@‘We’re trying to do things differently’ The challenges of relationships and recognition in Higher Education Freya Aquarone, Laura Nehéz-Posony, Propa Rezwana Anwar, Samira Salam, Eleni Koutsouri, Minkyung Kim, SooYeon Suh, Tope Mayomi, Julia Pilarska, Emily Houghton, and Yara Boodai ‘We’re trying to do things differently’ The challenges of relationships and recognition in Higher Education ‘We’re trying to do things differently’: the challenges of relationships and recognition in Higher Education A reflexive review of King’s College London’s Social Sciences BA programme Freya Aquarone, Laura Nehéz-Posony, Propa Rezwana Anwar, Samira Salam, Eleni Koutsouri, Minkyung Kim, SooYeon Suh, Tope Mayomi, Julia Pilarska, Emily Houghton, and Yara Boodai Centre for Public Policy Research Published in 2020 by the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR) King’s College London The School of Education, Communication & Society Waterloo Bridge Wing Franklin-Wilkins Building Waterloo Road London, SE1 9NH Copyright © Freya Aquarone, Laura Nehéz-Posony, Propa Rezwana Anwar, Samira Salam, Eleni Koutsouri, Minkyung Kim, SooYeon Suh, Tope Mayomi, Julia Pilarska, Emily Houghton, and Yara Boodai 2020 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher ISBN 978-1-8382998-0-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-8382998-1-1 (e-book) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cover design by Neil Brogan This book’s publication and the research on which it is based were funded by the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS-DTP) Printed on recycled paper by Premier Print Group, London To find out more about CPPR visit https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/centre-for-public-policy-research-cppr This book is dedicated to Laura’s father, Dr Márton Nehéz-Posony, who passed away in April 2020. Márton devoted his career to striving for social justice in Hungary; his life stands as testimony to the value of fighting for change. Márton was a big supporter of this project from the start and was so looking forward to seeing it completed. So Márton, if you’re listening, here goes… Contents Foreword 1 Background and project approach 3 Methodology 7 1 – Relationships and Recognition 17 Freya Aquarone Higher Education: ‘a community of learners’? 22 2 – Recognition as Love, Care and Kindness 29 2a – Love, care and kindness on the programme 33 Laura Nehéz-Posony 2b – Challenges to recognition as love, care and kindness 46 Propa Rezwana Anwar and Freya Aquarone 3 – Recognition as Equality and Partnership 81 Freya Aquarone 3a – Participatory democracy: Course Community Meetings 87 3b – Learning and teaching: engaged pedagogy 111 4 – The Context of Recognition on the Programme 131 Freya Aquarone 4a – Recognition on the staff team 136 4b – Sheer numbers: why community size matters for recognition 147 5 – Enacting Recognition Through the Politics of Difference 155 5a – Class, ‘race’ and critical consciousness 160 Samira Salam 5b – The effects of institutional and societal structures on access to HE 181 Eleni Koutsouri 5c – The politics of difference in the classroom 196 Openness in the classroom: the key to recognition 203 Minkyung Kim Diversity and the challenges of recognition 217 SooYeon Suh In defence of the politics of difference 232 Tope Mayomi and Freya Aquarone Epilogue 253 Executive Summary 259 Recommendations 277 Afterword 279 Acknowledgements 281 References 285 Index 301 Poems We’re living in a society 19 Simple as the fact 31 Another barrier is time 63 It’s not just a job for anyone 134 When love entered the classroom 216 I don’t think cis white people 230 Storms of Change 251 Acronyms BAME – Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic BASS – BA Social Sciences CCM – Course Community Meeting CPPR – Centre for Public Policy Research ECS – (School of) Education, Communication and Society GTA – Graduate Teaching Assistant HE – Higher Education KCL – King’s College London LGBTQ+ – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning ‘plus’ other sexual orientations/gender identities that fall within the umbrella term LISS-DTP – London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership UCU – University and College Union Foreword Sometime in the late autumn of 2019, just a couple of months into working on the BA Social Sciences programme at KCL, it began to dawn on me that you only get to do something for the first time once. An obvious realisation perhaps, but one which had – in the pace and the intensity of the day to day – escaped me. The first year of the programme was slipping through our fingers, and Higher Education is hectic at the best of times – not least when you’re starting a whole new course from scratch. For the staff team, having spent hours over coffees and email, at Away Days and in corridors, debating and