Interrogating Participation: pedagogies, gender, identity & inclusion

Interrogating Participation:pedagogies, gender, identity & inclusion Penny Jane Burke, Professor of Education Director, Paulo-Freire Institute-UK Centre for Higher Education & Equity Research (CHEER)

aims • To explore questions of WP with a particular focus on pedagogical experiences, relations and practices – interrogating concepts of participation • To examine the different pedagogical practices that HE teachers draw on in relation to concepts of ‘silence’, ‘voice’ & power • To consider how pedagogical practices & relations might be experienced as inclusive/exclusive by HE students & teachers

Widening participation • Focus has largely been on access to HE – key discourses: • Fair access • Raising aspirations • Overcoming barriers • All of these discourses, I argue, are highly problematic and raise ethical questions (see Burke, 2012)

Brief summary • Fair access – conflates ‘transparency’ and ‘fairness’ – and conflates fairness with equality – reinforces meritocratic view of WP • Raising aspirations – deficit discourse – assumes lack of aspirations – process of judging potential and ability left unproblematised – middle-class aspiration normalised • Overcoming barriers – imagines concrete, tangible barriers that can be removed – tends to ignore the subtle, insidious exclusions & misrecognitions at symbolic, cultural, emotional levels

Participation in HE • Not intensive focus of WP discourse – tends to focus on attainment and retention and not on processes of participation (e.g. in pedagogical practices & relations) • Little attention to HE practices which might be exclusive or implicated in complex social inequalities and cultural misrecognitions • Teaching and learning – largely instrumental view – teaching as delivery –different learning styles – student often positioned as passive subject – emphasis on quality not equality, diversity not difference & inequality

Anxieties • Quality and WP often juxtaposed • WP associated strongly with anxieties about lowering standards • Students associated with WP often constructed as ‘non-standard’ – needing special help – draining resources – lacking skills, aspirations, motivation, etc • Students associated with WP often construct themselves as not belonging, not being clever enough, not being a ‘proper’ HE student • Institutional identity and student identity closely bound up

Formations of Gender & HE Pedagogies • HEA-funded qualitative, multi-method project • Key research questions include: • The different ways that current HE pedagogical practices address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion • The ways that students and teachers experience the different pedagogical practices being used in HE • How gender and other identities (e.g. age, class and ‘race’) shape and constrain pedagogical experiences, relations and practices

Innovative research design • Aims to engage HE students and teachers in considerations about pedagogical practices, experiences and relations • Creates dialogic spaces for reflexivity about taken for granted practices & assumptions • Participatory approaches to get HE teachers and students involved with discussions about the development of inclusive pedagogies to challenge inequalities & exclusions

Reconceptualising pedagogies • Broadening engagement with teaching in learning in HE – pedagogies as concept to contest mainstream discourses • Pedagogies are shaped by identity formations but are also gendered, classed and racialised practices • Gender intersects with other (embodied) social identities and inequalities – tied to complex power relations and to changing pedagogical contexts My footer text

Silent lecture But a lot of Business language is around football, male sports, moving the goal post, team player, all this rubbish and I just wonder if you know it’s largely written by men, a lot of the Business Management literature and it’s very geared towards the systems type learning as well that maybe women, female students are excluded to a certain extent and a sort of silent lecture until the questions at the end. I thought of that word silent, the bit of research I did with students about women’s ways of knowing. Basically silence being the lowest level of engagement and you know by doing a lecture, we are imposing that silence but in the next minute, we’re saying, - let’s have a discussion about this and let’s engage but we’re controlling that as opposed to them really critically engaging. So I think there may be something wrong there in terms of imposing silence on the people. I mean I’m finding it more and more –they’re just not able to engage. They don’t take the risk and my group this year, there’s only about one or two that would participate. Whereas previously it would be a really good dynamic engaged. (Male Business Lecturer)

