Jocey Quinn

Student volunteering in English higher education

Volunteering in English higher education has come under political scrutiny recently, with strong cross‐party support for schemes to promote undergraduate volunteering in particular. Recent targeted initiatives and proposals have sought to strengthen both the role of volunteering in higher education and synergies between higher education and voluntary sectors. There is, therefore, an emerging consensus among both politicians and academics that promoting student volunteering is beneficial for students, higher education institutions and the communities in which they volunteer. This article reviews the rationale of recent initiatives to promote volunteering and the empirical evidence of the impacts that volunteering has on students, higher education institutions and communities. It argues that the benefits of student volunteering are assumed rather than proven, and, in the light of current political conviction of the need to promote volunteering, it is essential that we consider, critically, the motivations behind this agenda.

Lifting the hood: lifelong learning and young, white, provincial working-class masculinities

Young, white, provincial working-class men are portrayed as a threat to lifelong learning goals. They are least likely to enter university and most likely to ‘drop out’. However, white provincial masculinities are neglected in debates on gender and lifelong learning. This article uses a UK-wide study of working-class ‘drop-out’ to explore the situated nature of such masculinities, how they are performed by students and consumed by others and reproduced by university cultures and pedagogies. It concludes that such students struggle to fit the fluid paradigm of the new lifelong learner and are constantly being fixed in place by structural inequality, discursive frames and institutional practices. Their ‘drop-out’ is shaped by masculinity, but need not be viewed pejoratively. It can be a frustrated search for lifelong learning, often inspired by a love of informal learning. This should be respected, not ignored.

Listening to ‘the thick bunch’: (mis)understanding and (mis)representation of young people in jobs without training in the South West of England

Young people in jobs without training are ubiquitous but invisible, working in shops, cafes, and other low‐waged, low‐status occupations. Commonly elided with young people who are not in education, employment or training, they are positioned as the ‘thick bunch’ with empty and meaningless working lives. The main purpose of the research was to explore the experiences of this group of marginalised and socially disadvantaged young people through a deeper understanding of their interests and enthusiasms inside and outside work. These young people have been (mis)understood and (mis)represented. A more holistic and nuanced approach that is not uncritically founded upon a set of neo‐liberal stereotypes and assumptions, and instead recognises the complexity of their lives, would offer new opportunities for understanding and representation of their interests. Our findings challenge the conflation of identity with work and the notion that only certain forms of employment create meaning.

‘Dead end kids in dead end jobs’? Reshaping debates on young people in jobs without training

Young people who are in ‘jobs without training’ (JWT) are commonly seen as ‘dead end kids in dead end jobs’. They have been identified as a problem group who need to be encouraged back into formal education and training. Following the Leitch report and the new policy goal to involve all young people in education and training up to the age of 18, it is more important than ever to understand the needs of such young people. However, very little is actually known about their lives, their work and their priorities‐particularly from the perspectives of young people themselves. This article draws on findings from a longitudinal participative, qualitative project involving 182 interviews with 114 young people in JWT in the south of England, conducted in collaboration with Connexions. This is the first large‐scale, longitudinal qualitative study to be completed on young people in JWT, and seeks to open up new perspectives on this issue, informed and grounded in empirical research. The purpose of this article is to present some initial findings and open up the debate. It concludes that although these young people face serious structural inequalities, JWT need not be a deficit category and the term does not reflect their complex lives. Such young people do not live lives without learning, both in the workplace and in their worlds outside. Most prefer to learn in these contexts, rather than in school or college. Trying to force them into formal, linear educational pathways is anachronistic and likely to be actively resisted.

Responding to the ‘needs’ of young people in jobs without training (JWT): some policy suggestions and recommendations

In this paper we draw upon our findings from a project in the South West region of England. The research involved a collaboration between a group of university researchers and Connexions service personal advisers and mainly comprised interviews with young people, who were in ‘jobs without training’ (JWT). A key aim of the research was to explore the experiences of this group of marginalised and socially disadvantaged young people over a period of 1 year, as they moved into and out of work. In this paper we address the main findings and questions raised by the research. We challenge some commonly held assumptions about young people in JWT and their perceived needs. We end with a number of policy and practice-related suggestions and recommendations.

Mothers, learners and countermemory

This article explores how issues of learning and mothering emerged in research with women students. First it develops the notion of ‘a motherhood standpoint’. It then considers how Foucaults concept of ‘counter‐memory’, and, in particular, its reworking in feminist cultural theory as ‘countermemory’, can be used to explain why students persistently called up the mother when talking about themselves as learners, revealing this as both a political and psychic process. The mother can be seen as a double figure who represents both knowledge and its limits. The following analysis of student accounts demonstrates the tension between retelling their mothers memories, to bear witness to the educational injustice meted out to women, and their own memories of mothers, whom they are trying to escape to make an independent claim of knowledge.This article explores how issues of learning and mothering emerged in research with women students. First it develops the notion of ‘a motherhood standpoint’. It then considers how Foucaults concept of ‘counter‐memory’, and, in particular, its reworking in feminist cultural theory as ‘countermemory’, can be used to explain why students persistently called up the mother when talking about themselves as learners, revealing this as both a political and psychic process. The mother can be seen as a double figure who represents both knowledge and its limits. The following analysis of student accounts demonstrates the tension between retelling their mothers memories, to bear witness to the educational injustice meted out to women, and their own memories of mothers, whom they are trying to escape to make an independent claim of knowledge.

The Corporeality of Learning: Women Students and the Body

The corporeality of learning is a concept resonant of the changing nature of the contemporary university. Whilst the corporeal was once seen as both female and antithetical to learning, and the university itself was envisaged as the seat of a disembodied rationality that was strongly identified as male, these perceptions can no longer be sustained. The growth in the mass participation of women in higher education, so marked, that they now form the majority of undergraduates in the UK, has disrupted the mind/body, male/female dichotomy and thrown up many questions including: What happens to learning when the learning body is female? In this chapter I shall explore this interrelationship of body and learning: whilst acknowledging that they are both mutable conjunctions of materiality and meaning. My thoughts on this subject emerge from an indepth qualitative study of 21 second-year women students studying for degrees in interdisciplinary subjects in two HE institutions which have prioritised widening participation (Quinn, 2001, 2002). My sample was a diverse one, ranging in age from 19 to 62, amongst whom roughly half identified as working-class and half middle-class. In reflection of the courses I was studying, it included a small number of black and disabled students. The students were living in varied situations: with their parents, friends, children and alone, in their home city and away from home.