optimism’ and anticipated discrimination to examine whether a gap in educational expectations and achievement exists between immigrant and native students in Qatar and explores whether the impact of educational expectations on educational achievement is contingent upon the migratory status of students (migrant or native students). It utilizes data on students aged 15–16 obtained from the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The results show that migrant students have higher educational expectations and achievement than Qatari students, while female students in all groups enjoy better performance and hold higher educational expectations. The results also show that the gender gap among Qatari students is bigger than the gender gap among migrant students. Educational expectations have a significant and positive impact on achievement among Qatari and migrant students alike. These results and their theoretical implications are further discussed in the paper.
... The literature treats student aspirations and expectations as conceptually different and hence they are measured in separate ways (Bozick et al., 2010;Harrison & Waller, 2018;Khattab, 2015). Aspirations are a measure of what a student wishes to achieve, while expectations are the possibility or likelihood of actually fulfilling these wishes, given one's socioeconomic background (Reynolds & Pemberton, 2001). ...
... While aspirations and expectations are both relevant in determining various academic outcomes (Friberg, 2019), it is perhaps the relative impact of these two measures on student achievement that is most debated. Harrison and Waller (2018) have discussed how since the 1990s, education policy in the United Kingdom centered on the importance of raising educational aspirations among various groups in order to reduce inequalities in higher education. However, research at a later stage has come to question the importance of aspirations in increasing educational attainment (Carter-Wall & Whitfield, 2012;Gorard et al., 2012). ...
The main objective of this paper is to examine the role of students’ aspirations and expectations in affecting school achievement among 7th and 8th grade students in Qatar’s schools. The study draws on data collected in Qatari schools from a randomly selected sample of 841 students and their parents. The findings indicate that students’ educational aspirations have a stronger effect on students’ school performance when compared to students’ educational expectations, even when controlling for demographic factors, school attitude, and parental expectations. This finding directly contributes to the debate in the literature about the relative importance of aspirations and expectations, while also confirming what other studies have suggested- that the meaning and the way in which both aspirations and expectations operate is contextually relative. Context plays a significant role here, and consequently, leaves the debate over what matters more, aspirations or expectations, widely open.
... The associations are robust, even after controlling for parental social background and children's prior academic attainment (Duckworth & Schoon, 2012;Schoon & Lyons-Amos, 2017), and it is generally assumed that high parental aspirations can boost their children's motivation and attainment (Baker et al., 2014;Mortimer, Mont'Alvao & Aronson, 2020;Sommerfeld, 2016). Indeed, raising the aspirations of young people and their parents is a key target of a number of UK government initiatives aiming to improve student's academic attainment and social mobility (Berrington, Roberts, & Tammes, 2016;Harrison & Waller, 2018;St. Clair, Kintrea, & Houston, 2013). ...
... Moreover, it is important that parents and their children agree on the value of higher education and communicate about the pressures and strains (such as the need for financial support or cultural knowhow) they perceive in their evaluation and planning of higher education participation. A crucial step in improving educational attainment and participation, in particular among young people with parents educated below A-level qualifications, is the provision of relevant information and guidance on how to reach ambitious goals and how to effectively navigate the educational system (see also Harrison & Waller, 2018). ...
Previous research has shown that parental educational aspirations for their children are an important predictor of children's academic attainment. However, recent studies have pointed to potential negative effects, in particular if there is a mismatch between parental educational aspirations and the aspirations of their children. This study examines (1) the role of socio-demographic and school achievement-related factors in shaping a potential (mis) match between parental educational aspirations and the aspirations of their children, and (2) whether incongruence between parental and their children's educational aspirations hinders academic attainment in times of social change. We use data collected for the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study (BCS70) and Next Steps (formerly known as the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England), a cohort of young people born in 1989/90. We find that in both cohorts socio-demographic and achievement-related characteristics are associated with incongruent aspirations, and that incongruent aspirations between parents and their children are associated with a decreased likelihood of participating in and completing higher education. The study contributes to current debates regarding the causes and correlates of discrepancies in educational aspirations and how such discrepancies affect later life chances.
... (4) Family and peer influences: Literature draws attention to the importance that family and peers have in the construction of the personal and external expectations of students in terms of the costs and benefits of higher education (Harrison and Waller 2018). The role of adults is very significant in the construction of those expectations, sometimes limiting the application options to certain programmes, even in cases in which students might have a high probability of success. ...
... Regarding the factors that influence expectations, our findings align with the literature on the importance of family and social context (Harrison and Waller 2018;McGhie 2016). Additionally, it was observed that students felt explicit and implicit social pressure over the decision to apply to higher education and specifically on choosing a university programme over a technical-professional one. ...
Background: The transition of high school students to higher education can be an overwhelming experience which may impact on academic outcomes. Despite increases in access, course completion rates remain problematic in Chile. Students’ expectations of higher education can play an important role in their decision-making, especially in terms of choices made about programme and institution.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to better understand Chilean high school students’ expectations of the benefits and costs involved in the transition process from secondary to postsecondary education. Also, it aimed to examine the factors that influence those expectations.
Method: We used a qualitative design to collect information from 76 university-tracked high-school seniors through nine focus groups. All focus group data were double coded using a directed content analysis approach.
Findings: The analysis indicated that students mentioned expectations of non-monetary benefits frequently, and in all focus groups. Though monetary benefits were not referred to directly, students identified them implicitly through non-monetary benefits. Expectations about costs were mentioned less often than were benefits.
Conclusions: Our study highlights that the construction of expectations appeared chiefly influenced by the information obtained through family and peers. The findings from this study should help focus institutional and educational policymakers’ efforts in supporting the decision-making process of students transitioning to higher education.
... The term "aspiration" has been used with different connotations throughout history [29]. The theory of student aspirations, developed by Quaglia and Cobb [30], encompasses inspiration and ambition. ...
This study explores the significance of students’ aspirations as motivation and expectations in adopting e-learning, considering the influence of cultural values. The research utilizes a theoretical framework that integrates the Technological Acceptance Model, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, and the DeLone and McLean Information System Success Model, along with Schwartz’s human values. Employing a quantitative approach, the study investigates the relationship between social factors and e-learning adoption through a survey of 509 students at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia using a structured questionnaire and Structural Equation Model for hypothesis testing. Results reveal that students with a proclivity for change and self-enhancement have higher motivation and expectations towards e-learning, while those with conservative perspectives show lower motivation and expectations. Additionally, students prioritizing self-enhancement and openness to change are more likely to actively engage in e-learning adoption. This research contributes to sustainability by highlighting how fundamental human values influence e-learning adoption. It also emphasizes the role of sustainable education and transformative learning processes in shaping attitudes towards e-learning. These insights inform the development of effective e-learning programs, benefiting the field of e-learning research and providing valuable guidance to researchers, policymakers, and decision-makers in creating more inclusive and sustainable educational practices.
... From the meaning of the word, it can be defined lexically that education is guidance or help given to children by adults on purpose so that children grow up. Education can be limited in its narrow and broad sense (Harrison & Waller, 2018). In a narrow sense, education is a conscious and planned effort to help students become mature (Chen, 2017). ...
The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of using an inquiry-based contextual approach (CTL) on student learning outcomes in Integrated Science learning (Biology) in class VII students of MTs NW Tebaban in the 2022 academic year. This type of research is a quasi-experimental. The population in this study were students of class VII MTs NW Tebaban. By using the random sampling technique, two classes were obtained as the sample class, the experimental group was class VIIB and the control group was class VIIA. Data collection techniques use learning achievement tests, and student observation sheets. Based on the results of research and discussion that the average value of the experimental class was 79.24 while the control class was 69.5. So it can be concluded that the learning outcomes of the experimental class group are higher than the learning outcomes of the control class group. Meanwhile, based on the results of the normality and homogeneity tests of the two groups, the data were normally distributed and homogeneous, and had relatively the same initial conditions, so a two-party t-test was used to test the hypothesis. From the calculation results, obtained tcount = 4.06 while the value of ttable = 1.68. therefore tcount>ttable, so Ho is rejected and Ha is accepted. So that it can be concluded that there is an influence of Inquiry-Based Contextual Approach (CTL) on Learning Outcomes of Grade VII MTS NW Students in Integrated Science Subjects
... A pesar de su importancia en otros campos como el análisis de ideas políticas (Schmidt, 2008(Schmidt, , 2017, económicas (Lowry, 1987;Roncaglia, 2005) o educacionales (Heneveld, 1998;Lawton y Gordon, 2002), este tipo de análisis no se ha generalizado en la educación superior. En efecto, si se revisa la literatura especializada sobre el tema, es posible identificar estudios dedicados a la comprensión del concepto de universidad en las políticas públicas (Vingaard Johansen, Knudsen, Engelbrecht Kristoffersen, Stellfeld Rasmussen et al., 2017;Brandmayr, 2019;Horrod, 2020), en organizaciones internacionales -como el Banco Mundial o la Unesco- (Bonal, 2011;Buckner, 2016) y en estudiantes, académicos y administradores universitarios (Jackson y Dempster, 2009;Stich y Reeves, 2014;Valdez y Steel, 2014;Harrison y Waller, 2018;Fert, 2020;Seidenschnur, Veiga, Jungblut y Magalhães, 2020), mas no hay un número similar de investigaciones sobre el impacto de procesos históricos de largo alcance en los debates acerca de esta institución (véase Singh, 2011;Smolentseva, 2017). ...
