Professor Jacqueline Stevenson's paper at Sheffield Hallam Students' Union Black History Month celebration - 14 Oct 2015 - 'Race and achievement in Higher Education Seminar'.

1. BELONGING AND MATTERING IN
HIGHER EDUCATION
Professor Jacqueline Stevenson
j.stevenson@leedsmet.ac.uk
@ProfJStevenson

2. BME attainment gap
• Degree attainment gap = difference in 1st or 2:1
classification awarded to different groups of students.
• 2012/13 degree outcomes:
• 73.2% of White British students received 1st or 2:1
• 57.1% of UK-domiciled BME students
• 64.4% of Indian students; 63.9% of Chinese students; 54.2% of
Pakistani students; 43.8% of Black Other students
• Has remained nearly static over the last ten years.
• Why does it matter?
• Black graduates, are x3 more likely to be unemployed within six
months of graduation than White; 80%+ applications for very
graduate job; ¾ of large graduate employers now demand
applicants have a minimum of a 2:1.

3. Causes? (Singh, 2011)
• Externally: social deprivation, previous family educational experiences of
HE, type of institution; home or campus-based; gender, disability
• Internally: racism; time in paid employment; problems of segregation; low
teacher expectations; lack of role models; staff expectations/ prejudiced
attitudes associated with linguistic competence; students’ expectations;
discriminatory practices in TLA and student support; undervaluing/under-
challenging BME students; belonging (or not)
• But....being from a minority ethnic community is still
statistically significant in explaining final attainment
• My interests:
• Contribution of the curriculum and forms of pedagogy
• Whiteness of the academy; my position in the institution and as
part of both the cause and 'the' solution
• Belonging and mattering
3

4. Belonging
• Belonging is a multifaceted concept.
• Relates to feelings of connectedness, attachment to other people,
places, or modes of being
• More than need for simple social contact: active processes of
social contact and interaction; develops shared understandings of
who ‘we’ are (Judith Butler); we need to ‘matter’
• Arises from everyday practices and events within specific social
milieu.
• At the heart of any negotiation or competition that ensues between
[such] groups is the question of who has the right to make claims over
how ‘we’ do things – that is, who ‘really’ belongs (May, 2013, p. 98)

5. Everyday belonging 1
• We only know we don't belong when we don't belong
• ‘One of the ways in which a sense of belonging can
emerge is if we can go about our everyday lives without
having to pay much attention to how we do it.
Conversely a disruption in our everyday environment
can make us feel uprooted’ (May, 2013, p. 89)
• Every day belongingness
• For many of these students:
• Everyday world structured by power relations
• Everyday world as problematic
• Tensions between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary in the every
day world

6. Everyday belonging 2
• Everyday world structured by power relations
• There's no point going and asking because they just look at you
like you are dumb and tell you to go away and sort it out by
yourself (female, British Pakistani)
• You should know the answers but you don't. But you daren't ask
(female, British Black African)
• Everyday world as problematic
• So like every time I walk on campus I get stopped by security
because I am wearing a headscarf but my friends don't because
they are not (female, British Pakistani)
• So like you want to speak up in lectures but because I am Black
and a big man and all that you know that you can seem a bit
intimidating so you don't (male, British Black African)

7. Everyday belonging 3
• Belonging is not merely a state of mind but is bound up
with being able to act in a socially significant manner that
is recognised by others (May, 2013, p. 142)
• Tensions between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary
• The only time it’s [racism] really been talked about a lot is all the
stuff about Shilpa Shetty and Big Brother . I was glad then that
people were talking about racism… [here] it’s just never talked
about. It’s like everyone thinks that if it isn’t talked about then it isn’t
happening (male, British Pakistani).
• I am not a bomber; I just have a rucksack (male, British Indian).
• Just because I wear a headscarf it doesn't mean I am an
oppressed woman. I am able to make my own choices, chose how
to life my life but I am looked at with pity (female, British Black
African)

8. Importance
• Contested belongings
• Drawing boundaries
• Multiple belongings and hybrid cultures
• Inequitable student experience
• Fundamental in how privilege produced and reproduced
• BUT......

9. Agency and Strategising
• BME students are not passive
• Avoidance can be agentic; resistance and resilience
• Highly strategic in terms of working round and through
exigencies (see Stevenson, 2012*)
• Students bring to, and draw on, forms of community
cultural wealth - the assets that many students acquire
from ... "a sense of community history, memory and
cultural intuition" (Yosso 2005:79) (aspirational, linguistic,
familial, social, navigational, and resistance)
Stevenson, J. (2012) An exploration of the link between Minority Ethnic and White students’ degree attainment and views of their
future ‘Possible Selves’, Higher Education Studies, 2 (4), pp. 103-113.
Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), pp. 69–91.

10. Ways forward?
• I speak three languages, I am a single parent, a former
refugee, learnt English from scratch, went to FE college,
trained to be a nursery assistant, worked since I could....
(female, British Black African)....
• Yosso's framework should be used to develop
approaches to supporting students
• Start with what students bring to the classroom not what
they don't
• Ask reflective questions of our practice
• Angela Locke
http://web.csulb.edu/divisions/aa/personnel/fcpd/workshops/documents/Wrk1
EditedYossoCulturalWealthSummary.pdf

11. • Aspirational capital
• How are we supporting the maintenance and growth of students’ aspirations?
• What assumptions do we have about our students’ aspirations?
• Linguistic
• How are we supporting the language and communication strengths of our students?
• To what degree do courses utilise inclusive pedagogical practices?
• Familial capital
• How do we recognise and help students draw on wisdom, values and stories from
their home communities?
• How do we create environments that honour and invite families to participate?
• Social capital
• How do we help students stay connected to the communities and individuals
instrumental in their previous educational success?
• How do we engage with likely individuals and community-based organisations about
admissions and selection processes and the types of supports successful students
need?

12. • Navigational capital
• How do we help students navigate our institutions? Interactions with
teachers/faculty? Interactions with student-support staff? Their peers?
• How willing are we to acknowledge that our institutions, both their structures and
cultures, have a history of, and may still in many ways be unsupportive and/or
hostile to our students and their communities?
• Resistance capital
• How do we support students who are committed to engaging in and serving their
home communities (however they define these)?
• What opportunities do we provide students in and outside of the classroom to
prepare them for participation in a diverse democracy?