working for change in higher education: the possibilities for collaborative research
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Working for change in highereducation: the possibilities forcollaborative researchMarion Bowl aa University of Canterbury , Christchurch , New ZealandPublished online: 28 Aug 2008.
To cite this article: Marion Bowl (2008) Working for change in higher education: thepossibilities for collaborative research, Critical Studies in Education, 49:2, 185-198, DOI:10.1080/17508480802040118
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Working for change in higher education: the possibilities forcollaborative research
Marion Bowl*
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
(Received 22 February 2007; final version received 12 February 2008)
This paper explores the potential for conducting collaborative and criticalresearch in higher education which problematises the role and practices of theacademy in maintaining exclusion. It begins with a brief discussion of UKgovernment discourse on widening participation, and contrasts this with theresearch literature which indicates the persistence of exclusionary practices inhigher education, particularly in relation to social class. It then utilises aretrospective account of a small-scale participatory research study undertakenbetween 1996 and 2003 with a group of adult students from working class andminority ethnic backgrounds, to explore the possibilities for research which seeksthe collaboration of those who, in other traditions, are constituted as research‘objects’. The paper discusses some of the lessons from the research process andexplores the challenges for academics conducting research within the academy –challenges arising from their social positioning and their location in the academicfield, but also from the ‘scholarly gaze’ which they ‘cast upon the social world’.The paper advocates research which shifts the focus from deficit discoursesaround students, turns a critical and reflexive gaze towards academia andacademics, and directs its efforts towards challenging existing power structureswithin higher education.
Keywords: higher education; inequality; participatory research; wideningparticipation
Widening participation in UK universities: rhetoric and research
Since the election of the UK ‘New Labour’ government in 1997, on a pledge of
widening access to higher education (Department for Education and Employment
[DfEE], 1998; The Labour Party, 1996) there has been a stream of initiatives aimed
at increasing the proportion of higher education students from under-represented
backgrounds. Alongside the government’s preoccupation with widening participa-
tion has been growing research interest in this area [comprehensively reviewed in
Gorard et al. (2006)]. This has been facilitated by the increase in the number of
practitioners employed to widen participation within UK universities and also by
funding made available to develop and evaluate initiatives targeted at encouraging
more students from under-represented groups to enter and succeed in higher
education. During 2005, for example, the Economic and Social Science Research
Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme launched a funding initiative
specifically aimed at supporting research carried out at UK higher education
institutions which explores the themes of widening participation in, and fair access
to, higher education.
*Email: [email protected]
Critical Studies in Education
Vol. 49, No. 2, September 2008, 185–198
ISSN 1750-8487 print/ISSN 1750-8495 online
� 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17508480802040118
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Notwithstanding the government rhetoric and policy initiatives, the recent
research literature of class and higher education reveals a picture of continuing
working-class under-representation and exclusion (Bowl, 2003; Leathwood &
O’Connell, 2003; Nesbit, 2006; Reay, 2001; Reay, David, & Ball, 2005; Stuart,
2005). It suggests (Nesbit, 2006; Reay, 2001; Stuart, 2005) that the nature of school
‘choice’ and its implications for school experience and the shaping of educational
aspirations remains rooted in socio-economic differentiation which limits the
aspirations of working-class young people. It discusses (Reay et al., 2005) the
disjunctions involved for working-class people considering university entry. It
describes (Reay, 2001) the ‘status incongruity’ of working-class students who do
arrive at university and the difficulties of making the transition to educational
institutions whose practices are shaped by white middle class norms and values. It
argues (Bowl, 2003; Stuart, 2005) that for those who cross its threshold, university
may be experienced as an alien environment in which they are liable to be cast as
deficient and in need of remediation. It touches on the way in which the lives and
lifestyles of students and their university teachers are removed from each other and
on how working-class students (and some academics from working-class back-
grounds) continue to locate themselves as ‘outcasts on the inside’, in constant danger
of being ‘found out’ (Bowl, 2003; Reay, 2001). For those who do negotiate entry to
higher education, it appears to be a continued struggle for survival in the face of
limited institutional support (Leathwood & O’Connell, 2003). This raises the
question of how the insights of academic research can be put to work to inform a
wider understanding of the role of the academy in producing and perpetuating
exclusion and how research findings can contribute to bringing about change. It also
raises questions about academics’ positioning in the process of investigating and
theorising the student experience (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 40).
