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Injustice in our house: Addressing unequal student experiences and outcomes in Higher Education

Wednesday 24 October 2018, 3.30PM to -5.00pm

Speaker(s): Dr. Jessica Gagnon, Senior Research Fellow, University of Portsmouth

This year, the National Union of Students and Universities UK launched a joint initiative to tackle attainment gaps across the higher education sector. Universities UK also launched the Opportunities for Everyone campaign and the Office for Students has called for tougher targets and faster change in the sector to address the inequalities students face in higher education. Universities need to take action, but when inequalities are systemic, what should effective strategies for change look like?

Within this talk, Jessica will explore inequalities within higher education, focusing on initial findings from the multi-university project she currently leads, Changing Mindsets, and on findings from her PhD research. Changing Mindsets is a two-year Office for Students funded staff and student intervention which aims to address attainment gaps in student experiences, retention, progression, academic attainment and employability by changing mindsets and eroding stereotype threat (Steele, 1997) and implicit bias (Devine et al, 2012) as barriers to learning. The intervention workshops and evaluation research is underpinned by psychological (Dweck, 2017; Devine et al, 2012), sociological (Bhopal and Preston, 2012), and educational (Apple, 2015) concepts and theories. Jessica’s PhD research explored the university experiences of the daughters of single mothers who are first generation students through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with and reflective writings from 26 undergraduate students. The theoretical and conceptual frameworks upon which this study is built include feminist theory, intersectionality theory, and the concept of social exclusion. Drawing upon the findings, she will discuss suggestions for action to address injustice in our house. University strategies to address inequalities should be multifaceted, including multiple research-informed and evaluated approaches, and should be embedded within the institutional culture in order to contribute towards the possibility of real, lasting change.

Dr Jessica Gagnon is a sociologist of higher education whose research is primarily focused on inequalities and social justice in higher education, especially underrepresented students’ experiences. She is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education and Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. Jessica was a first-generation student raised in a working-class, single mother family. Her latest publication is: Gagnon, J. (2018). Unreasonable rage, disobedient dissent: The social construction of student activists and the limits of student engagement. Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, 11:1, 82-108.

Location: D/L/104 - Derwent SCR