Evaluation for equity and justice in higher education The Political, the Relational, and the Transformational

Abstract

Universities have a long history of “widening participation”, attempting to advance social equity and social mobility through access and success within higher education. In England, evaluation has been central to the widening participation agenda for over twenty years, so much so that it has become systematised within higher education providers and is intertwined with the development and delivery of programmes and activities. In this system, normalised evaluation of practice valuing technical expertise, linear thinking, and rationality is dominant. These systems typically focus on questions such as “Did this intervention work?” However, socio-political influences prevail, particularly in systems driven by policy agendas, which can contribute to symbolic and non-use of evaluation that maintains the status quo, inhibiting our ability to advance social equity. In these contexts, it is important to make explicit the value judgments decision-makers hold that affect how higher education providers enact WP policy and its evaluation in practice, so that we can begin to consider alternative perspectives and strategies for change. This paper builds a conceptual framework drawing from political science, organisational theory, and systems thinking to develop our understanding of the widening participation system, including evaluation within the system...