One potential pitfall for research in the field of widening participation is that it
tends to position the student as the ‘research problem’ (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p. 99)
and thus fails to problematise structural inequalities, buttressed by governmental,
institutional and academic policy, norms and practices. For example, Barbara
Merrill’s (1999) study of mature and working-class students at an English university,
refers to working-class culture as being ‘antithetical to education’ (p. 83). It goes on
to describe students as eventually adapting themselves to the requirements of
university, an assessment which glosses over the emotional and social costs of such a
process (Reay, 2001), and fails to acknowledge the role of the university in
maintaining the status quo. Another potential shortcoming of widening participa-
tion research is that, whilst highlighting continuing structural inequalities, it may fail
to problematise fully the role of academics themselves in maintaining the current
hegemony or to actively engage in developing and disseminating a critique which
might contribute to bringing about more fundamental change (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992; Bourdieu et al., 1999; Reay, 2001).
There are difficulties for academics conducting research on and within the
academy. The first is the extent to which the academic is steeped in the habitus
(Bourdieu, 1977, 1980) of academic life. Those who inhabit the universities as
professionals may, unwittingly or otherwise, have a vested interest in maintaining the
norms and privileges of university employment – however limited these privileges
may seem in the current climate of university work (Coledrake & Stedman, 1999;
Evans, 2004; Martin, 1999; Trow, 2000). Second, the outcomes of research into the
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student experience tend to be mediated by the perspectives of academics themselves,
which may dominate those of the students whose voices they are attempting to
‘capture’. Third, the structural conditions under which academics operate locate
them in different power positions from those whose experience they are researching –
those who have been denied the privileges endowed by access to the dominant
academic discourse (Lynch, 1999). Furthermore, in a research environment which
focuses on publication in prestigious academic journals, opportunities may be missed
for dissemination to a wider audience; research about the academy, conducted from
within academia may speak mainly to itself, through academic fora and publication,
thereby blunting its potential impact on wider debate and action around educational
inequality. Research which involves genuine partnership is likely to run against the
grain of academic convention where:
Time spent in ‘dialogue’ with marginalised groups does not produce career-rewardedpublications unless it can be reconstituted for that purpose. (Lynch, 1999, p. 26)
Hence the tendency to conduct research which:
… names people’s worlds from a distance, and often in a language that they do notknow. (Lynch, 1999, p. 41)
Lynch argues for research directed towards partnership. The challenge is to find
a platform for the voices of the less powerful to be heard above those of educational
institutions and structures. Likewise, Flecha and Gomez (2004) make the case for
dialogic research reflecting forms of knowledge which are invisible in the realm of
academia, and the use of this knowledge to develop socially useful theory and
contribute to change. Such an approach stands in opposition to methodologies
which regard people as objects of research, and which fail to take into account their
ability to name and understand their own realities. It also requires a critical appraisal
of both the conscious and unthinking perspectives and practices of academics
themselves (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 68–71) including the assumptions
inherent in their own positioning as ‘objective’ intellectuals, interpreting and
theorising – from ‘on high’ and at a distance – the social actions of others.
In order to explore the possibilities of research directed towards collaboration,
dialogue and change, this paper describes and reflects on a research project which
focused on collaborative data collection with a group of mature, working class and
minority ethnic university students. It discusses some of the lessons from the project
at a practical and theoretical level. It goes on to explore the possibilities for
conducting research which performs a political function – which does not constitute
the student, or changes in the composition of the student population as ‘the
problem’, and which does not stop short of revealing the structural constraints in
education, but which works to bring students, academics and others into dialogue,
debate and action around the exclusionary practices and purposes of higher
education.