Resumen:
El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar los cambios en el concepto de la universidad en un sistema de educación superior de alto privatismo como el chileno, examinando los debates intelectuales y políticos sobre el rol de estas instituciones desde el periodo de independencia en el siglo XIX hasta el presente. Los resultados muestran que desde una aceptación de su carácter elitista se pasa a la valoración positiva de la expansión de la matrícula por su impacto en la formación de capital humano. El impacto del capitalismo académico ha resultado, así, en el abandono de la comprensión tradicional de la universidad, su reemplazo por la idea de capital humano y el tránsito de un sistema guiado por un modelo único a uno en que compiten diversas descripciones.
... First, regarding educational aspirations and expectations, the aspiration to obtain a university degree or a higher VET level is shared by most working-class students, against the common (mis)perception that workingclass students share low aspirations ( Harrison and Waller, 2018 ). However, the degree of stability and certainty of this aspiration and its distance from expectations depends on the fraction. ...
This chapter explores how working-class students make sense of their upper secondary educational transitions. By means of in-depth qualitative interviews with students in Barcelona and Madrid, it identifies different working-class fractions, or sub-groups, with different amounts of economic, social and cultural capital to support their choices and transitions. It explores the classed nature of young people’s educational trajectories and demonstrates the effects of the multiple forms of school (dis)engagement on working-class students’ upper secondary choices. The chapter also inquires into the classed nature of educational aspirations by examining the internal heterogeneity among working-class students in how they imagine and enact their future prospects. Overall, the chapter contributes to understand the complexity and diversity within the working class and to identify the multiple, contradictory and non-linear ways in which it affects young people’s rationalities in their choice of upper secondary education.
... However, many young people reported a "positioning of educational failure" directed at them once in secondary school (Mannay et al., 2017: 692), suggesting aspirations of teachers and other professionals may be lower than those of care-experienced young people themselves. This suggests that a lack of aspiration is not a primary barrier to educational success for careexperienced young people, yet more structural barriers such as access to knowledge and finances are still pervasive (Geiger and Beltran, 2017;Harrison and Waller, 2018). ...
... Interestingly, few students are motivated to go to university primarily because of social pressure or norms [7]. There is also generally a high level of aspiration for study, with different social groups having similar levels of aspiration, however school attainment accounts for nearly all the differences in participation rates between social groups [8]. ...
Within this study, we aim to better understand the inspirations and aspirations of first year Biosciences and Chemistry undergraduates, how these change over the first year of study and their impact on motivation and engagement. Participants were asked to write a short reflective piece at the start of Welcome Week in their first year of undergraduate study. Thematic analysis identified four themes surrounding inspirations and aspirations. The most common theme was students naming a specific career as their aspiration (58%), followed by being inspired by work experience, aspiring to undertake further study and finally personal experience of a specific illness. Our findings showed that students’ career aspirations differed depending on ethnicity, with ambitions for medicine and laboratory work showing a marked increase in some ethnically marginalised groups. Focus groups undertaken at the end of the first year of study highlight increased motivation and engagement when students feel their course content aligns with their career aims. Conversely, students are disengaged by course material they feel is irrelevant to their chosen career. Here, we will discuss the impact of these findings on creating an inclusive curriculum and the career readiness of the student body. Conclusions apply to career development modules and how the applied nature of a course can lead to engagement and higher motivation for students as well as curriculum design.
... Our previous body of research on aspirations highlights that if students receive advice too late, their choices for the future will be limited (Jaremus et al., 2020), with prospective first-in-family students often ruling out the idea of higher education from an early age (Patfield et al., 2021). Working with younger children whose expectations are still forming can provide scope for the development of a broader range of aspirations, with teachers playing a key role (Harrison & Waller, 2018). We argue, with an increasing group of scholars, that all teachers can play a role in supporting aspirations ( Van den Broeck et al., 2020;Groves et al., 2021). ...
Access to higher education remains elusive for many young people despite substantial investment in outreach interventions, most of which target students in underrepresented equity groups. This paper explores an alternative approach to widening participation in Australia that focuses on teacher professional development to support student aspirations. We examine school teachers’ responses to a course designed to develop their conceptual understanding of aspirations and provide a framework for developing aspirations-related initiatives with their students and colleagues. The course pilot was evaluated drawing on surveys ( N = 49) and interviews ( N = 21). Teachers reported that they gained the following: (1) access to robust evidence of factors affecting aspirations; (2) relevant theoretical perspectives to conceptualise aspirations in new ways; and (3) insights on practical strategies with which they might nurture student pathways to higher education. To support widening participation in higher education, we argue that the scope of current outreach initiatives offered by universities must broaden to capitalise on the untapped potential of teachers.
... Factors which are associated with lower progression primarily focus on attainment at school [1], but also include being the first in the family to potentially attend higher education (an aspect associated with relatively less available knowledge of the higher education system) [25], and the economic circumstances of the household [26]. In addition to this, changing labour market conditions [27] and perceptions of their individual potential experiences in higher education [28] also contribute to changing intentions in relation to higher education applications [29]. ...
Despite increasing efforts to improve their access, students facing socio-economic disadvantages are still underrepresented in UK higher education. In this paper, we study whether behavioural nudging with information provision through text messages, embedded within a larger programme of widening participation activities, can be effective at increasing higher education application rates. We conducted two randomised control trials in which final year students in schools and further education colleges in areas with low higher education participation rates in the East of England region received a series of text messages that prompted thinking and/or action regarding the process of applying to higher education. We find null and statistically insignificant effects on application outcomes, suggesting that behavioural nudging in a setting where it is implemented as part of a more intensive widening participation programme is not effective at increasing higher education application rates. These results add to recent evidence regarding the potential impact of nudging in education by studying such interventions within a busy intervention space.
... Research has also highlighted the differential impact of educational aspirations and educational expectations on school achievement (Bozick et al. 2010;Gorard, See, and Davies 2012;Sharp et al. 2020) and participation in higher education (Beal and Crockett 2010;Bohon, Johnson, and Gorman 2006;Kirk et al. 2012), with some debating their competing influences on various educational outcomes (Carter-Wall and Whitfield 2012; Harrison and Waller 2018). Such observations suggest that there may be differences in the ways through which students' educational aspirations and expectations form (Beal and Crockett 2010), and in the conditions that influence their alignment or mismatch with one another (Kirk et al. 2012). ...
Aspirations and expectations are conceptually and empirically different. Given their differential impact on various educational outcomes, it is expected that they, and consequently their convergence, would be affected by different factors. This study examines the factors leading to high aspirations, high expectations and to their alignment by using cross-sectional data on 7th and 8th grade students in Qatar. Results from our study demonstrate that aspirations are affected by attitudinal factors and student grades alone, while expectations are significantly influenced by demographic factors (ethnicity, gender, school type, parent occupation). Parental expectations are influential in shaping student expectations but not student aspirations. The alignment of high aspirations with high expectations were determined by parental expectations, student grades and attitudinal factors. It appears that parental expectations play a critical role in bringing together high aspirations and high expectations. These results, the implications of the research and suggestions for future research are discussed further.
... The present researcher felt a need to study this issue in Kuwaiti classrooms to arrive at the necessary recommendations based on its findings. Purpose of the study Harrison & Waller (2018) suggest that there is a strong relationship between expectations and "young people's aspirations and socioeconomic status," they are "shaped by the adults surrounding them," and "parents and teachers "exert a strong influence on which possible selves appear probable to young people" (Harrison & Waller, 2018, p. 9). ...
... The present researcher felt a need to study this issue in Kuwaiti classrooms to arrive at the necessary recommendations based on its findings. Purpose of the study Harrison & Waller (2018) suggest that there is a strong relationship between expectations and "young people's aspirations and socioeconomic status," they are "shaped by the adults surrounding them," and "parents and teachers "exert a strong influence on which possible selves appear probable to young people" (Harrison & Waller, 2018, p. 9). ...
ABSTRACT
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare the influence of students' characteristics on social studies student teachers' expectations of students' behavioral, attitudinal, or ambitious performances and other student teachers.
Methodology: A descriptive quantitative approach consisted of administering a questionnaire on a sample of 135 student teachers of various specializations and GPAs at Kuwait University. Data analysis compared the mean of the sample respondents.
Results: The results showed that student teachers of different GPAs and fields of specialization tend to form different expectations about diverse classroom students based on some of their characteristics. However, no differences in these expectations based on the student teachers' GPAs and fields of specialization existed.
Conclusion: Recommendations were brought to the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education and the teacher preparation program in Kuwaiti universities. The influence of these student characteristics on achievement is suggested to be researched by further studies.
Keywords: teachers' expectations, student characteristics, students' behaviors.
