Joining the dots between teacher education and widening participation in higher education

Abstract

In England and Australia, higher education institutions are required to widen participation in higher education by including students from under-represented and non-traditional groups. Widening participation is most effective when it starts early – during compulsory education and other forms of pre-tertiary education. Higher education institutions are providers of pre-service and in-service teacher education, and therefore have the potential to ‘join the dots’ between teacher education and widening participation. Two approaches are identified: recruiting more diverse cohorts of students to teacher education through targeted, relevant and engaging pre-entry experiences in schools and communities with low rates of progression to higher education, and preparing all teachers to better support the tenets of widening participation through their professional roles in schools, colleges and communities. This paper focuses on the former, using a structural theoretical lens to understand low participation by particular groups of students. This framework is used to analyse two empirical examples, one from Australia and one from England. The paper concludes by recommending a more systemic approach to widening participation through teacher education, and makes practical suggestions informed by theory, practice and research.

Keywords:

• Teacher taster programmes
• pre-service teacher education/initial teacher training
• newly qualified teachers
• widening participation
• access to higher education
• literacy
• students as advocates/champions/ambassadors

Notes

1. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2072

2. A literacy event can be viewed as any occasion/activity where the written text is essential to the activity being carried out; for example, consider the list we wrote to help us remember what we needed to buy from the supermarket, and the writing of this paper needed to recognise the research, in terms of disseminating our finding to the world of academia.

3. Lifelong learning has now become a ubiquitous part of the rhetoric of contemporary educational policy, research and professional discourse. Lifelong learning crosses sectors, promoting learning beyond traditional schooling and throughout adult life. It refers to all educational provision and all forms of learning, including adult learning in formal and informal contexts. This paper takes LL to be adult learning, widely defined.

4. UCAS Teacher Training, formerly the Graduate Teacher Training Registry (GTTR), is the subsidiary of UCAS responsible for student applications from graduates (and those about to graduate) to providers of initial teacher training in the UK.