Working towards collaboration
Between 1996 and 2006, I worked as a community-based adult educator, employed
by a UK government-funded initiative aimed at improving the prospects of people
living in an area of England labelled as ‘disadvantaged’, and characterised by poor
employment and educational opportunities. The project was implicitly aimed at
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working-class women of African-Caribbean or South Asian heritage. Its focus was
on enabling adults to progress to university. It offered sustained information, advice
and guidance about educational opportunities, help with applying and preparing for
university and a flexible ‘Access to Higher Education’ course. Once students were
accepted by a university, the project continued to support them to progress in their
studies. In my role as community-based educator and advisor, the educational
stories I was told by those who did eventually gain access to university were of
financial hardship and lack of time to manage the demands of study, childcare,
family expectations and employment. They were also stories of unclear academic
expectations and institutional indifference in the face of students’ struggles to stay on
course. However, my conversations with university-based academic colleagues
suggested to me that their assumptions about such students, their academic ability,
their knowledge of university norms, their attitudes to study and their life priorities,
did not coincide with the realities of their students who were often unclear about the
tacit expectations of academic performance and who experienced a sense of
alienation from curricula and teaching modes which marginalised their everyday
experiences of poverty and discrimination (Bowl, 2006).
As a community worker, influenced by the traditions of community education
and critical adult education (Alinsky, 1970; Brookfield, 2005; Freire, 1972), I wanted
to work with students to explore, critique and challenge the structures and practices
which perpetuate educational inequality and exclusion, especially in higher
education. This implied for me the rejection of approaches to research which seek
to uncover meaning and interpret the actions of research ‘objects’ whilst seeking to
maintain neutrality as the ‘expert’ interpreter (Usher, Bryant, & Johnson, 1997,
p. 186). It led me to attempt to develop a critical research methodology, seeking to
involve research participants in identifying those aspects of government and
institutional structures, policies and practices which acted to frustrate change, and
to widen this involvement into working for change (Lynch, 1999, p. 51).
As a researcher, I was informed by my reading of Lynch (1999) and Apple (1990)
who advocate a move away from research focusing on the ‘problem’ of minority
ethnic and working class ‘failure’ in education, in favour of an approach which links
individual experience of the education system and its related institutions with the
structural context in which education takes place, surfacing the taken-for-granted
ways in which inequalities inherent in day-to-day practices reproduce a sense of
exclusion for those labelled as ‘non-traditional’ university entrants.
In the first stage of the research I aimed to develop my understanding of the
issues from the students’ perspective through in-depth interviews and the recording
of informal discussion over the course of two years, focusing on students’
educational backgrounds and on their experiences once they entered university.
Two main themes emerged. The first revealed the students as frustrated participants
who had often been engaged in a long and tortuous process of trying to use
education to their advantage. The second set of themes arose from the students’
experiences of entering university – their need to juggle time and money, their
difficulties in understanding what was required of them and a perception of lack of
support (see also Leathwood & O’Connell, 2003).
The next phase of the research was an attempt to build out of students’
individual stories a collective narrative of what it is to be a mature ‘non-traditional’
student (Bowl, 2003). I invited them to share their experiences of university entry as a
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group, and to discuss my emerging analysis from the first stage of the research (Mies,
1983). I asked those who had either moved on to university, or were about to do so,
if they would be willing to be involved in planning and contributing to a conference
aimed at promoting discussion between mature students, academics and policy
makers. This seemed to be a way in which the students’ shared concerns could bearticulated; at the same time, it could provide a platform for disseminating their
views (Lynch, 1999, p. 26). Thirteen students agreed to help with the conference.
Preparation for the conference involved four group sessions whose aim was to agree
on the key issues which should be raised, to help the students develop skills of public
speaking and to collect further data on their experiences of university entry.
