The Rhetoric of Widening Participation in Higher Education and its Impact

275 Pages·2018·2.595 MB·English

by  Navin Kikabhai

THE RHETORIC OF WIDENING
PARTICIPATION IN HIGHER
EDUCATION AND ITS IMPACT
Ending the Barriers against Disabled People
Navin Kikabhai
The Rhetoric of Widening Participation in Higher
Education and its Impact
Navin Kikabhai
The Rhetoric of
Widening
Participation in
Higher Education
and its Impact
Ending the Barriers against
Disabled People
Navin Kikabhai
School of Education
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-75965-4 ISBN 978-3-319-75966-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75966-1
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to Mum and in memory of Dad
Foreword
Disability and higher education is an under-explored area of concern. For
those who have reaped the privileges and rewards of higher education,
they have seldom given serious thought to a critique of higher education
let alone the institutional and exclusionary experiences of disabled peo-
ple. In a recent radio broadcast entitled Higher Education – crisis or
change? (2016) Laurie Taylor plays to this institutional regime. In his
closing comment, Taylor reduced the struggle for equality with a piece of
advice which he in-turn had once received from (an individual labelled
as) a professor who, with a hushed tone, said ‘… don’t break the hand that
feeds you’. This loss of human connection is reduced to, as Kikabhai’s
book explores, a social drama, a moral tragedy and shallow demonstra-
tion of widening participation. Where widening participation has been
adopted by the higher education sector this has arguably been evidenced
in a diversity of provision from partnerships with Further Education
(FE), Foundation Degrees, and more recently Foundation Years, rather
than any significant change with higher education itself.
Whilst the rhetoric of widening participation and the face of authority
begin to be unmasked, this book offers a conceptual framework, a differ-
ent set of critical questions, and engages in a dialogue across boundaries,
mapping out personal relationships and human spaces, recognising histo-
ries, identifying multiple barriers and constantly challenging mis/under-
standings. There are also questions related to higher education institutions
vii
viii Foreword
and their economic survival, funding and rising student debt. As is
argued, higher education has radically transformed, and whilst it has
been legally required since 2001 to make adjustments there is a concern
with diminishing resources.
As a Senior Lecturer in higher education, Kikabhai’s work reminds me
of my own multiple experiences concerned about the struggle for inclu-
sive education. Much of my own personal involvement has related to
supporting disabled young people and their families to gain access to
mainstream education. I too have observed numerous students navigate
through the difficulties of higher education. One experience that comes
to mind, involved me conducting an observation of an in-service teacher
at a college of FE. The group was in a discrete and segregated class for
learners with, apparently, ‘learning difficulties and/or disabilities’. No
doubt such segregated provision is based upon the misguided assumption
that the group of students were at the same level and had the same cluster
of skills and interests—a practice of segregation that had become firmly
established across the FE sector around the country, although there were
notable acts of resistance adopting a philosophy of inclusive education.
During this observation I had decided to sit alongside the students in
this segregated class. The class session related to a Life Skills course, and
specifically aimed to focus on ‘How to make a cheese sandwich’. The
students were each provided with a range of resources which were: an A4
paper handout containing eight similar-sized squares. In each square
there was drawn a range of shapes, purported to be a slice of bread, a
triangle of cheese and a round shape representing a tomato. On the
squares were other shapes, students were told that these were: a knife, a
cheese grater and butter. After watching the teacher meticulously demon-
strate this ‘Life Skill’, the student sat next to me began looking directly at
me and asked: ‘Am I normal?’. I paused with stunned silence, not know-
ing how I should respond. ‘How would I know if I am normal?’ the next
question came whilst I was still thinking of how to respond to the first.
‘Are you normal?’ the next question asked, only to respond with ‘I had
been accused of it!’. Conscious of the serious questions I was rendered
silent with a further series of questions and comments; these were: ‘Am I
learning now?’, ‘How do I know when I am learning?’, ‘I don’t like cheese’
and ‘I don’t have a kitchen, I live in a hostel’. Dazed by the series of
Forewor d ix
questions and comments I recall being accompanied with the student
and speaking with the in-service teacher during the class break. I repeated
the student comments. The in-service teacher’s response was ‘But, Peter
(not his real name) does not speak!’ Surprised, I retorted that Peter told
me that he did not like cheese. In response the in-service teacher said
embarrassingly: ‘Oh, very sorry, but we will be making a ham sandwich
