Higher education should be inclusive and diverse, with open and equal ‘opportunities’ for all.  As George Davie (1986) makes clear, this issue was debated and discussed in Scottish higher education as early as the 1900s and again (post-Great War) in the 1920s, specifically relating to the innovation of state-funded university places and the introduction of entry qualifications (in the primary form of school leaving certificates, known as Highers and A-levels).  The latter was, supposedly, to make access to higher education more of a ‘meritocracy’ and reduce the influences of finance, social class, and property-ownership on entry.  In the future, of the 1920s, Scottish university places would go to the most deserving (in terms of ability) rather than the most ‘served’.

Currently, a similar noble goal (in widening participation, or ‘WP’) has been discursively centred, with framing or ‘modelling’ attempted, via key institutional policies and projects on equality, diversity and inclusion (now known as ‘EDI’ for short).  Indeed, recently EDI has become a veritable ‘hive of industry’ as working capitals (i.e. ‘labourers’ to you and me) latch on to how the ‘field’ (a rather battle-laden term) might carry career potential and status advancement (praiseworthiness) through paper promotion, workshop or initiative leading, and the general meeting of institutional demands for ‘continuing professional development’ (CPD).  Such new higher education managerialism seeks to root-out employee bias and/or failings with regards to achieving academic harmony.

Of course, this ‘good fight’ against the triple scourges of inequality, uniformity, and exclusion (IUE) takes place along a wide front, with many salient pockets of non-progressive (and micro-aggressive) resistance.  Some battles are more prominent than others, but in the interests of equality nothing is excluded.  Alongside major battles on racism and gender-bias – which affect (and should do so) ever larger numbers and proportions of the higher education population – there are concerns for respecting neurodiversity and uniquely complex health and socially disadvantaged ‘intersections’.  Advances might be made in one area only for the extent to which another ‘set’ of people have been left behind or out becomes clear.  The ideal position (x) appears to constantly lie beyond the frontline, which subsequently occupies a minus ‘x’ (or ‘-x’) position.  As the Daily Telegraph – hardly a bastion of working class consideration – could hardly wait to point out (Friday 29^th July 2022), ‘white teenagers’ are now the group least likely to attend university!

The difficulties in making ‘historical progress’ can be elucidated, via a couple of my own experiences which raise questions about a core issue – highlighted as long ago as Marx’s 3^rd Thesis on Feuerbach (1845) – namely, ‘who educates the educator?’ and ‘how do they do this?’  A key problem is how to deploy our own understandings and language when attempting to make things right?  And thus, crack the old chestnut of ‘unconscious bias’ within the crusading faculty itself.

Case Study 1: Widening Participation to Reach the ‘Lower Classes’

In 2021 one department I teach for asked me to take part in a teacher-led ‘reflective’ research exercise under the auspices of advancing ‘scholarship of teaching and learning’ (SOTL).  The aim was to undertake a review of the department’s pre-undergraduate level interdisciplinary social sciences provision for both international foundation and access (open entry) students aiming to follow on to degree study.  It was established, as part of the ‘commission’, that a core concern was how we might “decolonise the curriculum”, that is, to examine to what extent the content (but also delivery) of our courses could be more diverse and inclusive in terms of the voices and positions being represented (or not represented).

Since I had played a central part in designing the existing courses, for both international and access students, my role was required since I was one of few (indeed, the only person on some aspects) who was still around (had survived long enough) to provide information on the original ideas and processes involved in creating those existing courses.

It could be argued I had a ‘vested interest’ in justifying or defending these courses but, truth-be-told, the creation of those courses had been complex and compromised in various ways for very practical reasons.  For instance, the international foundation course had ‘evolved’ (in 2011) out of an earlier course (dating from 2003) in which I played no part.  Certain elements involving ‘Western’ ‘dead white males’ (e.g. Plato and Locke) were retained because the lessons had proven, via trial and error, popular and pedagogically successful (with students).  Meanwhile, no ‘development funding’ was advanced for course design and new teaching materials in the first 8 years (2011-2017), other than ‘normal’ hours intended for class (or tutoring) preparation – so, to be clear, no funding for course design nor redevelopment.  The situation presented a very standard example of teacher frustration and of wanting to ‘do more’ but never having adequate time to do the quality job one would like.

