Student Attainment in Higher Education

Issues, controversies and debates

Graham Steventon, Debra Cureton, Lynn Clouder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317548577
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Student Attainment in Higher Education: Issues, controversies and debates is a timely exploration of student attainment in a rapidly changing higher education context and a rapidly changing world. The effects of neoliberalism and the commercialization of everyday life on education have been well documented, but with a focus on pedagogy, whilst student success is measured through grades, statistics and metrics. By exploring attainment in a broader context, this book provides a unique contribution to the critical literature on contemporary higher education.

Within the themes of understanding attainment and challenging practice, the book sets out to explore student attainment as complex and multifaceted. It achieves this by looking at different conceptualizations of what attainment means and to whom; how attainment is shaped by different and often competing agendas and vested interests. The book highlights these wider issues, controversies and debates that underpin student attainment, whilst at the same time engaging with strategic and local interventions, which set out to improve aspects of the higher education system and increase individual and social agency within it.

Sharing a range of pedagogical approaches and interventions, some of the key topics include:

• addressing attainment gaps
• engaging mature learners
• nurturing the intellectual identity
• the impact of activity choices.

Creating a dialogue amongst different audiences about national and international controversies and debates around the topic of student attainment, this contribution will be beneficial to teaching professionals, policymakers and strategists. As an edited collection with contextualisation in the wider research arena, the book has both national and international applicability and transferability.

1 Influencing change through a strategic approach to student attainment

Geoff Layer

DOI: 10.4324/9781315730325-2

Introduction

Change at the best of times is never easy and the higher education sector globally is going through major change. Much of this is driven by expansion of systems, economic need, new funding approaches and growth in research intensity. Change within those parameters is difficult and staff in all areas of universities can become quite cynical about both the political reason for and the rate of that change. However, changes to actual academic practice can be even harder to address as it touches upon the notion of independence and jealously guarded professional practice. This is why an evidence-based approach to change, along with a process of engagement with staff, is crucial; the momentum for change has to be managed very carefully.

This chapter considers the process of influencing change strategically within universities in which the goal itself can be difficult to fully demonstrate and in which there will be clear divisions of view. The chapter briefly charts institutional and policy change over a relatively recent history before going on to discuss change to academic practice and approaches to learning and teaching at both subject and institutional level, particularly in relation to maximizing student attainment.

Academic practice and change

The higher education system in the UK is, like many others, on a particular journey, and it is becoming more accountable in respect of the public investment that is being made. Governments invest in higher education to ensure an effective higher education system that contributes to economic growth and the public good. However, the notion of accountability to the state and the public does not always sit well with the traditional notion of the academy, and universities can be resistant to change.

One of the key tenets of a university culture is the notion of academic freedom, and this is, of course, interpreted in many different ways dependent upon circumstances and perspectives. In its broadest interpretation, this freedom can be used defensively against change, especially that which is seen as disruptive and disconcerting. Change certainly introduces periods of uncertainty, but it can also provide significant opportunities and it can be really empowering. The introduction of learning and teaching strategies, curriculum remodeling and pedagogical reviews has been used as a means of seeking to influence change and to introduce more of a university view into teaching than has traditionally been the individual or discipline-determined case. Much of this comes from the adoption and development not only of quality assurance cultures, but also, and more so, from the quality enhancement agenda, and this has been helped considerably in this process in the UK through sector-wide bodies such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) (and before that the Higher Education Quality Council), the Higher Education Academy (HEA) (see HEA 2015) and the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), amongst others.

Trying to influence change within universities is always very challenging, particularly if it is in an area of individual professional practice. Academics are appointed within universities on the basis of a range of criteria including subject knowledge, research track record, business engagement, record in income generation and commitment to teaching. The one aspect that is not really tested within the standard appointment process is that of teaching quality. The profession of university lecturer is one of the few that do not require some form of licence to practise through, in this instance, a teaching qualification. In many universities there is an in-service programme for staff new to teaching which is accredited by the HEA and latterly linked to the Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning, leading to optimistic forecasts in increased teaching and learning excellence (Turner et al. 2013). Nevertheless, in a UK-wide staff survey Turner et al. acknowledge that there is still some way to go, with just over 50 per cent aware of the framework but only around 30 per cent engaged with it.

From a management perspective, there is a significant challenge in enhancing teaching quality and introducing strategic, university-wide approaches to teaching. New appointments can be required to undertake the in-service course and to complete it within a certain timescale, but the voluntaristic nature of many universities and their approach to appraisal means that a significant number of existing staff may never undertake such a programme. Many will, of course, contribute significantly to their own continuing professional development through subject development or professional practice, and that is a key feature of university quality-enhancement cultures, but it does not necessarily include review of pedagogical practice.

Strategies to influence academic practice have to be located within an understanding of the history, culture and traditions of universities. The university systems of governance that have been based on a concept of collegiality and academic leadership require change to academic practice to be agreed and for academics to be convinced of the rationale behind the change. At the core of this history has been a longstanding adoption of the role of an academic in the classroom being a matter of individual practice and preference. It is only in the last twenty years that this concept has been challenged to reflect more of an institutional approach, so it is important to have an understanding of the history of universities to fully understand how change needs to be approached.

