University Choosers and Refusers
Social Theory, Ideas of “Choice” and Implications for Widening Participation
Erica Southgate1 and Anna Bennett2, 1School of Education, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia, 2Centre for English Language and Foundation Studies, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
The purpose of this chapter is to critically interrogate ideas about “choice” and higher education as they are framed in second modernity societies. We argue that “choice” is a Foucauldian-type of problematization, or a key aspect of the social world that, despite appearing to be a common sense norm, is riddled with uncertainty. We demonstrate how the concept of “choice,” as it is framed within the context of second modernity societies and their neoliberal universities, is a problematization by deploying a set of specific theoretical lenses—choice biography, structure and agency, and instrumental rationality. These sociological lenses illuminate why the idea of making choices about going to university is neither as straightforward or as logical as it seems in equity policy and practice.
Keywords
Agency; choice; equity; higher education; rationality; social theory; structure; widening participation
“Given the ongoing interest in increasing productivity and participation in the workforce, understanding when talent is lost is a useful exercise. The term ‘lost talent’ describes the underutilisation or wastage of human potential.”
“Pop quiz: would you borrow $50,000 to buy a product you are not entirely sure about? What if the product did not provide the desired outcome and rapidly lost its value a few years after purchase?…For some, university is a natural progression after school. For others, huge student debt is something to worry about much later on.”
“So…you are thinking about not going to university—congratulations! You have just proved that you can think differently.”
Willkommen to Second Modernity
Many societies are experiencing striking social and economic change. Some argue that this is an historic shift from first modernity to second modernity (Beck & Lau, 2005) or to a more “liquid” form of modernity (Bauman, 2000). First modernity societies are premised on the nation-state, industrial modernization, gainful work and employment, progress, and individual behavior bounded by collective forms of social life. Second modernity societies can take multiple forms but are generally characterized by the transformation of basic institutions while maintaining a commitment to the principles of modernity (Beck & Grande, 2010). Second modernity societies reflect the effects of globalization and global risk, a cosmopolitarization of the idea of community, increased and intense individualization, and employment uncertainty and/or underemployment (Beck & Grande, 2010; Beck & Lau, 2005). The “either/or” binary logic that prevailed in first modernity societies (employment/unemployment, qualified/not qualified) has been disrupted in second modernity societies by increased ambiguity and less predictable socio-economic and cultural conditions. Second modernity societies are characterized by a “both/and” dynamics (employed and yet still underemployed, qualified and yet not credentialed enough).
In second modernity decision-making is less certain. For example, linear ideas about career planning that lead to predicable progressions no longer apply when, in just one generation, whole industries can vanish, and ordinary people are told that they will change careers several times during a life course. Teachers are told that most of their students are being educated for jobs that have not been invented yet. Postschool career and education choices (or “transitions” in policy-speak) are often tinged with ambiguity and uncertainty. As the first quote of this chapter suggests, how are genuine individual choices about “investing” in higher education to be made, when despite a sense of “natural progression” to university for some, there are far more ambivalent choices for others and much less certainty of gainful employment in desired careers upon graduation? What of those who are considered capable but who choose not to attend university—are they a wasted economic resource, the “lost talent” of the nation, or should they be congratulated as individuals who have had the courage to think “differently”?
This chapter explores the idea of choice and higher education within second modernity. It is set out in three parts. Part 1 describes the neoliberal university (a key institution in second modernity societies) and how neoliberalism frames the idea of “choice” and higher education. Part 2 deploys some tools from social theory that allow for critical examination of the idea of “choice” in relation to educational and career pathways. Part 3 concludes the chapter with a discussion of choice as a key problematiZation in widening participation policy and practice.
The analysis is guided by a Foucauldian notion of critique which poses questions about “natural” assumptions that frame social issues:
“A critique does not consist in saying that things aren’t good the way they are. It consists in seeing on just what type of assumptions, of familiar notions, of established and unexamined ways of thinking the accepted practices are based…To do criticism is to make harder those acts which are now too easy.”