خصائص التلاميذ وأثرها على تكوين التوقعات لدى الطلبة المعلمين الخاصة بسلوكيات واتجاهات وطموحات المتعلمين: دراسة مقارنة بين الدراسات الاجتماعية والتخصصات الأخرى
د. عبد الله الهاجري، د. عبد العزيز الشمري
ملخص
الأهداف: مقارنة مدى تأثير خصائص المتعلمين على توقعات الطلبة-المعلمين الخاصة بالأداء السلوكي أو الاتجاهات أو طموح هؤلاء المتعلمين وذلك ما بين تخصص الدراسات الاجتماعية وغيرها.
المنهجية: استخدم الباحث المنهج الوصفي الكمي من خلال استبانة معدة لهذا الغرض وعينة من 135 من الطلبة المعلمين بكلية التربية بجامعة الكويت بمراعاة مختلف تخصصاتهم ومعدلاتهم الدراسية كمتغيرات للدراسة.
نتائج الدراسة: أظهرت النتائج أن الطلاب-المعلمين من مختلف المعدلات ومجالات التخصص يقومون بتشكيل توقعات مختلفة حول الطلاب على أساس مستوى جاذبيتهم وترتيب الهندام ولم توجد أية فروق في هذه التوقعات بين الطلبة-المعلمين من مختلف التخصصات والمعدلات الدراسية.
الخاتمة: قدمت الدراسة توصياتها إلى وزارة التربية والتعليم الكويتية وبرامج إعداد المعلمين بالجامعات الكويتية. وختم الباحث دراسته بالدعوة لإجراء مزيد من البحث لدراسة تأثير هذه الخصائص الطلابية على التحصيل العلمي في المادة.
الكلمات المفتاحية: توقعات المعلمين، خصائص التلميذ، سلوكيات التلميذ.
... A pesar de su importancia en otros campos como el análisis de ideas políticas (Schmidt, 2008(Schmidt, , 2017, económicas (Lowry, 1987;Roncaglia, 2005) o educacionales (Heneveld, 1998;Lawton y Gordon, 2002), este tipo de análisis no se ha generalizado en la educación superior. En efecto, si se revisa la literatura especializada sobre el tema, es posible identificar estudios dedicados a la comprensión del concepto de universidad en las políticas públicas (Vingaard Johansen, Knudsen, Engelbrecht Kristoffersen, Stellfeld Rasmussen et al., 2017;Brandmayr, 2019;Horrod, 2020), en organizaciones internacionales -como el Banco Mundial o la Unesco- (Bonal, 2011;Buckner, 2016) y en estudiantes, académicos y administradores universitarios (Jackson y Dempster, 2009;Stich y Reeves, 2014;Valdez y Steel, 2014;Harrison y Waller, 2018;Fert, 2020;Seidenschnur, Veiga, Jungblut y Magalhães, 2020), mas no hay un número similar de investigaciones sobre el impacto de procesos históricos de largo alcance en los debates acerca de esta institución (véase Singh, 2011;Smolentseva, 2017). ...
The objective of this research is to examine changes in the university concept in a largely private system of higher education, such as that of Chile. The focus of study was the intellectual and political debates held on the role of these institutions, starting at national independence in the 19th century until the present. The results show that an acceptance of universities' elitist nature is transitioning to a positive evaluation of the expansion of enrollment, due to its impact on the formation of human capital. The impact of academic capitalism has therefore led to an abandonment of the traditional conception of universities. It has been replaced by the idea of human capital and the transition from a system guided by a sole model to one in which diverse descriptions compete.
... Professional judgement and tacit knowledge of alternative and innovative methods of practice and evaluation could be lost. Within a process based system, subtle nuances of learners' development and belief in their future possible selves (Markus and Nurius 1986;Harrison and Waller 2018) may be missed in aggregated and big data and enveloped within discourses of performativity (Ball 2012;Burke 2018). ...
Professionalising outreach and evaluation work would enhance the quality and rigour of provision, benefit widening participation students and achieve regulatory requirements (Bowes et al. [2019]. The National Collaborative Outreach Programme End of Phase 1 report for the national formative and impact evaluations. Office for Students; Rainford [2020]. “Working with/in institutions: how policy enactment in widening participation is shaped through practitioners’ experience.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 42 (2): 287–303). This article presents practitioners’ experiences of how social justice can often feel unaligned to the technical expertise required in rigorous project design and evaluation. Professionalising outreach would achieve both improved practice and meet practitioners’ needs for development and a united professional voice. A professional body sharing standard methods of practice, offering CPD and skills would elevate outreach practitioners to a ‘professional’ standing (Eraut [1994]. Developing professional knowledge and competence. Falmer Press).
... We propose that while there are broader illustrations of expanding gender norms (Morris & Anderson, 2015;Scholes, 2020) and policy agendas to expand gendered participation (Murphy et al., 2019), constraining norms remain evident in children's career aspirations at a very early age in Australia. This may reflect ongoing enculturation through a range of experiences, including situated local expectations (Harrison & Waller, 2018), teacher stereotypical perceptions (Muntoni & Retelsdorf, 2018;Perander et al., 2020) and communities of practice in classrooms (Paechter, 2006). Policy agendas in Australia are not focused on challenging such gender stereotypes in the early years-rather, they are focused on funding programmes to upskill teachers, improving STEM literacy and numeracy, evaluating current programmes and introducing new programmes such as the delivery of Artificial Intelligence in Schools, under the Australian Technology and Science Growth Plan, as part of the $29.9 million Artificial Intelligence Capability Fund measure (Department of Education Skills & Employment, 2021). ...
This article reports on a survey of 332 Year 3 students from 14 Australian schools. We are interested in exploring Year 3 primary school student aspirations and what this data shows us about any societal changes, or not. This study is timely as it reports on contemporary data within an Australian educational context marked by significant investment in improving equitable gendered participation, particularly for girls entering STEM. Drawing on conceptions of masculinities and femininities as social constructions, we report on the participants’ desired occupations and explore their justifications for such choices. The top three occupations for boys included careers in professional sports, STEM‐related jobs and policing/defence. Girls reported wanting to be teachers, veterinarians or to work in the arts as their top choices. As part of our exploration, we found issues of money and power—traditionally coded masculine—and conceptions of love and care—traditionally coded feminine—ingrained in boys’ and girls’ justifications for their desired trajectories. Findings are significant for illustrating how traditional constructions of gender are ingrained in career choices in the early years of primary school and how policy agendas to widen participation need to start early in life.
... Such studies have argued, instead, that it is differential attainment and expectations that explain their under-representation, both of which are significantly shaped by the perspectives of the adults around them (e.g. Croll and Attwood 2013;Harrison and Waller 2018). The body of work on the aspirations of those within HE is rather less well-developed (although see important exceptions by, for example, Armstrong and Hamilton 2013;Bathmaker et al. 2016;Brooks 2006;Stevens, Armstrong, and Arum 2008). ...
While there is now a relatively large literature on young people's aspirations with respect to their transitions from compulsory schooling, the body of work on the aspirations of those within higher education is rather less well-developed. This article draws on data from undergraduate students in six European countries to explore their hopes for their post-university lives. It demonstrates that although aspirations for employment were discussed most frequently, non-economic plans and desires were also important. Moreover, despite significant commonalities across the six nations, aspirations were also differentiated, to some extent at least, by national context, institutional setting and subject of study.
... These difficulties are exaggerated by epistemological deficits that negate the possibility of robust evaluations of success, the schools' own agendas promoting engagement with successful students, and the tension between low attainment and high aspirations in disadvantaged young people. Indeed, Harrison and Waller (2018) are surely right to criticise the overreliance of HE discourses on aspiration, given both that there appears to be no clear link between aspiration and attainment (Harrison and Waller 2018:920-921) and that, in a market context, there may be many different non-HE options, such as skilled trades, which offer prospects for more affluent lives than HE. They persuasively propose that WP shifts toward expectations by adopting policy that 'addresses inequalities earlier in [young people's] lives, engages with the adults surrounding young people, provides advice when it is needed and does not perpetuate the classed myth of low aspirations' (Harrison and Waller, 2018:934). ...
... 3. We are mindful of the similarities with the work or Markus and Nurius (1986) around 'possible selves' and the way in which individualised projections of the possible self are grounded in wider conceptions of personal experience and circumstance. We also recognise similarities with Harrison and Waller (2018), who emphasise the role of 'aspiration' and 'expectation' in the construction of possible selves, particularly within the context of educational achievement and progression. 4. The survey included questions on employment, education and training, and psychological and social factors. ...
The utilisation of non-formal educational methods has long been advocated as a means of supporting marginalised young people. For many in this cohort, the adverse social circumstances that confront them can limit their sense of hope and leave them susceptible to educational under-achievement and/or engagement in anti-social behaviour. Research indicates that sport can act as an effective back-drop for the promotion of non-formal educational programmes especially in relation to marginalised youth. However, there is contention over the role that such programmes play in providing a foundation for enhanced aspirational goals and social integration. Drawing upon research conducted on one UK-based sporting intervention, this paper explores how project engagement enabled participants to enhance their sense of hope, especially around education, training and employment. In so doing the paper demonstrates how the pedagogical approach adopted by project staff, drew parallels with critical education, and nurtured an increased sense of hope amongst participants.