Meanwhile, the Access course, whilst receiving dedicated ‘development funding’ (2017-2018) and, hence, a new course (created from the ground up – no ‘evolution’ of a previous course), still had to be framed within multiple sets of institutional demands and requirements, such as: preparing students for the available degrees they would move on to; the need to focus on academic literacies and study skills; and/or retain structural alignment between humanities, arts, and social science courses within the overall access programme.

Practical reality, from my perspective, was that if the original commissioning stages (for both courses) had contained concern for making, or a remit to remake, course content and delivery more inclusive of ‘decolonising’ perspectives then that could easily have been done at the time.  There was no invisible wall of unconscious bias holding change back.  I could have introduced and referred to (and made pedagogical use of) the work of Cedric Robinson, Eric Williams, CLR James, Franz Fanon, bell hooks, or Angela Davis (to name a few Black authors I have been interested in).  However, at the time, no practical emphasis or significance (i.e. funding) was given to ‘decolonising the curriculum’.  In subsequent years, higher education ‘discourse’ has shifted and ‘decolonisation’ has become a defining feature of learning and teaching and, thus, the review of what can (or should) be done.

The outcome of the reflection and review was that, of course, something can and should be done to make both course content and delivery (the teaching / learning techniques used) more ‘inclusive’, and it isn’t simply teaching staff (the ‘employees’ with their ‘unconscious bias’) who hold ‘progress’ back.  As a ‘teacher’ of social science, I’d love to do a whole course on CLR James, his connections with Raya Dunayevskaya, and his seminal work The Black Jacobins (1939), but there is seriously limited scope within any foundation-year focused department for such specialist courses when it comes to credit-bearing ‘programmes’ OR ‘market-based’ public-engagement short courses.  Ultimately, we serve Leviathan or the ‘market’, or educational product consumers, or political demands – or whatever.

However, the most surprising element (experience) of undertaking our course content reflection / review was something which never made the final report (and never should have), and this was related to the sometimes ‘unconscious’ class-bias of the language used to discuss and refer to our very own WP students.  For instance, I came across, in written discussion, our very own students being referred to as ‘lower class’.

In some ways such statements are a ‘sociological’ statement of ‘fact’.  How else should our target audiences and student cohorts within WP be ‘defined’ and then referred to?  But in other ways such language conjures up images and tales of My Fair Lady ­­and the ‘saving’ of the ‘lower classes’ through education.  The phrasing definitely carried a clear sense of ‘unconscious bias’, since as soon as I pointed the problem out, conscious awareness changed the ‘text’.  Indeed, such a situation was never meant to be – it was a proverbial ‘slip of the tongue’ (or ‘text’ in this case).

‘Naturally’, such pronouncements are an easy thing to make.  The higher education WP ‘sector’ is awash with references to its ‘target audiences’ using identity-laden words and phrases, and this is despite a shift in the sector’s general ‘discourse’.  That is, there is recognition that we need to change how we talk about inclusivity and diversity such that curricula and pedagogical ‘models’ draw on and meet the experiences of those to be ‘included’ (literally those who are extra mural, or ‘outside the walls’) rather the experiences of those firmly ensconced ‘inside them’ (intra mural).

Surely a first goal in the latter transformation is to get away from thinking about (never mind referring to) our own students as, somehow, ‘lower class’?  They are, first and foremost, our fellow citizens and thoroughly deserve an equal ‘billing’.

