The SRHE cryptic crossword returns despite lack of popular demand. This is No 2. As usual, familiarity with SRHE staff, members, journals, SRHE News and Blog will be a big advantage, perhaps even essential. There are some proper names; other words are in any good dictionary (Chambers, of course, is recommended).
Professor Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and Blog and chairs the SRHE Publications Committee.
Email your solution to Rob.Cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk. There were no correct solutions for Crossword No 1, so the meagre prize rolls over and becomes almost respectable for the first correct solution submitted by an SRHE member and drawn after 1 August 2020. The solution will appear in the next issue of SRHE News, October 2020. If you can’t wait that long, email Rob.Cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk after 1 August for solution and explanations.
To download this crossword as a word document, click here.
Across
1. Kind of VLE where learning at first is missing, leaving something behind (9)
6. Finance officer is back in the rat race (5)
9. A traveller, one detected in the air, always 3 (5)
10. One on both sides takes in former wife, a princess (9)
11. Heir to the throne making a fist of university (4,2,9)
13. Go back in – die – not entirely nice, to be cynical (8)
14. One academic, first class, was called God (6)
16. Fabricate inferior hide (3,3)
18. Make out with good girl, that’s one thing that’s looking up (8)
21. Regular feature of SRHE Conference – Perkins gives it a shaking (8,7)
23. Learner with Cert Ed (FE) lost in thought (9)
25. Members of SRHE lend their authority on everything that goes on in society (5)
26. Did well to live after 11’s mother left (5)
27. At the end of the year I’m to be in Paris. It’s not far (9)
Down
1. Perhaps be a way to get an academic on TV (5)
2. High time to be seen here, in universities like Birmingham and Queen Mary (5,6)
3. Possibility of Bayes on win margin requiring expert judgment (2,1,4)
4. An American cop here in ancient Rome? That means no law at all (8)
5. Manuscript read back to front at first, with hopes rather than expectations (6)
6. Professor and editor took charge of Publications Committee, for example (7)
8. People not lacking discipline but with freedom to disagree (9)
12. Demand a little academic work – there’s plenty to follow (4,3,1,3)
13. Removed organ? Room was needed for 21 to have done this (9)
15. Initially every programme in soap operas demands interesting characters, appearing at intervals (8)
17. Nothing for dinner? Just gruel (7)
19. Our Rob’s a law unto himself (7)
20. Brought together teams in Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle (6)
22. Anger management in the kitchen (5)
24. You can get a loan for this, or run away with no start in life (3)
Solutions to Cryptic Crossword No 1:
Across
1 Campfire 5 Profit 10 Tonal 11 Sandstorm 12 Boy wonder 13 Annul 14 Rumpole 16 Escape 18 Instil 20 Dominie 22 Rifle 23 Not on show 25 Abstracts 26 Goner 27 Slowey 28 Starlets
Down
1 Cuthbert 2 McNay 3 Fellow of the SRHE 4 Residue 6 Research manager 7 Frown upon 8 Temple 9 Untrue 15 Manifesto 17 Networks 19 Lunacy 20 Data set 21 Greats 24 Hinge
In this Blog we share our experiences of conducting research with adults that have offended or are at high risk of offending and who also experience other challenges relating to mental health, substance use, housing, health, and education. This is our second Blog that discusses a project, funded by SRHE, which sought to understand the role of Higher Education in facilitating aspirations of those at risk of offending/reoffending who wish to desist from offending behaviours. You can read the first Blog that presented the findings of the study here. This blog focuses on two interlinked aspects of the project: the methodological philosophy we adopted in the study; and the use of a Pictorial Narrative Approach to data collection and analysis.
The study was the first of its kind in Wales as it set out to examine the role of Higher Education within the context of prevention of offending/reoffending within a community setting. A key strength of the project was that it brought together academics, third sector and statutory agencies (who seek to support and divert adults at risk of first time offending and those seeking support with desistance from offending) and those at risk of offending/reoffending. The research was therefore very much a partnership and this was a key value and driving force of the research. We offer three areas of interest for this partnership project with The Hub who offer provision for ex-offenders, their families and the wider community.
Values versus Rules
Our study adopted an anti-oppressive approach and was underpinned by a hybrid approach of participatory action and community engagement and learning. It therefore worked with those at risk of offending/reoffending as partners and sought to empower and encourage aspiration by carrying out research through ‘doing with’ rather than ‘researching on’ participants. With this in mind, it challenged some of the accepted guidelines for effective research design – one example being our decision to move away from the more accepted text book guidance regarding focus groups size (Stewart et al, 2014) and structure (Sim and Waterfield, 2019).
Many researchers prescribe focus group size and conclude that five to eight is an effective size, with others suggesting that focus groups with over twelve participants loose coherence and value (Ochieng et al, 2019). In addition, Sim and Waterfield (2019) discuss the ethics of focus groups and suggest that the researcher(s) need to ensure all voices are heard, which can be difficult due to group dynamics and dominant voices – especially so within discussions that are of sensitive contexts such as our research. Indeed, in addition to recalling their experiences of education in the context of offending, many of our sample expressed experiences of multiple challenges and barriers in their day to day lives which might lead some to consider them as ‘vulnerable.’
However, one of the key strengths of the project was that through collaborative discussions with our research partner ‘The Hub’, it became apparent that to limit the number of participants and try to organise smaller groups would in fact lead to feelings of alienation and exclusion. It was abundantly clear that if we wanted to understand the experiences of the participants – many of which were traumatic and still ‘raw’, then the structure of the focus group had to be engaging, therapeutic and most importantly, on the terms of the members of The Hub. Therefore, to carry out the focus group in line with ‘text book’ instruction would have been in total contradiction to the philosophy of the organisation and indeed our inclusive ‘research with’ approach.
