{"id":182,"date":"2018-09-27T13:54:32","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T12:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/?p=182"},"modified":"2018-09-27T13:55:07","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T12:55:07","slug":"accessing-the-experiences-of-estranged-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/accessing-the-experiences-of-estranged-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Accessing the experiences of \u2018estranged\u2019 students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since January 2018, we have been exploring the experiences of \u2018Estranged Students\u2019 in Higher Education and this week we presented some of the preliminary findings of the project at the BERA conference (11th<\/sup>-13th<\/sup>Sept. 2018). We follow this with our conference at the University of Strathclyde (20th<\/sup>\u00a0Sept. 2018) titled \u2018Accessing Higher Education: The Experiences of \u2018Estranged Students\u2019 Beyond Entry Point\u2019.<\/p>\n

Estrangement as an area of widening participation is rather under-researched, and our BERA paper certainly raised questions of definition, usefulness and ambiguity of the term, as well as the likely heterogeneity of \u2018estranged students\u2019.\u00a0 In conversation with delegates, we probed at University itself as a \u2018strange\u2019 place, potentially causing rather than solving, estrangement.<\/p>\n

Understandings of\u00a0the experiences of students who\u00a0are given\u00a0statutory recognition for estrangement\u00a0are rather scarce: can they be understood as a \u2018widening participation\u2019 group? Do they self-identify as such? In the Scottish context \u00a0only 3 universities have\u00a0so far have taken the\u00a0StandAlone pledge<\/a>\u00a0 to support people who are\u00a0estranged from their family. This means that the majority of Universities have not and, as such there is clearly an urgency in bringing knowledge about the experiences of this cohort of students to the fore, informing widening participation officers, policy makers and practitioners, and instigating sector change.<\/p>\n

The term \u2018estranged students\u2019 has been used by policy makers and support groups to refer to students whose\u00a0relationships with their biological\/adoptive parents and\/or wider family have broken down\u00a0(OFFA, 2017). Estranged students are a non-traditional group of students in Higher Education (HE) and may lead their study career without the financial and emotional support of their close family.\u00a0But we ask if there is an emerging, rather awkward \u00a0individualising tendency to psychologize \u2018estrangement\u2019 from family in this context, over-emphasizing the need for therapeutic solutions as \u2018working on the self\u2019, rather than structural reform.\u00a0 The rhetoric and practice of the \u2018family\u2019 has itself materialized all sorts of inequalities and violences, and understanding its nature as a social \u2018buffer\u2019 is rather complicated.<\/p>\n

In England, the status of \u2018estrangement\u2019\u00a0was first introduced\u00a0in student funding policy in 1997, alongside other financial changes \u2013sitting alongside the marketization of Higher Education and the increased notion of what constituted a \u2018student experience\u2019 . The purpose was to enable estranged students to access financial support independently of their family\u2019s income\u00a0(Smith & Malcolm, 2008). In Scotland, however, the same status was only recognised in 2016, thus creating an almost\u00a020 year\u00a0gap between the two countries where the enactment of policy and practices aimed at supporting estranged students are concerned.\u00a0\u00a0What is a \u2018student experience\u2019 in the context of \u2018estrangement\u2019?<\/p>\n

\u2018Estranged students\u2019 continue to face numerous and specific hardships not only in accessing HE, but also in completing their studies \u2013 as with other studies, we aim to complicate the story of \u2018getting into\u2019 University, exploring how interviewees\u2019 sit with and resist \u2018estrangement\u2019. No doubt, \u00a0\u00a0hardships remain, encompassing not only financial pressure, but also experiences of homelessness, discrimination and mental health problems\u00a0amongst other issues, during their time at University\u00a0(Bland, 2015). The scale of these challenges arguably extend beyond\u00a0understanding of socio-economic struggles, though not enough is known about the intersection, for example, between \u2018estrangement\u2019 and other categories of university participation and\u00a0 (e.g. race, class, gender, sexuality).<\/p>\n

Moreover, research on estrangement is extremely limited and mostly pertains to the fields of psychology, social work or communication studies. The only data available to date come from studies commissioned by and for Stand Alone, a charity that supports and raises awareness of the challenges faced by this \u2018non-standard\u2019 entry group. In 2016, the Stand Alone Pledge\u00a0was launched\u00a0to help HE institutions improve the support they provide to estranged students.\u00a0The pledge has now been signed by 50 institutions UK wide<\/p>\n

Challenges identified in research (see Bland, 2017) relate to economic struggles that often\u00a0impact on\u00a0practical issues such as accommodation and affordability of basic goods. Research has also point out that stigmatisation and belonging are key issues estranged students face as part of their identity. The research we conducted so far confirms most of these aspects, but it also unveils a different side to estranged students regarding a very strong sense of personal resilience.<\/p>\n

Research by Prof Yvette Taylor; Dr Cristina Costa; Sidonie Ecochard and Claire Goodfellow<\/em><\/p>\n

If you would like to learn more about this research, why not\u00a0join us on Thursday on a free event we are hosting on this thematic at the University of Strathclyde<\/strong>\u00a0(Free registration open\u00a0here<\/a>) ?<\/h4>\n

You can also join the discussion online via the\u00a0#StrathEstrangement<\/strong><\/h4>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR \/CRISTINA COSTA<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cristina is Associate Professor in Digital Education and Society in the Department of Education and Childhood, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. After completing a degree in Modern Languages and Literatures, Cristina worked as an EFL teacher in the Portuguese Navy. During that period she developed an interest in Learning Technologies and completed an MPhil in Educational Technologies at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. In 2007 she moved to the UK to take up a post in the field of Learning and Research Technologies at the University of Salford. In February 2013 she completed her PhD study on The participatory web in the context of academic research: landscapes of change and conflicts. From March 2013 to March 2018 she worked as a Lecturer in Digital Education at the University of Strathclyde. She was named Learning Technologist of the Year 2010 by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT).<\/p>\n

This article was firstly published in the Social Theory Applied<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since January 2018, we have been exploring the experiences of \u2018Estranged Students\u2019 in Higher Education and this week we presented some of the preliminary findings of the project at the BERA conference (11th-13thSept. 2018). We follow this with our conference at the University of Strathclyde (20th\u00a0Sept. 2018) titled \u2018Accessing Higher Education: The Experiences of \u2018Estranged … Continue reading “Accessing the experiences of \u2018estranged\u2019 students”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}