... Many working-class young people are keenly aware of the low expectations of them from larger society and so act accordingly. Harrison and Waller (2018) explain that young people do indeed aspire, but they also grasp what is objectively available to them and so temper those aspirations accordingly. Similarly, Papafilippou and Bathmaker (2018) demonstrate the accrual of additional capital alongside the academic qualification required for successful education to employment transitions is often made possible through creation of "a strong possible career self." ...
As trends of social and economic change allow precarity to inch into the lives of those who may have been more accustomed to security (Standing, 2011 , 2014 ), this paper addresses the response of some young people who are caught “betwixt and between” in potentially liminal states (Turner, 1967 ). Those whose families have undertaken intra- or intergenerational social mobility and who have made a home in a place, Ingleby Barwick in Teesside, that seems to be of them and for them—an in-between place that is seen as “not quite” middle or working class. This paper draws data from a research project that adopted a qualitative phenomenological approach to uncover the meaning of experiences for participants. Methods included focus groups and semi-structured interviews through which 70 local people contributed their thoughts, hopes, concerns, and stories about their lives now and what they aspire to for the future. Places, such as the large private housing estate in the Northeast of England on which this research was carried out, make up significant sections of the UK population, yet tend to be understudied populations, often missed by a sociological gaze attracted to extremes. It was anticipated that in Ingleby Barwick, where social mobility allows access to this relatively exclusive estate, notions of individualism and deservingness that underlie meritocratic ideology (Mendick et al., 2015 ; Littler, 2018 ) would be significant, a supposition borne out in the findings. “Making it” to Ingleby was, and continues to be, indicative to many of meritocratic success, making it “a moral place for moral people” (McEwan, 2019 ). Consequently, the threat then posed by economic precarity, of restricting access to the transitions and lifestyles that create the “distinction” (Bourdieu, 1984 ) required to denote fit to this place, is noted to be very real in a place ironically marked by many outside it as fundamentally unreal.
... It has been noted by several commentators [e.g. Baker et al., 2014;Harrison and Waller, 2018] that much government policy towards boosting HE and science participation has followed an aspiration-deficit model, suggesting that inequalities arise at least in part from a lack of desire among low-SES groups to participate. However the evidence for this view is, in fact, lacking; in terms of higher education, at least, young people have uniformly high aspiration for their futures [Archer, DeWitt and Wong, 2014;St. ...
Widening participation in science is a long-held ambition of governments in the U.K. and elsewhere; however numbers of STEM entrants to university from low-socioeconomic status groups remain persistently low. The authors are conducting a long-term school-based space science intervention with a group of pupils from a very-low-participation area, and studied the science attitudes of the participants at the beginning of the programme. Key findings were that young people from the very-low-SES study cohort were just as interested in science study and science jobs as their peers nationally, and had a pre-existing interest in space science. Some participants, particularly boys, demonstrated a ‘concealed science identity’, in that they perceived themselves as a ‘science person’ but thought that other people did not. Boys tended to score higher on generalised ‘science identity’ measures, but the gender difference disappeared on more ‘realist’ measures. In addition, although participants agreed that it was useful to study science, they had little concrete idea as to why. These findings shed light on how science communicators can best address low-SES groups of young people with the aim of increasing their participation in science education and careers. We conclude that interventions with this group that focus on ‘aspiration raising’ are unlikely to be successful, and instead suggest that activities focus on how young people can see science as a realistic path for their future. It would be helpful for in-school programmes to allow young people an outlet to express their science identity, and to give information about the kinds of jobs that studying science may lead to. Further research into whether the gender split on idealist/realist measures of science identity persists over time would be of use.
In recent years, the sociology of culture has turned its gaze to future aspirations. This gaze is in line with contemporary future-oriented culture, which encourages young people to aspire to fulfill their dreams. A leading carrier of future orientation is the aspirational discourse, which has become prominent in the educational field and among youth. Sociological inquiry is conflicted regarding the outcomes of this discourse. While it is criticized for increasing inequality, it has also been shown that aspirations are means for higher achievements. In this paper, we shift from a focus on outcomes to a focus on interpretation and ask: How do social actors make sense of aspiring selves despite social limitations and inequality? Based on a qualitative study that tracks the aspirational discourse among school educators and recent high school graduates in Israel, we introduce the concept of “glitches” as articulated detours that rise in response to a mismatch between the discourse and lived experience. We identify three main glitches: deviating from the message “the sky is the limit” by lowering the aspirational sky, pausing future orientation by taking time out and limiting individual accountability by yielding to force majeure. We discuss how each glitch serves a different role in the construction of individuals’ life narratives and argue that the intermittent use of glitches enables individuals to sustain the mythical aspirational discourse, even in moments of mismatch and doubt.
Background: The discussion of access in medical education has its focus largely on physical and epistemological access, leaving a qualitative gap regarding sociocultural factors which enable access in this context. This study introduces and defines symbolic access, a concept with a specific lens on sociocultural enculturation, and the influence it has on student learning within the South African medical education landscape.
Methods: A phenomenographic design was used to explore students’ conceptions of symbolic access and its impact on learning. One-on-one exploratory interviews were conducted with fifteen final year medical students at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Interviews were analysed using Sjöström and Dahlgren‘s seven-step phenomenography model.
Results: Four categories of description were induced, which described students’ understanding of symbolic access, these were rejection, disregard, invalidation and actualization. Five dimensions of variation were discovered, these dimensions expressed the different ways the categories were experienced. These dimensions were; interactions with educators, peer relationships, educational environment, race and hierarchy. Categories of description and dimensions of variation formed the Outcome Space, a visual representation of the student experience of symbolic access. The outcome space had a double narrative related to symbolic access; exclusion (major) and actualization (minor). Medical student’s chief experience within the medical community was exclusion, however experiences of peer-relationships, clinical skills lessons and participation within the clinical setting facilitated community inclusion, enculturation, and impacted learning.
Conclusion: Despite deeply exclusionary experiences throughout their programme, medical students articulated attaining symbolic access into the community, which is predominantly influenced by clinical experiences during the pre-clinical and clinical years of study. Furthermore descriptions of valuable learning experiences were connected to clinical events and the involvement with patient care. This study suggests that the actualization of symbolic access and description of meaningful learning experiences are linked. Medical educationalists should design undergraduate curricula with early clinical immersion at the fore and explore symbolic concepts pertaining to access, as they are linked to transformative learning experiences for the medical student.
Conventional wisdom suggests that parents’ educational expectations (how far they expect their children to go) and aspirations (how far they want their children to go) positively impact academic outcomes and benefits from attending high-ability schools. However, here we juxtapose the following: largely positive effects of educational expectations (of parents, teachers, and students); small, mixed effects of parent aspirations; largely adverse effects of parental aspiration-expectation gaps; and negative effects of school-average achievement on expectations, aspirations, and subsequent outcomes. We used a large, nationally representative longitudinal sample (16,197 Year-10 students from 751 US high schools).
Controlling background (achievement, SES, gender, age, ethnicity, academic track, and a composite risk factor), Year 10 educational expectations of teachers and parents had consistently positive effects on the following: student expectations in Years 10 and 12, Year 10 academic self-concept, final high-school grade-point-averages, and long-term outcomes at age 26 (educational attainment, educational and occupational expectations). Effects of parent aspirations on these outcomes were predominantly small and mixed in direction. However, the aspiration-expectation gap negatively predicted all these outcomes. Contrary to our proposed Goldilocks Effect (not too much, not too little, but just right), non-linear effects of expectations and aspirations were small and largely non-significant.
Parent, teacher, student expectations, and parent aspirations were all negatively predicted by school-average achievement (a big-fish-little-pond effect). However, these adverse effects of school-average achievement were larger for parents and particularly teachers than students. Furthermore, these expectations and aspirations partly mediated the adverse impacts of school-average achievement on subsequent grade-point-average and age-26 outcomes.
The ‘Articulate’ programme is a high‐intensity five‐day widening participation programme designed to help students develop their communication skills and confidence through a range of activities led by an Articulacy tutor and culminates in students taking an examination for the English Speaking Board (ESB) Level 1 Award in speech on the final day. Additionally, students also develop their understanding of and aspirations towards higher education (HE) through sustained interaction with student ambassadors, who support all sessions throughout the week. Based on the conceptual framework of the theory of change, the intervention primarily addresses the barrier of soft skills, including increasing students' self‐belief, while also addressing some of the barriers of socio‐economic factors to HE participation namely knowledge, understanding and likelihood of applying to HE in future, through increased exposure to HE role models. In this paper we report our findings from the evaluation where we are studying the effectiveness of the programme. Through survey questionnaires data was collected from over 698 students in year 9 and year 10, studying at 42 schools across Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset who took part in the ‘Articulate’ programme, which was run in collaboration with Next Steps South West (NSSW). Results show the majority of participating students went on to perform well in the ESB exam; furthermore, participants were more likely to have positive attitudes towards HE and considered applying to HE in future. The findings will be of particular interest to practitioners and activity providers.
