Accessing Education: Effectively Widening Participation

Access courses were developed in Britain to promote equality and social justice. This research study of access education draws on the views of academics, access practitioners and, most importantly, the accounts and critiques of access students themselves. It notes how access as now provided within the dominant discourse is often intimidating to the students it is meant to serve and how current approaches can reinforce poverty and exclusion and reproduce unequal power relations. Dr Burke and her students argue for a collaboratively developed pedagogy for access courses that includes theory and practice, teachers and students - a pedagogy which addresses difference and context while remaining committed to anti-classisist, anti-sexist and antiracist approaches to teaching and learning.