ERIC Number: EJ1222214
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0309-877X
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Available Date: N/A
Under-Tapped Potential: Practitioner Research as a Vehicle for Widening Participation
Gazeley, Louise; Lofty, Fay; Longman, Penny; Squire, Ruth
Journal of Further and Higher Education, v43 n7 p1008-1020 2019
Practitioners working to widen participation to universities in England are an increasingly important and professionally diverse group but surprisingly absent from the academic literature and lacking in access to bespoke professional development pathways in HE. In England current approaches within policy and research also tend to position them as gatherers of evidence with a mission to inform change rather than developing their capacity to be(come) agents of change in their own right. Drawing on the perspectives of three widening participation practitioners who had recently completed a research-based MA, this paper explores the opportunity that this provided to illuminate the complexities encountered in routine practice, contributing to positive change. Rather than being methodologically inferior, practitioner research emerged as highly complementary and in the case of WP its transformative potential is currently hugely under-tapped.
Descriptors: Access to Education, Foreign Countries, Professional Development, Professional Personnel, Research and Development, Theory Practice Relationship, Graduate Students, Disadvantaged
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom (England)
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Author Affiliations: N/A