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Inclusive Practices: Learning from Widening Participation Research in Art and Design Higher Education

This anthology, co-edited with Peter O'Neil, is the first comprehensive collection of Widening Participation research in art and design HE. It provides strong and coherent evidence of and rationale for improving learning by making more inclusive policies, processes, practices and pedagogies for HE art and design.

Case studies are situated within diverse individual and institutional contexts across HE and the anthology’s editorials speak to wider international efforts to increase participation in response to the rise of the global knowledge society. The co-authored chapter (with Peter O’Neil) on WP research in UK HE art and design situates this focus within an evaluation of broader WP policy and research in HE in Britain and contextualises it with reference to similar initiatives in the international higher education landscape. It extends Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital, habitus and field to understand not only how class works as a barrier, but also how socio-economic privilege works to thicken and complicate the barriers of age, disability, gender, race and sexuality. Building on established sociological WP research, the chapter puts forward a case for a diversity of research methods, which illuminate the subjectivities of pedagogic practitioners as well as that of students themselves. It argues for a shift in HE, recommending that the sector develops transformative approaches in all its policies, processes, and more importantly, develops flexible, anticipatory and inclusive pedagogies to enable all students to participate and succeed. Ultimately, it maintains that HE is improved through or by widening participation, and in the context of international debates about the role of HE in a globalised knowledge economy, calls for attention to be paid to social inclusion as social justice.

The anthology provides a key reference work for policy makers and academics in HE, contributes to scholarly debate on WP and provides specific examples of practice.