Adopting the view that the value/ethos of the project outweighed the ‘rules’ of focus group design, led us to break with convention and support all sixteen members of The Hub who turned up on the day to participate in the focus group. The members who participated that day shared their experiences of education and also of vulnerability, not only with us but with the wider group. Indeed, Gordon (2020) suggests that in acknowledging the vulnerability of participants in research, consideration needs to be given to the seriousness of it and researchers should develop their approach in relation to the lived context – and this is what we did whilst in the room that day. At times the conversation fluctuated away from the crib sheet of questions as participants struggled to articulate the day-to-day challenges they experienced – some of which are evident from the pictorial accounts in this Blog.
Creative Narrative Approaches that Enhance Storytelling
Sandberg and Ugelvik (2016) point out that ‘story telling’ is nothing new and is in fact a facet of our humanistic behaviours that helps us to make sense of the world we inhabit. Many cultural criminologists have adopted a narrative approach within their research and in recent years have started to explore the role of visual methods as a way to enhance knowledge and engagement with research, to provide a break with the taken for granted view of social reality, and to ‘democratise’ crime control (Francis, 2009; Brown, 2014; Carr, et al, 2015; Sandberg and Ugelvik, 2016).
As researchers with an extensive background in supporting marginalised communities and using qualitative methods in research, we were really drawn to using a fairly new approach called ‘Pictorial Narrative Mapping’ which has been identified as providing a holistic, nuanced account of the phenomena under study (Lapum et al, 2015). We really appreciated that whilst many studies have used creative means of data collection such as drawing, poetry or photography to enable those with limited confidence, linguistic or literacy capacity to participate fully (Glaw et al, 2017), some have pointed out that not all participants have the capacity to be creative (Brown, 2014). Therefore, adopting the Pictorial Narrative approach enabled the members in the focus groups to vocalise their response whilst observing the analyst draw her interpretations of their views. We found this approach worked really well in that it captured the discussions clearly and in a way that the focus group members could see and therefore relate to. This approach as it was ‘live’ also motivated people to comment, acknowledge and start new threads of conversation which meant immediate triangulation of data analysis which is something that has been identified as bringing about increased trustworthiness of the findings (Glaw et al, 2017).
It was clear the process and approach was positive and arguably therapeutic with all members thanking us for the opportunity to take part in the pictorial approach, as the following quote and visual representation summarises:
“This is great! Can we have a copy and then we can go back every couple of weeks and think about what we said today and see if we getting to where we want to be.” Pete
A ‘strengths’ outcome for participants
Dybicz (2011) discusses the use of a strengths-based approach in social work practice and concludes it requires a shift in thinking from the practitioner and movement to supporting people to reflect, identify and self-direct their own positives and future development goals. Zimmerman (2013) suggests that when using such an approach in research, the process should offer a safe space to reflect on positive factors that can be acknowledged and utilised to transform to new goals, aspirations, and future directions.
These notions capture this research’s philosophy and desired impact and outcomes well. The impetus for the project came from the community and the ethos of the Hub is that the service is user led, and so using this approach gave all sixteen participants a strong voice. All members were heard and listened to with their stories captured accurately by the artist. Each of their narratives was illustrated and at the end of the engagement event the participants were delighted to see that all their voices were included.
However, it was also apparent that the participants saw the value in this method as a way to measure their own progress and future intentions as the quote above demonstrates. Measuring any form of intervention or personal development towards desistance has been shown to be problematic but as Pete’s quote illustrates, there is power in narrative/visual methods in enabling those at risk of offending to acknowledge where there are, the strengths they possess and the transition to their new identity – whether that is through HE or something else.
It was clear therefore that members had identified their strengths and felt more positive following the focus group with a greater sense of self-worth. This is illustrated well by John, a participant who was really emotional after the focus group and came back to thank us for supporting him to have his voice heard.
“I’ve never in all my life have someone just listen to me and let me speak, and you know, really listen. It has made me so happy, I really feel good and I can look to the future. Thank you.” John
Conclusion
The benefits of using a value driven process and a Pictorial Narrative Mapping approach to this project are clear. Using more creative, inclusive, and non-standard approaches can be extremely useful from a scientific point of view, offering deeply satisfying and valued experiences for both research participants and researchers. The impact and outcomes of such approaches offer shared power and clear ethical integrity and when working with some of the most vulnerable people in society also create contexts where there is personal growth from being part of the research process and so in this way an embodiment of a strengths approach to social research. So in conclusion we would suggest that when appropriate, be bold and step away from the confinement of the methods texts that sometimes holds us back as researchers and endeavour to make those societal changes happen in practice. Our research might not change how Higher Education reaches out to those at risk of offending across the whole sector but what we have done is enabled those without a voice, to feel valued and heard and, in our view, this has been the true value of this project.
Mark Jones was an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at Swansea University at the time of the research and is now Director at Higher Plain Research and Education.HigherPlainResearchEducation@gmail.comTwitter @A_HigherPlain.
Debbie Jones is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Director for Undergraduate Studies, Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University.Deborah.a.jones@swansea.ac.uk, Twitter @debjonesccjc.
Our lead partner in this research isThe hubin Swansea. Debbie and Mark are grateful to SRHE for funding the project.
You can read the full report of this research for the SRHE here.
