On the institutional work of widening participation practice

Thesis

This study is motivated by the following question: when practitioners engage in the project of ‘widening participation’ (WP), what are they hoping to do? Due to both its grounding in neoliberal logics and its aspirations for social justice, the very idea of WP is contested and subject to contradiction. WP, therefore, can mean substantially different things to different people, particularly to practitioners. While practitioner perspectives are chronically understudied in WP research, a nasc...

Expand abstract

Authors: Stewart, G

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-xv0vevv95
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: institutional work; institutions; higher education; evaluation; widening participation; widening participation practice; organizational institutionalism
• Subjects: sociology; higher education