F 7.2
Session: F
Parallel Session: 7.2
Research Domain: Reshaping Student Experiences
Anne Hollinshead, Carol Tomlin
University of Wolverhampton, West Midlands, United Kingdom
Never mind Educating Rita – what about educating Princes, Comfort &
Muriel? Is higher education a transforming experience for mature, West
Indian /Jamaican, female students?
In the 1970’s the concept of ‘Educating Rita’ provided hopeful optimism, through its
antidote to the oppressiveness of fixed identities, because the liberation of Rita from
social class idealised her personal changes in identity through higher education. Higher
Education was represented, in this context, as an undoubtedly transformative tool,
whereby transformation was seen as occurring with the transference of forms of capital
between different spheres and the acquisition of power through the study of specific
discourse.
That was 30 years ago.
Today higher education professionals are required, as part of the widening participation
agenda, to work (with little or no guidance and support) with students from a variety of
backgrounds identified as ‘non-traditional’. In many cases these students exhibit a
principally instrumentalist approach towards their studies; and appear to be unable or
unwilling to ‘trade capital’ (Ball 2000) in a HE context.
In this paper we focus on distinct but growing group of overseas, fee-paying students –
mature, female and West Indian/Jamaican. As black & white academics in a ‘New
University’ we have been examining our relationships with this group of students and
the subsequent opportunities such students have to be ‘transformed’ by the HE
experience.
Our work has looked at:
The degree to which these students become legitimate participants in a culture
that values certain forms of thought and patterns of practice
Communication patterns within our specific discourse community – particularly
the differences between the approaches of black & white lecturers. For
example: the ways in which we (white lecturers) often allow these students to
avoid using the formal language of the academic/discourse community for fear
of being seen as pathologising them / cultural insensitivity / fear of vexatious
accusations of racism.