Transcript Document

A Family Affair?Conceptualising
First Generation Entry to
University
Professor Jocey Quinn
IPSE
Families and Universities
Some common assumptions
• Students are individuals
and university is about
individualisation and
differentiation from the
family
• Middle class‘Helicopter
parents’ are both powerful
consumers and irritants
• Working class parents are
passive and don’t exercise
choices for their children
Some consequences
• Students are viewed in
isolation, not as part of
familial networks
• Students are judged by
how far they can escape
the family-intellectually
and geographically
• Families are judged as
uncaring or too involvedbasically a problem
What does it mean to be a first
generation entrant?
• Implicit in widening
participation research but
little specific focus• No theoretical
conceptualisation or
empirical analysis
• First Generation Entry an
International Study draws
on international metaanalysis of evidence from
10 countries, empirical
UK study and theory from
socio-cultural theory on
the family to address this
• We define first generation
entrants as as “those for
whom the older
responsible generation(not
necessarily biological
parents) has not had an
opportunity for university
study at any time of their
lives”
• This definition recognises
changes in the
family/changes in HE
participation/ interrelation
with social class
First Generation Entry and
Family Theory
First generation families are
diverse but also often
structurally and
discursively stuck. Not the
fluid, untraditional
(Giddens) family“people
in the valleys they haven’t
got much confidence as a
community you know…you
get a sense of being
knocked down and your
family are the same,not
good enough,not good
enough”
But they are not necessarily
fragmented (Mason) or
individualised (Beck)
Our research supports
theories of reciprocal and moral
relationships within families
(Ribbens McCarthy)
“”As much as I was enjoying
the course and everything it was
starting
to upset me as well as my mum…
I think for her I had to leave”
Transition to HE as a Situated
Practice
So-Democratisation,
individualisation not most
useful concepts
Nor collapse of family/decay
of society-these families
showed cohesion
Rose (1996)challenges linear
idea of detraditionalisation
suggests look at situated
practices by which
families are made subjects
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Transition to HE as a Situated Practice
Internationally seen as time of attrition,
probation, risky stressful
In UK-culmination of aspirations, Part
of youthful seamless path to success
and citizenship
shed the old inadequate self-become
someone new-the first generation
entrant is one who must allow
themselves to be changed-therefore
emphasis on access and retention
But our research suggests they are
permanently in transition-as we all areand what we need is a flexible HE
system that mirrors this
Social Capital and First generation
entry
First generation entry fits a
dynamic reciprocal model- it
operates at multi-levels on
family and its development
They are pivotal/totemic figures for
family and culture
They have to-perfect themselves as
educated and employable,
reassure family it has invested
wisely, open horizons of family
and community, represent a
triumph of egalitarianism’everyone can make it’.
How is it the degree ‘branded’(Skeggs) desirable, even
obligatory-but also likely to be not
an eliite subject or institution.
Compelled to buy something that
may ultimately be of little valuebut can’t afford to be without it?
In the UK social capital may not lie in
the degree itself but in prevailing
discourse of aspiration and
mobility.
First generation students prove they
are winners not losers-insiders of
educational project brought into the
fold and with them the family-can
now be social capitalists and barter
Different forms of social capital
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Bonding social capital-first generation entry can cause fractures not glue-but
over time can help new sets of values within the family-perhaps more critical
but useful to renewal of the family
Bridging social capital-first generation entry predominantly seen as opening
student up into the world-but bridges structurally easier for some than others.
Theoretically university important means for connecting with difference and
making ideas strange and new in our culture
Linking social capital-Inhibited by lack of knowledge of He and how it works.