Case Study 2: Advancing Critical Thinking in Access (foundation / entry level) Students

My second ‘awakening’ – and this is definitely the kind of thing which makes me ‘woke’ – occurred at an online conference organised by the Open University (OU).  The focus and theme of the conference was ‘interdisciplinary foundation courses’ and their continued relevance within the OU.  For background information, the traditional OU degree (which starts ‘open entry’, not demanding enlisted students have any prior qualifications) begins with a (large) 60-credit interdisciplinary ‘module’ – the ones I have taught (2000-2022), namely, DD100, DD101 and DD102, have covered sociology, politics, social policy and criminology, economics, geography, and psychology.

However, growing demand for ‘named’ Honours degrees (in an identifiable subject area, that is, having a degree in ‘Psychology’ or ‘Criminology’ will make the graduate a psychologist or criminologist, and not just a ‘graduate’) witnessed the decline of the multi-disciplinary Open Degree and a clamour for more clearly demarcated higher level modules. 

When I undertook a Diploma in European Humanities with the OU (1995-1998), all 3 modules I studied (at levels 1, 2 and 3) where interdisciplinary.  However, interdisciplinary provision has been retained, for now, on Foundation (SCQF Level 7) and Access (SCQF Level 6) modules.  Hence, the conference was a chance to examine the role and relevance of interdisciplinary learning and teaching when the main focus is (should be) on student induction to academic literacies and study skills.  There were, of course, a number of workshops / sessions I attended, including a very useful one on the differences between interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary work (including the meaning of the terms).  But a standout session, from my standpoint, focused on the challenge of teaching ‘critical thinking’ to access and/or foundation students on interdisciplinary access courses.

This session generated the usual debates about how ‘critical thinking’ can be induced or instilled into new, open-entry students.  My own view that ‘critical thinking’ is not an ‘attribute’ (nor possess-able ‘trait’) which can be ‘taught’ as an individually-centred or owned ‘skill’, but is rather the constant product of a ‘social situation’, I will leave to another article.  What is of interest here is one of the responses (from a fellow participant – an associate lecturer and member of ‘teaching staff’) to the issue of how critical thinking can or might be taught.  After all, some students manage to pick the desired skill up quite easily, but others don’t – no matter how much we try to instil this desirable and highly ‘employable’ skill.

My erstwhile colleague appeared to have a STEM background (perhaps biology), and then asked (via chatbox): ‘Is critical thinking something we are born with?’

This is a controversial and thorny question!  The immediate difficulty is that the question can be read in two different ways – through socio-historical positive and negative lenses.  The positive understanding is that the possibility of ‘critical thinking’ is something we are ALL ‘born with’, and thus the challenge is how this ‘born-with’ capacity or facility for ‘critical thinking’ can be brought out (a la The Enlightenment) in each and every individual.  Consequently, the struggle lies with ‘teachers’ to ignite, or spark, the latent intellectual fuel within the student ‘subject’.  No doubt, the student also plays their ‘part’ or role, since failure of the process may (also) come down to some form of fuel dampening which makes the ignition stage more difficult in some ‘target’ subjects than others.  But at least on this understanding of the ‘born with’ question, every human individual has the potential to be, and chance of being, sparked into action.  And once the fuel is burning it will, somehow, do so for the rest of the individual’s life.

The alternative interpretation of the question, the negative one, is that only SOME individuals are ‘born with’ a capacity for critical thinking.  That is, is critical thinking something the aspiring student ‘has’ or does ‘not have’?  And can the latter distinction explain why our attempts at inducing and/or instilling ‘critical thinking’ succeed or fail?

Now, biologically-determinist approaches to human intelligence cannot be dismissed that easily.  Having worked with people with learning disabilities for almost two decades it was obvious to me that biology can and does place limitations (and quite severe ones) on an individual’s ability to learn and understand the world.  What often emerges are very different ‘realities’ about what the world (and the social world) consist of.  And beyond learning disabilities (which typically have physical or biological roots, as in brain injury or chromosomal divergence) there are many forms of biologically-rooted learning difficulty and neurodiversity which produce unique ways of learning that, of course, cannot be viewed as ‘lesser’.