Students speaking
The resulting conference, which attracted an audience of around 80 students,
academics and university policy makers, focused on a report of the preliminary
research findings and the verbal contributions of nine mature women students, whohad experience of unemployment or low paid work, were parents or carers, were
from minority ethnic backgrounds and were the first in their immediate family to
enter university. They acted as keynote speakers. Their contributions clustered
around three themes: lifestyle change, financial hardship, and relationships with the
institution [a detailed account of these themes can be found in Bowl (2003)].
The decision to aim for university entry involved re-thinking many aspects of
their lives. There was awareness that gaining a degree or professional qualification
was likely to guarantee a better financial future; however, there were risks. From thestudents’ perspective, the onus was on them, rather than on the institution, to take
account of the practical difficulties of reorganising life around the demands of the
university timetable. Moving from state benefit to student loan drastically changed
the students’ financial situation, meaning that, particularly in their first term, they
were dogged by financial uncertainty. Concerns outside university often eclipsed
academic concerns and, although there were variations between institutions, the
overall impression gained was that students were on their own in dealing with their
difficulties.There was also confusion about the norms and requirements of university study
and the implicit nature of academic expectations. The theme ‘what do they
[university teachers] want’ emerged strongly in accounts of students’ attempts to
tackle assignments. On the whole, university teachers were experienced as distant
and disengaged from student concerns and the tutorial role was not experienced as
supportive. As conference speakers the students took the opportunity to speak, not
just about their experience of university courses, teaching, studying and assignments.
The focus of their concerns was the impact of university on the totality of their lives –their daily struggles for survival both outside and within the institution.
Dialogue
Conference delegates were then divided into workshop groups. The aim of the
workshops was to encourage face-to-face discussion, to open up a space for dialogue
between people located in different power positions and to facilitate the joint
production of realistic recommendations for policy and practice (Kemmis, 2006;
Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005). Each group was co-facilitated by a student and held a
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mix of students and educational professionals. Workshop topics focused on four
areas of concern raised by the students during the course of organising the
conference. The students as parents workshop explored full- and part-time students’
difficulties in obtaining and paying for childcare and the failure to recognise the
needs of parents and children in university planning and policy. The part-time and
distance learning workshop discussed the isolation felt by those who lacked the
informal support networks to sustain them in their studies. The workshop entitled
managing the transition considered how universities could ease the difficulties of
entry to university and better prepare students for the demands of university study.
The fourth workshop concentrated on strategies for survival – ways in which
potential students could prepare themselves for university and how they could build
support for one another. The recommendations from these workshops were then
shared with all the delegates in the final plenary session of the conference and were
collated in written form to be disseminated after the conference was over.
Dissemination
A neglected aspect of research into higher education conducted from within
academia is its dissemination. Whilst student perspectives feature prominently in the
literature of widening participation cited earlier, it is questionable to what extent this
literature reaches a wider audience – the family, the student, the non-researching
teacher in further or higher education, the policy maker or the politician. Yet
collaborative research, and research directed towards change, should include a
consideration of the audience for such research (Kemmis, 2006; Usher et al., 1997,
p. 201).
Four potential audiences were identified for the purpose of disseminating the
outcomes of the research process described above. First, it was important that those
who had been involved with the research and the organisation and conduct of the
conference were able to see that their recommendations had been listened to and
accurately summarised, not merely to enhance validity through ‘recycling’ of analysis
(Lather, 1991, p. 68), but also because they were co-participants in the conference
process and therefore part-owners of its outcomes. Second, there was a potential
wider community audience: those who aspire to university and those who support
them in fulfilling their aspirations. For this audience, research which is disseminated
in an accessible fashion can inform, guide or stimulate discussion and action. Third,
information needed to be directed towards those who influence university policy and
practice at institutional level – those who teach and those who govern, manage and
administer higher education – to tell ‘unwelcome truths’ (Kemmis, 2006) and to offer
a mirror through which they might examine their own unrecognised exclusionary
practices.
