Policy misrecognitions and paradoxes: Developing more contextually attuned access and equity policies in Australian higher education

Abstract

In this paper we discuss recent policy attempts (in 2017) to introduce new frameworks for Australian higher education access and equity programs. These include introducing fees and a tendering process for access or ‘enabling’ programs, as they are called in Australia, and an evaluation framework based on an evidence hierarchy for widening participation or ‘equity’ programs. We illuminate how those policymaking attempts contradict the conditions required for equity-oriented programs because they misrecognise the experiences of the participants. We argue that different conceptual approaches to provision and evaluation are required for practitioners, providers and policymakers to shape future policy together ( Heimans and Singh, 2018 ) so that enabling and equity programs can be understood in ways that value the knowledges and experiences of the participants involved ( Sayer, 2011 ). Our aim is to contribute to work that disrupts the positioning of ‘objective’ policy evaluation frameworks vs ‘subjective’ practices because this decontextualises ( Burke and Lumb, 2018 ) and oversimplifies ( Tesar, 2016a ), and may serve paradoxically to reduce the programs’ impacts.

Teacher Education Policy, Ethics, and Quality of Graduates: Triad Entities for Remodeling General and Vocational Education and Training

“…This outcome may be likened to the fact that the conditions for the formulation and implementation of teacher education policy are defective. The findings of this research concur with the fact that there is a need to develop more contextually attained access and equity policies in higher education because of policy misrecognition (Bennett & Lumb, 2019). Similarly, the findings are inconsonant with the logical and theoretical reviews of Okafor and Chukwuedo (2015) on the need for policy reformation in TVET programmes.…”

“…In the perspective of teacher education programmes, it will be unprofessional to undermine the importance of policy and its effective implementation and reforms (Hall & Schulz, 2003;Misibi & Mchunu, 2013;Okafor & Chukwuedo, 2015), because the central focus of the teacher education programme is to train teachers with a sound mind, mentally accreted, ethically sound and academically/intellectually sound to train individuals for every sphere of human endeavours (Federal Republic of Nigeria, FRN, 2013). Thus, any teacher education programme with policies and ethics that do not portray generally accepted morals, ethics, and standard in contemporary society may be regarded as dysfunctional (Bennett & Lumb, 2019;Nwakaire, 2011;Omatseye, 2004).…”

Beyond ‘Aware and Paralysed’: Governance, Research and Leadership at the Nexus of Academic Development and Corporate Universities

“…Higher education in the anglosphere tends to be largely self-governing and creates large libraries of policy and procedure documentation to support this position (Heller & Heller, 2001;Karmel, 2001;Lisewski, 2021). Frequently policy in higher education institutions is criticised for a broad variety of reasons, from equity and inclusion (Bennett & Lumb, 2019;Brett, 2016;Clancy & Goastellec, 2007) through failings during disruptive change (Amoah & Mok, 2022;Ayton et al, 2021) and in 'some' cases through its disconnect from the practices and experiences of those working/studying in the institution (Bessant, 2002;Kift et al, 2010;Winter, 2009). The role for the academic developer sits somewhere between policy deviser, particularly in the spaces of academic integrity and teaching requirements/performance, and policy critic, constrained by rules they did not develop and had no say in (Di Napoli et al, 2010;East & Donnelly, 2012;Lisewski, 2021).…”

Obscenity and fabrication in equity and widening participation methodologies

“…Access to powerful knowledge is one way to conceive of WP as a justice‐oriented social project. Yet methodologies of evaluation need to acknowledge and be sensitised to this value‐laden field or they run the risk of misframing (Fraser and Honneth, 2003; Burke, 2012) personhoods, producing less than credible evidence and, paradoxically, re‐embedding the very inequalities the policy professes to engage (Bennett and Lumb, 2019). We would here tend towards Guba and Lincoln’s (1989989, p. 7) argument that, ‘to approach evaluation scientifically is to miss completely its fundamentally social, political, and value‐oriented character’.…”

“…In the Australian EWP context, there have been moves toward constructing a national evaluation framework (Bennett and Lumb, 2019) of the HEPPP premised on an evidence hierarchy wedded to experimental methodologies, seeking the establishment of ‘counterfactual’ or ‘control groups’ with ‘trial registries’. These types of commitments enjoy strong support in many contexts (Bickman & Reich, 2009), yet an extensive literature also challenges the epistemological, ontological and methodological claims upon which the above evidence hierarchy operates when adopting RCTs in social fields of investigation (e.g.…”