On top of this, the research of political scientist Prof Karen Stenner has demonstrated that about one-third (33%) of any human population consist of ‘authoritarians’ who do not like change.  This is not a simple matter of political ideologies and allegiances, since Left-liberal populations still have a substantial portion of authoritarians even though the percentage is not as high as that found amongst Right-conservative populations.  What this comes down to, then, is what we ‘mean’ by ‘critical thinking’?  That is, are we referring to an ability for self-reflection and self-criticism, an ability to question others and what they are doing, or the capacity to see multiple points of view?

One response is to note that such differences in human populations are highly ‘marginal’.  That is, there are differences (in, say, size of brain cavity between males and females) but the tolerances are so small that in practice such measurements are meaningless.  You really need bigger ‘leaps’ or ‘gaps’ in units of what is being measured before variance in outcome or output would be distinguishable.  In short, biological factors might explain ‘something’ (at extreme points of intelligence quotients, IQs) but they don’t explain anything within a central ‘bell curve’ crowd (the vast majority).

When my fellow participant first posted the question I understood it in the positive mode.  So, it was a surprise to me (given the OU teaching and learning context) from seeing subsequent discussion that the negative mode had been intended!  Literally, is ‘critical thinking’ something you are either born with, or not?  A further, perhaps more shocking, surprise was that the question had been accepted and taken-for-granted, as if the idea that some students (probably taken to be quite a lot, given the levitation of the question) are not   capable of critical thinking is just a rather sad ‘fact’.

From the Enlightenment-inspired provision of education to the general masses – the Open University – discussion of developing ‘critical thinking’ (as some kind of skill within ‘students’) had descended into world familiar from an Aldous Huxley novel – Brave New World­ ­ – where part of the teacher’s work is to diagnose those with low capacity or potential (the Epsilons) so they might be separated from those with the ability for ‘critical thinking’ (the Alphas).  I would like to categorise the experience of this incidence as ‘quaint’, yet it is just worrying that some ‘ideas’ continued to be pervasive.

Elitism and the Division of Labour

The key social science question is ‘where do such ideas emanate from?’  Do they merely arise out of perspectives which lack lived experience of being one of the ‘lower orders’?  Or does it goes back to what Adam Smith noted in Book 5 of the Wealth of Nations, namely, that divisions of labour have the potential to make us all ‘stupid and ignorant’.

When I introduce Smith’s comments about the division of labour potentially making use ‘stupid and ignorant’ (in Access and Foundation education, but also on a not-for-qualification course I teach on Smith’s Wealth of Nations as part of public engagement) I ask the self-reflective question of whether or not Smith would have included himself as part of the division of labour which induces such stupidity and ignorance?  That is, what, if any, powers does Smith have to rise above and out of the division of labour which helps him to recognise the latent stupidity?  More importantly, as academia (university research and teaching) is yet one more ‘division of labour’, aren’t academics just as prone to being ‘stupid and ignorant’ as anyone else?

It is a wonderful belief that ‘we’ (academics, sociologists, philosophers … however ‘we’ want to describe ourselves) have superior-powers of observation, insight, introspection, research, or understanding compared to the ‘common’, ‘everyday’, or ‘unthinking’ mass of humanity.  However, as my OU colleague managed to convince me, no we don’t.  Surely ‘the some can and some can’t think critically’ position is in itself a sign of failing to think critically.  That is, it fails to reflect on the social position of the enunciator and why it is that they think they are thinking critically when they might not be.  Furthermore, the same goes for WP sector phrases such as ‘lower class’ and even ‘disadvantaged’ – why is holding the upper, higher or even middle ground understood to be an ‘advantage’?  And ‘advantage’ to or for what?

To conclude, as a community prompt aimed as much at myself as any other self, widening participation in higher education is about reaching ‘out’ and never ‘down’.  There is much to be learned by ‘reaching out’ where one set of educators can educate another set of educators.