Low completion rates amongst students from Black working-class backgrounds remain a persistent challenge to post-apartheid university transformation in South Africa. Notions of universities as colour-blind, meritocratic, and post-racial have developed around a deficit and victim-blaming majoritarian narrative that individualises educational…

First-generation and working-class (FGWC) students bring a different set of life experiences to the classroom than students of privilege. As an instructor from an FGWC background, I use the poverty simulation game Spent! to make economic stratification understandable to students who have led lives of economic privilege and bring FGWC…

This paper will discuss the concepts of Bildung, subalternity, and physics- and engineering education and where these topics intersect and interact with one another. A central part of the concept of Bildung is educating citizens--active participators in society. At the same time, a central characteristic of subaltern groups is that their voices…

Research suggests that class-privileged students value learning for its own sake and study the liberal arts, while working-class students believe college is a means to an end. However, recent studies indicate that these associations are weakening. This paper investigates the link between class background, college values, and curricular choices,…

This article explores whether pedagogies of dialogue and care are evidenced in how lecturers engage online with their students in teaching and learning on Learning Management Systems (LMSes). Many lecturers in the online higher education landscape predominantly come from affluent educational habitus, whereas many students come from working-class…

Studies in relation to working-class students at elite universities document on the one hand the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in dealing with class domination while on the other indicate a new form of domination and disadvantages working on these working-class 'exceptions' -- they may achieve academically at university but experience various…

This paper explores the potential for conducting collaborative and critical research in higher education which problematises the role and practices of the academy in maintaining exclusion. It begins with a brief discussion of UK government discourse on widening participation, and contrasts this with the research literature which indicates the…