next week’. On reflection, this exchange was revealing in that over 20
years of teaching at different educational levels from secondary schooling
to postgraduate study not one student had asked: how do I know when I
am learning?
Whilst it has been the case that higher education institutions have
learnt a great deal about, at times from, but not necessary with, those it
labels with having ‘learning difficulties’, it is deeply worrying that dis-
ability continues to be one of the most fundamental problems facing
higher education participation to this day. My own experience working
across the range of schooling sectors suggests that in relation to disabled
learners, schools have learning difficulties (S-with-LD), colleges of FE
have moderate and severe learning difficulties (C-with- MLD and SLD)
and the university sector has profound and multiple learning difficulties
(U-with-PMLD). Schools, colleges and universities continue to make the
same errors by responding to individual deficit interpretations rather
than a real commitment to the self-determination, contribution and par-
ticipation of disabled people.
Whilst there are worrying signs of institutional and policy change,
flanked by corporate and market ideals, this book is a timely and impor-
tant reminder of the rhetoric of widening participation and ending the
barriers against disabled people.
Joe Whittaker
Preface
This book is primarily concerned with the rhetoric of widening participa-
tion in higher education and its impact. In broad terms, it relates to the
issues of disability and higher education participation, and to ending bar-
riers against disabled people. For sure, there is an uncomfortable silence,
particularly with reference to disability, but, as higher education moves
towards (or so it is claimed) with increased diversification and massifica-
tion it is also slowly being transformed and shaped by competing neolib-
eral discourses driven by notions of ‘excellence’, and ‘academic standards’.
Given this context, this book is concerned with the politics of ‘learning
difficulties’ and the politics of modern higher education participation. If
the struggle for equality was measured within a day, disability equality
would not appear until the close of the day, and probably within only an
infinitesimal part of the last second. Social class, gender, ‘race’ and reli-
gion would probably appear at midday, with sexuality late afternoon,
even though there are continued discriminations relating to this. In com-
parison with other social groups, addressing the discrimination faced by
disabled people comes late in terms of social justice, and yet, ironically,
this group is often the first to be dehumanised, scapegoated and segre-
gated. Certainly, whilst other social groups have gained recognition and
benefited from redistribution in terms of addressing issues of inequality,
xi
xii Preface
those same groups have tended to ignore experiences of disability. Seldom
have such groups acknowledged the complex intersection of identities, let
alone acknowledged that impairment itself could be a unifying character-
istic of difference, or of social, cultural, personal and intrinsic value.
Examining higher education in terms of the exclusion of disabled people,
likewise, comes late in the struggle for social justice. In contrast, other
social groups have succeeded in gaining access to higher education, with-
out their presence being questioned. Indeed, as has been known for some
time, higher education participation and expansion has been primarily
focused on a concentration of energies on those social groups which
already have a history of participation.
The ideas within this book emerged from a doctoral study, a critical
qualitative inquiry making use of a case study of a theatre initiative which
attempted to develop an undergraduate degree programme in the per-
forming arts for individuals labelled as having ‘learning difficulties’. The
theatre company, the Cutting Edge Theatre Initiative, developed a per-
forming arts degree entitled ‘Theatre Performance and Workshop
Practice’, with the aim of creating graduates who would take up roles in
the theatre-related industries.
The book, The Rhetoric of Widening Participation and its Impact,
recounts the experiences of the practitioners and uncovers silenced
voices and forgotten accounts. This struggle for performance is a jour-
ney of over two decades of insights of shared and individual experi-
ences. It reveals how earlier attempts encountered a range of barriers. It
examines the way discourses about ‘learning difficulties’ are produced
and reproduced to serve normative interests. The associated traditional
re–∞–search approaches are problematic, it has concluded well before
it started. It utilises a postmodernist conceptual framework drawing
upon the work of Weber, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari to explore
disability and the rise of the modern higher education institution. It
raises questions about the rhetoric of widening participation and exam-
ines the barriers faced by disabled people. It offers a postmodernist
reading, a social construction of the issues, presented as a creative burst,
beyond a choreographic text, a theatre production of data, challenging
habitual mis/understandings. Amidst the multiple interpretations, it