The Role of Imagined Social Capital in the Access and Retention of Non-traditional Students

1. The Role of Imagined Social Capital in the Access and Retention of Non-traditional Students Professor Jocey Quinn University of Plymouth, UK

2. Outline of talk What is imagined social capital? What is its role in access and retention? Exploring via 4 research studies with: • Young people with no chance to get to HE • First generation students who got to HE then dropped out • Mature women students who accessed HE and completed their studies • Student volunteers as potential agents of access

3. What is social capital? • ‘Social capital’ is the benefit that accrues from belonging to networks-eg bonding, bridging, linking social capital • Problematic concept -for example ignores power relations within networks and the hidden work of women who enable these networks to function • Has been used instrumentally and judgementally by policy makers

4. What is ‘imagined social capital’? ‘Imagined social capital’ is the benefit accrued from symbolic and imagined networks See: Quinn (2010) Learning Communities and Imagined Social Capital London: Continuum Differs from Bourdieu because he emphasises “ durable networks of more or less institutionalised relationships” (1997,47-51) While I focus on Networks with real others that are created to perform a symbolic function Imagined networks created with unknown others who may even be mythical or fictional

5. Study 1:Young people in Jobs without Training The young people all around us working in shops, cafes, farms, building sites…jobs that are seen as low-skilled and are usually low-paid-everywhere but also invisible JWT a UK policy construct-over 16, working over 16 hours, no level 2 qualifications, no accredited training • Identified as a ‘problem’ and defined only in terms of lack-no qualifications, no training, no prospects, no aspirations • Neglected group-know little about their lives and their learning

6. Our Research Jocey Quinn, Rob Lawy and Kim Diment, 2008 Marchmont/Exeter, funded by ESF, Learning and Skills Council and Connexions Conducted in collaboration with Connexions careers service-capacity building and participative approach 112 young people, 184 interviews From across South West England -rural, sidelined and ignored

7. Education = Misery “ When I got to secondary school it was downhill all the way” “ We were the thick bunch” Interviewer: How about FE college? Jane: Pass Interviewer: Could you go to college to do training? Tom: Not an option, no way Interviewer? : So you’ve been doing a cleaning job? Liz: Yes, as you do. I did anything to occupy myself, anything apart from school

8. Feeling Good for nothing Interviewer: What are you good at? Josh: Don’t know really, talking, laughing, don’t know, nothing really Interviewer: What are you good at? Adam: Don’t know, don’t know Interviewer: What are you good at? Carl: I’m rubbish Interviewer: What are you good at? Jamie: Not much

9. HE not on the Horizon Do have some positive symbolic networks • Those who work with their hands • Those who learn from experience • What I am not: not unemployed or drug user But-this symbolic capital has little use value in UK society and sets them apart from education Cannot counteract being part of the symbolic network “the thick (stupid) bunch” Symbolically excluded from learning HE becomes unthinkable as well as materially undoable because of poverty, locality

10. Study 2: Working class ‘drop outs’ from HE In the UK rates of retention are higher than many EU countries But because the system is inflexible and demands completion within 3 years as the norm- ‘drop out’ is seen as a big problem ‘Drop out’ highest (eg 30%) in less elite universities where more students are working class, local and first generation

11. Our research Quinn, Thomas, Slack, Casey, Thexton and Noble (2005) Joseph Rowntree Foundation: Socio-cultural study of meanings/implications of drop out in provincial areas of industrial decline 4 universities : England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland 4 research jury days-stakeholders 80 interviews with students who had dropped out Policy symposium, Admissions survey

12. Institutional interventions v cultural narrative of working class drop out All HEIs involved had multiple support and information processes to increase retention BUT Could not counteract prevailing circulating story that: working class students are lacking, they can enter HE but they will probably fail and withdraw

13. Where is imagined social capital? • Students attach themselves to the lost working communities of their localities: the tightly knit networks of mining or potteries • These symbolic networks were very powerful in family and community memory-even though they no longer exist. They shape educational choices • “I live in a council estate-They say you don’t need to get an education, get a job, go into an industry, but industry is very low now in this area” ( ex student)

14. Pulling both ways These imagined communities produce benefits: • Sense of loyalty, belonging, feeling that working together with common goals and solidarity is possible And problems: • Mournful conclusions: education can never compensate for the loss of these networks • Why stay in HE?

15. Project 3: Mature women surviving HE Women students are the majority of undergraduates in the UK But Widening participation has focused on young people under 30 without commitments HE Curriculum and pedagogy is still masculinised

16. The Research Quinn (2003) Powerful Subjects: are women really taking over the university? ( Stoke:Trentham) PhD research ( ESRC) • In-depth study of 21 diverse women students aged 19 to 62 studying 2 interdisciplinary subjects in 2 universities • Focus on curriculum, subjectivity and negotiation of life inside and out of the university • Interviews, Focus groups, diaries, observations

17. Imagined Social Capital • Mature women faced many problems-juggling care, finance and study, self doubt and doubts of others, • intergenerational conflicts with students/staff • What mattered was symbolic networks either with other ‘real’ women - “ladies who lunch” or with women they only knew on an imagined level through study -“really strong women” • These networks created: imagined social capital: a sense of power and safety and resources for ‘identity change’ • Enabled them to negotiate and remain in the university-the benefits were intangible but material

18. Study 4: Student volunteers: Agents of access? Students in the UK encouraged to volunteer HE seen as path to citizenship Encouraged to work with local communities And disadvantaged people Seen as a significant element in widening participation-breaking down boundaries and encouraging non-traditional students to enter the university

19. The research Holdsworth and Quinn ( 2011 forthcoming ) Antipode: Journal of Radical Geography ‘The epistemological challenge of HE student volunteering : “reproductive” or “deconstructive” volunteering?’ Mapping study of university/community links (ESRC) 20 biographical interviews student volunteers Theoretical concepts drawing on imagined social capital

20. Theory “Universities facilitate the production of imagined social capital by opening up the strange and unfamiliar to be reframed and re-used by students in their own symbolic networks”( Quinn, 2005:15) Volunteering has the potential to do this and link the university to the local community to facilitate access Does it in practice?

21. “Reproductive” volunteering Does not challenge but reproduces and re-enforces existing power relations and inequalities “ Where I live at home its like a white majority area. The volunteering thing (in a deprived inner city school) highlighted it more because everyone in the school I went to , it is a good school-there isn’t many people from different backgrounds. But coming here like it being a big city…it just brought out the differences like that nowadays the families are common and its like a lot of immigrant families” Stacey

22. “ Deconstructive” volunteering Allows volunteers to critique, deconstruct and resist power structures and inequalities “Doing volunteering ( gardening projects in local communities) suddenly there was this explosion of community and culture and my mind was becoming aware that actually there was more to life than school and sometimes school doesn’t have all the answers” Molly

23. Some conclusions for Access and Retention Take symbolic and imagined factors in students lives seriously and work with them-produces material change • Validate young people’s different symbolic networks so their capital can have value and help build access to HE • In pedagogy try to foster some of the communal values held by lost symbolic networks of industry • Critical exposure to radical thinkers in HE fosters imagined social capital • Use outreach and volunteering to learn from local communities, not impose HE values on them: bring these learning experiences into the curriculum