Silence – lack of engagement • Because I tell you, if in doubt I start playing. I either go what’s the matter babies, tell me, or I start playing. Because I can’t bear silence, lack of engagement, I can’t bear it, so…it’s also partly because there is this shared belief, I think I’m right in saying, underneath, that students need to connect with themselves, and they need to connect with one another, in order to write well…So it’s essential that we bring them out as people, that’s part of our job. We are not just teaching a subject. You have to take part or you are not learning. I think that’s what we believe. • (Creative Writing Lecturer, female)

Kind of coerce… • Int: You said the day everybody was tired you put everybody in a circle and you said you did the maternal thing of OK, what’s going on, what’s the matter? So do you actively draw on that, to get people engaged? • Lecturer:I’m aware I’m doing that. I think I’ve just always done it. I think the older I’ve become the more I do it actually. It was, I actually will explicitly refer to myself as Auntie occasionally. Not in the initial classes, but as we all get to know each other, I will often…maybe not often, but often enough, kind of coerce people into saying things, or taking part, on the basis of because Auntie knows so and so and so and so. • (Creative Writing Lecturer, Female)

Anxious & nauseous • Int: And you’ve given an account of feeling quite anxious when you’re having to read because of your dyslexia. Are there any other times when you remember feeling particularly anxious about your studies? • Student: Well I basically feel anxious if I have to like, like I don’t like, I think it’s just because I’m scared of being stupid like I don’t like if I want to say something and I know that what I want to say is right and if I don’t say it, the tutor points it out. So I should have said it to show how clever I was but I didn’t and no-one did. But I’m just too scared to put up my arm or just to say it. And sometimes I even feel nauseous - l like I want to be sick just from having to say a sentence. And it’s not because like I sometimes I got good stuff up there as well but it’s just scary to say it. And I’m not shy – I’m not a shy person. I get in contact with people quite easily and I’m good at speaking to people I think but I’m just very nervous. • Creative Writing Student 1, female

‘The best’ • Well sometimes it gets worse like if it’s like ‘cause in some classes you know that everyone there is very respective and humble but in other classes you have people who are a bit more arrogant and stuff like that. And that makes it worse if there are people who you know are like just like the best. • (Creative Writing Student 2, female)

frightened • I get more of a sense of there are some students there who are actually frightened of the seminar environment, they find it creates a good deal of anxiety, because I think it’s one of the, you know, the normal ways we teach at university level that is very different, perhaps, from their experience of teaching at school or college, because it’s much more focussed on their involvement, their participation, them leading discussions, and generally, you know, as facilitators of that discussion in our role, we are not there telling student X you’ve just said something that’s complete rubbish, even if actually they have said something that’s complete rubbish, we try and phrase that in a way that’s kind of constructive, and let’s have somebody else join in the debate. • History Lecturer, female

Power, voice & silence/ing • ML1: I can hear blokes. Again I can usually hear their chatter let’s say more acutely more than I can hear some female chatter simply because of the difference in pitch. • ML2: I really can’t tolerate talking. It really drives me nuts and I will stop a lecture and they know. Whereas in the old days I used to just get louder and louder and they got louder and it got out of control. But I think you learn as a lecturer how to control a group. And if they’re too quiet you… • FL1: I think after 20 minutes you put a question to them. It gives them an opportunity to talk to each other otherwise I know that their attention span is not all that great so it’s best to give them a bit of a breathing space. • ML3: Actually my experience is thinking about the power dynamics in business studies as well ‘cause I think we all think, I don’t think any of us would think we have to go in and manage that space because as a lecturer it’s not about allowing silences and not allowing silence and telling them when they can speak and when they can’t. But there is that dynamic about independent learning and reflective learning – probably you go into a situation and you are the manager, if you have power. • FL1: The only power they have is to walk out. • Discussion of Business Lecturers

Making noises • …and you find yourself that they are just really, they are there physically, but they are not engaging, you know, and they are the same group who’s actually been making noises- so affecting the students’ hearing, and the lecturer themselves, you know, and the problem, sometimes, you find the same group time and time again. When you warn the first time, come the following week, and exactly the same. So the question we raised as well, before, how far you can go to say OK, enough is enough • Sports Science Lecturer, male

