‘Possible Selves’ in practice: how students at Further Education Colleges in England conceptualise university

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a project in the North of England that looks at the college-to-university decision-making processes of non-traditional students through the conceptual lens of ‘Possible Selves’, as initially developed by Markus and Nurius (1986) and applied to higher education by Harrison (2018), Henderson (2019) and others. Our data involves in-depth interviews with young people, and with the college staff responsible for advising and guiding them, at Further Education Colleges from which the rate of transition to university is lower than the national average. Our findings show that young people talk about their ‘like-to-be’ and ‘like-to-avoid’ futures in complex and self-regulated ways, often moderating how they articulate aspiration to align with external discourses, such as those projected by college staff. Students also demonstrate a keen awareness of structural limits, effectively constructing future selves which, though ‘elaborated’, reflect counter-reading of dominant narratives around financial self-improvement as achieved via the ‘full’ university experience. The ‘Possible Selves’ approach is therefore found to be enabling as a mediating artefact for researchers, and valuable for identifying policy-relevant points of tension between students and their college staff.

KEYWORDS:

• Possible Selves
• college-to-university transition
• student debt
• further education
• stay-at-home students
• social justice

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the National Collaborative Outreach Programme whose funding and support made the project this paper is based on possible. Further, we would like to thank Holly Henderson for her comments and suggestions on the draft of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Collaborative Outreach Programme

Notes on contributors

Steven Jones

Steven Jones is a Professor of Higher Education and Head of the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester. He conducts research into policy and practice in post-compulsory education that explores how economically disadvantaged young people conceptualise, engage with and perform at university. He is particularly interested in how students’ cultural and social capital affects their higher education experiences.

Rita Hordósy

Rita Hordósy is a Nottingham Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests revolve around social justice issues in education and post-compulsory education trajectories, with her current work focusing on the research/teaching nexus compared across European universities.

Jenna Mittelmeier

Jenna Mittelmeier is a Lecturer in International Education in the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on students’ transition in higher education, with particular expertise in international students’ experiences and curriculum internationalisation.

Aunam Quyoum

Aunam Quyoum is a PhD researcher in Education at the University of Sheffield. She uses participatory methods and curriculum-based research as a prism to explore students’ understanding of history, identity and citizenship in contemporary Britain.

Tamsin McCaldin

Tamsin McCaldin is a Lecturer in Educational Leadership in the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester, as well as a former secondary school teacher. Her research focuses on students’ experiences, particularly in the area of preparing for examinations, in the context of education policy.