Research Aims, Objectives and Questions

Aim

To examine the impact of the division between further and higher education on strategies to widen participation in undergraduate education

Objectives

1. To determine the nature and significance of this division and its rationale.

• What assumptions underpin this separation, and how is access, participation and progression conceived and promoted in analogous systems?
  

2. To investigate the impact of this separation on policy formation, organisational development and student participation within and between further and higher education.

• What are the relationships between the main partners in the two-sector system, and what considerations shape their response to widening participation policies?
  

3. To develop a theoretical model for understanding the structural, organisational, situational and dispositional factors that bear on participation, progression and transfer in a dual-sector system.

• What are the features of an effective cross-sector system of further and higher education?
  

4. To establish an empirical base for analyzing relationships between the location of higher education and patterns of participation by age, gender, ethnicity, disability and social class in post-secondary education.

• What kinds of students use what types of further education as a basis for enrolment and study in what forms of higher education, and how is this changing?
  

5. To assess the contribution of further education establishments to the expansion of higher education and the broadening of its student population.

• How significant, different or distinctive is the further education contribution to higher education?
  

6. To understand the meaning and importance of boundaries, transitions and transfers between further and higher education and between short-cycle and first-degree undergraduate education.

• What is the nature of this boundary and how is it encountered, experienced and described by students and staff who move between these zones?

7. To build policy intelligence, research capacity and practitioner-based research capability in further and higher education.

• In what ways can current policy and practice be improved by reflection on alternative approaches, and where and how is research capacity best developed in the future?