Power & confrontation • And that’s precisely how far you can go to change, you know, and confront and make the situation (I 33.55) I mean I’ve done it, I think, twice or three times, and one of them is going and complain to the boss, you know. But I mean I have nothing to hide, you know. It’s just…I know the reason why, I’m happy with that. But sometimes it is constant, you know, like I said, when you want to start raising the issue. Even, I explain, I stop sometimes and say – look, if you know the subject that’s good, don’t bother to turn up. You know. But at the same time I won’t allow you to keep staying in the back and talking and interfere with the lecture and with the other students, and actually this year some students were complaining about that… • Sports Science Lecturer, male

Culture of expectation • Yes, it’s always been discussed hasn’t it, and the compact was supposed to try and sort all of that out and things. But again a lot of it comes down to the culture, and the culture of expectation. And, you know, the…what do we expect and what do they expect, and what is acceptable within a culture, and what is not acceptable within a culture? And part of that is about education, us educating ourselves and us educating them. But in…it’s impossible to educate, you know, in the sense that we don’t have time to sit down and navel gaze about how can we engage these people better in order to do this, that and the other, or do we look right back to our admissions criteria and say OK, well, we only choose the ones who are like us. And, you know, it comes down to what’s institutional racism? And I think, I think without question higher education has a tendency to be institutionally racist, but to what extent can I address it and can the university address it, or is it just a societal issue that we have to get over, you know? • Sports Science Lecturer, female

Student expectations • Yeah I mean it depends again on a few things. It depends on the lecturer – if they can sort of, what’s the word, control, if they can allow everyone to sort of, if they were able to speak loud enough and get everyone involved then it’s a really good lecture and if everyone’s listening and if everyone’s quiet but when there’s lecturers that are like sort of having people talking in the back and don’t do anything about it – that’s the bad parts of that big lecture room and that really annoys me because my friends tend to want to sit sort of middlish and so we’ve got the lecturer talking at the front, but then we’ve got them at the back and it’s like trying to concentrate on who is actually talking. • Sports Science student, male

Really intelligent • I sit with generally two girls my age and one guy my age. Actually a couple of guys my age sometimes do and sometimes don’t but like it’s normally just the four of us and we are all like the same age. Yeah and two of them voice their opinions about what they want to say. Me and my other friend don’t’ really say that much but she is really intelligent as well. Like when me and her talk about things in group work she is really intelligent. She is taking everything in but she doesn’t like saying it out loud either so it’s quite nice having a friend like that. • Art History Student, female

Voice and Mis/recognition, Othering • I think the government has set this unrealistic goal of having fifty percent of the population go through university. Now that inevitably means a massive proportion of people at university today probably shouldn’t be here, and call me very, you can say I’m being very harsh there, I probably am, but the simple fact is I don’t think they should be here, I don’t think they are bright enough. Students should adapt to the lecturers, students should have the intelligence to adapt to their lecturers, and they should just have the simple respect and not talk in the back of the class (Male Student 1, Sports Science).

Peer regulatory discourses • I would say, it sounds so bad, I would say like maybe eighty percent, this is a guestimate, eighty percent of people who come from a lower class, whose parents didn’t go to university, might not address learning in general with as quite a passion as those who maybe came from middleclass, or those who had their parents who went to university. I went to a secondary school which although it was state it was quite top end, we had the PM’s children there, and from there you always had high expectations bred into that sort of way of thinking. You moved into that way of thinking, that that is the way forward, and that is a normal thing to do, whereas people who went to other schools might not see it like that…(Male Student 2, Sports Science). My footer text

Ethical challenges raised • The data show the ways that subjects in HE are implicated in power relations and complex inequalities • The notion of ‘participation’ positions subjects in certain (unequal) ways – pedagogical practices work to regulate and position subjects around notions of il/legitimate voice and silence – • Who is the subject/object of the ‘disciplinary’ gaze of WP? This appears to be gendered, classed and racialised as well as tied in with power differences of age – notions of voice and silence seem to exacerbate such differences

Politics of identity & difference • ‘voices’ are heard, silenced, included, excluded, re/presented in pedagogic spaces in relation to classed, gendered and racialised inequalities and differences • Participation - profoundly shaped by politics of identity & difference – raises key questions • what is the responsibility of the (individual) subject in this? • Are there ways to challenge differences and inequalities through critical, feminist or inclusive pedagogical practices? • Are pedagogies always implicated in the re/production of inequalities?