Foucauldian critique examines contemporary practices and forms of self (or subjects/subjectivity) that have become problematizations. Problematizations are aspects of the social world that have some uncertainty or difficulties associated with them (Rabinow & Rose, 2003). Investigations into problemizations seek to evaluate and unsettle the “normative yardsticks” (Lemke, 2011) that act as “truths” in the social world. Foucault provides a “rational critique of rationality” (Foucault, 1998); an approach that traces the way “rational” subjects and their conduct emerge out of particular socio-historical conditions. We contend that postschool “choices” are a key problematization of second modernity and that this is illustrated in the widening participation agenda of higher education.
Part 1: Choice and the Neoliberal University
Neoliberalism is a ubiquitous feature of western second modernity societies and has been described as: an ideology (Amable, 2011); a pervasive set of discourses (Gaffikin & Perry, 2009); and a new form of political and economic governance (Larner, 2000). Neoliberalism reflects the tenets of classical liberalism (the self-interested individual and free market, laissez-faire economics) but is characterized by intense individualism, consumer sovereignty, freedom and choice, competition, marketization, and modes of governmental and institutional regulation that rely on performativity and audit mechanisms (Olssen & Peters, 2005).
Commentators suggest that neoliberalism has remade universities as corporate entities headed up by knowledge managers who seek to guide an entrepreneurial or enterprise institution to successfully compete in ever-deregulated national and global educational markets (Marginson & Considine, 2000; Peters, 2013). Connell (2013) argues that under neoliberalism education systems “come to stand, not for the common interest and self-knowledge of the society, but for ways to extract private advantage at the expense of others” (p. 106). The human capital function of education is emphasized: individual students should make calculated investments in developing the skills, knowledge and attitudes they need to acquire positional good within local, national, and global markets and this has, according this logic, a positive economic flow effect for the nation state (Rizvi & Lingard, 2011). Choice is a driving concept. It is considered a fundamental property of the individual consumer who possesses the capacity to make unrestrained, rational decisions within the higher education marketplace. Bauman (2000) encapsulates the pervasive logic and irony of this type of individualization and choice when he writes:
“Let there be no mistake…individualization is a fate, not a choice. In the land of the individual freedom of choice the option to escape individualization and to refuse participation in the individualizing game is emphatically not on the agenda…(If people) fall ill, it is assumed that this has happened because they were not resolute and industrious enough in following their health regime; if they stay unemployed, it is because they failed to learn the skills of gaining an interview, or because they did not try hard enough to find a job or because they are, purely and simply, work-shy; if they are not sure about their career prospects and agonize over their future, it is because they are not good enough at winning friends and influencing people and failed to learn and master, as they should have done, the arts of self-expression and impressing others. This is, at any rate, what they are told these days to be the case, and what they have come to believe, so that they now behave as if this was, indeed, the truth of the matter.”
original emphasis, p. 34.
The intensity of individualization in Western societies has been examined by a number of sociologists (for an overview see Brannen & Nilsen, 2005). Beck (1994) suggests that it has led to the emergence of the “choice biography,” a reconceptualizing of biography as self-made, as requiring people to rationally take control of, shape and propel themselves towards their own life goals. This contrasts with the normal or standard biography, where people’s life course is conceived of as more linear and related to their social origin (Brannen & Nilsen, 2005). While subject to considerable debate (Brannen & Nilsen, 2002; Roberts, 2010; Woodman, 2009, 2010), the idea of choice biography does capture something of the logic inherent in the opening quotes where people are compelled to manufacture, self-design, and self-stage their own biographies (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995), with minimal acknowledgment of the broader economic, social, and cultural constraints that affect choice.
Social theory has long problematized ideas of unfettered freedom of choice. It offers a number of conceptual tools that problematize the idea of choice as a highly individualized expression of freedom and responsibility mediated through calculated action.
Part 2: Some Ideas About Choice from Social Theory
Agency and Structure
Questions about the extent to which people (sociologists call people agents, actors, or subjects) have the freedom to act according to their own will and intentions are central to social theory life. This type of action is referred to as agency, which is:
“the experience of acting, doing things, making things happen, exerting power, being a subject of event or controlling things. The other aspect of human experience is to be acted upon, to be the object of events, to have things happen to oneself or in oneself, to be constrained and controlled: to lack agency.”