But being deprived of links to HE can decrease social capital eg in workplace
Imagined social capital- can be produced by shared outsider knowledge and
imagined links with mythological communities-Potentially first generation
entrants well placed to generate this. But only capital that is legitimated counts
so this is problematic
First generation entry generates diverse forms of social capital-but messy and
problematic
The Ambivalence of First
Generation entry
First Generation entry is contested, paradoxical and ambivalent
It involves students working on themselves to become disciplined bodies who will do what’s
expected and want to do it
But also evokes counter-memories and counter-narratives
“sociological ambivalence”(Connidis and McMullin, 2003)
“simultaneously holding opposing feelings or emotions that are due in part to countervailing
expectations about how individuals should act. Thus ambivalence reflects the
contradictions and paradoxes of social experience”
Moments of crisis and disruption make ambivalence visible
Parents want children to go to university/they fear the abandonment of the family
Children don’t want to go to university/they feel they must fulfil parents ambitions and
compensate for past inequalities
educated person/loyal family member
True to class and history/free to take family further
Enacted within socio-economic framework where access has replaced traditional industrybut no means clear this provides adequate compensation or reward
Findings from the empirical study
• Parents/carers had not had opportunities for
any university education but wanted it for
their children-they welcomed the
opportunities for family mobility but at the
same time only wanted children to be
“happy”
• They did not lack aspiration, but could not
ignore the constraints of poverty and class.
• “ Back then when my parents were in education
they never really had the opportunity to go, it was
straight into a job and that was it”
• “They think it will make me go further, give me
more opportunities job wise? My grandad says if I
finish my degree I can be anything. I could pack
shelves if I wanted to. I can have the choice,
whereas if I don’t do my course I wont have the
choice. You can go down, but I cant go up.”
Families setting limits
They wanted children to have access to He
that protected family survival and
sustainability and therefore had to set limits
as to where and how children could study
and live
• “I had to live at home because they couldn’t
afford anything else. Go to school come
home, go to university come home, nothing
different”
• “The people who lived in Halls were part of
the environment whereas I felt like a bit of
an outsider-even though I lived round here
and it was my town.”
You don’t have to go to
university
• University education was by no means
considered essential to a happy or fulfilled
life
• It was seen in terms of doing something
useful rather than becoming someone
different
• “ my family have a working attitude. They didn’t
really mind what I did as long as I wasn’t sitting
around the house doing nothing. If I was doing
something with my life they were happy enough
supporting me.”
• “You don’t have to have a degree to be intelligent
do you? My father is a highly intelligent man and
he’d read all the classics and he’d be constantly
learning”
Negative impacts
• Parental lack of opportunity for HE and lack
of knowledge about university norms and
systems impacts negatively upon student
ability to progress and even stay in HE
“ I just felt like I was out there and I was on my own
and there were not a lot of people who could help
me in any way”
“ We got the induction at university at the beginning
and there was some talk about it (student support)
but we were never told who it was so if I ever
needed I wouldn’t know where to find them”
“ It was like this is your course and you are in it-noone told me you could change”
Family support
• Parents however, attempted to help and
support their children as best they could
• It was parents who students turned to and
trusted for guidance when it came to
decisions about both entering and leaving
early
Were your family interested in what you were doing
at university? Did they ask you about it?
Yes they didn’t understand a lot of it but they were
keen to try
Do you feel they supported you when you were
there?
Yes they tried to help me when I was stuck or if I
needed any help. Again they didn’t really
understand it.”
Family responses to withdrawal
• Parents displayed flexibility and
contingency
• Both parents and students desired more
flexible options rather than being tied
irrevocably to 3 years uninterrupted study
• Are they the real lifelong learners?
“They are pretty broad minded…she said if I wasn’t
happy I should just do what I wanted to do”
“ They said they would support my decision
whatever it was”
“ Obviously they haven’t been to university and they
have got on with life and everything without it”
“ It just made me realise there are other areas to be
explored”
Conclusion
Research on families needs “multilevel analysis that connects
interactions within families to social structure and culture,
the importance of viewing conflict as a central feature of
social life, the need to focus on relationships and families
rather than on individuals exclusively and the necessity to
consider diversity in family life”
(Connidis and McMullin, 2003)
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• Rather than trying to fit the family to the university we
should focus on responding to the family –recognising how
it is socially and culturally constructed
• On a deeper level -a much more flexible and responsive
HE needs to be developed which will meet the needs of
diverse families