Context and implications
Rationale for this study
This paper summarises the mid‐term evaluation of an outreach programme designed for under‐represented groups to build their soft (communication) skills and develop their understanding of higher education (HE)—in terms of applying to university, support available and the possibilities HE can offer.
Why the new findings matter
It is possible to achieve medium‐term goals only after a sequence of short‐term goals are completed and built together to form a long‐term pursuit. Evaluating these goals is particularly useful for those delivering them and for the funder. Long‐term plans are what we are working towards, but the value of moderate to mid‐term goals is that they let us check our progress and evaluate whether we are still heading towards our long‐term pursuit and whether our plan, design or choices need to change to reach desired outcomes.
Implications
We expect the paper will be of particular interest to funders, regulators, practitioners and activity providers delivering similar programmes and will encourage them to evaluate the programmes they run for effectiveness and accountability. Based on the work done by some research team members, the Office for Students has recently published a report encouraging higher education institutions, outreach and activity providers to consider the standards of evidence and programme evaluation. Our work is one example of a mid‐term review for an ongoing programme with long‐term goals. Such reports are relatively rare, and we expect this evidence‐based practice will set a good example for colleagues involved in similar work.
en Debate continues on the effects of the global proliferation of private higher-educational institutions, especially for-profit institutions. We examine two related questions for Peru using mixed methods: Who attends private institutions and what are their perceived advantages/disadvantages? Longitudinal quantitative data suggest higher-educational segmentation starting early in life, whereby young people from wealthier households attended private institutions and those from poorer households attended public ones. Interviews with teachers, students, and staff provide insights on perceived strengths and drawbacks of higher-educational marketization and highlight the importance of family background in higher-educational choices, governmental regulation, and close monitoring of higher-educational quality.
Abstract
es Actualmente continúa el debate sobre los efectos de la proliferación global de instituciones privadas de educación superior, especialmente de instituciones con fines de lucro. Examinamos dos preguntas relacionadas al tema en el contexto peruano utilizando una metodología mixta: ¿Quién asiste a instituciones privadas y cuáles son sus ventajas/desventajas? Los resultados de los datos longitudinales sugieren que aún existe una segmentación de la educación superior que comienza a una edad temprana, en la que los jóvenes de hogares de mayor nivel socioeconómico (NSE) asisten a instituciones privadas, mientras que los de hogares de menor NSE asisten a instituciones públicas. Las entrevistas con los docentes, estudiantes, y trabajadores reflejan las fortalezas y desventajas percibidas sobre las instituciones con fines de lucro y resaltan la importancia de los antecedentes familiares en la toma de decisiones educativas, de la regulación gubernamental y del monitoreo de la calidad de la educación superior.
Successful Educational Actions (SEAs) are school-based initiatives oriented to provide high-quality education for all students. Identified by the INCLUD-ED research project, SEAs have been implemented in schools in different countries and researchers have studied their implementation and the impacts achieved. We undertook a review and synthesis of research findings on the implementation of SEAs with three aims. First, identify different types of impacts on students (3–12 years), second, offer a unified and comprehensive framework, and thirdly, provide suggestions for further research. We identified 63 studies that met our inclusion criteria and were coded descriptively. The findings documented in our reviewed studies accounted for impacts on the individual level, comprising (1) students’ instrumental learning and 2) self-esteem and motivation; on the group level, involving (3) enhancement of interpersonal relationships and (4) cohesion and conflict reduction; and on the community level, comprising (5) family involvement and change towards school and (6) absenteeism reduction. The synthesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of those findings and further research suggestions.
The told life journeys of learners returning to formal education are important to recognise in order to name the learning that occurs in the social contexts of family, community and work and, secondly, to appreciate the compelling connection between this learning and Higher Education (HE). The concept of what is viewed as important lies at the heart of this study which gives voice to the often overlooked mature, part-time student in order to recognise their assets. Despite previous research on older students in HE there is little on their brought assets, gained through past experiences. A biographical approach using semi-structured interviews based on a life-history grid allowed for the voices of the learners to be heard and their stories acknowledged. Findings indicate learning does arise from the everyday and there is a pattern to what is said about the specific intra and interpersonal attitudes and skills accrued. Past experiences are a resource for the adult learner and time spent away from the classroom is not a learning gap. The resulting affective assets are significant to academic study, enhancing and supporting the cognitive. HE needs to see the value of these assets, including motivation, resilience, independence, team work and emotional intelligence, to resurrect the social justice agenda of widening participation and lifelong learning and to seize this academic potential for the benefit of the learners and the academy alike.
This article examines international student mobility (ISM) as a process of “aspiration on the go” for African students in China—a burgeoning yet under-researched international student flow. Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork at a Chinese university, we present ethnographic case studies of African students that unveil their varied aspirations for travelling to study in China and, more importantly, reflect the diversity and dynamics of their aspirations on the go in confrontation with the realities they have encountered during their stay. We demonstrate that students’ aspirations might be preserved, transformed, reconfigured, placed on hold or go well to realisation, each of which impacts their ISM navigation, such as decisions to leave, to stay or to move to another university/country. We argue that adopting a dynamic and processual approach is important for rethinking international student aspirations and mobilities, in that it not only identifies nuances that diversify our understanding of what international education may mean for different individuals—especially for those from less-privileged backgrounds in an ISM flow within the Global South—but also bridges such binaries as imagination and reality, promise and precarity and structural force and agency that are usually treated separately in the literature of ISM.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption to the educational experiences of young people and to educational institutions. This article will examine the opportunities and challenges of the 'emergency' move to online spaces for the universities, schools and colleges in the Higher Education Progression Partnership South Yorkshire (HeppSY). Within the article, there is a particular focus on stakeholder groups and their relationships, which were vital for accessing and engaging the target students for activities and initiatives, but they are often not explicitly discussed when evaluating the impact of widening participation activities. This article will present the findings of 16 interviews and focus groups and the opportunities and challenges of moving into an online space will be outlined from the perspective of two stakeholder groups, as well as issues around digital poverty, capability and funding. The discussion section will focus on the implications of the online environment for widening participation and partnerships and how it can be moved beyond emergency online delivery to be planned and sustainable. It concludes by outlining the role of the online in widening participation and partnership working that will help drive the diversification of access post-pandemic.
Although postgraduate expansion swiftly followed the massification of undergraduate provision, with classed inequalities in access, postgraduate taught (PGT) education has rarely received the same level of scholarly attention as the critical mass of undergraduate research. To address this partial research lacuna, the paper traces 41 biographical narratives of first-generation students enrolled on taught Master's programmes at four English universities, complemented by four dialogic analysis workshops. Theorising social inequalities as lived and navigated structure and process, the paper traces a continuity of familiar refrains of inequality from undergraduate to postgraduate study. However, it illustrates how these may be reformulations, rather than replications. Firstly, it discusses material and symbolic barriers to PGT affordability including high fee levels, familial histories of debt and religious beliefs. Secondly, it emphasises that geographical mobility may be impossible or undesirable for Master's students due to relatively more ‘complicated’ lives, emplaced commitments, the subjectivity of social space and affective ties to place. Finally, it underscores that ‘fitting in’ still matters at PGT, as students may either divert from or feel uncomfortable in ‘high-status’ spaces where they feel they do not belong. In concluding, the paper argues the case for fully integrating PGT into HE equity agendas.
This article explores the extent to which three different school or college characteristics are related to school or college-level progression rates to higher education. Using data from publicly available datasets concerning state schools and colleges in England, linear regression analyses were performed to investigate the extent to which progression rates to higher education are related to the proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils within schools, the proportion of pupils in schools who reside in “low participation neighbourhoods” and the effectiveness of schools as determined through Ofsted inspections. Schools with a higher proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils tend to send fewer pupils to university though once school-level attainment is controlled for this trend reverses. However, schools with higher proportions of pupils in low participation neighbourhoods and those with lower Ofsted ratings tend to send fewer pupils to university both before and after school-level attainment is controlled for. The findings are interpreted within the context of a widening participation agenda and suggestions are made for how providers of widening participation outreach activities may most effectively target school-level interventions designed to increase higher education participation, especially those which do not have the effect of raising pupil attainment.
Introdução: Existe uma necessidade do buscar perceber as diversas perspectivas teóricas sobre as juventudes no ensino médio, pois acredita-se ser um passo para compreender as expectativas sobre o futuro, e as vivências nesta etapa da escolaridade. Objetivo: Realizar uma revisão integrativa da literatura acerca dos pensamentos e anseios dos jovens do ensino médio sobre projetos de vida no Brasil e no mundo. Materiais e Métodos: Foram realizadas pesquisas nos bancos de dados como Periódico CAPES e Google acadêmico, nos últimos cinco anos. Os descritores utilizados foram: “aspiração” “concepção” “ensino médio” “juventude” “projeto de vida” e “aspiration” “conception” “High school” “Youth” “Life Project”. Foram selecionados oito artigos que se adequaram aos critérios estabelecidos. Resultados: Dos artigos analisados, foi possível observar que 60% dos artigos mostraram que há uma discrepante diferença de objetivos na relação entre a escola, as percepções dos jovens, as propostas de formação e os anseios e aspirações desses sujeitos na escola de ensino médio. Conclusão: Os artigos permitiram constatar que os jovens do ensino médio não têm aspirações de projetos de vida claramente definidas. A atenção desse público está voltada para o presente e as preocupações estão voltadas para relações amorosas e amistosas do momento. Além disso, as influências externas e as crenças gerais impactam diretamente na forma de pensar dos jovens do ensino médio e as aspirações de futuro, quando identificadas, terminam sendo frustradas.