These three audiences are often overlooked in the concluding phases of a
research process. The conference report and workshop recommendations which
emerged at the end of this part of the research process were therefore sent out
not only to conference delegates, but also to approximately 2000 educational
institutions, community organisations, politicians, students and other interested
individuals and a conference newsletter, with brief ‘sound bite’ observations and
recommendations was produced and distributed to a similar readership. The fourth
audience – the academic audience – was addressed through the conventional means
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in order to contribute to the body of research in the field of widening participation:
conference papers were offered; articles were written for publication in academic
journals (Bowl, 2000, 2001, 2006) and a book (Bowl, 2003) was published.
Looking back: reflecting on the collaborative research process
This section offers a retrospective assessment of the research process described,
before going on to discuss the possibilities for critical and collaborative research
(Carr & Kemmis, 1986, 2005; Kemmis, 2006) in the current higher education climate.
The experience of this small-scale piece of research suggests that it is possible to work
from uncovering the individual stories of students, towards developing a collective
narrative which challenges over-simplistic views of university students’ lives and
concerns. It can surface aspects of experience which frequently remain invisible
(Flecha & Gomez, 2004), and provide an opportunity to identify issues from the
perspectives of those affected by them. It provides a space for people located in
different positions of power within university education to come together and listen
to one another (Kemmis, 2006); it invites students, academics and policy makers to
enter a dialogue among equals. Face-to-face meeting and critical dialogue offer the
possibility for unsettling comfortably-held assumptions (Fenwick, 2006); whilst
university teachers are accustomed to seeking and receiving individual course
evaluations, they less frequently hear the collective voice of their students ‘talking
back’ (hooks, 1989) within the academy. It can provide a platform for the expression
of views that are rarely given a public hearing within academia (Lynch, 1999, p. 26)
and can facilitate the production of recommendations for change and future action
at the local level. The dissemination of the outcomes of research through a variety of
channels may have an impact on those who receive and read them. This, in turn, may
open up further space for dialogue contributing directly to individual changes in
view and, indirectly to policy change. However, reflecting on the research process
also raises issues about research purposes and processes which require further
consideration.
Research which seeks the direct involvement of student participants can tend
towards tokenism: granting minimal participation whilst holding on to the power in
the research situation. In the case of the research process described above, for
example, the activity was researcher-initiated and organised. Collaboration was
invited rather than being assumed at the outset. Participation and collaboration, like
empowerment and social justice, are often spoken of as absolutes – either achieved or
not achieved. In reality it is not quite this simple. ‘Total’ participation is hard to
achieve; it also may not be desired by participants who have competing priorities.
One practical and personal lesson from the research therefore is the importance of
working consciously for collaboration, negotiating in advance (Lynch, 1999, p. 44)
the extent and type of involvement and degree of responsibility which collaborators
are prepared to take on: critically reflecting on the aims of seeking participation, and
being transparent about its limits.
A further issue in research of this nature lies in how data are used to represent the
‘voices’ in the research process. In-depth individual and group interviews as data
collection methods are common in research on student experience and they can
offer a forthright counterweight to academic and policy discourse on widening
participation. However it can be tempting to present data in a way which may
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appear to be a powerful account of a situation or phenomenon, but which may be
the appropriation of the words of others, out of their intended context (Ellsworth,
1989; Griffiths, 1998; Opie, 1992; Troyna, 1994). This highlights the importance of
recycling both data and analysis (Lather, 1991). It also suggests that greater
emphasis needs to be placed on collaborative writing in such research (Canaan in
Canaan & Shumar, 2008; Christensen & Atweh, 1998), on extending the dialogue
beyond the period of data collection and analysis, and on considering how other
protagonists in the research – particularly the researcher – are written into the
research ‘story’ (Usher et al., 1997).
