Tamsin Hinton-Smith

The reluctant researcher: shyness in the field

Despite the attention qualitative researchers have given to the interaction context and social process of data collection, there has been scant recognition of the dramaturgical dilemmas this poses for the fieldworker. Respondents have been caricatured in an essentialist typology, ranging from the ideal to the reluctant, while the researcher has been assumed to take a relatively privileged position as director of the drama. Here we report on a study of shyness in art galleries and museums, using extracts from our fieldnotes to illustrate how researchers may themselves be prone to feelings of self-consciousness, incompetence and impostordom. Different methodologies and fieldwork scenarios can be located along a ‘cringe spectrum’, to the extent that they involve high levels of performance, improvisation and interactional contingency. We discuss the strategies used by shy and non-shy members of our team to manage such dramaturgical stress, and argue for more reflexive dialogue about this issue.

Roma women’s higher education participation: whose responsibility?

ABSTRACT There are striking gaps between Roma and non-Roma higher education (HE) participation rates, with less than 1% of Roma possessing a tertiary-level qualification [United Nations Development Programme, World Bank and European Commission. 2011a. “The Situation of Roma in 11 EU Member States.” Accessed 3 April 2015. http://issuu.com/undp_in_europe_cis/docs/_roma_at_a_glance_web/1#download]. As the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005–2015) closes, this renders the present a salient moment to reflect on Roma students’ HE experiences. Widening educational access for marginalised groups raises specific questions about where responsibility for doing so lies – with tensions between individualised articulations of raising aspiration and notions of collective responsibility framed in a social justice agenda. Drawing on interviews with five Roma women students, this paper unpacks the contradictions between desiring access to HE for individual self-betterment and concurrent pulls towards educating for the wider benefit of ‘improving’ Roma communities. Using Ahmed’s [2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press] work on institutional belonging, we explore the specifically gendered nature of these narratives in how ‘doubly’ marginalised bodies are positioned as outsiders, in receipt of an educational gift.

Lone Parent Students’ Motivations for and Hopes of Higher Education Engagement

Lone parents are a key educationally excluded group targeted by widening participating (WP) agendas. Yet it has been argued that the distinct needs of students with parental responsibilities have been largely ignored by WP strategies, despite evidence that the group is increasing and facing a range of issues (Moreau, 2011). This chapter explores the motivations and aspirations of lone mothers studying at UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Lone fathers have been omitted from the discussion due to low response rates in the research on which this chapter draws. Nevertheless, the rich longitudinal narratives provided by those lone fathers who participated suggested that in many key respects, lone parent status transcends gendered experiences, with lone mothers and lone fathers describing a broad commonality of higher education (HE) motivations, priorities and challenges.

The ‘success’ of Looked After Children in Higher Education in England: near peer coaching, ‘small steps’ and future thinking

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the shortage of studies on the ‘success’ of care-experienced young people in Higher Education (HE) internationally. It draws on the findings of a study of a near peer, pre-entry coaching intervention developed in England to address stakeholders’ concerns around a lack of ‘success’ post entry to university, linked to gaps in knowledge and the challenge of providing ongoing support. In delivering reciprocal benefits to the coaches, some of whom were care-experienced themselves, the HE Champions model promoted the possibility of longer term ‘success’. The personalised nature of the young people’s programme experiences and difficulties in recruitment highlighted the need for ‘success’ to be conceptualised as ‘small steps’ despite pressure to deliver more measurable outcomes. The research also highlighted the importance of reflexive, human-scale systems that put care and relationships at the centre.

Power, pedagogy and the personal: Feminist ethics in facilitating a doctoral writing group

ABSTRACT The paper explores questions of power arising from feminist facilitators running a doctoral writing group at a UK university. Butler’s [2014. Re-thinking Vulnerability and Resistance. [Online]. Accessed September 12, 2017. http://www.institutofranklin.net/sites/default/files/files/Rethinking%20Vulnerability%20and%20Resistance%20Judith%20Butler.pdf] theorisation of precarity and vulnerability inspired us to re-think normative constructions of research writing and the academic identities and subjectivities this presupposed. Our doctoral writing group was imagined as a space to think collectively and reflexively about the thesis, the multi-faceted power-dynamics at work in its production, and our relations to the text as both writer and audience. This paper antagonises some of the pedagogic consequences of inviting seemingly ‘personal’ matters into the space of the writing space and, subsequently, the doctoral text itself. We speak back to discourses that position doctoral writing as always and only an individual, and individualising endeavour, that eschews encounters with the personal and relational. Indeed, we recognise that configurations and spaces for research writing are always ‘political’.

Performativity, border-crossings and ethics in a prison-based creative writing project

We critically reflect on insights from our experiences as female researchers on a creative writing project in a men’s prison, including the emotional impact on the men involved and the ways in which our role as participant researchers impacted deeply on us. Juxtaposed starkly with the physical constraints of the prison, a sense of journeys emerged as significant throughout the study, particularly the symbolic crossing of boundaries. We draw on theories of performativity from both Feminist and Symbolic Interactionist perspectives to frame our understanding of the experience of being participant researchers in prison creative writing workshops, and also consider associated ethical issues.

Sociology, inequality and teaching in higher education: a need to reorient our critical gaze closer to home?

This chapter argues a particular disciplinary positioning for sociologists in negotiating our professional practice as higher education teachers in the neoliberal academy. It conjectures a need to decompartmentalise the equality-focused vales underpinning the research interests of many sociology academics, from our everyday teaching practices. Understanding of the often-unspoken value-orientation of knowledge including that imparted in HE teaching, and the mechanisms of power and privilege of which we are all part, locate a particular responsibility not only to remain attuned in our own practice but also to take an active role in our institutional cultures. Evidence from research and teaching experience demonstrates the complex interplay of policies, cultures, and both intentional and unintentional dimensions of interactions between individuals and groups in perpetuating prejudice and marginalisation in HE contexts. Evidence of the un-belonging experienced by marginalised minorities including within the university sociology classroom identifies a need for us to reorient our critical gaze closer to home, to the classroom and wider institutional culture as the locus of activity in which so much of our professional lives are spent.

Conclusion: Assessing Progress and Priorities in Widening Participation

This chapter draws on the insights provided by contributors throughout the volume to evaluate progress in widening participation (WP), including identifying key achievements and relative failures across the different dimensions of evaluation. This takes place alongside discussion of areas for future development and why such work remains necessary and will continue to become increasingly so. The diverse perspectives of the 22 commentators who have contributed to this volume represent a range of specific concerns in WP, from understanding historical developments (Berggren and Cliffordson in Chapter 12), charting contemporary progress (Padilla-Carmona in Chapter 14), or looking to predicting the future of higher education (HE) provision (Earl-Novell in Chapter 17). The book’s contributors bring to the discussion their own unique areas of expertise, encompassing issues focused around facets of experience including gender, race, class, age, subject area, higher education institution (HEI) type and mode of study. These contrasting national, disciplinary, theoretical and ideological perspectives, and the rich empirical research that has informed them, collectively provide a broad and solid base for understanding key contemporary issues in WP. Despite such apparent divergence, these scholars of HE are united in their attempt to understand the factors supporting and impeding participation amongst previously excluded groups.