ABSTRACT

The massification of national systems of higher education in recent decades and the rapid increase in the number of students have raised widening participation for students from underrepresented groups as a central policy agenda. In this study I focus on an overlooked group in the research literature – student support practitioners, who provide advising and counseling services to students – and explore how these practitioners negotiate and shape widening participation policies as part of their ongoing work. The study is based on interviews with 43 support practitioners working in 17 Israeli higher education institutions. It draws on the policy-as-practice approach and the theoretical construct of category work to explore how these practitioners interpret, adapt, and modify widening participation policies. The analysis reveals three practices of category work: creation, transformation, and disruption of policy categories: Practitioners create a new category of flexible and part-time studies, transform the category of students eligible for support by expanding its boundaries to include low socioeconomic status, and disrupt a target group’s category by dissolving its boundaries, modifying its homogenous nature, and eliminating problematic support tools. This study contributes to our understanding of the gaps between WP policies and their appropriation, and of the processes in which local actors shape policy categories.

摘要

近几十年来，国家高等教育系统的大众化和学生人数的迅速增加，已将扩大代表性不足群体的学生的参与作为一项核心政策议程。在这项研究中，我关注研究文献中一个被忽视的群体——学生支持从业者，他们为学生提供建议和咨询服务——并探讨这些从业者如何协商和制定扩大参与政策，作为他们正在进行的工作的一部分。该研究基于对在 17 所以色列高等教育机构工作的 43 名支持从业者的采访。它借鉴了政策实践方法和类别工作的理论构建探索这些从业者如何解释、调整和修改不断扩大的参与政策。分析揭示了类别工作的三种实践：政策类别的创建、转型和破坏并通过消除目标群体的界限、修改其同质性和消除有问题的支持工具来破坏目标群体的类别。这项研究有助于我们了解 WP 政策及其拨款之间的差距，以及当地参与者塑造政策类别的过程。