At the level of analysis it is also important to recognise that however close the
collaboration between researcher and researched, the researcher is theorising
through the lens of her ‘objectivising gaze’ (Bourdieu in Wacquant, 1989, p. 32);
there is a gap between her theoretical analysis and the common-sense understandings
of those whose social world is being studied. The lesson here is the need for the
researcher to reflect upon and offer an account of the gap between her intellectual
theorising and the day-to-day strategies of those whose experience she is researching;
an account which acknowledges the partiality, rather than the neutrality, of
academic accounts.
Looking back: researching for change
One problem with research which claims to be directed towards change is identifying
when and for whom change has taken place, and whether and for whom change is
desirable (Gore, 1993). In the context of the study described here, change could be
interpreted in a number of ways: changes in students’ consciousness, or in their
personal capacity to articulate their concerns publicly and to work with others to do
so; changes in policy and practice in response to research intervention; or changes in
the researcher’s own perspective on the issues and the research process.
Writers on participatory research tend to concentrate on the potential of such
research to raise the consciousness of those who are deemed ‘disadvantaged’
(Reason, 1994), and, it has been remarked (Fenwick, 2006), the urge to empower is
strong among radical educators and critical researchers. In the research process
described above there was some evidence that, as a result of their involvement,
student participants’ public speaking skills and their confidence as university students
were enhanced, and mutually supportive links were forged between students, on the
basis of their shared concerns; the collective expression of views by those who may
feel individually powerless (Kemmis, 2006) seems to be a worthwhile and achievable
aim. And whilst claims for the empowering capacity of such research need to be
made with caution (Ellsworth, 1989), there seemed to be evidence that the experience
of ‘speaking out’ through the research process can have implications beyond the
research itself. However, in seeking to prescribe or proclaim empowering outcomes for
others, perhaps the point is missed that in the coming together of different views, new
and unthought-of possibilities may emerge – not just for those deemed ‘disadvan-
taged’, but also for those located more powerfully (Fenwick, 2006, p. 20) – and these
possibilities and outcomes cannot be predicted or claimed by the researcher.
It can be tempting too, for the researcher to over-estimate the potential influence
of critical research on the overall thrust of government or institutional policy. In
relation to changes in policy and practice, student-led conferences have the capacity
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to promote dialogue between the recipients of established university policies and
practices and those who implement policies at a local level. The dissemination of the
outcomes of research through a variety of channels may have an impact on those
who receive and read them. This, in turn, may contribute to wider campaigns for
changes in policy and practice. Thus it may contribute indirectly to subsequent
policy change. Conferences, however, are collections of people who come together
briefly and then return to their own environments; they are collective in only the
most limited sense. Their ability to challenge embedded power structures and
transform their own or others’ well-worn exclusionary practices are limited. At the
time of writing, UK higher education seems as far away as ever from offering
equality of access, experience and outcome from university study: the stratification
of UK universities is now a matter of accepted fact (Thomas, 2005). And the tide has
turned against mature students, as policy is focused on campaigns to encourage
13–18 year-olds to consider university as an option rather than opening up higher
education to people of all ages. A further lesson from the research process is that,
whilst the promotion of dialogue between the student and the academy can raise the
issues, the onus is on practitioners and researchers located within the academy to
problematise their own standpoints, assumptions and practices and to be actively
involved in analysis and critique of academic institutions and their power structures
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Nesbit, 2006; Reay, 2001).
The journey through the collaborative research process has the potential to
change the researcher’s own perspective and this has indeed been the case for me.
First, it has revealed how institutional habitus can maintain and perpetuate
exclusion whilst claiming to do the opposite. This, in turn has led me to question the
role of academics in reproducing structural inequality and the extent to which they
are complicit in maintaining the status quo, problematising students rather than
themselves. It has raised questions for me too about the extent to which those who
do not experience class or ‘race’ based oppression first-hand can truly be regarded as
carrying forward the struggle for change in education, or whether they are merely
‘sympathetic fellow travellers’ (Brookfield, 2005, p. 111). This presents a dilemma.