References
Brown, M (2014) ‘Visual Criminology and Carceral Studies’ Theoretical Criminology 18(2): 176-197
Carr, N, Bauwens, A, Bosker, J, Donker, A, Robinson, G, Sucic, I, and Worrall, A. (2015) ‘ Picturing Probation: Exploring the Utility of Visual methods in Comparative Research’ European Journal of Probation 7(3): 179-200
Dybicz, P (2011) ‘Interpreting the Strengths Perspective Through Narrative Theory. Families in Society’ The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 92.10.1606/1044-3894.4132
Francis, P (2009) ‘Visual Criminology’ Criminal Justice Matters, 78
Glaw, X, Inder, K, Kable, A, and Hazelton, M (2017) ‘Visual Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Autophotography and Photo Elicitation Applied to Mental Health Research’ International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16: 1-8
Gordon BG (2020) ‘Vulnerability in Research: Basic Ethical Concepts and General Approach to Review’ The Ochsner Journal 20(1): 34–38 https://doi.org/10.31486/toj.19.0079
Lapum, J, Liu, L, Hume, S, Wang, S, Nguyen, B, and Harding, K (2015) ‘Pictorial Narrative Mapping as a Qualitative Analytic Technique’ International Journal of Qualitative Methods 14(5)
Ochieng NT, Wilson K, Derrick CJ, and Mukherjee N (2018) ‘The use of focus group discussion methodology: Insights from two decades of application in conservation’ Methods Ecol Evol 2018 9:20–32 https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12860
Sandberg, S and Ugelvik, T (2016) ‘The Past, Present and Future of Narrative Criminology: A Review and an Invitation’ Crime, Media and Culture 12(2): 129-136
Stewart DW, Shamdasani PN, and Rook DW (2014) Focus Groups. Theory and Practice (3rd edn) Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications
Zimmerman MA (2013) ‘Resiliency theory: a strengths-based approach to research and practice for adolescent health’ Health education and behavior: the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education, 40(4): 381–383 https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198113493782
It is often the case that those entrenched in patterns of offending find it difficult to stop due to stigma, discrimination and other structural issues limiting opportunities to bolster aspiration (Ministry of Justice, 2010; Shapland and Bottoms, 2011). Several studies have concluded that studying within Higher Education (HE) can be a significant ‘hook for change’ offering development of personal agency and widening positive social networks, key factors towards desistance (Lockwood et al, 2012; Runell, 2017).
Yet, despite widening access to HE being a global endeavour (Evans et al, 2017), the Prison Education Trust (2017) highlight that HE can feel unwelcoming for those with a criminal record. Evans et al (2017) found that, despite a drive to widen participation and access to HE in Wales, the internal culture and narrative can become ‘entangled, reinforcing the status quo at the expense of developing non-traditional student participation such as adult learners.
This blog shares our research carried out in Swansea, Wales which was funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education. The project explored the aspirations, barriers, and challenges for those at risk of offending to study in HE and considered what might be needed to support the desire to desist from offending within the context of a HE setting. The data collection phase consisted of two engagement events: one for those that had offended or were at risk of offending and were members of our partner and host organisation ‘The Hub’ (n = 16), and the other with practitioners who worked with people at risk including two participants who were also studying at Higher Education and had offended (n = 10).
We adopted a Pictorial Narrative Approach as a data collection tool and community engagement activity (Glaw et al, 2017). We will talk more about the Pictorial Approach and share some of the visual data in a forthcoming blog but for now, we want to share some of the key findings from the project.
It was clear from the data that aspirations, short and long term, varied but there was a common desire to ‘get back on track’. This was articulated as achieving better mental health and well-being which was seen as a ‘daily struggle’, securing employment, with some of the group wanting to use their own experiences to help others, and the development of positive family ties and relationships. Such aspirations have been identified as key drivers to desistance (McNeill 2019) and might be the necessary pre-requisites before any consideration can be given to embarking on higher education.
However, one of the more concerning factors from the data was the impact of previous education. 12 participants reported negative educational experiences, feeling like a ‘lost soul swimming in a fish bowl’. Many recounted negative learning experiences within the classroom such as, ‘getting the answers wrong’ and being ‘told off’ leading to feelings of embarrassment and intimidation. A majority of participants identified other forms of educational exclusion such as learning difficulties and bullying. Such experiences left the participants with feelings of alienation and resentment of the whole education sector. For participants who had been to prison it was often ‘the beginning of their education’ where they found hope and aspiration. Prison education was viewed as offering opportunity to develop basic skills such as reading and writing and for one participant it offered the chance to pursue a higher level of education at university on release from prison.
In terms of barriers and challenges to accessing HE, most of the participants were sceptical of HE and identified university as marketing itself as a vehicle for gaining employment but really ‘just wanted the money.’ Three of the participants in the first group had attended university and felt the level of debt acquired in the pursuit of a degree was excessive with no guarantees that it would lead to a job. Indeed, funding of a degree was a perceived as an insurmountable barrier for the group. All participants from the first group were claiming benefits and felt university was out of reach because of the trade-off between state support and the notion of ‘degree debts’. Even something as simple as paying for public transport to get to university was seen as problematic.
There was recognition however that university could help people gain confidence and improve their well-being if the issue of exclusion/rejection for previous offending could be addressed. One participant reported, ‘I applied for university but they rejected me because of my conviction, only drink related offences mind you, but they rejected me anyway but even when I walk across the campus now I feel proud and it makes me walk with my head held high – the university has a good vibe about it’.
Indeed, there was a strong sense of despondency amongst the group who felt their convictions would prevent them from going to university. One participant reported that he had been told that he needed to be ‘clean from drugs for two years before I can start doing courses, it’s really fucking hard’. Another participant articulated the views of the group when he said, ‘if you have the money they’ll take you but not if you have a conviction’.
The findings from this pilot study suggest that HE can offer people who have offended, or are at risk of offending, the opportunity to develop positive personal agency. However, for that to happen universities need to reconfigure how HE is delivered in the truest sense of widening access. This might include: the delivery of HE in partnership with prisons and existing community rehabilitation programmes to overcome issue of stigma and increase confidence; training for student services to meet needs of those students with a criminal record or at risk of offending; and, better outreach and marketing of HE and student loan systems to those at risk of offending. You can read the full report on the project at http://www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/reports-2018/JONESdebbiemarkReport.pdf
Debbie Jones is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Director for Undergraduate Studies, Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University. Deborah.a.jones@swansea.ac.uk, Twitter @debjonesccjc.
