1. Creating a sense of place: the role of personal tutors and social networks 
Ciaran Burke
Associate Professor of Higher Education
@ciaranburkesoc

2. Widening Participation
Post-war U.K. higher education policy has operated within the context of post-industrial Britain.
Successive policies had a common theme – social justice through access to university:
Higher Education Act (1992)
Teaching and Higher Education Act (1998)
Future of Higher Education (2003)
Students at the Heart of the System (2011)
Beginning with New Labour, we have seen a more direct narrative of widening participation policy.
Sam

3. Widening Participation
An issue with some WP policy is that it follows a “History Boys” approach:
Group of “able” working class boys stay at school to prepare for the Oxbridge entrance exam
School hires an Oxbridge graduate to tutor the boys
They are taught to think differently and ultimately be different to be successful
Issues:
Focuses on access
Teaches working class students to “pass” as middle class
Sam
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4. Widening Participation
The process of non-traditional students getting on and getting out of higher education has not received the same policy focus or critical attention (Waller, et al., 2018)
As such, policies fail to consider the classed nature of access resulting in:
A sense of not belonging (Reay, et al, 2005; Burke, 2015)
What Reay et al. (2009) refer to as Strangers in Paradise
What Ingram (2018) describes as an individual’s identity being pulled in two different directions
The absence of a sense of place is not surprising but problematic
It is this rift between self and place that personal tutors can begin to address
Sam

5. Widening Participation
Widening Participation interventions often take a linear character focused on the individual and at times parents/guardians
Such approaches fail to recognize the need to consider social networks (Fuller, et al., 2011)
Within this context there are three theoretical considerations:
Hot knowledge – Ball and Vincent (1998)
Communicative reflexivity – Archer (2007)
Collective habitus – Bourdieu (1977, 1984)
Sam

6. Hot knowledge vs. cold knowledge
In I heard it through the grapevine (1998) Ball and Vincent make the distinction between different forms of knowledge:
Hot knowledge – information from individuals and informal sources
Cold knowledge – information from written/official sources
According to Ball and Vincent, individuals prefer:
Hot knowledge over cold knowledge
Hot knowledge from individuals who share their demographics
Issues being:
Reproduction in levels of understanding higher education
Limited impact of overt widening participation interventions
Sam

7. Communicative reflexivity
According to Margaret Archer, a central element in addressing social reproduction and structural inequality is reflexivity:
“reflexive deliberation, via the internal conversation” (2008)
A form of reflexivity within Archer’s model is “communicative reflexivity”:
Individuals discuss things out loud as they need confirmation and completion by others
Issues:
Communicative reflexives tend to interact with those similar to them
This type of reflexivity can support social reproduction
However, Kahn (2017) develops this position to argue that it depends on who students interact with – here is the opportunity for personal tutors
Sam

8. Collective habitus
Within Bourdieu’s structural constructivist theory of practice, habitus plays a central role:
Norms, values and dispositions
These interact with forms of resources within specific contexts
Habitus is “durable, not eternal” – a strong enough interaction or intervention can alter one’s habitus
However, the habitus has a collective level, one which reduces the impact of outside forces:
objective conditions also contain a warning against the ambition to distinguish oneself by identifying with other groups, that is, they are a reminder of the needs of class solidarity’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 381).
Issues:
Reinforces one’s natal sense of place
Potential to dilute the impact of an intervention
Sam

9. Proposed study
These issues are the starting point of my RARA supported project
Research question asks: to what extent do social networks reinforce or dilute the impact of personal tutors?
Adaptation of Scott’s (2013) social network analysis where a relational analysis focusing on contacts, ties and connections will be applied.
Sample:
10 to 15 undergraduate students
Three significant individuals per undergraduate student
Method:
Semi-structured interviews
Visual methods
Imagined correspondence
Sam

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11. Raising Awareness, Raising Aspiration