This project is a joint cooperation between University College of Southeast Norway (USN), University of Cumbria (UoC), United Kingdom and VIA University College (VIA), Denmark, drawing on each institution’s specific competence and experience. The project offers a response to the ‘Rethinking Education Survey by prioritising the social aspects of HE and by ensuring that support to succeed in further education is provided. By generating a synergy between education, research, innovation and social inclusion, marginalised students will be recruited onto modernised BA and MA pathways. Through collaborating with students as co-researchers, the project generates opportunities to participate, enhances employability and supports academic progression. By re-designing curricula to include marginalised students transnationally, HEI partners will actively promote ‘social cohesion, sustainable development, active citizenship and personal fulfilment in European societies’. EU efforts to reduce social inequality must focus on marginalised contexts where we learn from those who live with the consequences. Historically, HEI’s have reproduced economic disparities and compounded social immobility. HEI innovation and modernisation is crucial for preventing social exclusion. This project enhances social mobility by developing new approaches to student/educator co-creation. This will be achieved by collaborating with marginalised students to reduce inequality and disrupt intergenerational cycles of educational dis-investment. This project targets disadvantaged students with experience of Early School Leaving (ESL)/Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). Through recruiting students as co-researchers, the project seeks to minimise the risk of educational failure and improve HEI retention rates. By embedding ESL/NEET experience at the heart of the project, a transnational and empirically informed evidence base will develop ‘deprivation literacy’ models. ‘Deprivation Literacy’ models will help improve relationships between ESL/NEET, Associate Partners and key stakeholders across education, training and welfare provisions. This project has been designed to intervene and compensate for social exclusion. By valuing the knowledge and insights of student co-researchers, advanced research and practice experience will be acquired. In short, this project models social inclusion within our own HEI’s and local communities. Initially, each HEI will recruit a minimum of 5 student co-researchers. A minimum of 30 current ESL/NEET will also be recruited onto the project as informants. Informants will be identified by liaising with key stakeholders/ Associate Partners within deprived regions identified in Norway, Denmark and the Northwest of England. Building upon the success of an ongoing longitudinal study of ESL/NEET undertaken by USN, this project will utilise an informal ‘indirect approach’ methodology. Following training in this approach educators and students will collect qualitative data designed to capture informants unstructured biographies. The methodology places a specific emphasis on connecting with and investing in marginalised young people. Through analysing the connections disadvantaged informants develop with co-researchers, theories of ‘deprivation literacy’ conceived at UoC will contribute to the theoretical foundations of the methodology. The project will co-design a transnational online Research Module. All educators and students will be trained in the ‘indirect’ method and will also receive preliminary ‘deprivation literacy’ training for working with vulnerable populations. Academic content and assessment will be constructively aligned to produce ‘authentic assessments’ for student co-researchers who prefer to ‘learn by doing’. Student-co-researchers will collect/ analyse data and publish findings through an open-access peer-reviewed journal. Findings will also be published in academic peer-reviewed journals and will be disseminated at international conference and multiplier events. In addition to the production of a transnational book, findings will be used to develop ‘deprivation literacy’ models for HEI’s, Associate Partners and key stakeholders working with disadvantaged learners. The expected impact of this project is envisaged in four key areas: HEI, secondary education, social welfare agencies and disadvantaged communities. By creating synergies between education, research and employment, HEI’s contribution to economic growth and links with local disadvantaged communities will be strengthened. Producing data informed by marginalised young people can be used to improve student retention rates. Offering vocational research training will assist graduate transitions to employment or postgraduate study. Strengthening international collaborations will promote intercultural dialogue between community stakeholders, enabling all partners to map diversity and identify similarities between ESL/NEET experience.
Through the Erasmus+ project Marginalisation and Co-Created Education (MaCE) Higher Education students from a range of positions were able to become part of the academic research community, being co-researchers and contributing with their expertise. MaCE is a joint cooperation between University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), University of Cumbria (UoC), United Kingdom and VIA University College (VIA), Denmark, drawing on the institution’s competence and experience. This is an innovative approach to generate synergy between education, research, innovation and social inclusion in order to include students who may have experienced marginalisation to develop research on dropouts as well as gaining accreditation through bachelor (BA) and master (MA) pathways. MaCE built on four corner stones, 1) Co-constructed and socio cultural perspective, 2) the importance of context, 3) The indirect approach and 4) Equality Literacy. The first two points are visible through students being co-researchers. The project generated opportunities for them to work alongside the university researchers as part of the research community, learning skills and developing their self-efficacy encouraging them to continue their educational pathways as well as enhancing their employability. The context for both the higher education students and the students at school were visible when drawing upon students as a resource within research and the educational setting. The project built on young people and student’s’ experiences in developing the educational programs. Students from both masters and bachelors programs were trained in methodology and have worked side by side with experienced researchers in researching on younger ESL/NEET students. In this way, the students have drawn upon their own lived experiences (context) as well as learning practically and theoretically. The students were actively involved as interviewers, respondents, analysts and writers. They joined as individuals and became active participants in the social practices of a social, multidisciplinary and multinational community. In this way the students actively constructed their academic identity through this environment, and obtained academic merits, which has helped them stand firmly and secure in the meeting with the academic environment. The third corner stone “The indirect approach” (Moshuus & Eide, 2016) is a unique methodological approach utilised by the project to grasp the experiences put forth by disadvantaged young people, both in HEI and school. Through this approach and the data gathered by the co-researchers and researchers, we developed two models (the fourth point) Equality Literary (EQL) and Wellbeing, Education, Learning and Development Model (WELD). These models enabled a bio-social-cultural, life course, systemic view of educational privilege and disadvantage. Such an understanding informed an alternative approach to education in its broadest sense. We found that many of the students entered the research community with an expertise from a range of life positions, disadvantaged and advantaged. These students brought new and valuable knowledge and competence into the community, giving them a sense of belonging in the academic milieu. The students also reported how the barriers between faculty and students disappeared when working together with researchers, how much more they had learned, that they felt comfortable in the role and that taking the next step in their academic studies seemed more likely. All in all 51 students participated and 13 researchers from the three countries. Most of the students have completed their course. Many of the students have been interested in going from BA to MA, and some from MA to PhD. At the moment one of the students have achieved a PhD scholarship, while others apply for positions related to research. Other students find that their publications help them in their search for jobs, while others have been able to build network through MaCE that have been valuable in their continuing career. One student has even established a new school in the UK underpinned by the learning from the project. For the Universities the models developed have been shared and distributed through their networks both regionally, nationally and internationally. MaCE is also spread within the institutions including students as co-researchers, especially on MA level. The MaCE journal will be continued as a way of publishing student’s research, the online course in training the students as researchers as well as the handbook for following up will be further developed in each institutions. Several other institutions nationally and internationally, both HEI and practitioners have taken MaCE further. The results and the experience of MaCE led to new funding through Erasmus+ KAIII project Co-creating through Social Inclusion (COSI.ed) with 11 partners in 5 countries in order to upgrade MaCE to policy level. this means MaCE has a future impact on Europe.