Care‐experienced students in higher education: A case for re‐figuring higher education worlds to widen access and further social justice

Abstract

While the higher education (HE) literature highlights how the sector is designed for a typified imagined student, the issues are particularly acute for care‐experienced students. The dominant HE discourse assumes that all students will be able or want to participate in ‘stereotypical’ aspects of student life and have stable networks to offer emotional, practical and financial support. Here, we deploy Holland et al.'s formative heuristic of figured worlds to interrogate how socially and culturally constructed realms and artefacts establish ‘givens’. People ‘figure’ who they are through navigating different realms which are conceptually and materially produced. We take particular inspiration from figured worlds’ focus on unequal power in social space; socially and institutionally endorsed understandings of how things ‘should’ be celebrate certain subjectivities and ways of ‘doing’ university while marginalising others. The paper discusses biographical‐narrative interviews and collaborative analysis with six students with experience of foster, residential and kinship care, all studying at a post‐1992 English university. Crucially, conversations highlighted participants’ exceptional maturity, educational passion and tenacity. Yet challenges remained. This paper focuses on four domains where our participants felt forced into peripheral subjectivities: student accommodation, wellbeing support, societies and curricula. Halls became hostile spaces through high rents, late‐night/loud drinking cultures and their transitory nature. Wellbeing services felt inimical when designed for quotidian anxiety and stress, neglecting more complex stories. Similarly, society membership fees, requisite team kits and ‘cliques’ materially and symbolically constricted participants. Finally, specific areas of curricula and pedagogical delivery posed problems, namely when traumatic and/or painful content (e.g. domestic violence and safeguarding) was not assumed to relate to anyone in the classroom. Despite these barriers, participants continued to navigate their HE journeys with skill and creativity. Although this paper's perspective is partial, we argue for theorising the holistic student experience through the lens of figured worlds. This reveals how norms and practices make dominant subject positions hard to access for care‐experienced students, contradicting and undermining their obvious value. In concluding, we discuss how locating problems as structural speaks back to deficit discourses, challenging us to reimagine and reconfigure HE through alternative discourses of worth. Attention is needed within and beyond the classroom; students’ lives are multifaceted and played out in multiple figured worlds.

Theorising educational engagement, transitions and outcomes for care‐experienced people: Introduction to the special issue

“…They explain that when such definitions are adopted, others who 'share similar experiences and social positions nearby' such as those estranged from their families, will not be formally recognised in institutional equity policies and initiatives and are therefore excluded from support. Child and Marvell's (2024) research complements these observations: using figured worlds (Holland et al, 1998) as a conceptual lens, they argue how reductionist thinking about care experience in the UK's higher education sector can alienate and exclude care-experienced students. Bunn and Fuller (2024) argue for a more contextualised 'critical praxis' approach that reflexively works with students to identify 'the ways that people from within a category intersect with other experiences'.…”

“…While the papers within this special issue cover an interesting variety of topics individually, when taken together, the commonalities between them highlight pertinent issues experienced by those with a background of care across educational settings and national contexts. These include inclusivity and recognition in the definitions used to identify someone as 'care-experienced' (Brown & Shelton, 2024;Bunn & Fuller, 2024;Child & Marvell, 2024), the importance of relationships for educational success (Brown & Shelton, 2024;Collins et al, 2024;Marion & Tchuindibi, 2024;Matchett & Appleton, 2024;Sandford et al, 2024) and the risk-laden nature of transitions through education for those with an absence of support (Melkman, 2024;Mølholt et al, 2024).…”

“…He proposes that there is a need to support care-experienced school pupils through 'strong, caring relationships built upon trust and respect between school staff and students' to fulfil children's attachment needs; these relationships can provide a buffer against the negative consequences of insecure parent-child attachments and subsequently enhance their learning and well-being. In identifying who would benefit from such proposals though, it is important to consider the earlier points raised by Bunn and Fuller (2024), Child and Marvell (2024) and Brown and Shelton (2024)-that rigid definitions can exclude those who have encountered circumstances that intersect with care experience. Brown and Shelton's ( 2024) work provides an excellent example of this, where those who are adopted from care are often no longer recognised as needing support; their care-experience becomes 'hidden' once they move into family contexts deemed as stable.…”