The generation game: educational decisionmaking from an intergenerational perspective

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The generation game educational decision-making
from an inter-generational perspective
Widening Participation in HE across the Life
Course June 28th 2007

• Sue Heath, University of Southampton

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Structure of presentation

• Background
• Overview of our project
• Case study of a typical network
• Reflections on our approach

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Background to our research

• Policy and research interest in widening
  participation
• 2010 target of 50 of 18-30s
• Persistently uneven patterns of participation
• ESRC/HEFCE Teaching and Learning Research
  Programme initiative on WP

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Our interests

• WP literature has tended to focus on the
  experiences of participants, even when exploring
  non-participation
• Decision-making as a socially embedded practice
  linked to dispositions, attitudes and
  family/friendship-based practices shared across
  and within generations

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Non-Participation in HE Decision-making as an
embedded social practice

• To examine the extent to which HE is conceived as
  within the bounds of the possible for
  'potentially recruitable' but 'non-participating'
  adults
• To explore how attitudes to HE and decisions
  about participation are distributed across,
  embedded and negotiated within inter-generational
  'networks of intimacy'

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Project methodology

• Stage one desk research (lit reviews), analysis
  of large scale data sets, key informant
  interviews
• Stage two sixteen case study 'networks of
  intimacy 16 entry point interviews plus
  approx 5 additional interviews per network,
  followed by second entry point interviews

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Sampling strategy

• Level 3 as highest qualification (20 of
  economically active population, cf 50 below
  level 3)
• Not (yet) participated in HE
• Gender, life stage and other factors, including
  generation, SEG, employment status, age,
  occupation, geographical location

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Theoretical and conceptual orientations

• Social networks
• Habitus and forms of capital
• Life course and life stage
• Generation (history, biography, structure)

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The life course approach

• Location in time and place
• Linked lives
• Human agency
• Timing of lives
• Giele and Elder 1998 Methods of Life Course
  Research

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Lorraine Smiths nominated network members
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Location in time and placeLorraines parents

• Mother passed 11 in 1946 organisational impact
  of GCEs.
• Father attended secondary modern school from
  1944 apprenticeship
• HE participation rates in 1950 3

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Lorraine and her sister

• Lorraine failed 11 in 1970. School went
  comprehensive in 1971. Left at 16 with CSEs.
• Julie started at same comprehensive school in
  1972. Also left at 16 with CSEs.
• HE participation rates in late 1970s c13

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Lorraines children

• Cathy started comprehensive school in 1992 BTEC
  at separate sixth form 97-99 media studies
  degree, 1999-2002
• Paul started at same school in 1994 gained good
  GCSEs, but dropped out of sixth form in 2000
  after first year contemplating an Access course
  from September 07
• HE participation rates in late 1990s c32
• (now 43)

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Linked lives Dispositions towards education

• 'I didn't expect them to set the world on fire,
  we're not a clever clogs family (laughs), but no,
  we're a pretty average family, I s'pose (mother)
• Education as struggle for most of the family
• Achievement put down to effort rather than
  'natural' talent (nb gender)

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Human agency and timing of lives

• Two older generations have overwhelmingly pursued
  standardised biographies
• Cathy merging of choice and standardised
  biographies?
• Paul wasting his abilities or acting
  strategically (if out of time)?

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Network perceptions of HE

• Pride in Cathys achievements YET
• Too many people in HE
• Graduates accrue huge debts
• Graduates still can't get jobs
• Should be targeted at 'the clever ones'
• Value measured in instrumental terms

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Lorraines mother

• A lot if it is a waste of time and money. You
  get these youngsters going on courses and they
  finish it and they still can't get a job
• I think it would be better if the government
  stopped all this paying of... getting them all in
  debt... I don't think that's fair....
• They need fewer people to go to university and I
  think they ought to encourage the clever ones to
  go and it ought to be free. I dont think they
  ought to be helping people to go to university
  for things that they could do just as well
  without. I mean its all, yes, I've got to go to
  university, you've got to do this and you've got
  to do that and they end up doing jobs that they
  could have done without going.

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Lorraines sister

• 'I actually think there's too many people going
  to university. And I think there's a lot of
  averagely intelligent people going that aren't
  actually going to get anything out of it and
  they're going to spend an awful lot of time and
  money getting a mediocre degree that won't
  necessarily get them a job in what they want to
  do... I just think there's too many people going
  along that road for the amount of work there is'.
  
• 'I have probably said to the boys that I think a
  degree leaves you with a very large debt and not
  necessarily what you want to do in life, but I
  haven't suggested to them that they couldn't do
  it if they wanted to'.

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Cathy and Paul

• 'I took my shining new degree and I went back to
  the chip shop I worked in before I left (Cathy)
• 'She'd probably have the same job without the
  degree, I think (Paul)

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Reflections on our approach

• Luschers concept of ambivalence
• Ribbens McCarthy et al (2003)
• - family cultures
• - generational/standpoint positions
• - structural accounts
• Continuity and change

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• Within intergenerational research there is a
  creative tension between change and continuity,
  between processes of reproduction and innovation.
  In intergenerational families, values and
  practices are transmitted, while each generation
  may also develop or subscribe to its own
  (Brannen, 2003)

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Further information

• www.education.soton.ac.uk/nphe
• Working paper series
• Email Sue.Heath_at_soton.ac.uk