‘Let the Right Ones In!’: Widening Participation, Academic Writing and the Standards Debate in Higher Education

Abstract

This article challenges the frequently expressed concern that widening participation has contributed to a general 'dumbing down' of higher education in English universities. In particular, it explores the implications of a long-standing 'moral panic' about the poor quality of students' academic writing, particularly in the post-1992 'new' universities, which have been raised in various academic reports and countless media articles. A vampire metaphor is used throughout the article to highlight ways in which assumptions about these falling standards in undergraduates' academic writing feed on the foundations of a long-standing, albeit implicit, distrust of the growth in the sector on elitist, ideological grounds. The article investigates how academic writing practices, whilst difficult to define, nonetheless wield a 'disciplinary power' over lecturers and students. This includes a discussion about how a situated, New Literacy Studies approach to academic writing development challenges the view that students' academic writing standards are falling. The article suggests that all universities have a responsibility to acknowledge and develop the different literacies that students, especially widening participation students, bring with them to university.

The degree project in Swedish Early Childhood Education and Care – what is at stake?

“…Like in the UK, in Sweden the widened access of first-generation students to higher education in the last few decades has led to a standards debate on the quality of academic writing (Forsberg and Lundgren 2006;French 2013). In professional programmes, universities must deal with both academic knowledge and employability skills (Steven and Fallows 1998;Knight and Yorke 2004).…”

“…The multiple and often contradictory demands on 'academic writing' should be critically examined in order not to collide with the finality (Meeus et al 2004;French 2013) or bring tension (Schryer 1994) into ECEC education. We question whether it is ethically, professionally and academically just that decisions on the form and contents of the degree project in vocational higher education sectors, like ECEC programmes, should principally lie with representatives of traditionally non-vocational academic disciplines (cf.…”

“…With a socio-cultural perspective, researchers in the field of New Literacy Studies highlight that perceptions of academic literacies are changing along with changes in society (Barton et al 2000;Ivanič 2004;Lea and Street 1998;Burke 2008;French 2013). Academic literacies and discourses on writing are seen as embedded in academic contexts as well as social practices; academic writing is considered to have social purposes and values which include students' personal knowledge and feelings.…”

ECEC Students’ Writing Trajectories: Academic Discourse and “Professional Habitus”

“…The process of learning to write involves ways of thinking, and drawing on literacy practices and academic discourses that students may be unfamiliar with, or do not recognise as relevant to their career (Meyer & Land, 2005). Various studies on writing in vocational programmes indicate that students in fields of care and connected to social solidarity and ethics develop a vocational identity, but are unlikely to identify with academic writing and critical thinking (Barton & Hamilton, 2005;Burke, 2008;French, 2013). Macken-Horarik, Devereux, Trimingham-Jack, and Wilson (2006) see first-generation students' engagement in everyday, academic, and professional discourse as crucial for moving between ("dialogue with") different discourses.…”

“…What the students seem to express here is a tension between their understandings of pupils' and teachers' activities in "real" settings, including social solidarity and ethics as embedded in the vocational professions (see Barton & Hamilton, 2005;Burke, 2008;French, 2013) and the recommended "neutral" attitude of researchers in an academic discourse.…”