Mark Jones was an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at Swansea University at the time of the research and is now Director at Higher Plain Research and Education. HigherPlainResearchEducation@gmail.com Twitter @A_HigherPlain. Our lead partner in this research is The hub in Swansea. Debbie and Mark are grateful to SRHE for funding the project.
References
Evans, C, Rees, G, Taylor, C, and Wright, C (2017) ‘Widening Access to Higher Education: The Reproduction of University Hierarchies Through Policy Enactment’ Journal of Education Policy, 34(1): 101-116
Glaw, X, Inder, K, Kable, A, and Hazelton, M (2017) ‘Visual Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Autophotography and Photo Elicitation Applied to Mental Health Research’ International Journal of Qualitative Methods 16: 1-8
Lockwood, S, Nally, J, Ho, T, and Knutson, K (2012) ‘The Effect of Correctional Education on Postrelease Employment and Recidivism: A 5-Year Follow-Up Study in the State of Indiana’ Crime and Delinquency, 58(3): 380-396
Runell, LL (2017) ‘Identifying Desistance Pathways in a Higher Education Program for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals’ International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 61(8): 894-918
Shapland, J, and Bottoms, A (2011) ‘Reflections on social values, offending and desistance among young adult recidivists’ Punishment & Society 13(3): 256–282 https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474511404334
New evidence suggests graduates from less privileged backgrounds are still at risk of being locked out of certain key industries such as cultural, political and extraterritorial organisations, the media and legal professions. Graduate internships have been the subject of considerable debate for more than ten years. Yet, despite media and policy interest on the topic there is still a lack of generalisable quantitative data on the prevalence of the practice and, particularly, on the question as to whether some groups are being excluded. Back in 2009, the final report of the Panel for Fair Access to the Professions (Milburn, 2009) argued that taking part in an internship after leaving university was often an ‘essential’ first career step in many professions but raised concerns that access was often a question of who you know, not what you know, and whether graduates had the financial means to work for free for a significant period of time.
Fast forward eleven years and while there has been some research on the topic there have still only been generalisable quantitative studies looking at graduate internships in the UK. This is in no small part down to the fact that the main statutory surveys, such as the Labour Force Survey, fail to capture internships as a separate employment category. The Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey, has been one notable exception to this, capturing internships since the 2011/12 graduating cohort. Other exceptions include the Futuretrack study, which has followed a cohort of first degree applicants since applying to university in 2006, and one or two one-off surveys.
Studies using data from these sources have shown that unpaid internships do not confer the same advantages as paid internships or university work placements in accessing the best jobs, have a negative impact on earnings and may even reduce the chances of having a graduate job in the short to medium term (Purcell et al, 2012; Holford, 2017; Hunt, 2016). Thus, unpaid graduate internships may not be the ‘invaluable’ ‘leg-up’ claimed by some MPs when talking out the 2016 private members bill that sought to outlaw unpaid internships (Hansard, 4 November col 1156-1226). The same quantitative studies also suggest that access to internships is moulded by a range of factors including social class and educational background, although not always in the way one might expect (Hunt and Scott, 2018).
More recent attempts to assess the situation have been hampered by the measurement problems noted above. The Sutton Trust have made two commendable attempts to estimate participation internships at six months after graduation using the DLHE for the 2012/13 and 2015/16 cohorts (Sutton Trust, 2014; Montacute, 2018). However, these studies underestimated the proportion of unpaid internships by not fully accounting for item non-response in questions about pay in the DLHE and not measuring internships reported as ‘voluntary’ jobs. Examples of ‘voluntary’ jobs identified in the 2011/12 DLHE included: web design and development professionals; conservation professionals; legal professionals; management consultants; journalists; PR professionals; architects; and artists (Hunt and Scott, 2020). Hardly the kinds of work for good causes the voluntary work exception in minimum wage legislation was intended to preclude (Pyper, 2015). When these ‘hidden’ internships were counted in the 2011/12 DLHE 58% of graduates doing an internship at six months after graduation were unpaid – far more than previously estimated (Hunt and Scott, 2020).
Now the DLHE has been replaced by the Graduate Outcomes survey we will only know about graduate internships occurring at 15 months after graduation, after many have been completed. The 2016/17 DLHE, therefore, represents an opportunity to reassess the situation and see how things have changed since 2011/12. The current analysis of the 2016/17 DLHE, funded by SRHE, shows that while the number and proportion of graduates doing an internship at six months after graduation is the same as for the 2011/12 cohort, the number of ‘hidden’ internships has halved from 1,375 to 650 and the proportion of internships that are unpaid has declined from 58% to 36%.
Whilst the decline in unpaid internships is welcome, they still account for more than a third of internships at six months after graduation and this figure is substantially higher in certain key industries and occupations, such as:
activities of extraterritorial organisations (eg EC, UN, OECD) (92%);
membership organisations (which would include unions and political parties) (70%);
libraries, museums and cultural activities (69%);
programming and broadcasting (69%);
legal associate professionals (69%);
conservation and environmental associate professionals (67%); and
government and related administrative occupations (including NGOs) (63%).
Findings from other, less generalisable, surveys suggests that the number of graduates engaging in an internship at some point is only likely to increase during the first few years after graduation and, again, many of these are likely to be unpaid (Hunt and Scott, 2018; Cullinane and Montacute, 2018). The most striking findings from the current research, however, are from the multivariate analysis of participation patterns. This analysis shows that, after controlling for the other factors in the analysis, having better grades or studying at a prestigious university increases the chances of securing a paid internship six months after graduation, whereas coming from a higher socio-economic background increases the odds of doing an unpaid internship.
