Belonging and Mattering - Professor Jacqueline Stevenson
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Transcript of Belonging and Mattering - Professor Jacqueline Stevenson
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BELONGING AND MATTERING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Professor Jacqueline Stevenson [email protected] @ProfJStevenson
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BME attainment gap• Degree attainment gap = difference in 1st or 2:1
classification awarded to different groups of students. • 2012/13 degree outcomes:
• 73.2% of White British students received 1st or 2:1 • 57.1% of UK-domiciled BME students
• 64.4% of Indian students; 63.9% of Chinese students; 54.2% of Pakistani students; 43.8% of Black Other students
• Has remained nearly static over the last ten years. • Why does it matter?
• Black graduates, are x3 more likely to be unemployed within six months of graduation than White; 80%+ applications for very graduate job; ¾ of large graduate employers now demand applicants have a minimum of a 2:1.
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Causes? (Singh, 2011)• Externally: social deprivation, previous family educational experiences of
HE, type of institution; home or campus-based; gender, disability
• Internally: racism; time in paid employment; problems of segregation; low teacher expectations; lack of role models; staff expectations/ prejudiced attitudes associated with linguistic competence; students’ expectations; discriminatory practices in TLA and student support; undervaluing/under-challenging BME students; belonging (or not)
• But....being from a minority ethnic community is still statistically significant in explaining final attainment
• My interests:• Contribution of the curriculum and forms of pedagogy• Whiteness of the academy; my position in the institution and as part
of both the cause and 'the' solution• Belonging and mattering
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Belonging• Belonging is a multifaceted concept.
• Relates to feelings of connectedness, attachment to other people, places, or modes of being
• More than need for simple social contact: active processes of social contact and interaction; develops shared understandings of who ‘we’ are (Judith Butler); we need to ‘matter’
• Arises from everyday practices and events within specific social milieu.
• At the heart of any negotiation or competition that ensues between [such] groups is the question of who has the right to make claims over how ‘we’ do things – that is, who ‘really’ belongs (May, 2013, p. 98)
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Everyday belonging 1• We only know we don't belong when we don't belong• ‘One of the ways in which a sense of belonging can
emerge is if we can go about our everyday lives without having to pay much attention to how we do it. Conversely a disruption in our everyday environment can make us feel uprooted’ (May, 2013, p. 89)
• Every day belongingness• For many of these students:• Everyday world structured by power relations• Everyday world as problematic• Tensions between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary in the every
day world
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Everyday belonging 2• Everyday world structured by power relations
• There's no point going and asking because they just look at you like you are dumb and tell you to go away and sort it out by yourself (female, British Pakistani)
• You should know the answers but you don't. But you daren't ask (female, British Black African)
• Everyday world as problematic• So like every time I walk on campus I get stopped by security
because I am wearing a headscarf but my friends don't because they are not (female, British Pakistani)
• So like you want to speak up in lectures but because I am Black and a big man and all that you know that you can seem a bit intimidating so you don't (male, British Black African)
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Everyday belonging 3• Belonging is not merely a state of mind but is bound up
with being able to act in a socially significant manner that is recognised by others (May, 2013, p. 142)
• Tensions between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary• The only time it’s [racism] really been talked about a lot is all the
stuff about Shilpa Shetty and Big Brother . I was glad then that people were talking about racism… [here] it’s just never talked about. It’s like everyone thinks that if it isn’t talked about then it isn’t happening (male, British Pakistani).
• I am not a bomber; I just have a rucksack (male, British Indian).• Just because I wear a headscarf it doesn't mean I am an
oppressed woman. I am able to make my own choices, chose how to life my life but I am looked at with pity (female, British Black African)
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Importance • Contested belongings• Drawing boundaries• Multiple belongings and hybrid cultures• Inequitable student experience• Fundamental in how privilege produced and reproduced• BUT......
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Agency and Strategising• BME students are not passive• Avoidance can be agentic; resistance and resilience• Highly strategic in terms of working round and through
exigencies (see Stevenson, 2012*)
• Students bring to, and draw on, forms of community cultural wealth - the assets that many students acquire from ... "a sense of community history, memory and cultural intuition" (Yosso 2005:79) (aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistance)
Stevenson, J. (2012) An exploration of the link between Minority Ethnic and White students’ degree attainment and views of their future ‘Possible Selves’, Higher Education Studies, 2 (4), pp. 103-113.
Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), pp. 69–91.
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Ways forward?• I speak three languages, I am a single parent, a former
refugee, learnt English from scratch, went to FE college, trained to be a nursery assistant, worked since I could.... (female, British Black African)....
• Yosso's framework should be used to develop approaches to supporting students
• Start with what students bring to the classroom not what they don't
• Ask reflective questions of our practice• Angela Locke
http://web.csulb.edu/divisions/aa/personnel/fcpd/workshops/documents/Wrk1EditedYossoCulturalWealthSummary.pdf
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• Aspirational capital • How are we supporting the maintenance and growth of students’ aspirations? • What assumptions do we have about our students’ aspirations?
• Linguistic• How are we supporting the language and communication strengths of our students? • To what degree do courses utilise inclusive pedagogical practices?
• Familial capital• How do we recognise and help students draw on wisdom, values and stories from
their home communities? • How do we create environments that honour and invite families to participate?
• Social capital• How do we help students stay connected to the communities and individuals
instrumental in their previous educational success? • How do we engage with likely individuals and community-based organisations about
admissions and selection processes and the types of supports successful students need?
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• Navigational capital • How do we help students navigate our institutions? Interactions with
teachers/faculty? Interactions with student-support staff? Their peers? • How willing are we to acknowledge that our institutions, both their structures and
cultures, have a history of, and may still in many ways be unsupportive and/or hostile to our students and their communities?
• Resistance capital • How do we support students who are committed to engaging in and serving their
home communities (however they define these)? • What opportunities do we provide students in and outside of the classroom to
prepare them for participation in a diverse democracy?