discussing the principles of education which we were hoping to realise, ‘normality’ suddenly kicked in. And come September, there just wasn’t enough time in the week for in-depth reflection and discussion. Snatched conversations in stairwells came to feel like luxuries; moments of pausing in a storm to take stock of where we’d washed up. Some of those conversations became about how to capture this journey – for posterity and for our own community’s learning and maybe for a few outside people with an interest. A group of us put our heads together and the idea of a reflective research project – carried out for and by members of the programme community – emerged. The idea became a possibility primarily because of a generous grant from the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership, which enabled me to take a funded break in my PhD. But the project’s viability was also grounded in the support of Dr John Owens and Professor Alan Cribb who, despite the aforementioned workloads faced by HE practitioners, gave hours and hours of their time and emotional energy to making this project happen, from co-writing the grant application right through to proof-reading the drafts. More than anything though, this project is the result of the enormous work, dedication, and creativity of the rest of the research team – all of whom are first-year undergraduates. This project was meant to last three months. In the end, it took us seven. Of course, research projects famously overrun, but we weren’t really anticipating doing ours in the context of a pandemic. For the vast majority of the project, our research team of thirteen has been scattered 1 We’re trying to do things differently across six countries – the UK, Greece, Poland, Hungary, South Korea, and Thailand – and has been communicating largely through an unhealthy reliance on video conferencing and a bit of dabbling in interactive post-it-note software. It has not always been an easy journey, and many team members have had to deal with complex personal challenges resulting from the fallout of COVID-19. I’m still blinking in pleasant surprise that we’ve reached this point without becoming thoroughly sick of one another, and without burning out completely. This book is trying to capture a moment in a journey. That journey is still very much in its infancy. But we hope what we’ve written provides a useful snapshot of a work in progress for those of us – students and practitioners alike – who have an interest and belief in the possibility that Higher Education can look a little more like our ideals, and a little less like tick-boxes and marketing. - Freya 2 Background and project approach A brief introduction to the BA Social Sciences programme The BA Social Sciences (BASS) programme is a relatively new undergraduate programme at King’s College London (KCL), hosted by the School of Education, Communication and Society (ECS). The programme was developed over several years by staff at ECS and launched with its first cohort of forty-three students in September 2019. The ideas and aims which motivated the programme’s creators, and which were developed further by staff to form the programme’s official ‘philosophy and ethos statement’, are oriented around four core commitments, to: social justice and human wellbeing, rigour and criticality, social action and social change, and collaborative and inclusive learning. There is also a strong emphasis on the idea that meaningful human relationships are fundamental to education. Many aspects of the programme’s philosophy will feel familiar to students and practitioners, perhaps especially those working in the social sciences. However, partly because the course was built from scratch, it has been able to embed some practices which are arguably relatively unusual. For instance, while lectures do form part of the timetable, a large proportion of contact time consists of workshops and small-group seminars, with a strong emphasis on student participation and discussion. There is a whole-community forum for deliberation and decision-making based on democratic principles. There are no exams, and the programme combines conventional academic essays with more diverse forms of assessment such as presentations, media articles and reflective diary- writing. The research team and how it worked This project drew on the principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR). PAR has many definitions, but at its core, it is about people becoming researchers of their own social context in order to better understand and/or change it (Galletta and Torre, 2019). In education 3 We’re trying to do things differently research, this tends to mean “center[ing] the wisdom and experience of students [...] and educators, positioning them as architects of research rather than objects of study” (Galletta and Torre, 2019:1).