These findings show that, whilst unpaid internships appear to be declining in most sectors, they are still a key access route in some key industries and occupations and that this is likely to present a barrier to entry for less privileged graduates. The fact that graduates with better grades or from more prestigious institutions are more likely to do the paid internships reinforces findings from previous studies that suggest paid internships are more competitive and sought after. The findings also show that participation in graduate internships, paid or unpaid, is more commonplace in less vocational subjects, such as mass communication and documentation, historical and philosophical studies and creative arts and design. This may suggest that graduates of these subjects feel more need to supplement their educational qualifications with internships to ‘get ahead’ in an increasingly competitive graduate labour market.
Dr Wil Hunt is a Research Fellow at the ESRC-funded Digit Research Centre at the University of Sussex. His research interests centre around the higher education, the graduate Labour market and the impact of new digital technologies on the world of work.
This blog reports on research funded by SRHE as one of its 2018 Member Award projects.
References
Cullinane, C and Montacute, R (2018) Pay as You Go? Internship pay, quality and access in the graduate jobs market London: The Sutton Trust
Hansard HC Deb vol 616 col 1156-1226 (4 November 2016) National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill [Electronic Version]
Holford, A (2017) Access to and Returns from Unpaid Graduate Internships IZA Discussion Paper No 10845 Bonn: IZA Institute of Labor Economics
Hunt, W (2016) Internships and the Graduate Labour Market PhD thesis, University of Portsmouth
Hunt, W and Scott, P (2018) ‘Participation in paid and unpaid internships among creative and communications graduates: does class advantage play a part?’ In Waller, R Ingram, N and Ward, M (2018) (Eds.) Degrees of Injustice: Social Class Inequalities in University Admissions, Experiences and Outcomes London: BSA/Routledge
Hunt, W and Scott, P (2020) ‘Paid and unpaid graduate internships: prevalence, quality and motivations at six months after graduation’ Studies in Higher Education 45(2): 464-476
Milburn, A (chair) (2009) Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions London: The Stationery Office
Montacute, R (2018) Internships – Unpaid, unadvertised, unfair Research Brief London: The Sutton Trust
Purcell, K, Elias, P, Atfield, G, Behle, H, Ellison, R, Luchinskaya, D, … Tzanakou, C (2012) Futuretrack Stage 4: Transitions into employment, further study and other outcomes (Full Report). (HECSU Research Report) Manchester: Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU)
Pyper, D (2015) The National Minimum Wage: volunteers and interns. Briefing Paper Number 00697. London: House of Commons Library.
Sutton Trust (2014). Internship or Indenture? Research Brief London: The Sutton Trust
In a blog post last December, I attempted to chart the broad changes in UK public-sector planning and management over the decades since 1945. I suggested that while central planning methods based on the idea of “predict and provide” applied across nationalised utilities, transport, health, local government services including schools, universities, and more, for the first few post-war decades, this was gradually supplanted from the 1980s onwards by market-based methods, generally described as neoliberal. My conclusion in relation to higher education was: “Central planning has gone, but its replacement depends on central funding and central intervention. I don’t think that we’ve seen the last of formal central planning in our sector.”
Obviously, I’d like to claim that I foresaw that the catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic would sweep away ideas of supposedly finely-balanced markets in fields such as health and education. What in fact I was thinking was that quasi-markets and the rest of the new managerial apparatus would eventually be seen to have fallen short on the neoliberal promise of efficiency without political interference, and the search would then be on for an alternative model. What goes around, comes around.
It’s too early to see exactly what the post-Covid higher education landscape will look like, but I think we can assume that government policy – in this new age of the expert – will ensure the survival of strong research universities, in the “golden triangle” and beyond; and it is equally hard to believe that universities such as Bolton and Sunderland, recently reported to be in financial difficulties, will be allowed to fail by a government politically committed to helping “left behind” regions. Whatever is presently being said by ministers about “no bailouts for universities”, politics is going to trump economics. In the context of the worst economic depression since the 1930s, the 1830s, the 1430s – you choose – this all points to a strong national planning function, involving control of student numbers (as we already know), research planning, and capital planning. The OfS, and even HEFCE, mantras of simply being there to keep the student marketplace looking neat and tidy, and not being concerned with institutional planning or even survival, now seem positively quaint.
Helpfully, we don’t need a crystal ball to foresee the future for higher education planning and funding, because the health sector has provided us with a worked example. On 2 April, the Department of Health and Social Care announced that £13.4 billion of hospital trust debt would be written off – just like that, as Tommy Cooper would have said. This is equivalent to about a third of total annual higher education spending. In less dramatic circumstances, this would have been a major event, but with so much else going on, it seems to have been filed by the media under “boring bureaucratic stuff”. The reason given for the write-off, according to the press notice, was to help hospitals “in maintaining vital services”; as Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State, put it, “nobody in our health service should be distracted by their hospital’s past finances”.
The present NHS structure of semi-autonomous hospital trusts with their own budgets dates from 1990. What was presented then as an essential method of improving NHS efficiency now turns out to have been a “distraction”, getting in the way of providing “vital services”. Who knew? All those person-centuries of work by hospital managers and highly-paid consultants in devising budgets, cutting costs, and then cutting them again to stay within an arbitrary budget, were essentially pointless. Careers were built, and wrecked, on managing a “distraction”. Hospitals, it seems, should simply have been given the money they needed to do the job required of them, as in olden times. The neoliberal model, as applied to UK health care, ended up (at best) delivering nothing.
As I noted in the book that I edited with Ron Barnett and Peter Scott in honour of Gareth Williams’ contributions to higher education studies, Valuing Higher Education (2017), the higher education landscape contains, on the one hand, institutions that require incomes; and on the other hand, students who wish to benefit from this institutional provision. (The universities/students, hospitals/patients, parallel is obvious.) Accordingly, the financing of UK higher education traditionally considered the needs of both institutions and individual students. But in recent years, policy in England has swung in a way that might fairly be described as revolutionary: it has moved, so far as teaching costs are concerned, from considering the needs of institutions to an almost exclusive focus on the needs of students. From a neoliberal perspective, putting the interests of the student-consumer above maintaining a planned pattern of institutional provision was self-evidently correct: this was the basis of David Willetts’ 2011 White Paper, with its unsubstantiated claims about the benefits that would arise from largely unconstrained student choice, the removal of most restrictions on the use of the university title, the entry of more “alternative providers”, and the rest. Will any of this agenda outlive the coronavirus? To preserve some semblance of a working higher education system into next year, I suspect that a lot of the Willetts 2011 policies will be found to be “distractions”, just like their NHS equivalents.
