Jones, I.;
(2021)
Reconceptualizing the ‘problem’ of widening
participation in higher education in England.
London Review of Education
, 19
(1)
pp. 1-14.
10.14324/LRE.19.1.02.
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Abstract
This article critically analyses national and institutional forms of policy and different conceptions of widening participation in higher education in England by contrasting representations of ‘it’ as a ‘problem’ to be managed, compared with complex and recurring dilemmas in practice. Building on Bacchi’s (2012a) strategy, the article asks, ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR), and how the ‘problem’ of widening participation was constructed in specific contexts, by examining tensions between constructions of policy in texts and representations of widening participation in semi-structured interviews with national and institutional policy actors. Policy actors did not share a single voice, and various proposals embodied different representations of the ‘problem’. These do not reduce practice to distinct or static categories limited by available policy options. Instead, contemporary representations, interpretations and translations of policy and practice make visible both limitations and possibilities for widening participation in higher education in the future.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | Reconceptualizing the ‘problem’ of widening participation in higher education in England |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.14324/LRE.19.1.02 |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/ 10.14324/LRE.19.1.02 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | © 2021 Jones. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | widening participation, higher education, policy, problematization, policy actors |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10121458 |
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