Ethics, Inclusion and power • How might teachers and students negotiate these complex power relations in more ethical, equitable and inclusive ways? • Critical pedagogies attempt to address issues of power but are also problematic in relating ‘voice’ to empowerment • Silence can be a form of power and resistance and voice can be a form of challenging the traditional authority of the HE lecturer – but how does this impact on the relations between students – how does this reinforce gendered and racialised constructions of students and teachers?

Implicated in inequalities • A feminist poststructural position is that we are always implicated in unequal relations of power however we need to draw on reflexive, ethical and participatory pedagogies in the continual attempt to disrupt inequalities (e.g. Gore, Lather, Ellsworth) My footer text

Participatory pedagogies • underpinned by explicit sets of social justice principles and ethical starting points; • E.g. might involve teachers and students initiate their pedagogical relationship with an explicit plan of the ways they will work together, ethically, critically and inclusively and review this regularly; • involves a commitment to creating interactive spaces for learning and teaching, where different forms of knowledge and experience might be drawn on to help illuminate and make accessible the disciplinary or subject knowledge at the heart of the course;

Participatory pedagogies • might involve an explicit discussion of the different perspectives, backgrounds and forms of knowledge of participants whilst also subjecting these to critical reflection in collaborative learning processes; • concerns with curriculum and assessment are understood as part of pedagogical practices and relations, not separate entities; • concerned not only with explicit practices of teaching and learning, but also with the construction of knowledge, competing epistemological perspectives and the ways that learning and meaning might be assessed to support pedagogical and meaning-making processes

Accessible knowledge • To create the opportunities for exclusive forms of knowledge & practice to become accessible, inclusive and participatory through processes of redistribution • developing HE in ways that nurture, enrich and fully recognise the importance of diverse forms of knowledge, identity and practice My footer text

Paramount for WP & Equity in HE: • that awareness is raised around these complex issues through REFLEXIVITY. • requires serious attention to the relationship between pedagogical practices and relations and social identities, inequalities and exclusions – situating individual experience/identity in wider social relations • Gender is not only tied to individual identity formations but also shapes pedagogic and disciplinary practices, epistemologies and assumptions. My footer text

obligation • All of us, regardless of credentials, regardless of time since receiving advanced degrees or prominence in our respective fields, have an obligation to educate ourselves about the world around us, about developments in our fields, and most especially about people, events, and ideas about which our class, race and/or social position would normally insulate us from knowing. (…) earning an advanced degree and entering a profession in the academy is still predominately the province of Whites who come from privileged backgrounds. (…) Primarily, the obligation to educate ourselves means going out to meet the world, and not expecting it to come to us – or, perhaps more pointedly, not assuming that was has come to us constitutes ‘the world’ (Gordon, 2007). My footer text

Beyond ourselves… • ‘the conjunction in critical social theory of the various feminisms, neo-Marxisms and poststructuralisms feels fruitful ground for shifting us into ways of thinking that take us beyond ourselves’ (Lather, 1991: 164). My footer text

Possible reflexive questions • Do the experiences of teachers and students resonate with your own experiences? What are the differences/similarities – and what challenges do these raise? • What spaces might we create to transform pedagogical practices, cultures and relations in HE? What are the possibilities for doing things differently? What are the constraints? • How do you understand the relationship between widening participation, identity formation and pedagogies? My footer text

Interrogating Participation: pedagogies, gender, identity & inclusion