SRHE member Paul Templeis Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education, University College London. See his latest paper ‘University spaces: Creating cité and place’, London Review of Education, 17 (2): 223–235 at https://doi.org/10.18546
Space and place are too often the background and too rarely the central focus of higher education research. This was the argument of our symposium, which offered four ways of theorising the spatial in higher education. The conversation that began in this symposium extends far beyond the time allowed, and so we are continuing that conversation here, with each of the four symposium contributors summarising their use of the spatial in higher education research.
Kate Carruthers Thomas on Massey’s spatial concepts
I work with the spatial concepts of Doreen Massey to research and theorise higher education (HE). Massey was a radical geographer, bringing a feminist perspective to discussions of space, place and power and her understanding of space as plural, heterogeneous and fluid energises an analysis of dominant forms of space and power in HE. My SRHE 2019 paper drew on two research examples: Gender(s) at Work (2018) exploring ways gender shapes experiences of the workplace and career in a post-1992 UK university, and Dimensions of Belonging (2016) problematising a sector-wide reductive narrative of ‘student belonging’ in relation to part-time students.
Applying Massey’s spatial propositions to HE frames ‘the university’ as a product of social relations shaped by geographies of powersocially-coded masculine. Universities originate from monasteries: elite, male-dominated spaces of knowledge production. The contemporary university remains shaped by the power geometry of patriarchal disciplinary discourses, traditions and cultures as well as male-defined constructions of work and career success. Massey coins the term ‘power geometry’ to describe how individuals and groups are differently positioned in relation to flows of capital and culture, to different geographies of power in particular contexts. How they are positioned shapes how they experience the spaces they are in. Gender(s) at Work extends the notion of geography of power to gender, examining how gender operates as a geography of power to position individuals and groups in relation to the flows and connections (of prestige, reward, status) within that activity space.
I also use Massey’s device of ‘activity space’ – the spatial network of links and activities, of spatial connections, locations within which agents operate (2005: 55). This multiscalar tool enables a view of individual universities as activity spaces (shaped by their own geographies of power) and as nodes in the wider activity space of a stratified HE sector. Dimensions of Belonging theorises four English universities as sites in relationship with locality, economy and the HE sector, with each university campus a complex territory of power and inequality in which belonging is negotiated.
To capture lived experiences of university spaces, I created a methodology of spatial storytelling; one sensitised to ‘the social as inexorably also spatial’ (Massey 1993:80). This mobilises the idea of power geometry through combining narrative enquiry and visual mapping, disrupting and revealing spaces between organisational rhetoric/corporate narratives and lived experiences.
Working with Massey in researching and theorizing HE both energises my analyses of space, place and power and leaves room for complexity and contradiction. Spatial storytelling reveals ‘spaces between’ leaving ‘openings for something new’ (Massey 2005: 107).
Holly Henderson on de Certeau’s spatial stories
Higher education happens in places. It does not, however, happen in all places equally, and nor does it happen equally in any one place. The complexities of how higher education is understood and accessed in different places, and how places themselves are defined in relation to higher education, are multiple. In a previous project, which looked at students studying for degrees in post-industrial towns without universities, and in a current project, which looks at access to and experiences of higher education on small islands around the UK, I have used concepts from social geographies to try to get to grips with what it means to say that higher education happens (unequally) in places.
I use spatial analysis in three ways. Firstly, using the concept of spatial stories (de Certeau, 1984), I see any place as defined narratively through layers of stories. These stories are the ways that a town or street comes to be known as a ‘kind of’ place. Often, we do not notice that we are telling or hearing them, but they are fundamental to the way we understand our surroundings. Secondly, I extend spatial analysis to the relationship between higher education and place. In the UK, and especially in England, the dominant story is of a particular mobility pattern, in which the 18-year old undergraduate leaves the place of the familial home and moves into university accommodation in a new place. Finally, I ask how individuals narrate their own stories in relation to these first two factors; do they see themselves as belonging to the place they are living in, and has that question of belonging affected their decision to move or stay in place for degree education? Does the place they feel they belong to require that they make a decision between staying without studying higher education, or leaving in order to study? And if the place they are living and studying in does not have the same history of providing higher education as that of a well-known university city or town, does higher education fit straightforwardly with the enduring narratives through which the place is defined? These questions, and others that stem from them, position place at the centre of higher education research.
Fadia Dakka on Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis
Prompted by Ron Barnett’s claim about the ‘ineradicability of rhythm in university time’ (2015), my reflection extends to the nature of time, place and change in contemporary academia. In keeping with the theme of the Symposium, I emphasise how making space in higher education research subsumes both making time and ‘dwelling’ in it. Therefore, rhythm does not simply refer to the pace of activities within the university, but also to its ontological, epistemological and ethical dimensions. Using rhythm as a critical lens and a pedagogical orientation, I have examined the production of time and space in the everyday life of a teaching-intensive university in the West Midlands (2017-18), drawing inspiration from Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (2004 [1991]) and Critique of Everyday Life (2014 [1947,1961, 1981]). I am particularly interested in the ethical and political implications that can be drawn from rhythmic analyses of ‘felt’ time and space (Wittman, 2017) in contemporary universities. On this basis, I have empirically explored notions of anticipation, dwelling, appropriation and presence within the contemporary university.