Widening participation in England has been framed around two primary needs; raising attainment and raising aspiration. Whilst aspiration is complex, policy definitions often frame it in narrow economic terms and see access to higher education as primarily about developing a workforce, the underlying logic being that to improve social mobility that individuals need to “aim higher”. Pre-entry work with under-represented groups therefore has tended to adopt a deficit of aspiration approach. There has been extensive critique of the deficit model yet “raising aspirations” still endures in both national and institutional policy. Drawing on sixteen semi-structured interviews with widening participation practitioners in England, this paper considers the alignment between policy and practice. It explores the more complex and nuanced view of aspiration held by practitioners and how this more closely aligns with the theory of possible selves. This paper argues that there are two key issues; a disjuncture between policy and practice and a gap in understanding of the structural issues associated with aspiration. The paper argues that the solution involves a radical rethink of policy that returns to a focus on helping individuals to realise their own individual aspirations and more clearly acknowledges the structural constraints shaping the formation, vocalisation and realisation of aspirations.
This paper reports on a project in the North of England that looks at the college-to-university decision-making processes of non-traditional students through the conceptual lens of ‘Possible Selves’, as initially developed by Markus and Nurius (1986) and applied to higher education by Harrison (2018), Henderson (2019) and others. Our data involves in-depth interviews with young people, and with the college staff responsible for advising and guiding them, at Further Education Colleges from which the rate of transition to university is lower than the national average. Our findings show that young people talk about their ‘like-to-be’ and ‘like-to-avoid’ futures in complex and self-regulated ways, often moderating how they articulate aspiration to align with external discourses, such as those projected by college staff. Students also demonstrate a keen awareness of structural limits, effectively constructing future selves which, though ‘elaborated’, reflect counter-reading of dominant narratives around financial self-improvement as achieved via the ‘full’ university experience. The ‘Possible Selves’ approach is therefore found to be enabling as a mediating artefact for researchers, and valuable for identifying policy-relevant points of tension between students and their college staff.
Education is a key driver of intergenerational mobility, yet previous research has suggested that there are large socio-economic and ethnic gaps in higher education participation, including amongst the most selective institutions. Prior attainment has been found to be an important reason why some young people are more likely to go to university than others, but it is less clear which stage of education has the greatest impact on HE participation. This is vital from a policy perspective, as it provides insight into the best time to intervene to raise participation. This report uses linked individual-level administrative data from schools in England and universities in the UK to document the relationships between socio-economic status, ethnicity and HE participation, and explore what drives these relationships.
The concept of ‘aspiration-raising’ has been ubiquitous in the discussion of differential rates of participation in higher education in England for many years. Potential students from disadvantaged backgrounds are constructed as setting their sights too low and therefore not considering higher education or ignoring elite universities that they could access. However, it is increasingly understood that aspiration-raising is unable to explain patterns of participation and that it risks ‘blaming the victim’ by failing to appreciate the structural constraints forged through their sociocultural context. The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative lens in the form of ‘possible selves’. This is drawn from the discipline of psychology and aims to explain how we all conceive and develop visions of ourselves in future states. These images create a motivational impetus for actions in the present in order to achieve a like-to-be self—or evade a like-to-avoid self. Notably, the theory takes specific account of the individual’s expectations and the importance of having a clear pathway towards a long-term destination. This paper provides an overview of the foundational theory and empirical evidence for a general readership, before presenting a new conceptual model focused on access to higher education. This is then used to explore the principles that might underpin interventions to support participation from disadvantaged groups within highly stratified systems, as well as suggesting a new policy agenda and priorities for future research.
An important axis of inequality in Britain is the private/state school divide. The success of private schools in Britain in delivering high academic achievements and better-paid jobs has been attributed to these schools engendering high self-evaluations, greater aspirations and social networks. Using recently repaired data on secondary school type from the 1970 British Cohort Study, we find that internal locus of control, aspirations and access to networks, but not self-esteem, are raised by private schooling. Locus of control and aspirations (but not networks or self-esteem) each have modest effects on earnings at age 42. Yet only a small part of the private school earnings premium is accounted for by all these factors. Much of the premium is due, rather, to educational attainments. This evidence suggests that strategies to strengthen self-evaluations or aspirations in state schools will contribute little on their own to the objective of greater equality or social mobility.
In England and Australia, higher education institutions (HEIs) are expected to widen participation (WP) in higher education (HE) to enhance social justice and improve individual and national economic returns. Furthermore, HEIs are the major providers of initial and in-service teacher
education. This article surveys international literature to explore ways in which teacher education programmes could and do contribute to preparing teachers to advocate for WP, including drawing on learning from WP research that demonstrates the value of current HE students engaging young
people in schools and colleges to support them in seriously considering progressing to HE. We conclude that teachers and pre-service teachers are well placed to be advocates for WP. In the majority of higher education institutions, however, WP and teacher education functions are not working
collaboratively to embed advocacy for WP into teacher education programmes.
This paper aims to better understand the relationship between young people's aspirations towards education and jobs, and the context in which they are formed, especially to understand better the role of disadvantaged places in shaping young people's aspirations. Policy makers maintain that disadvantaged areas are associated with low aspirations and there is support for this position from academic work on neighbourhood effects and local labour markets, but evidence is slim. Using a two-stage survey of young people in disadvantaged settings in three British cities, the paper provides new data on the nature of young peoples’ aspirations, how they change during the teenage years, and how they relate to the places where they are growing up. The findings are that aspirations are very high and, overall, they do not appear to be depressed in relation to the jobs available in the labour market either by the neighbourhood context or by young people's perceptions of local labour markets. However, there are significant differences between the pattern of aspirations and how they change over time in the three locations. The paper then challenges assumptions in policy and in the literature that disadvantaged places equal low aspirations and suggests that understanding how aspirations are formed requires needs a nuanced approach to the nexus of class, ethnicity and institutional influences within local areas.
Using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), this study examines how different combinations of aspirations, expectations and school achievement can influence students’ future educational behaviour (applying to university at the age of 17–18). The study shows that students with either high aspirations or high expectations have higher school achievement than those with both low aspirations and low expectations. Furthermore, complete alignment between high aspirations, high expectations and high achievement is the most important predictor of future educational behaviour among students. However, it is also found that low expectations do not negatively impact students’ future behaviour when they have high aspirations accompanied with high school achievement. Additionally, the study finds significant ethnic differences in favour of white students at GCSE level, but that these differences are reversed in relation to applying to university at the age of 17–18.
Educational and occupational aspirations have become an important reference point in policy debates about educational inequality. Low aspirations are presented as a major barrier to closing educational attainment gaps and increasing levels of social mobility. Our paper contributes to this on-going debate by presenting data on the educational aspirations of students from the Effective Provision of Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education Project in England. We analyse factors that help predict students holding high aspirations. Our findings reveal generally high aspirations across all students but also differences by income group and other background factors. We evaluate the significance of these findings for the existing literature and public policy discussions about the importance of raising educational aspirations. In particular, we question the way in which low aspirations are framed by policy-makers as a major problem in debates around educational inequality.
This review examines whether the attitudes, aspirations and behaviours of young people and their parents influence educational attainment and participation. The 'poverty gap' in education means that children from poorer families tend to do less well at school and beyond. It is crucial to know whether this situation can be improved by activities to enhance the beliefs and behaviour of the most educationally marginalised families. If attitudes and aspirations do cause higher levels of attainment, then appropriate interventions can be developed. But if they do not, then money and effort is being wasted on approaches that may even have damaging side effects. This all-encompassing review of existing evidence provides summaries on a range of areas, from parental expectations tochildsubstance abuse. The review: • presents a model of causation for social science; • provides information from almost 170,000 pieces ofevidence; • summarises the effects of 13 different kinds of belief andbehaviour; • highlights the implications for policy, practice and future research funding.
This article reports on a longitudinal study of student aspirations at the ages of 13 and 15 in three schools in the United Kingdom, where there has been a great deal of emphasis placed on aspirations in recent policy making. The data, based on individual interviews with 490 students in areas with significant deprivation as well as interviews with parents, teachers and community members, call into question the effectiveness of concentrating educational efforts on raising aspirations. Aspirations, even in these communities struggling with poverty, are very high—the missing element is the knowledge of how to make these aspirations concrete and obtainable. Implications for educators include insights into the highly aspirational nature of marginalised communities, the key role teachers play in helping aspirations come to fruition, and the need to focus on supporting young people to achieve aspirations that already substantially exceed the jobs available in the UK workforce.
