From barriers to capacities: reconcieving aspiration-focused student - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

From barriers to capacities: reconcieving aspiration-focused student equity strategy

Sam Sellar

National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education Hawke Research Institute University of South Australia sam.sellar@unisa.edu.au

… redefining student equity in higher education …

1. Problem: Persistent low rates of participation in HE among people from low SES backgrounds, partly due to motivational barriers. 2. Tension: Raising aspiration removes motivational barriers to participation in HE but places excellence in question if aspiration outstrips achievement 3. Reconception: Aspiration not simply the means to realise ends, but the capacity to influence them 4. Implication: Outreach activity should develop research capacities that support people to plan, articulate and realise socially valuable ends

Reconceiving the problem

• Aspiration an issue of individual motivation

– ‘The major barriers to increased higher education participation by students from low socio-economic backgrounds include previous educational attainment … [and] little aspiration to participate’ (Australian Government 2009:13)

• Negative freedom: ‘consists just in there being no obstacle’

(Taylor 1985: 213)

• Student equity is a question only of means and can place the

ends at risk

From motivational barrier…

• Aspiration is a cultural capacity to (a) navigate normative

contexts toward desired ends and (b) to participate in shaping these contexts and ends (positive freedom)

• Strengthening the capacity to aspire:
• (1) Challenging deficit views; (2) teaching and learning; (3) linking

immediate desires to broader narratives; (4) cultivating voice

• Positive freedom: ‘[O]ne is free only to the extent that one

has effectively determined oneself and the shape of one’s life’ (Taylor 1985: 213)

• Student equity is a question both of means and ends

…to aspirational capacity

• Aspiration and research:

– ‘Without aspiration, there is no pressure to know more. And without systematic tools for gaining relevant new knowledge, aspiration degenerates into fantasy or despair’ (Appadurai 2006: 176-177)

• A broad definition of research:

– ‘the capacity to systematically increase the horizons of one’s current knowledge, in relation to some task, goal or aspiration’ (Appadurai 2006: 176)

• The quality of social scientific knowledge production is

dependent upon its inclusivity (Connell 2007)

Aspiration demands research

• Strengthening the capacity to aspire and the capacity for

research:

1. A strong social justice strategy 2. A sound approach to preparing citizens for knowledge economies 3. Opens up new ways of thinking the relationship between increasing participation and increasing the quality of knowledge production

Conclusion