Although an important sociological concept, agency has “maintained an elusive, albeit resonant vagueness” (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Hewson (2010) suggests the agency is imbued with certain properties The first property is that of intentionality where people act in a purposeful, goal-directed way. The second involves power where people use their resources and capabilities to their advantage. The third aspect involves a mode of rationality considered as systematic calculation of means and ends that facilitate action. Conceptions of agency in modernity (and second modernity) are characterized by two (seemingly conflicting) metaphors: foresight informed by cautious, rational prudence and audacious self-confident power (Hewson, 2010). Emirbayer and Mische (1998) suggest that agency is socially embedding action within a temporal framework, that is:
“informed by the past (in its habitual aspect), but also oriented toward the future (as a capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment)…. Since social actors are embedded within many such temporalities at once, they can be said to be oriented towards the past, the future, and the present at any given moment…(I)n examining changes in agentic orientation, we can…chart varying degrees of maneuverability, inventiveness and reflective choice shown by social actors in relation to the constraining and enabling contexts of action.”
p. 963–4.
Agency is often discussed in relation to what Emirbayer and Mische (1998) describe as “contexts for action” or social structure. The idea of social structure usually refers to social entities that are relatively stable, organized, ordered and sometimes hierarchized (Bernardi, Gonzalez, & Requena, 2007). These entities may be enduring social, economic, and cultural relations (gender or social class being examples of this) and institutions or organized social systems (corresponding to commonly held notions of, for example, politics, the legal and education system, the community, and the family) (Bernardi et al., 2007).
The agency-structure debate has a long history in social thought and continues to influence contemporary debates about society, freedom, and human action. These debate focuses on two aspects: (i) How much “society” (via social structures) cause people think and act the way they do (Bessant & Watts, 2007); and (ii) Whether structure and agency are even distinctive things at a lived and analytical level (Clegg & Bailey, 2008). At the heart of the debate are questions about people’s capacity to choose in relation to the broader social contexts of their lives:
“(T)he relation between structure and action is bidirectional. On one hand, the restrictions and opportunities of the structural context in which the actor finds himself [sic] capacitate and constrain his [sic] action. In other words, the structure limits and conditions action. Nevertheless, individuals do not cease to have margins of freedom in their actions. On the other hand, the aggregation and combination of individual actions can result in emerging, unforseen, or undesired effects of change in the social structure. In other words, the structure itself is the product of the complex aggregation of individual actions.”
Understanding individual “choice” can be messy. It involves tracing the bidirectional movement between agency and structure to evaluate all the factors that “capacitate and constrain” a person. Any account of making choices needs to pay attention to the complex temporal aspects of agency enacted within specific contexts where an individual’s ability to reflect on, invent, and manoeuvre towards choices are (often simultaneously) influenced by their (past) habits, the horizons of their (future) projections, and the contingencies of (present) everyday life (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998).
Some social theorists have presented frameworks that account for a bidirectional movement between agency and social structures and educational and career choices. For example, Hodkinson and Sparkes’s (1997) theory of careership captures the interplay between decision-making and the structural determinants that facilitate, limit and pattern this. They argue that career and educational choices are mostly pragmatic, not systematic, and derive from interactions within social fields or contexts in which people operate. What look like “personal” choices are, Hodkinson and Sparkes (1997) argue, actually decisions that are influenced by sets of routine practices related to structural relations such social class, gender or ethnicity, that are embodied as dispositions or habitus. Habitus influences both the types of choices that are made and the way they are made. They give the example of young women being more likely than young men to consider their domestic circumstances when making career decisions because young women are more socialized into considering the private realm when making choices. The contexts people come from are imbued with social norms related to factors such as gender, socio-economic status, religious and cultural background. These structural relations mold a person’s habitus and their possibilities for action:
“People make career decisions within horizons for action. By horizon for action we mean the arena within which actions can be taken and decisions made. Habitus and the opportunity structures of the labour market both influence horizons for action and are inter-related, for perceptions of what might be available and appropriate affect decisions, and opportunities are simultaneously subjective and objective…(H)orizons for action both limit and enable our view of the world and the choices we can make within it…Thus, the fact that there are jobs for girls in engineering is irrelevant if a young woman does not perceive engineering as an appropriate career.”
