Advancing Theory and Research in Widening Participation

Ellen Boeren is lecturer at Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She obtained her PhD in Educational Sciences in May 2011 from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Her research interests are situated in the field of higher/adult/lifelong education. She conducts (European) comparative research and has a special interest in survey methodology. She went through the Thomas J. Alexander fellowship with the OECD (funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation) and is the Edinburgh team lead on the Horizon 2020 funded project ENLIVEN - Encouraging Lifelong Learning for a Vibrant and Inclusive Europe as well as on the Erasmus+ project New Adults’ Competencies for Skills Revolution. She is sole author of 'Lifelong Learning Participation in a Changing Policy Context: an Interdisciplinary Theory' for which she won the 2017 Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Adult Education Literature.Nalita James is Associate Professor in Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester, UK. Her research interests include: access to higher education, adult education, lifelong learning, educational transitions, and educational policy and she is published widely in this area. She is currently conducting research on adult learners and the impact of ESOL on learner identity (funded by the Department for Local Communities and Government) with Leicester Adult Education College. She is co-author with Hugh Busher of Improving Opportunities to Engage in Learning: A study of the Access to Higher Education Diploma (Routledge, 2018), and with Ellen Boeren of Being an Adult Learner in Austere Times (2018).

• Introduction: Special Issue: advancing theory and research in widening participation 1.Beyond aspirations: deploying the capability approach to tackle the under-representation in higher education of young people from deprived communities 2. Thinking with and beyond Bourdieu in widening higher education participation 3. Understanding adult lifelong learning participation as a layered problem 4. Systemic obstacles to lifelong learning: the influence of the educational system design on learning attitudes 5. Recognition of prior learning: the tensions between its inclusive intentions and constraints on its implementation 6. Accessing and assessing appropriate widening participation data: an exploration of how data are used and by whom

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