The analysis of the participants’ spatio-temporal experiences within the institution has revealed a plurality of academic rhythms that respond to radically different logics. The logic of accumulation, rooted in temporal linearity, exacerbates procedural anticipation, conflating quantification with educational progress. Within this logic, the emphasis on individual productivity and time-management produces an impoverished educational experience centred on constant adaptation and compliance. Spatially, this coincides with the abstract, conceived grid of institutional timetables, schedules and deadlines, the oppressive repetition of which reinforces a ‘pedagogy of domination’ (Middleton, 2014). On the other hand, the poetic logic, that translates Aristotle’s ‘poiesis’ as the human activity of bringing something new into the world, resonates with ideas of transformation, appropriation and dwelling which, in turn, reaffirm the centrality of imagination-relation-anticipation as a necessary condition for meaningful change.
Appropriation, dwelling and (anticipatory) presence have strong implications for how we inhabit the university space. For instance, the participants’ unorthodox production of space documented in the project epitomizes the Lefebvrian act of subversion whereby the perceived and lived spaces produced by the participants effectively disorientate the conceived space of the institution (Lefebvre, 1991 [1974]). The participants’ refusal to inhabit the homogeneous yet fragmented space of the capitalist institution (Stanek, 2011) contrasts with their dwelling in pockets of autonomous, reflective space/time meticulously carved out in their everyday. These forms of spatio-temporal appropriation need to be increasingly performed as collective, liberating acts of quotidian resistance, in order to subvert the capitalist institution from within.
Sol Gamsu and Michael Donnelly on the relational construction of place
The moment of entry to higher education (HE) sees major patterns of internal migration within the UK. Accessing HE is, as we know, a process that is deeply implicated in the creation and reproduction of inequalities. Binding these basic points together in an analysis of flows of students between home or school and university allows us to show how the geography of education is central to core debates in geography. Like my colleagues, the work of Massey has been central to how I have conceptualized these processes. Place for Massey (2005: 139) forms ‘where the successions of meetings, the accumulation of weavings and encounters build up a history.’ Regional boundaries are formed through the concentration of particular social practices that become symbolically and spatially associated with certain boundaries and reflect and re-create divisions and hierarchies (Cooke, 1985; Paasi, 2011).
These patterns develop over time and are rooted in particular political economies with HE provision largely instigated, or at least largely financed, by the state. The historical and contemporary geographies of local and national state power, the spatial contexts of regional dominance within England, the relative autonomy of the Welsh, Scottish and (Northern) Irish systems of governance in relation to power of the Anglo-British state – HE has been a central field that has been shaped by and in turn reinforced the spatial hierarchies and divisions created through the state. Beyond these structural geographies though, cultural geographies of regional division are also reflected and created by individual mobilities created by daily or termly movements to and from university and home.
Our paper (Gamsu and Donnelly, forthcoming) explores these theoretical issues, using social network analysis (SNA) methods to highlight how recognizable regional and national boundaries are present in students’ mobility patterns. Taking the example of students moving from Northern Ireland to Liverpool we explore how student mobilities reflect historical patterns of migration across the Irish Sea. Using the same SNA approach, we examine the distinctive hierarchies of schools and universities present in school to university movements. We find a cluster of primarily English elite private and state schools and universities. Quantitative SNA methods are complemented by qualitative interviews and mapping techniques to allow us to show how student mobilities at the micro-level create, reflect and reinforce historical spatial boundaries and socio-spatial hierarchies of institutions.
In Conclusion
To draw these distinctive approaches together we briefly revisit the original aims of our symposium, the first of which was to highlight the often unseen ways that space and place structure higher education, and structure it unequally. Inequalities and difference underpin Henderson’s work with spatial stories working to understand ways in which higher education happens (unequally) in places, while Carruthers Thomas frames the university itself as a complex territory of power and inequality. Spatial analyses throw up difference and relationship in Dakka’s uncovering of a plurality of contradictory academic rhythms in the everyday life within a teaching-intensive university and, in analysing flows of students between home/school and university, Gamsu and Donnelly highlight the shaping of HE through local, regional and national differences reflecting historical and contemporary geographies of local and national state power.
The second aim of the symposium was to demonstrate different possibilities for the use of spatial theory in researching higher education, providing new insights into enduring debates. To this end, each of the four papers foreground particular spatial/temporal concepts or processes. By putting place at the centre of her research into island HE Henderson gains new insights into narratives of HE and belonging. Gamsu and Donnelly frame the moment of entry into HE as a pattern of internal migration, using social network analysis to highlight regional and national boundaries in student mobility patterns. Carruthers Thomas positions gender as a geography of power within the university as means of examining spaces between organisational rhetoric of equality and lived experience. Meanwhile Dakka introduces opposing logics – the logic of accumulation and poetic logic to challenge the privileging of individual productivity over reflective space/time carved out in the everyday.
Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow and Athena SWAN Project Manager at Birmingham City University, UK. She specialises in interdisciplinary enquiry into contemporary higher education, inequalities and gender; in spatial methods and analyses. Kate also uses poetry and graphics as methods of disseminating her research in these fields.
Dr Holly Henderson is an Assistant Professor in Education at the University of Nottingham. She has previously held positions at the University of Birmingham and began her career teaching in Further Education in London. Her research and teaching focus broadly on sociological issues of inequality in education. In particular, she is interested in access to and experiences of post-compulsory and higher education. Her research is theoretically informed by social geographies, which enable analysis of the ways in which place, space and mobilities structure educational possibility. She is also interested in narrative and its relationship to subjectivity.