Hodkinson and Sparkes (1997) also argue that routines, turning points and happenstance also influence educational and career pathways. For example, they suggest that some routines in everyday life confirm the choices made by a person and socialize them into particular trajectories while other routines contradict or serve to dislocate a person from their identity and habitus. They outline three types of turning points that can also impact upon choice: (i) structural turning points, often connected to institutions, where choices are determined by external structures (for example, the end of compulsory schooling prompts young people to consider job and educational trajectories); (ii) self-initiated turning points where individuals transform in response to personal circumstances; and, (iii) forced turning points where people make choices in reaction to external events or the actions of others.
The theory of careership suggests that personal choice is actually a complicated, relational dynamic in which many factors can have a “knock-on” effect, and where structure and agency are in continuous interaction (Hodkinson, 2008; Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1997). This challenge to highly individualized conceptions of postschool education and career choice is also echoed in the work of other social theorists (for example, Archer et al., 2012; Ball, Reay, & David, 2002b; Bok, 2010; Reay, Crozier, & Clayton, 2010; Sellar & Gale, 2011; Southgate, Kelly, & Symonds, 2015). The complications of choice contrasts with neoliberal educational policy that assumes choice to be a technically rational process where individuals enact their free will to make decisions based on a disinterested assessment of their abilities and opportunities on offer (Hodkinson, 2008; Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1997; Southgate & Bennett, 2014). It is to this formulation of the instrumentally rational actor that we now turn.
Challenges to Instrumental Rationality and Choice
Choice is a contested problematic of Western thought—and one infused ideas about rationality.1 Research has traced a shift towards a highly rationalized view of the citizen or consumer in social and education policy (Kemshall, 2010; Nairn & Higgins, 2007; Reay, 2008; Sanderson, 2002). Apple (2000) argues that neoliberal education is imbued with the view of “student as human capital,” a perspective which assumes people judiciously undertake informed assessments in order to invest in and achieve their goals. Underpinning this highly, some might argue “over-rationalized” (De Haan & Vos, 2003), conception of human action is instrumental rationality. Instrumental rationality is apparent when a person deliberately formulates the means towards a goal. It substantively involves projective agency (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998) where decisions about career and education pathways “are made on the basis of calculations of the costs, benefits, and probabilities of success of various options” (Hatcher, 1998).
Critiques of instrumental rationality and explanations for other types of rationality are evident in the sociological literature. For example, Max Weber, a founder of sociological thought, suggested that people’s actions are influenced by: (i) instrumental rationality (zweckrational) or the calculating pursuit of one’s goals; (ii) value rationality (wertrational) or the pursuit of goals based on a beliefs and values that are intrinsic to a person related to ethics, philosophy or religion; (iii) affectual state (affektuel) or emotion, sentiment, and feeling rather than calculating means and ends; and, (iv) tradition (traditional), where custom or habit are (often unconsciously) at work (Brubaker, 1984). A person’s actions, including the choices they make, are rarely influenced by only one form of rationality.
Others have argued that instrumental rationality or calculated decision-making is a social action that is often re-constructed in retrospect (De Haan & Vos, 2003). In other words, people seek to explain their actions as instrumentally rational after the fact, although at the time their choices were more pragmatic or even nonrational. Nonrationality can take many forms (Gigerenzer, 2001) including “choices” that appear to have little conscious thought behind them:
“By nonrational, I refer to all of those motivators and causes of action that work outside of reason. Nonrationality should not be confused with irrationality. Irrationality goes against reason; nonrationality simply acts without reason. The results of nonrational action can, on reflection, be found to be rational or irrational, but the action itself does not occur because we reasoned it out and found what we are to do to be rational. Much more likely is that we feel it is the appropriate thing to do and then figure out a reason to rationalize what we just did or are about to do.”
original emphasis, Quantz (2013).
Contemporary feminist theory has also critiqued instrumental rationality. This social theory argues that rationality per se is not masculine; however, the masculinization of a certain type of rationality has occurred and this requires careful attention. Instrumental rationality is a dominant Western form of masculinized rationality, stemming as it does from its roots in the philosophy of Descartes (or Cartesian thought). The Cartesian model of “man” artificially separates the mind from the body and privileges abstract thought, objective judgement, and general principles over more concrete, affective, and bodily ways of being/knowing (Ross-Smith & Kornberger, 2004). Ideas about masculinized instrumental rationality, operating as it does in the (idealized) minds of calculating actors, is considered the superior form of reason. Choices stemming from this type of rationality are considered best; instrumental rationality is associated with “positive” qualities such as cleverness, independence of will, decisiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, confidence, and control (Bologh, 1990; Bordo, 1986). Other forms of rationality and nonrational action are deemed either to be irrational (against reason) or an inferior form of reason. Choices stemming from noninstrumental rationalities are considered lesser because they are associated with “feminine” characteristics such as emotion, sentiment, interdependence, and relationships with others, and bodily aspects of self, such as gut-feeling and habit (Ross-Smith & Kornberger, 2004). Feminist social theory suggests that instrumental rationality is the norm against which other types of rationality (and action) are judged and that this standard effectively devalues other types of rationality that are not (solely) instrumental.
