Under-represented students’ university trajectories: building alternative identities and forms of capital through digital improvisations

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on widening participation in relation to under-represented student negotiations of and trajectories through university by drawing attention to students’ informal digital practices for studying and social interactions associated with undergraduate student life. Drawing on a two-year UK study and Holland et al.’s [1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press ] framing of agency, culture and identity making across ‘figured worlds’, we consider the importance of informal studying and socio-academic practices and the role of digital technologies in fostering agency and identity making. The significance of this study lies in revealing the particular importance of improvisation and collective agency for under-represented students participating in university. Whilst acknowledging that the technologies can also reproduce social inequalities, we conclude that, through the increasing interconnectedness of academic and social interactions, the digital improvisations offer creative opportunities for students to negotiate spatial, social and academic inequalities and lead to new/alternative identities and develop stronger social, cultural and educational capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Widening participation
• agency
• digital cultures
• social networks

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the 31 co-researchers who took part in the [removed] study for their inspiration and invaluable contributions to this work. Many thanks are also due to Professor Sheila Trahar and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The term ‘under-representation’ avoids a deficit positioning and moves away from a discourse of disadvantage.

2 Our interpretation of ‘local’ was broader than that of UKU, which only focuses on two (neighbouring) postcode groups. We felt this was too narrow and included those students within travelling distance and who were commuting in (the furthest was 70 miles away).

3 Evernote allows users to capture, organise and share notes, including video, photographs and audio files and synchronise between devices. See http://www.evernote.com

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an internal widening participation research fund at the university where the study was conducted.