This paper considers the role of social capital in the aspirations for higher education of a group of socially disadvantaged girls. Drawing on data from a longitudinal, ethnographic case study of an underperforming secondary school, the paper considers current conceptualisations and the role of family in educational ambitions. The paper concludes by tentatively suggesting that whilst social capital is extremely helpful in explaining differences within groups, trust appears to be a pre-requisite for the investment and generation of social capital, as opposed to the other way around. The paper also suggests that young people are not necessarily dependent on their families for their social capital but are able to generate capital in their own right.
The study examined the relation between possible selves, academic performance, motivation, self-esteem and persistence on task. The assumption was that envisioning a desired end-state produces information processing favouring the desired state and, as a consequence, the action seems more likely and people are able to construct more efficient plans. We hypothesized that academic performance is best for subjects who are able to produce well-elaborated, vivid pictures of future selves. The sample consisted of 289 students, 14 and 15 years old of both sexes. The statistical analysis revealed that those who endorsed specific, elaborated positive selves outperformed the other groups in academic achievement. There was also indication that this group of students showed more persistence on task. The results are discussed in terms of their importance for the motivational role of possible selves in achievement situations.
Governments, local authorities, school leaders, and teachers all over the world want to improve the attainment and participation of their students at school. They also want to minimise any systematic differences in school outcomes between social and economic groups. However, considerable effort and money is being wasted on policies, practices and interventions that have very little hope of success, and that may indeed endanger the progress that is being made otherwise. The poor quality of much education research evidence, and an unwillingness among users of evidence to discriminate appropriately between what we know and do not know, means that opportunities are being missed. At a time of reduced public spending and increased public unrest, at least in the UK, it is important that proposed interventions are both effective and efficient. There are evidence-informed ways forward in handling under-achievement and increasing social justice in education. This book shows which the more likely approaches are, and where further work could yield further benefits.
The book will synthesise and summarise the full body of existent evidence on how to overcome disadvantage at school, with a special focus on the role of poverty in educational attainment and post-compulsory participation. The summary on each approach will be inclusive and critical. The book represents a bold attempt to uncover how to break the stratifying links between the socio-economic background of individuals and their educational futures.
This book is unique in three ways.
• It shows where the solutions to disadvantage and the poverty gradient may lie, and where they do not lie.
• It combines primary (new), secondary (official) and published (review) evidence in a way that has never been attempted before in this area. All of these types of data are synthesised for the first time, to find out how to overcome disadvantage in education. The book adopts a clear model of causation in social science – consisting of association, temporal sequence, intervention and explanatory mechanism. It then uses this model to assemble and audit the evidence of all types relevant to the plausible causes of disadvantage. Very few possible causes have sufficient evidence for a complete causal model.
• It clearly distinguishes between those possible causes of disadvantage that are largely fixed for individuals – such as their sex, health record, or family background – and those that are modifiable – such as the school attended, area of residence, or their motivation. The main focus of the book is on the latter list, since only these can be of use to anyone wishing to improve the educational chances of the most disadvantaged in society.
“Overcoming disadvantage” is a research-based book, relevant for courses at Masters level and above in social policy, social work, sociology, and education. It will also be of considerable interest to researchers, practitioners and policy-makers in these areas. It is based on a number of research projects and analyses conducted by the authors, combined with a new way of looking at how we assess causation in social science. Despite its original approach, the book is written in an accessible and engaging manner, suitable for its readership. Terminology and technical issues are kept to the minimum needed for a reader to understand the research issues and to form their own critical judgements. Full references are given to the technical background for those who wish to learn more.
This article draws on case studies of nine working-class students at Southern, an elite university. 1 It attempts to understand the complexities of identities in flux through Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and field. Bourdieu (1990a) argues that when an individual encounters an unfamiliar field, habitus is transformed. He also writes of how the movement of habitus across new, unfamiliar fields results in ‘a habitus divided against itself ’ (Bourdieu, 1999a). Our data suggest more nuanced understandings in which the challenge of the unfamiliar results in a range of creative adaptations and multi-faceted responses. They display dispositions of self-scrutiny and self-improvement — almost ‘a constant fashioning and re-fashioning of the self ’ but one that still retains key valued aspects of a working-class self. Inevitably, however, there are tensions and ambivalences, and the article explores these, as well as the very evident gains for working-class students of academic success in an elite HE institution.
This paper discusses how the rhetoric of ‘diversity’ is mobilised within New Labour HE policy discourse around widening participation (WP). The paper argues that these constructions of diversity derive an important element of their symbolic power from an association with notions of ‘equality’—and yet the radical/egalitarian potential of WP policy and practice is subverted and compromised by New Labour's pursuit of neoliberalism—to the extent that WP is rendered more a tool for social control than social justice. The paper is organised in two main parts: the first considers New Labour's promotion of ‘institutional diversity’—and how this is tied to ‘choice’. The second part discusses how ‘student diversity’ is being discursively mobilised within the context of ‘equality’ and ‘social inclusion’. It is argued that this common-sense linkage (between ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’) is conceptually untenable within New Labour policy and practice due to a privileging of the economic, the pursuit of institutional diversity, and the use of the market within higher education. It is argued that a diversity of students in HE cannot be taken as an indicator of greater ‘equality’ within the system, and attention is drawn to the ways in which ‘diversity’ may operate as a moral discourse that silences other competing (e.g., critical) accounts of WP.
Aimhigher was discontinued on 31 July 2011. This paper reviews the literature analysing its contribution to widening participation to higher education in the UK. Successes of Aimhigher are considered alongside its challenges; particularly the necessity to situate policy within the diverse
demands of 42 areas covering England. These issues are considered in the context of wider contemporary debates concerning the quality of research into widening participation and instruments used to evaluate policy. Four strands of literature are identified and analysed: Aimhigher's impact
and evaluation, its effectiveness in targeting beneficiaries, the progression and tracking of students and policy.
This paper explores constructions of the 'new' university student in the context of UK government policy to widen participation in higher education. New Labour discourse stresses the benefits of widening participation for both individuals and society, although increasing the levels of participation of students from groups who have not traditionally entered university has been accompanied by a discourse of 'dumbing down' and lowering standards. The paper draws on an ongoing longitudinal study of undergraduate students in a post-1992 inner-city university in the UK to examine students' constructions of their experiences and identities in the context of public discourses of the 'new' higher education student. Many of the participants in this study would be regarded as 'non-traditional' students, i.e. those students who are the focus of widening participation policy initiatives. As Reay et al. (2002) discovered, for many 'non-traditional' students studying in higher education is characterized by 'struggle', something that also emerged as an important theme in this research. The paper examines the ways in which these new student identities both echo the New Labour dream of widening participation and yet continue to reflect and re-construct classed and other identities and inequalities.
This paper, based on ESRC‐funded research work in four case study schools, explores the ‘pressures’ to ‘deliver’ which bear upon English secondary schools in relation to GCSE performance. It further illustrates the ways in which pressure is transformed into tactics which focus on particular students, with the effect of ‘rationing’ education in the schools. Foucault’s analysis from Discipline and Punish is deployed to examine these tactics and to relate them to more general changes in the regime of techniques and ‘play of dominations’ operating in English schools.
In the current discourse on the transition from school to work, career decision‐making has a pivotal but paradoxical position. Sociological literature emphasises the dominance of socially‐structured pathways, whilst policy‐making operates on assumptions of individual freedom to choose. In this paper we draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to present a new model of career decision‐making, given the shorthand title of ‘careership’. There are three completely integrated dimensions to the model. These are (i) pragmatically rational decision‐making, located in the habitus of the person making the decision; (ii) the interactions with others in the (youth training) field, related to the unequal resources different ‘players’ possess; and (iii) the location of decisions within the partly unpredictable pattern of turning‐points and routines that make up the life course. This model avoids the twin pitfalls of implicit social determinism or of seeing (young) people as completely free agents.
Parental expectations have long been studied as a factor in increasing adolescent educational aspirations, often linking these expectations to parental level of education and involvement in academic endeavours. This study further explores this relationship in a statewide Midwestern sample of parents and their adolescent children. Regression analysis and independent samples t‐tests were used to predict adolescent aspirations and compare groups. Results suggest that adolescent educational aspirations can to some degree be predicted by parental expectations. Parents reported high expectations for their children despite low levels of personal educational attainment. However, these high expectations were buffered by a reported unfamiliarity with college requirements and an expressed concern about college affordability and limited awareness of financial aid opportunities. Limitations and suggestions for future research and intervention are discussed.