Sociological research has explored how social norms are related to social class, and how these influence educational and occupational choices (seminal work has also focuses on class and gender, for example: Skeggs, 2004; Willis, 1980). Hatcher (1998) drawing on the work of Gewirtz, Ball, and Bowe (1995) suggests that it is the middle class who most closely approximate instrumental rationality by making “educational decisions based on cost-benefit-probability calculations in order to…maintain their class position” (p. 13). Reay and Ball (1997) argue that “rational” working class choice differs from “rational” middle class choice in that the middle classes are playing an education “game” they are expecting to win. They suggest that there are greater risks for working class parents and their children in pursuing prestigious educational choices and that there is a “rational” logic in avoiding such choices (Reay, 2001; Reay, Davies, David, & Ball, 2001). Archer and Hutchings (2000) suggest that some young people do weigh up the risks and costs of going to university and see the option as not really “worth it” in terms of the financial risk, the possibility of failure, threat to class or ethnic identities, and the emotional discomfit of not fitting in (also see Reay, 2001). They argue that their choice not to go to university is reasonable given the structural and material constraints identified by such youth. Furthermore, they caution against viewing the choice not to go to university as indicative of a deficit of rational thinking or aspiration, instead arguing that broader structural inequalities should be addressed, particularly in schooling systems that create a sense of failure for working class youth. This is confirmed by other research which describes how some young people from working class backgrounds self-select out of higher education by choosing another, more “natural” post-school destination (Archer & Yamashita, 2003; Hatcher, 1998).
In their Bourdieuian analysis of social factors, choice and higher education, Ball, Davies, David, and Reay (2002a) suggest that choices are made within delimited opportunity structures and different horizons of action. They trace how choices are a product of a complex interplay between instrumental and/or pragmatic rationality, nonrational and nonutilitarian goals, taking into account the influence of values, emotions, projective agency, collective belonging, and habitus (embodied dispositions). This complexity is illustrated when they argue that school achievement (the means) is only one aspect of choosing to go to university:
“(It) has to be acknowledged that, in part, choice is related to likelihood of acceptance (into a university) and the applicant’s knowledge of the ‘points requirements’ of different courses in different institutions. Nonetheless, this was certainly not the only factor involved in this choice making…(For example,) those choosing high-status universities were more likely to nominate a career move as the basis for their choice. Presumably based on the availability of particular kinds of ‘imagined futures’…In contrast, those students primarily motivated by a wish to go to an institution where there were people who shared their culture and ethnicity, and were inclined to refer to their family and home life as important, were least likely to apply to high-prestige universities. Of course many of those choosing high-status universities are also making a choice that ensures they will be with others ‘like them’ in terms of culture and ethnicity, but this is an implicit rather than an explicit aspect of choice…and of the ‘classed’ nature of particular universities. It is taken for granted by these choosers that certain sorts of institutions and courses will be populated by certain sorts of students.”
The Bourdieuian concept of habitus is important here. Habitus is a set of embodied, durable but open dispositions, sometimes conscious but more often not so; one’s habitus mediates action with the external world (Bourdieu, 1990). Habitus is acquired in processes of socialization through group membership and as a result of living under certain conditions (Giddens, 2009). As Ball et al. (2002a) suggest the habitus of some segments of the middle class2 (often unconsciously) incorporates a trajectory towards university, with the habitus of middle class students “fitting” the institutional “ways of being” at university. They are “pre-adapted” to the milieu (Ball et al., 2002b). Choice for such students is about getting into the right course at the right university, not about going to university.
