Accessing Education: Effectively Widening Participation

by Penny Jane Burke

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.

180 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Penny Jane Burke is Professor of Education and Director of the Paulo Freire Institute-UK in the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) at the University of Sussex, UK. She has previously published The Right to Higher Education: Beyond Widening Participation.