On the one hand, is it legitimate to carry out research which invites the participation
of those who are located in different power positions from oneself? On the other
hand, is it legitimate to carry out research in the field of inequality without
prioritising the views of those who are marginalised? For critical researchers, the
latter position is untenable. However, the former involves a ‘self-conscious struggle’
(Hill Collins, 1991, p. 27) to reject dominant conceptions and perspectives. It also
requires ‘dialogue and principled coalition’ with others (Hill Collins, 1991, p. 37) to
explore how relationships of power and subordination are maintained within the
educational sphere, and how they can be challenged. It requires the adoption of an
approach which seeks ‘reciprocity’ (Lather, 1991; Oakley, 1981) and the rejection of
the ‘subject/object’ asymmetry in the research process (Fals-Border & Rahman,
1991, p. 5). Further it requires that one questions the basis on which one chooses to
research the experience of others, and one’s own social positioning in the research
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). But, if academics – and particularly those who
research and teach in the field of educational inequality – do not work towards
solutions, then they are likely to remain part of the problem (Bourdieu et al., 1999;
Nesbit, 2006; Reay, 2001). Critical educators therefore need to consider how,
together, they can make the best of their efforts.
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Looking forward: participatory research in higher education
What are the current possibilities for academics working within a methodological
framework which is collaborative and critical and prepared to tell ‘unwelcome
truths’ (Kemmis, 2006)? Is such an approach possible in the current market-driven
research climate in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere (Codd, 2006;
Harris, 2005) where the emphasis is on published product rather than the inclusivity
of the research process, and on academic talking to academic, rather than any wider
audience? Is it realistic in university climates where the emphasis is on preparing
students to meet the expectations of the academy, rather than changing the nature
and structure of universities to better meet the needs of a more diverse student body
(Thomas, 2005)? Is it feasible in an academic work climate characterised by
performitivity, ‘fordist work relations’ (Avis, 2003, p. 321) and a culture of blame –
in which the government blames academics for their lack of accountability,
academics blame students for their lack of preparedness, and the embedded
structural patterning of inequality and its political bases are conveniently overlooked
(Avis, 2006)?
This final section of this paper discusses the implications of operationalising such
an approach. It offers a number of suggestions as to how our efforts might be guided
and supported: through the processes of systematic (Lynch, 1999) and epistemic
reflexivity (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) and through supportive and critical
dialogue within and outside academia (Canaan in Canaan & Shumar, 2008; Neary &
Parker, 2004).
Research is necessarily a selective process; individual researchers make choices
(implicitly or explicitly) about theoretical position, research topic and approach
which are dictated by personal, as well as political perspectives. In collaborative and
critical research these choices need to be explicit – choices aimed at serving the
interests of those who do not generally have access to academic discourse and
political power and who may sometimes be used by researchers as a means to further
their own academic careers (Lynch, 1999). Such research deliberately engages with
issues as defined by communities and by those who do not enjoy the privileges
afforded by ‘academic freedom’ (Martin, 2005). It seeks to surface previously unseen
and unheard points of view. It implies building alliances within and outside the ‘field’
(Bourdieu, 1966) of higher education and consciously working towards ensuring that
the needs and interests of those normally constructed as the objects of research,
guide the aims and direction of research (Flecha & Gomez, 2004, p. 136). It means
rethinking assumptions about research design and methods of data collection and
questioning the extent to which those that researchers tend to call ‘participants’ are
actually invited to participate in the research process. For, as Lynch argues:
Only when the voice of those who are named is heard at the research planning table canwe begin to know how to develop emancipatory practice. (Lynch, 1999, p. 40)
However, the adoption of a research stance which is critical in relation to social
structures and which claims to turn the tables on the traditional researcher–
researched relationship does not absolve the researcher from criticism – of tokenism,
of manipulation or of unwarranted claims to empower. Such research requires the
researcher to be honest about the shortcomings and limitations of their efforts. It
calls for what Lynch (1999, p. 16) refers to as: ‘systematic reflexivity, a constant
analysis of one’s own theoretical and methodological assumptions’, as well as one’s
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actions, to ensure that one remains alert to the importance of people defining their
own reality in their own terms and contributing to changing it. It also requires acritique of one’s claims to ‘make a difference’ through research and instead to
consider what the researcher can learn from listening to what she is told, and how
this new-found knowledge can be used beyond the research itself.