They are akin to Ball et al. (2002b) notion of the embedded chooser of higher education, one who has a “deep grammar of aspiration.”3 Embedded choosers follow a “normal” cultural script (or biography) that has a detailed plan about their imagined future and how they will get there. Their habitus, formed over their lifetime through extensive family and educational support where financial constraints are not an issue, will allow them to “naturally” develop both the ways and means to get to university. In contrast to this, contingent choosers have an incomplete cultural script regarding higher education; they have narrower social horizons, no family, and few social connections with experience of higher education, and are constrained by their financial situations. University study has an “unreality” to it; their habitus is not pre-adapted for the higher education milieu. Hence “rationality” and “choice” are not just situated within the minds of individuals. Embodiment, emotion, imagination, and sociality matter where educational choices are concerned.
Part 3: Choice as a Problematization of Widening Participation: Concluding Thoughts
As a policy framework, a diverse set of practices and an experiential domain, widening participation is permeated with the concept of individualized choice. This is particularly apparent in discourses that exhort the “capable,” the “talented,” and the truly “aspirational” to choose the “right” educational pathway for the good of themselves and the nation (Southgate & Bennett, 2014). At one level the social justice agenda driving widening participation proposes to empower certain types of people, from groups not traditionally represented in higher education, to make positive choices about studying at university in order to improve their lot (social mobility) and fulfil their dream (aspirations), and this is, in itself, not necessarily a problem.
However, from a Foucauldian perspective, the norms underpinning the idea of choice in widening participation should be closely examined for their assumptions and differential effects. Choice is a key problematization of widening participation because it is not a neat or discrete category of action but a socio-historical dynamic reflecting the “messiness of the human predicament” (Bauman, 1993). Treating the choice to go to university by “non-traditional” students4 as a matter of policy and practice intervention for individual, social, and economic good, as the prevention of human wastage, obscures both the intricacy of its lived dynamics and the way it has become a central (yet often unsettling) “truth” of second modernity societies and its institutions such as the neoliberal university. To reiterate Bauman (2000), in these times where highly individualized freedom of choice is exalted as the norm, not making choices and the “right” choices “is emphatically not on the agenda.”
Privileging one set of norms (or habitus) over another, risks (re)confirming a deficit view of those who do not embody the normative yardstick of highly individualized choice. Deficit thinking has historically been directed at the poor, the working class, and other socio-cultural groups (Burke, 2012; Reay, 2001). When people from these groups do not “rationally” choose postschool education or educational options that are deemed “aspirational” enough, they risk being positioned as “Other”: as something less than the instrumentally rational norm associated with those who are white, privileged, middle class, and until relatively recently, male (Archer & Hutchings, 2000; Southgate & Bennett, 2014). As social theory tells us choice is not always or even usually instrumentally rational, purely cognitive or an action devoid of social influences. Slack (2003) makes this point in “Whose Aspirations are they anyway,” arguing that any programmatic attempt to establish norms regarding university study for nontraditional groups need to be undertaken in a respectful manner—one that doesn’t denigrate other aspirational norms and the pragmatic logic involved in decision-making—and with an acknowledgement of the very real structural and relational factors that enable and constrain choice.
Given that a highly individualized idea of instrumental choice situated with a “choice biography” (Beck, 1994) is central to widening participation policy, we argue that closer consideration needs to be paid to theorizing and empirically investigating what respectful policy and practice looks like according to its lived tensions and possibilities. A second modernity warning is required however: given the disruption of the binary logic of either/or in second modernity societies, there may be no definitive principles for respectful widening participation policy and practice. Respectful policy and practice may be this and that, or may be respectful in some circumstances and for some groups and individuals, but not for others.
If choice is a key problematization for the widening participation agenda, then a rhetorical notion of respect is not its antidote. To claim respect as a simple solution risks introducing another normative problematization to the field. Foucault (1983) reminds us that everything is potentially uncertain, and that action for change requires attention to the unexamined ways of thinking on which accepted practices are based. What action might proceed from this cautious approach? One action might entail a systematic and rigorous analysis of what choice and respect look like in the differing contexts of widening participation, the principles and norms underpinning these, and their intended and unintended effects. It might also involve policy-makers and equity practitioners examining their rational decisions and the assumptions and norms that underpin the choices they make in developing, interpreting, and enacting widening participation within schools, universities, and the broader community.