Power, Politics and Pedagogic Possibilities

1. Revisioning the Widening Participation Agenda in Higher Education: Purpose, Policies, Pedagogies and Practice Power, Politics and Pedagogic Possibilities Professor Sue Jackson, Birkbeck University of London Professor Penny Jane Burke, University of Sussex

2. Towards a Praxis of WP • Subjectivity, Recognition and Misrecognition • Developing transformative frameworks through feminist post-structural insights • Reinventing Freirean praxis for WP

3. Exploring the autobiography of the question • Whenever I have tried to carry out a piece of theoretical work it has been on the basis of my own experience, always in relation processes that I saw as taking place around me. It is because I thought I could recognize in the things I saw, in the institutions with which I dealt, in my relations with others, cracks, silent shocks, malfunctionings…that I undertook a particular piece of work, a few fragments of autobiography (Foucault, 1988: 156).

4. WP policy • neoliberal perspectives -- fail to take account of deeply embedded and complex histories of exclusion, inequality and misrecognition • the impact of ‘the global template of neoliberalism’ on HE: the ‘industry of HE’ has overshadowed ‘social and cultural objectives of higher education generally encompassed in the conception of higher education as a ‘public good’’ (Naidoo, 2010: 71). • New managerialist & marketized frameworks are ‘likely to erode the potential of higher education to contribute to equity’ and also have implications for quality (Naidoo, 2010: 75).

5. Micro-level of identity formation • Neoliberalism works at macro level (e.g. national policy formation) • At micro-level of identity formation, implicating subjects in regulatory & disciplinary technologies of the self. • E.g. processes of recognition (of potential and disadvantage) requires particular ways of being and doing student in which the subject both submits to and masters the discourses which determine ‘potential’ in different subject &disciplinary contexts.

6. Subjectivity & Recognition • Recognition central to processes of identity formation(or ‘subjectivity’). • highlights the relational, discursive &embodied processes of identity formation • Recognition achieved then through the dual processes of submission and mastery.

7. Violation of justice • On the status model, misrecognition is neither a psychical deformation nor an impediment to ethical self-realization. Rather it constitutes an institutionalized relation of subordination and a violation of justice. To be misrecognized, accordingly, is not to suffer distorted identity or impaired subjectivity as a result of being depreciated by others. It is rather to be constituted by institutionalized patterns of cultural value in ways that prevent one from participating as a peer in social life. (Nancy Fraser, 2003: 29).

8. Changing institutional cultures & practices • When misrecognition is identified with internal distortions in the structure of the self-conscious of the oppressed, it is but a short step to blaming the victim (…) Misrecognition is a matter of externally manifest and publicly verifiable impediments to some people’s standing as full members of society. To redress it, means to overcome subordination. This in turn means changing institutions and social practices (Fraser, 2003: 31, my emphasis).

9. Importance of subjectivity in recognition • However, McNayargues that Fraser’s objectivist perspective of recognition tends to leave aside the important insights emerging from an understanding of the subjective dimensions of identity formations (McNay, 2008: 150).

10. Foucault • identities are embodied and lived through discursive practices • discourses regulate, govern, classify & exclude bodies within institutional spaces, such as schools and universities. • Identity is embodied and through disciplinary practices and discourses, bodies are controlled and rendered ‘docile’.

11. Reproduce practices & power relations • Atencio and Wright (2009: 45) suggest, based on their analysis, that: • “schools and teachers must critically reflect upon how they (re)produce hegemonic practices and power relations that only serve to support particular types of bodies and subjects whilst devaluing those constituted as ‘Other’.”

12. Embodied subjectivities • working of power & difference: • marked and inscribed on the body • resisted or subverted through ‘practices of the self’. • different bodies are positioned, mobilized and regulated in relation to complex inequalities across pedagogical spaces & relations.

14. Influenced by Hip-Hop Interviewer: What influences your work? Nina: I’m influenced by Hip-Hop? Interviewer: Hip-Hop or the history of Hip-Hop Nina: The History of Hip-Hop

16. All part of the experience White middle-class male candidate interviewed immediately after Nina, was from an affluent spa town, expensively dressed and cited famous artists and designers amongst his influences. In the interview discussion, he confirmed that he would ‘definitely be leaving home because it is all part of the experience.’ The young man was offered a place in spite of having considerably poorer qualifications than Nina, including having failed GCSE Art.

17. Embodied misrecognised subjectivities • Nina not recognized as a legitimate subject of art and design studies because she cited a form of fashion seen as invalid in the higher education context. • Nina embodied Black racialised ways of being, which were seen as signs of immaturity and lack of fashion flair. • Her intentions not to leave home were read as signifying her inappropriate subject position.

18. Processes of Recognition The male, middle-class, white-English candidate knew how to cite the discourses that would enable him recognition as a legitimate student subject. The admissions tutors’ judgments shaped by implicit, institutionalized, disciplinary, gendered and racialised perspectives of what counts as legitimate forms of experience and knowledge. Classed, gendered and racialised formations of identity (embodied and performative) profoundly shape selection-processes.

19. Transformative revisioning of WP • significant, long-term & radical • challenging in relation to discourses of difference and neoliberal global frameworks currently regulating & producing educational policies &practices • opportunity for ‘a new imagination that is freed from the stifling neo-liberal orthodoxy of the past decades’ (Badat, 2010: 136).

20. Key steps: • Developing reflexive practices & orientations • resisting forms of neoliberal regulation • developing collaborative & participatory practices & methodologies • rejecting the current modes of individualization • problematise and re-constitute practices (including pedagogy, assessment, quality, management and leadership) (Burke and Jackson, 2007).

21. Paying attention to subtleties • enrich & broaden our concepts of ‘quality’ and ‘accountability’ to hold those in positions of status, authority & power accountable to equality, ethics and inclusion (Burke & Jackson, 2007) • Demands attention to subtle ways that relations, practices & cultures might serve to (unwittingly) perpetuate deep-seated, historical inequalities, exclusions & misrecognitions • requires all participants to develop deeper levels of criticality and reflexivity, bringing together theory and practice through a commitment to praxis