Understanding working-class student transitions to postgraduate taught education

近二十年来，高等教育机构、政策制定者和倡导组织一直在倡导扩大参与度(WP)。这一现象指的是希望增加处境不利或代表性不足的年轻人进入高等教育的活动和干预措施。这种努力至关重要，因为许多申请者面临许多持续存在的结构性和系统性障碍。这包括残疾学生、来自某些黑人、亚洲和少数族裔背景的学生，以及来自社会经济条件较差群体的学生。社会经济背景，通过社会阶层的框架来理解，对高等教育的进入和获得以及劳动力市场的结果有着特别持久的影响。然而，WP对话压倒性地集中在本科生的学习上。因此，我们对研究生教育，特别是研究生授课(PGT)课程(例如，硕士、硕士、PGCE)的理解受到了影响。鉴于PGT可以对更广泛的职业发展、技术专长和个人能力产生坚定的积极影响，这些影响远远超出了学术界的共鸣，这种知识真空令人担忧。已经进行了一些有限的研究，尽管这些研究往往是定量的、宏观的--所以忽略了学生的实际观点--或者探索了同质的环境。因此，尤其迫切需要高质量的定性洞察力，以探索工人阶级候选人在选择通过PGT时的更广泛的决策。这不仅将为不平等如何在一个研究不足的领域发挥作用提供新的、独到的学术见解，还将支持未来以证据为基础的政策制定，以促进教育平等和改善生活机会。研究问题：1.工薪阶层学生如何以及为什么决定是否进入PGT？2.工人阶级学生在过渡过程中的经历是什么？3.学生认为什么影响了他们长期的PGT持久力/成功？方法：教育不平等经常从波迪亚学派的角度进行理论分析(1977,1986；Reay 2002；Wakling 2005)。这项工作使用资本理论作为更广泛的理论框架的一部分，以创新对教育机会的理解。“主导话语”(Baumann 1996)的逻辑--国家和政策架构--将被福柯的“温顺机构”所拆解，以理解它希望如何将自治的、经济上合理的、富有成效的决定写在学生机构上(福柯1976；1979)。然而，福柯被正确地批评为将权力具体化，并掩盖了“地面上”的抵抗，鲍曼(1996)将其称为“平民话语”。工薪阶层的学生不能完全抵制政府，但他们可以智取政府。De Certeau(1984)的“战略”和“战术”将应用于来自PGT学生/申请者的主要证据，以考察“生存技能”和机构是如何以不完全推翻国家主导力量但破坏其总体逻辑的方式执行的。

For nearly two decades, Widening Participation (WP) has been championed by Higher Education Institutions, policy makers and advocacy organisations. This phenomenon refers to activities and interventions which hope to increase the number of young people from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds entering Higher Education (HE). Such efforts are of critical importance, because of the many persistent structural and systematic barriers that many applicants face. This includes disabled students, those from certain Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds and those from less socio-economically advantaged groups. Socioeconomic background, understood through the frame of social class, has a particularly persistent effect on HE entry and attainment, as well as labour market outcomes.However, the WP conversation has overwhelmingly focused on undergraduate study. Our understanding about postgraduate education, in particular postgraduate taught (PGT) courses (e.g. MSc, MA, PGCE) has suffered as a result. Given that PGT can have a staunchly positive effect on wider career progression, technical expertise and personal competencies which resonate far beyond academia, this knowledge vacuum is concerning. Some limited research has been conducted, although it tends to be quantitative, macro-level - so ignoring the student perspective 'on the ground' - or explore a homogenous setting. There is therefore a particularly pressing need for high-quality qualitative insight to explore the widerdecision-making of working-class candidates as they chose to move towards and through PGT. This will not only contribute new and original academic insight into how inequality operates in an under-researched field, but also support evidence-based policy making in future to enhance educational equality and improve life chances.Research questions:1. How and why do working-class students decide whether or not to enter PGT?2. What are working-class students' experiences of the transition?3. What do students feel affects their longer-term PGT persistence/success?Approach:Educational inequality is frequently theorised from a Bourdiesian perspective (1977, 1986; Reay 2002; Wakeling 2005). This work uses theories of capitals as part of a wider theoretical framework to innovate understanding of educational access. The logic of the 'dominant discourse' (Baumann 1996) - the state and policy architecture - will be unpicked using Foucault's 'docile bodies' to understand how the it hopes to inscribe self-governing, economically rational, productive decisions on student bodies (Foucault 1976; 1979). However, Foucault is rightly critiqued for reifying power and obscuring resistances 'on the ground', what Baumann (1996) terms 'demotic discourses'. Working-class students cannot fully resist the state, but they can outwit it. De Certeau's (1984) 'strategy' and 'tactics' will be applied to primary evidence from PGT students/applicants to look at how 'survival skills' and agency are performed in ways which do not fully overturn the State's dominant power yet undermine its overarching logic.