References
Barnett, R (2015) ‘The time of reason and the ecological university’, in Gibbs, P, Ylijoki, OH, Guzman-Valenzuela, C, Barnett, R (2015) Universities in the Flux of Time London: Routledge pp 121-134 Carruthers Thomas, K (2019) ‘Gender as a Geography of Power’ in Crimmins, G (ed) (2019) Strategies for Resisting Sexism in the Academy London: Palgrave Macmillan
Carruthers Thomas, K (2018) Rethinking Student Belonging in Higher Education: From Bourdieu to Borderlands London: Routledge
Cooke P (1985) ‘Class practices as regional markers: a contribution to labour geography’ in Gregory, D and Urry, J (eds) Social relations and spatial structures London: Macmillan, pp 213-241
De Certeau, M (1984) The practice of everyday life (S Randall trans.) California. University of Berkley Press Gamsu, S and Donnelly, M (Forthcoming) ‘Social network analysis methods and the geography of education: regional divides and elite circuits in the school to university transition in the UK’ Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie
Lefebvre, H (1991 [1974]) The Production of Space Oxford: Blackwells Publishers Ltd
Lefebvre, H (2004 [1991]) Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life London: Bloomsbury
Lefebvre, H (2014 [1947,1961,1981]) Critique of Everyday Life London: Verso
Massey, D (1993) ‘Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place’. In Bird, J, Curtis, B, Putnam, T, Robertson, G and Tuckner, L (eds) Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Chance. Abingdon: Routledge pp 59-69
Massey, D (2005) For space, London: Sage
Middleton, S (2014) Henri Lefebvre and Education. Space, History, Theory New York: Routledge
Paasi, A (2011) ‘The region, identity, and power’ Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 14: 9-16
Stanek, L (2011) Henri Lefebvre on Space. Architecture, Urban Research and the Production of Theory Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press
Wittman, M (2017) Felt Time. The science of how we experience time. Cambridge: MIT Press
The Symposium was held at the 2019 SRHE Research Conference at Celtic Manor. I bet you’re sorry you missed it.
The SRHE event on doctoral supervision and assessment, followed by a celebratory book launch, in February this year had at first struck me as pretty ambitious. The description on the website said that, as members of the research community, we should strive to undertake new research through supervising and assessing ‘the new generation of researchers’. With doctoral supervision being my own doctoral research field, I cannot help contemplating whether our research community has already moved into a new generation. How does this ‘new generation of researchers’ differ from the older generation in terms of research interests when they first embark the research journey? And how much intellectual tradition we should keep in such a fast expanding community which is increasingly marked by globalization and individuality? With this curiosity in mind, I arranged my trip to London, hoping to find answers from the presenters and other attending researchers.
The six speakers were authors of the six newly published books in the Success in Research series. Referred to as being ‘interactive and practical’, these publications aim to add value to doctoral education, and cover six themes: inspiring doctoral researchers, collaboration and engagement, seeking funding, publishing, mentoring, as well as doctoral assessment and supervision. The event was attended by a wide range of researchers coming from different universities, experienced and novice supervisors, research developers, recently graduated doctoral students, and postgraduate students who are undertaking doctoral studies like myself. It was a pretty fun and productive day led by the positive and energetic ‘lady gang’, as Pam Denicolo from University of Surrey amusingly called themselves.
As the first presenter, Pam articulated ‘inspiring’, a major theme that would go through the whole session. By inviting the audience to think over the question, ‘what is inspiring supervision?’, she reminded supervisors and researchers of proactive participation in the research community by doing things like deliberately creating ‘lucky opportunities’, and reflecting on actions that make supervising/being supervised enjoyable. Julie Reeves, a research developer from University of Southampton, then presented on the value of collaboration and engagement. We were invited again to reflect and discuss with other members the nominal value of inspiring collaboration and why it matters in research supervision. It was a fun-filled experience of listening to others and sharing my own views with them in the group discussion. Also I noticed how effectively the first two presenters led us to think by deliberately posing reflective questions and encouraging us to talk. By doing so, I felt the boundary between presenters and audience was blurred, as we all contributed to each theme by listing our ideas on posters, with many of them indeed being ‘inspiring’.
The four presenters in the afternoon also demonstrated their topics with the same strategy, posing enlightening questions and prompting original thoughts. Marcela Acuna Rivera, research development manager, from Royal Holloway, University of London contributed a practical speech on seeking funding. Her presentation kindly provided a nuts-and-bolts guide navigating research funding with an emphasis on preparing the application, and reminded us why having a holistic view of the research landscape matters so much. The presentation up next was on publication, given by Dawn Duke from University of Surrey. She offered 10 top tips regarding publication strategies, and posed powerful questions about why impact matters in research community and who cares/should care about one’s own research. Funding and publication are always valued and even prioritised in research community, and sometimes the two issues cause anxiety among novice researchers. The two speakers presented both topics in a fun and productive way, pinpointing the significance of being confident and prepared for success.
Mentoring in the research community is a field I had known less about before, but was able to gain more understanding thanks to the fifth speaker, Alison Yeung, from University of Surrey. As an experienced mentor in helping postgraduates with writing skills, Alison explained the relationship between mentor and mentee, narrated her own stories of mentoring students, and invited us to think over the value of mentoring in assisting supervision. Sue Starbuck, from Royal Holloway, University of London contributed the wrap-up speech on doctoral assessment. She declared that doctoral assessment should be inspiring and empowering, and invited us to work in groups reflecting on the factors and motivators stimulating us to improve productivity in the assessment process. Again it was a quite fun discussion.
Have the questions that I posed at the beginning of this post been answered? I think yes. The global research community is fast expanding and changing today, and the rate is being accelerated by different facilitators like technology and increasingly professional training support. Having said that, in the doctoral education, as the main site for cultivating modern researchers and an area of practice for a large number of researchers/supervisors, there still exist essential traditions that can be followed. These traditions are people-oriented, characterized by inventiveness, curiosity and everlasting pursuit of answers. This productive event again verified the power of posing questions and sharing perspectives as a strong support to any volatile situation in the research community.
SRHE member Bing Lu (Warwick) is a second-year doctoral researcher from Education Studies, investigating how academics who have returned after a doctorate abroad conduct doctoral supervision in their home countries. Twitter @BingluAlice
