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Mature female learners activating agency after completion of an education foundation degree: professional progression and the teacher shortage crisis (2019)
Journal Article
Bovill, H., Harrison, N., Smith, H., Bennett, V., & McKenzie, L. (2021). Mature female learners activating agency after completion of an education foundation degree: professional progression and the teacher shortage crisis. Research Papers in Education, 36(2), 196-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2019.1633565

This paper draws upon questionnaire data from 126 mature, female alumni students and interviews with a subset of 20 participants who completed education foundation degrees in three English universities in the South West. Three illustrative cases from... Read More about Mature female learners activating agency after completion of an education foundation degree: professional progression and the teacher shortage crisis.

Challenging discourses of aspiration: The role of expectations and attainment in access to higher education (2018)
Journal Article
Harrison, N., & Waller, R. (2018). Challenging discourses of aspiration: The role of expectations and attainment in access to higher education. British Educational Research Journal, 44(5), 914-938. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3475

© 2018 British Educational Research Association Raising the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds progressing to higher education has been a key policy objective for successive governments in the UK since the late 1990s. Often thi... Read More about Challenging discourses of aspiration: The role of expectations and attainment in access to higher education.

Towards a typology of debt attitudes among contemporary young UK undergraduates (2015)
Journal Article
Harrison, N., Chudry, F., Waller, R., & Hatt, S. (2015). Towards a typology of debt attitudes among contemporary young UK undergraduates. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 39(1), 85-107. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2013.778966

© 2013, © 2013 UCU. The findings of this study suggest that student attitudes are more complex than assumed in some previous research and journalistic commentary, especially with respect to social class. Counterintuitively, many students from lower s... Read More about Towards a typology of debt attitudes among contemporary young UK undergraduates.

An ecological fallacy in higher education policy: the use, overuse and misuse of ‘low participation neighbourhoods’ (2015)
Journal Article
Harrison, N., & McCaig, C. (2015). An ecological fallacy in higher education policy: the use, overuse and misuse of ‘low participation neighbourhoods’. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 39(6), 793-817. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2013.858681

© 2014 UCU. One form of ecological fallacy is found in the dictum that ‘you are where you live’ – otherwise expressed in the idea that you can infer significant information about an individual or their family from the prevailing conditions around the... Read More about An ecological fallacy in higher education policy: the use, overuse and misuse of ‘low participation neighbourhoods’.

Don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it's gone? Skills-led qualifications, secondary school attainment and policy choices (2015)
Journal Article
Harrison, N., James, D., & Last, K. (2015). Don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it's gone? Skills-led qualifications, secondary school attainment and policy choices. Research Papers in Education, 30(5), 585-608. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2014.1002526

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. In the name of curriculum breadth and raising standards, recent government policy in England has removed a large number of non-academic qualifications from the list of those that secondary schools can count in league tables... Read More about Don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it's gone? Skills-led qualifications, secondary school attainment and policy choices.

Modelling the demand for higher education by local authority area in England using academic, economic and social data (2013)
Journal Article
Harrison, N. (2013). Modelling the demand for higher education by local authority area in England using academic, economic and social data. British Educational Research Journal, 39(5), 793-816. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3000

Managing the demand for higher education has been a major concern of successive UK governments over the last 30 years. While initially they sought to increase demand, latterly the emphasis has been on widening participation to include demographic gro... Read More about Modelling the demand for higher education by local authority area in England using academic, economic and social data.

The mismeasure of participation: how choosing the ‘wrong’ statistic helped seal the fate of Aimhigher (2012)
Journal Article
Harrison, N. (2012). The mismeasure of participation: how choosing the ‘wrong’ statistic helped seal the fate of Aimhigher. Higher Education Review -London-, 45(1), 30-61

Extant between 2004 and 2011, Aimhigher was the UK government’s flagship national initiative for widening participation to higher education for young people from disadvantaged social groups, with costs approaching £1 billion. Its demise was predicate... Read More about The mismeasure of participation: how choosing the ‘wrong’ statistic helped seal the fate of Aimhigher.

We blame the parents! A response to 'cultural capital as an explanation of variation in participation in higher education' by John Noble and Peter Davies (British Journal of Sociology of Education 30, no. 5) (2010)
Journal Article
Harrison, N., & Waller, R. (2010). We blame the parents! A response to 'cultural capital as an explanation of variation in participation in higher education' by John Noble and Peter Davies (British Journal of Sociology of Education 30, no. 5). British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(4), 471-482. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2010.484922

This paper offers a response to a recent article where the authors argue cultural capital is the only determinant of the propensity of young people to seek to enter higher education, dismissing other indicators such as social class. This response que... Read More about We blame the parents! A response to 'cultural capital as an explanation of variation in participation in higher education' by John Noble and Peter Davies (British Journal of Sociology of Education 30, no. 5).