Introduces the concept of possible selves (PSs) to complement current conceptions of self-knowledge. PSs represent individuals' ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming, and thus provide a conceptual link beteen cognition and motivation. PSs are the cognitive components of hopes, fears, goals, and threats; they give the specific self-relevant form, meaning, organization, and direction to these dynamics. It is suggested that PSs function as incentives for future behavior and to provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self. The nature and function of PSs and their role in addressing several persistent problems (e.g., the stability and malleability of the self, the unity of the self, self-distortion, the relationship between the self-concept and behavior) are discussed. (143 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Performance measurement is not an end in itself. So why should public managers measure performance? Because they may find such measures helpful in achieving eight specific managerial purposes. As part of their overall management strategy, public managers can use performance measures to evaluate, control, budget, motivate, promote, celebrate, learn, and improve. Unfortunately, no single performance measure is appropriate for all eight purposes. Consequently, public managers should not seek the one magic performance measure. Instead, they need to think seriously about the managerial purposes to which performance measurement might contribute and how they might deploy these measures. Only then can they select measures with the characteristics necessary to help achieve each purpose. Without at least a tentative theory about how performance measures can be employed to foster improvement (which is the core purpose behind the other seven), public managers will be unable to decide what should be measured.
Previous research has shown that prior attainment – particularly at Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 – plays a key role in helping to explain why some young people are more likely to go to university than others (and why some perform better than others once they are there). This suggests that what happens earlier in an individual’s life is likely to be a crucial determinant of their subsequent educational choices and progress. What is less clear from the existing evidence, however, is what role schools might play in helping to explain why some groups of young people are more likely to access and achieve at university than others. This report uses linked individual-level administrative data from schools and universities to document the relationships between a variety of secondary school characteristics of interest and higher education (HE) participation rates and university outcomes. Perhaps more importantly, we also explore what drives the relationships that we observe.
Drawing together example studies from international contexts, this edited collection provides a new and cross-disciplinary perspective on the concept of the possible self, exploring its theoretical, methodological and empirical uses with regards to Higher Education. Building on research which examines the ways in which possible selves are constructed through inequalities of class, race and gender, the book interrogates the role of imagined futures in student, professional and academic lives, augmenting the concept of possible selves, with its origins in psychology, with sociological approaches to educational inequalities and exclusionary practices.
Possible Selves and Higher Education considers both the theoretical and methodological frameworks behind the concept of possible selves; the first section includes chapters that consider different theoretical insights, while the second section offers empirical examples, exploring how the possible selves concept has been used in many diverse higher education research contexts. With each chapter considering a different aspect of the structural barriers to or within education, the examples provided range from the experiences of students and teachers in the language learning classroom, to graduates entering employment for the first time, and refugees seeking to rebuild lives through engagement with education.
Offering a broad and diverse examination of how concepts of our future selves can affect and limit educational outcomes, this book furthers the sociological dialogue concerning the relationship between individual agency and structural constraints in higher education research. It is an essential and influential text for both students and academics, as well as anyone responsible for student services such as outreach and widening participation.
This article, drawing upon the Paired Peers project, a longitudinal qualitative study (n = 90), examines how seven UK engineering graduates, four women and three men, construct their career identities during the transitionary period from university to work. It explores how gender and the occupational cultures that reside within the sector, and the wider sociocultural context, affect women’s careers identities, choices and trajectories. The longitudinal design, characteristics of the cohort and the theoretical framework of possible selves contribute to the originality of this empirical research. In this paper, we show how female graduates gradually adapted their occupational aspirations and career identities to fit with socio-cultural expectations and how they struggled to construct viable ‘engineering’ selves in the vital career identity development phase of their first years of employment when most female STEM graduates change careers.
Efforts to widen the participation in higher education for disadvantaged and under-represented groups are common to many countries. In England, higher education institutions are required by government to invest in ‘outreach’ activities designed to encourage such groups. There is increasing policy and research interest around the effectiveness of these activities and how this might be evaluated. This paper reports the results of a project designed to explore concepts of ‘success’ and ‘impact’ with two generations of practitioner-managers working in this field, including extended telephone interviews with ten active in the mid-2000s, and online questionnaires from 57 engaged in the mid-2010s. The paper concludes that the drive to ‘measure the measurable’ may be undermining successful activities, while unhelpful inter-institution competition has replaced the co-operative ethos and wider social justice aims that dominated ten years ago.
This book explores higher education, social class and social mobility from the point of view of those most intimately involved: the undergraduate students. It is based on a project which followed a cohort of young undergraduate students at Bristol's two universities in the UK through from their first year of study for the following three years, when most of them were about to enter the labour market or further study. The students were paired by university, by subject of study and by class background, so that the fortunes of middle-class and working-class students could be compared. Narrative data gathered over three years are located in the context of a hierarchical and stratified higher education system, in order to consider the potential of higher education as a vehicle of social mobility.
Daniel Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in economics sciences in 2002, December 8, Stockholm, Sweden. This article is the edited version of his Nobel Prize lecture. The author comes back to the problems he has studied with the late Amos Tversky and to debates conducting for several decades already. The statement is based on worked out together with Shane Federik the quirkiness of human judgment.
How do we reflect upon ourselves and our concerns in relation to society, and vice versa? Human reflexivity works through ‘internal conversations’ using language, but also emotions, sensations and images. Most people acknowledge this ‘inner-dialogue’ and can report upon it. However, little research has been conducted on ‘internal conversations’ and how they mediate between our ultimate concerns and the social contexts we confront. Margaret Archer argues that reflexivity is progressively replacing routine action in late modernity, shaping how ordinary people make their way through the world. Using interviewees' life and work histories, she shows how ‘internal conversations’ guide the occupations people seek, keep or quit; their stances towards structural constraints and enablements; and their resulting patterns of social mobility. © Margaret S. Archer 2007 and Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Sociologists of education have explored the relationship between students’ postsecondary aspirations and their propensity to get “cooled out” in community colleges. However, researchers have directed little attention to students whose aspirations remain stable over long periods of time or to the different roles that college degree goals play in the lives of disadvantaged students. Using four waves of longitudinal interviews, I examine the reasons why low-income women hold steady to their aspirations for college degrees over a three-and-a-half-year period. I argue that holding steady not only reflects rational expectations about future employment opportunities, but it also generates moral status in the face of marginalization and facilitates the navigation of personal relationships. I use the concept of an “ambition imperative” to demonstrate how aspirations for college attainment are a means of asserting moral status and pursuing virtuous social membership. This article contributes to theories of aspirations and offers an alternative explanation of the institutional effects of community colleges in the lives of students.
In this paper we suggest that a construct known as “possible selves”, which has been developed in psychological literature, holds conceptual merits that are of use to a growing body of literature on youth transitions, and within it, an increasing interest in imagined futures. We highlight several benefits of possible selves that have emerged from our empirical research with young men in two English towns, Luton and Swindon. Research and theorization about youth futures has suggested that young people’s values and their perceived positions in society can be elicited and seen in their projections of themselves in the future. We conclude that possible selves provides a useful addition to this literature by offering a theorization of the link between imagined possibilities in the future and motivation to act in the present. We suggest that this construct opens the scope of empirical and theoretical enquiry into youth transitions and trajectories toward future possibilities.
The recent report of the Milburn Review into Social Mobility highlights the under-representation of young people from lower socio-economic groups in higher education and encourages universities and others to act to remedy this situation as a contribution to greater social mobility. The paper uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England to examine the relationship between social background, attainment and university participation. The results show that differences in school-level attainment associated with social background are by far the most important explanation for social background differences in university attendance. However, there remains a small proportion of the participation gap that is not accounted for by attainment. It is also the case that early intentions for higher education participation are highly predictive of actual participation. The results suggest that although there may be some scope for universities to act to improve participation by people from less advantaged backgrounds, a much more important focus of action is on improving the school-level achievement of these students.
Young people’s aspirations remain an enduring focus of education policy interest and concern. Drawing on data from an ongoing five-year study of young people’s science and career aspirations (age 10–14), this paper asks what do young people aspire to at age 12/13, and what influences these aspirations? It outlines the main aspirations and sources of these aspirations as expressed by young people in England in the last year of primary school (survey of 9000+ Y6 pupils, aged 10/11, interviews with 92 children and 76 parents) and the second year of secondary school (survey of 5600+ Y8 pupils, aged 12/13, interviews with 85 pupils). We demonstrate how aspirations are shaped by structural forces (e.g. social class, gender and ethnicity) and how different spheres of influence (home/family, school, hobbies/leisure activities and TV) appear to shape different types of aspirations. The paper concludes by considering the implications for educational policy and careers education.
This paper reports findings from a study of 49 young first-year UK undergraduates who had undergone one or two weeks of work experience at school between the ages of 14 and 16. Previous studies focusing on the whole school cohort suggested that the nature of work experience placements was strongly predicted by class. In particular, middle class families were seen as being able to secure higher-quality placements than working class families through their higher levels of social capital. This study of young people in the large minority subset subsequently progressing to higher education also found evidence of stereotypical placement choices. However, this was situated in low-quality placements that were irrelevant to the participants’ eventual career path. One notable finding was that a significant proportion of working class students had exercised considerable personal agency to secure high-quality placements. This could challenge structuralist interpretations of young people’s decision-making, although the possibility of a retrospective construction of an explanatory narrative is noted. This paper concludes that more effort is needed to push academically-able working class young people towards placements that will increase motivation and widen horizons and that government needs to be clearer about its policy aims in this area.
