On developing positive alternatives to the
consumerist visions of higher education in
recent policy documents
Funded by:
Paul Ashwin, Andrea Abbas, Monica McLean
The ‘Pedagogic quality and inequality in
university first degrees’ project: November
2008- January 2012 (ESRC: RES-062-23-1438)
(www.pedagogicequality.ac.uk)
SRHE Student Experience Network
Thursday 23rd February 2012
At the heart of a heartless system, the new student
experience? Shaping relationships in higher
education
This event
One way of disturbing, or at least questioning,
the current monetized logic around higher
education is to focus on the quality and nature
of the relationships between the actors.
Structure
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Outline of project and methods
What analysis of policy documents indicated
was a high quality undergraduate education;
What our empirical data indicated was a
high quality social science undergraduate
education.
The implications of the relations between
the 2 and 3.
Pedagogic Quality and Inequality in University First
Degrees Project
Origins: challenge to ‘quality’ and league tables
Aim: to theorise ‘just’ teaching and learning
Objectives:
(1) to explore the value for students of social science
degrees in different universities;
(2) to investigate (in)equities in curriculum and
pedagogy; and
(3) to contribute to debates about pedagogic quality.
The universities
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Sociology and related social science degree courses
in four universities: Prestige, Selective, Community,
and Diversity
Prestige and Selective have been regularly rated in
the top third of UK university league tables for
Sociology; Community and Diversity have been
regularly rated in the bottom third.
The data
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160 biographical and longitudinal interviews with students;
a survey of over 750 students;
an analysis of curriculum documents;
an analysis of national policy documents.
interviews with 16 staff;
analysis of video recordings of teaching in each institution in
each year of the degree (12 sessions);
analysis of students’ assessed work (examples from each
year);
a focus group discussion with tutors from all four institutions
about students’ assessed work;
Policy analysis
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Documents from 12 groupings of organisations representing the interests
of business, charities, educational developers, government, independent
reviews of higher education, international organisations, lecturers,
parliament, regulatory bodies, students, think tanks, and universities.
Examined 133 documents from 33 organisations published since 2009;
Extracts taken from 91 documents and analysed in NVivo
880 instances of accounts of a ‘good undergraduate education’ were
identified under 80 different themes.
These were grouped under four main subheadings: What a good HE
system is like; What a good degree is focused upon; What a good degree
provides; and how the quality of a good undergraduate education is
assured.
What a good degree provides
Dominant Market Model
 Up to date information to students;
 Employability skills;
(Business, government, parliament, international organisations,
regulatory bodies, student groups, think tanks)
Alternative Traditional Model
 Disciplinary knowledge;
 Critical thinking;
 Researchers shaping the curriculum.
(Lecturer groups)
Extract from UK Quality Code
Each Chapter of the Quality Code considers and addresses
the following overarching themes, as appropriate to the
topic:
 how information about the topic is communicated to
students and other relevant audiences
 how the employability of students can be addressed in
relation to the topic
 how equality and diversity issues have been embedded
throughout
 how the topic relates to all the diverse needs of
students...
(QAA, October 2011)
How the quality of a good degree
is assured/enhanced
Dominant Market Model
 Competition between institutions
 Student choice
 Making information public
(business, government, independent reviews, think tanks,
regulatory bodies)
Development Model
 Teaching development
 Student engagement
(independent reviews, international organisations, parliament,
developers, student groups)
Conclusions from policy
analysis
 Two different notions of higher education: one
market focused another traditional.
 The market model is informing the views of a far
broader range of organisations than just the
government;
 Predictable assurance/enhancement divide, yet
seems to be a move to new ‘market’ version of
assurance
 No sense of positive alternatives.
Our project’s empirical findings: what a
good undergraduate degree provides
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Educational processes best predict educational gains
(Gibbs 2010)
High quality undergraduate courses are those in which
students engage with academic knowledge in
transformative ways.
This involves students in studying hard to understand the
academic content of their courses.
Similar findings in other disciplines – ETL project (see
Entwistle 2009 for a summary) and Nespor (1994)
Importance of ‘bringing knowledge back in’ (Young 2009)
Engendered by good teaching in
which:
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there are personal relationships with lecturers, who are accessible for
questions and who encourage effort and challenge students to work
hard;
lecturers are interesting and enthusiastic; and give feedback which
advises students how to improve;
students are prepared for discussion in academically-focused
seminars and workshops, and where the relevance of the knowledge
under discussion is made explicit
courses are well-designed and there are a varied teaching and
assessment methods;
students feel that they are supported on their courses and by the wider
university to overcome obstacles to studying.
The complexities of quality: processes
Scale
Ranking of universities
Engagement with academic
knowledge
Selective, Diversity, Prestige, Community
Good Teaching
Diversity, Community, Selective, Prestige
(*Institutions in Red have scores that are significantly higher than those in Blue)
Policy implications
Our research:
 offers students’ engagement with academic knowledge in
transformative ways as an alternative way of thinking
about quality;
 questions the portrayal of students as simply
‘consumers’;
 questions whether UK league tables and KIS (key
information sets) data give students valid information
about prospective courses
 But what about a positive alternative?
What is meant by ‘knowledge’?
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Bernstein’s (2000) notion of the ‘pedagogic device’ can be seen to
relate to three versions of knowledge:
 Knowledge-as-research;
 Knowledge-as-curriculum;
 Knowledge-as-student-produced-text
(see Ashwin et al 2012 for an exploration of these distinctions).
Knowledge is transformed as it moves between these three forms.
Possible development of alternatives to the ‘monetized logic’ is to think
about the relations between these different forms of knowledge.
Need to think about the place of different kinds of academic knowledge
in the relations between HEIs, academics and students
Engagement with academic knowledge
Scale Items
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I benefit from being in contact with active sociology researchers
Studying sociology helps me to understand myself
I am becoming a sociologist
Studying sociology helps me to understand other people
Sociology is relevant to today’s world
Studying sociology has changed my view of the world
The point of studying sociology is to make the world a better
place
Through studying my degree I am beginning to see the world in
sociological terms
Studying sociology is about developing my opinions
Good Teaching Scale Items
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My sociology tutors motivate me to do my best work
My sociology tutors put a lot of time into commenting (orally
and/or in writing) on my work
My sociology tutors work hard to make their subjects
interesting
My sociology tutors are extremely good at explaining things
My sociology tutors make a real effort to understand difficulties
I may be having with my work
My sociology tutors normally give me helpful feedback on my
progress
(adapted from Ramsden 1991)