To work within a critical and collaborative framework also implies a conscious
decision to turn one’s critical gaze away from students and towards educational
systems institutions, and practices (Kemmis, 2006). It demands what Bourdieu refers
to as ‘epistemic reflexivity’, which goes beyond self-reflexivity. It calls for an
examination of the systematic biases in one’s personal and social position as anacademic – the biases of class, gender and ethnicity, the bias of status and location
within the academic ‘field’ and the bias of ‘scholastic stance’ which places the
researcher as outside viewer upon the ‘spectacle’ of social reality being explored.
Awareness of these biases, argues Bourdieu (in Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 39),
lays an imperative on the critical social scientist to undertake a systematic
exploration of the:
… unthought-of categories of thought which delimit the thinkable and predetermine thethought as well as guiding the practical carrying out of the inquiry.
In other words, the critical social scientist must make problematic her own
standpoint: ‘objectivizing’ her ‘objectivizing point of view’ (Bourdieu in Wacquant,
1989, p. 33).
Finally, such an approach calls for the processes and outcomes of research tobe put to the service of public debate and constructive critique. Critical and
collaborative research runs against the grain of the competitive and individualising
nature of the current academic climate. The critical researcher runs the risk of
isolation and marginalisation within her institution and in the wider academic field.
The building of wider national and international networks of critical researchers,
teachers, practitioners and students (Canaan in Canaan & Shumar, 2008) seems
essential to support and to link together small, locally-focused efforts in critical
collaborative research, such as the one described in this paper.
Conclusion
The presentation of this paper, in this format, using these forms of academic
discourse, is in itself ironic. There are unlikely to be many working-class
undergraduate student readers to offer their critical view of the processes described.
This in itself tells us something about the ‘game’ of research and the value placed on
participation and activism. However, the aim of writing this paper has been to reflect
and to invite reflection and discussion with others on some of the issues involved in
the process of researching critically and collaboratively within higher education, and
on how such research might be developed and sustained.
Collaborative research is time consuming. It is not ‘quick and dirty’ research of
the sort which is often commissioned to evaluate widening participation initiatives. It
involves doing things the hard way, building alternative alliances outside academia,
taking time to negotiate the terms on which people are prepared to participate and
consulting on appropriate approaches to investigating issues which are of concern to
people who have been marginalised in education. The data which such research
yields are likely to be rich, collected by working alongside people (not ‘objects’) who
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are both informed about the issues being researched and committed to creatingpositive change. It involves a self-conscious awareness and critique of one’s own
position in the research, one’s own relationship to the researched and one’s tendency
to produce an account of reality which, whilst powerful may be a product of one’s
own objectivising point of view.
Critical research involves the possibility of being regarded as marginal in one’s
academic community, where different criteria are used to measure success and wherecriticism of institutional policy and practice may not be appreciated. However, it
offers the possibility of working within broader, supportive networks of people
located both inside and outside academia. In this sense, it offers the opportunity to
speak and be listened to beyond one’s own narrow academic community and to learn
from listening to the perspectives of others. Finally, it calls for a move from
justifying ourselves – in the tradition of the thesis and the peer reviewed paper, to
opening ourselves up to constructive critique – and entering a different form of
debate within and outside the university. And ultimately, such debate and critiqueoffer up the possibility of transformation in education.
Notes on contributor
Marion Bowl is currently a Senior Lecturer in Adult and Community Education at the
University of Canterbury, New Zealand. She was formerly project manager of a community-
based access to higher education initiative in Birmingham, UK and a Senior Lecturer in
Education at the University of Birmingham.
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