The Role of Imagined Social Capital in the Access and

Retention of Non-traditional Students

Professor Jocey Quinn

University of Plymouth, UK

Outline of talk

What is imagined social capital?

What is its role in access and retention?

Exploring via 4 research studies with:• Young people with no chance to get to HE• First generation students who got to HE then

dropped out• Mature women students who accessed HE and

completed their studies• Student volunteers as potential agents of access

What is social capital?

• ‘Social capital’ is the benefit that accrues from belonging to networks-eg bonding, bridging, linking social capital

• Problematic concept -for example ignores power relations within networks and the hidden work of women who enable these networks to function

• Has been used instrumentally and judgementally by policy makers

What is ‘imagined social capital’?

‘Imagined social capital’ is the benefit accrued from symbolic and imagined networks

See: Quinn (2010) Learning Communities and Imagined Social Capital London: Continuum

Differs from Bourdieu because he emphasises“ durable networks of more or less institutionalised

relationships” (1997,47-51) While I focus onNetworks with real others that are created to perform a

symbolic functionImagined networks created with unknown others who may

even be mythical or fictional

Study 1:Young people in Jobs without Training

The young people all around us working in shops, cafes, farms, building sites…jobs that are seen as low-skilled and are usually low-paid-everywhere but also invisible

JWT a UK policy construct-over 16, working over 16 hours, no level 2 qualifications, no accredited training

• Identified as a ‘problem’ and defined only in terms of lack-no qualifications, no training, no prospects, no aspirations

• Neglected group-know little about their lives and their learning

Our Research

Jocey Quinn, Rob Lawy and Kim Diment, 2008

Marchmont/Exeter, funded by ESF, Learning and Skills Council and Connexions

Conducted in collaboration with Connexions careers service-capacity building and participative approach

112 young people, 184 interviews

From across South West England -rural, sidelined and ignored

Education = Misery

“ When I got to secondary school it was downhill all the way” “ We were the thick bunch”

Interviewer: How about FE college?Jane: Pass

Interviewer: Could you go to college to do training?Tom: Not an option, no way

Interviewer? : So you’ve been doing a cleaning job?Liz: Yes, as you do. I did anything to occupy myself, anything

apart from school

Feeling Good for nothing

Interviewer: What are you good at?Josh: Don’t know really, talking, laughing, don’t

know, nothing reallyInterviewer: What are you good at?Adam: Don’t know, don’t knowInterviewer: What are you good at?Carl: I’m rubbishInterviewer: What are you good at?Jamie: Not much

HE not on the Horizon

Do have some positive symbolic networks• Those who work with their hands• Those who learn from experience• What I am not: not unemployed or drug userBut-this symbolic capital has little use value in UK

society and sets them apart from educationCannot counteract being part of the symbolic

network “the thick (stupid) bunch”Symbolically excluded from learning HE becomes unthinkable as well as materially

undoable because of poverty, locality

Study 2: Working class ‘drop outs’ from HE

In the UK rates of retention are higher than many EU countries

But because the system is inflexible and demands completion within 3 years as the norm- ‘drop out’ is seen as a big problem

‘Drop out’ highest (eg 30%) in less elite universities where more students are working class, local and first generation

Our research

Quinn, Thomas, Slack, Casey, Thexton and Noble (2005) Joseph Rowntree Foundation:

Socio-cultural study of meanings/implications of drop out in provincial areas of industrial decline

4 universities : England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

4 research jury days-stakeholders

80 interviews with students who had dropped out

Policy symposium, Admissions survey

Institutional interventions v cultural narrative of working class drop out

All HEIs involved had multiple support and information processes to increase retention

BUT

Could not counteract prevailing circulating story that: working class students are lacking, they can enter HE but they will probably fail and withdraw

Where is imagined social capital?

• Students attach themselves to the lost working communities of their localities: the tightly knit networks of mining or potteries

• These symbolic networks were very powerful in family and community memory-even though they no longer exist. They shape educational choices

• “I live in a council estate-They say you don’t need to get an education, get a job, go into an industry, but industry is very low now in this area” ( ex student)

Pulling both ways

These imagined communities produce benefits:

• Sense of loyalty, belonging, feeling that working together with common goals and solidarity is possible

And problems:• Mournful conclusions: education can never

compensate for the loss of these networks• Why stay in HE?

Project 3: Mature women surviving HE

Women students are the majority of undergraduates in the UK

But

Widening participation has focused on young people under 30 without commitments

HE Curriculum and pedagogy is still masculinised

The Research

Quinn (2003) Powerful Subjects: are women really taking over the university? ( Stoke:Trentham)

PhD research ( ESRC)• In-depth study of 21 diverse women students

aged 19 to 62 studying 2 interdisciplinary subjects in 2 universities

• Focus on curriculum, subjectivity and negotiation of life inside and out of the university

• Interviews, Focus groups, diaries, observations

Imagined Social Capital

• Mature women faced many problems-juggling care, finance and study, self doubt and doubts of others,

• intergenerational conflicts with students/staff• What mattered was symbolic networks either with other

‘real’ women - “ladies who lunch” or with women they only knew on an imagined level through study -“really strong women”

• These networks created: imagined social capital: a sense of power and safety and resources for ‘identity change’

• Enabled them to negotiate and remain in the university-the benefits were intangible but material

Study 4: Student volunteers: Agents of access?

Students in the UK encouraged to volunteer

HE seen as path to citizenship

Encouraged to work with local communities

And disadvantaged people

Seen as a significant element in widening participation-breaking down boundaries and encouraging non-traditional students to enter the university

The research

Holdsworth and Quinn ( 2011 forthcoming )Antipode: Journal of Radical Geography‘The epistemological challenge of HE student

volunteering : “reproductive” or “deconstructive” volunteering?’

Mapping study of university/community links (ESRC)

20 biographical interviews student volunteersTheoretical concepts drawing on imagined social

capital

Theory

“Universities facilitate the production of imagined social capital by opening up the strange and unfamiliar to be reframed and re-used by students in their own symbolic networks”( Quinn, 2005:15)

Volunteering has the potential to do this and link the university to the local community to facilitate access

Does it in practice?

“Reproductive” volunteering

Does not challenge but reproduces and re-enforces existing power relations and inequalities

“ Where I live at home its like a white majority area. The volunteering thing (in a deprived inner city school) highlighted it more because everyone in the school I went to , it is a good school-there isn’t many people from different backgrounds. But coming here like it being a big city…it just brought out the differences like that nowadays the families are common and its like a lot of immigrant families” Stacey

“ Deconstructive” volunteering

Allows volunteers to critique, deconstruct and resist power structures and inequalities

“Doing volunteering ( gardening projects in local communities) suddenly there was this explosion of community and culture and my mind was becoming aware that actually there was more to life than school and sometimes school doesn’t have all the answers” Molly

Some conclusions for Access and Retention

Take symbolic and imagined factors in students lives seriously and work with them-produces material change

• Validate young people’s different symbolic networks so their capital can have value and help build access to HE

• In pedagogy try to foster some of the communal values held by lost symbolic networks of industry

• Critical exposure to radical thinkers in HE fosters imagined social capital

• Use outreach and volunteering to learn from local communities, not impose HE values on them: bring these learning experiences into the curriculum