Demographics, Backgrounds and Ways of Knowing

James writes on sociology, his methodologies, and experience.

Recently I had to fill a form with information about another person, and it ended with an ethnicity questionnaire. I felt very peculiar encountering this, and it encouraged me to think deeply about the topic of ethnic identity and experiences of the world, and how I have worked with this topic in different ways throughout my life.

Whenever an ethnicity questionnaire is part of an official form, James S and I almost always tick the “White - British” box, rather than “Prefer not to answer”. Since my Citizens Advice days, working in frontline Advice as well as Social Policy and service development, I have appreciated the value of full data in understanding how structures and systems work. When working with diverse communities in Leicester (where religious and ethnic groups have strong recognisable infrastructure that shapes people’s lives), and refugees in Coventry, putting "White - British” felt important for data completeness rather than being intrinsically of interest. Whiteness can feel like a default, with nothing notable about it.

This feeling was challenged for me when I became Access and Participation Secretary, working within the Student Success Team, at Writtle University College in 2018. The Office for Students reported back to the university with its requirements for the institution’s demographic focus, in terms of enrolment, retention, attainment, and progression. Their verdict was that the university needed to focus on one group in particular: ‘White Working-Class Males’.

My immediate reaction was to query this block. Why WWCM and not WCM? Or WWC? Or WM? … but this was, according to the OfS, the group of specific interest. My research was long and fascinating, involving literature reviews, focus groups, internal and externally managed student surveys, and test-and-learn interventions (which I am pleased to say were highly successful). A long internal report paper was generated, but I will not repeat it here. I want to draw out one highlight insight, which was the damaging effect of one key Higher Education industry phrase on specifically WWCMs: ‘independent learner’. In a nutshell, other groups either interpreted the aspirational archetype to mean a go-getter, or a benchmark to be challenged if glass ceilings were to be broken through (‘I must ask for help on my own initiative’, or ‘I need to jump twice as high, so I will demand all I can get till I am stopped, and will not police myself’). Academics and support staff alike thought that ‘independent learner’ clearly meant ‘proactive go-getter’, but it flatly turned out to mean the complete opposite to WWCM, who shouldered an expectation to ruggedly ‘figure things out for myself’, sometimes taken to the extreme. Multiple focus group participants explained they did not even ask the Librarian for help finding resources for fear they would fail to perform as ‘independent learners’ and flunk their degrees.

The OfS definition of working-class revolves around postcode-based metrics such as Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and POLAR Quintiles. POLAR measures graduates in the home environment of students, acting as a proxy for familiarity with Higher Education from the inside. The impact there is clear. The impact of whiteness appears to (partly?) be explainable more in terms of other ethnic groups seeing themselves already as glass-ceiling-smashers, reducing the ‘independent learner’ curse, skewing the statistics. … But why Men? Partly the statistical underperformance of male students could be explained by female rejection of the ‘independent learner’ curse (glass-ceiling-smashing), but I found strong evidence in the literature and on the ground for aspects of masculinity to actually draw students towards the curse, and not all of that was culturally inherited or assumed, but was instead engineered by poorly planned and evaluated approaches further upstream in the education pipeline. As I remarked in my report at the time: ‘The reason for this misinterpretation by male students is the school background identified by Pinkett and Roberts in which boys have been systematically subjected to interventions using competitiveness and reinforcing ideals of self-reliance onto boys in a misguided effort to engage them.’

My conclusions are that it is always best to be tenaciously curious about the experiences of different groups — even ones you embody or feel you know.

It is as a role model that I feel a weight of responsibility to talk openly about how I have made the leaps forward I have made in the heritage and cultural worlds, and, indeed, the giants around me upon whose shoulders I have stood to make my particular contributions. In a culture that only values virtuoso celebrity this takes courage. I want to talk about one dynamic in particular, which contains helpful advice. James S and I regularly attend local business networking evenings, where we can discuss our perspectives with people from different backgrounds and experiences. ‘Getting our reps in’ by explaining concepts to new friends with an open mind does a great deal to enhance our cognitive agility, relevance realisation and optimal grip on ideas, as well as understanding how communications land with people from diverse backgrounds. This kind of welcome openness is a major key to success.