The journey of UK higher education began with its origins in the middle ages and developed through the centuries as society wanted different things from its universities. The creation and the subsequent development of universities demonstrate key phases of development:

• the church-based phase about establishing seats of learning and individual scholarship
• the Newman approach to liberal education and educating the minds (Newman 1852)
• the Victorian perspective during the industrial revolution of utilitarianism and workforce development focusing on specific knowledge and skills
• Robbins’ call for expansion away from simply providing places for the privileged few (Robbins 1963)
• Crosland's inspirational view of polytechnics (Crosland 1966)
• Wilson's drive for the White Heat of Technology (Wilson 1963)
• Baker's removal of the binary divide (Further and Higher Education Act 1992).

And then of course Lord Dearing (in his speech at Newcastle University in September 2002):

Just as medieval towns had sprung up around castles as sources of strength and in the industrial revolution they relied on manufacturing industries, in the 21st century universities were the natural sources of strength in knowledge-based economy.

(MacLeod 2002: 1)

Throughout this history universities have grown but tended to develop in ways that were focused on subject disciplines and courses with academic direction from senior academics. However, the challenge that began to emerge through the state questioning what public investment was providing started a process of looking at national evidence and using that evidence to secure change in return for funding. This started with a general approach of reviewing who was actually participating and what the scale of participation should be, and has now moved into looking at how successful that participation has really been in terms of individual performance. This level of external interest has led to universities seeking to reflect more and to look for change where appropriate in response to the evidence.

When reflecting on this changing nature of higher education it is always worth considering its role, purpose and function, as all too often commentators, politicians and managers get caught up in the desire to look at only the part of the system where the change is happening. The modern definitions of higher education are to be found in the reports of Robbins (1963) and Dearing (1997), who, while they used slightly different vocabulary, tended to agree that higher education had four key purposes:

• To inspire and enable individuals to develop their capabilities to the highest potential levels throughout life;
• To increase knowledge and understanding for their own sake and to foster their application for the benefit of economy and society;
• To serve the needs of an adaptable, sustainable, knowledge-based economy at local, regional and national levels;
• To play a major role in shaping a democratic, civilized, inclusive society.

(Dearing 1997: 72)

Of course, Robbins (1963) also established the important principle of for whom higher education should be provided: those qualified by ability and attainment and willingness to pursue a higher education path. This principle laid the foundations for the modern-day expansion in participation from 197,000 students in 1963 to 1,385,675 full-time undergraduate students in 2013 (Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) 2014).

That expansion has had its fair share of issues, as it was often portrayed as being a move towards a mass system of higher education along a US-type model. But, as Trow (1989) points out, there are a number of stages to go through before you have a mass system and it is not simply about increasing participation. A mass system requires a significantly different approach to learning, teaching, student support and preparation. It took some time for the UK system to realize the need for change and Robertson (1994), in leading up to Choosing to Change, referred to it as a crowded system rather than a mass system, since all that had happened was that student numbers had increased without any pedagogical reflection, and this had simply happened on an incremental basis.

It is not only the increase in participation that challenged university thinking, however. Crucially, the aspects of widening participation, social capital and social justice in which the key players focused on the Robbins concept of ‘higher education should be available to all those who can benefit’ was a principle reinforced by Willetts (2013) as recently as 2013 to celebrate fifty years of Robbins. This principle was used by academic activists to enable the development of alternative routes into higher education, initially for adults and then for under-represented groups, with the result that higher education became broader and bigger. This concept of academic activism reflects a group of staff within universities who are committed to ensuring that higher education is more socially inclusive and that the basic issue of where an individual goes to school should not be such a key determinant of whether they have access to a university education and the significant changes to their life chances that are therefore available.

At the time of the Robbins Report university education was really for the select elite who could both afford to study and who were in a position whereby they expected to spend three years as a student because it was part of the accepted family and societal norms. This position did not really change much over the years, even though participation increased, and there was a stubborn failure to narrow the gap in participation from those in the lowest socio-economic group compared to those in higher groups who had an expectation of a university education.

The argument and focus of the latter part of the twentieth century were very much about not only increasing but also broadening participation – both being addressed incrementally without any new big idea. Indeed, that is still the case today as the National Strategy for Access developed by HEFCE and Offa (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 2014) on behalf of government does not contain any new or big ideas but simply focuses on issues that need resolution. A truly big idea would be a UK version of the GI Bill from the USA (USA Federal Government 1944) involving some sort of state-sponsored incentives for entering higher education.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the debate moved away from simply focusing on access to higher education to one that raised the question: acce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Influencing change through a strategic approach to student attainment
• 2 Dilemmas in addressing the ethnicity attainment gap
• 3 Addressing the attainment gap at the University of Derby: from theory to practice?
• 4 Linking attainment to interculturalism and global citizenship
• 5 The secret of student success: student identity, belonging and the psychological contract
• 6 Intellectuality, student attainment and the contemporary higher education system
• 7 Authentic learning: a route to student attainment?
• 8 Mentoring for attainment
• 9 Student attainment through activity-led cooperative learning
• 10 Mixing metaphors for academic writing development
• 11 Building a house on sand? Are vocational education and training qualifications an (in)equitable stepping-stone to success in higher education?
• 12 (not) Talkin’ ’bout my generation: is higher education engaging older learners?
• 13 Being a student and becoming a professional: tensions and challenges in attaining a professional identity
• 14 Issues, controversies and debates: concluding thoughts
• Index