This paper discusses the educational engagement practices of disadvantaged students at a South African university. It explores how they are able to exercise their voice and agency within the institutional structures of the university. It concentrates on first generation university students who come from disadvantaged social backgrounds, i.e. students from low socioeconomic environments who are the first in their families to access university education.  Appaduari (2004) suggests that people who come from low socio-economic backgrounds have weaker navigational capacity because they do not have the opportunities to practice their navigational capacity. Appaduari (2004) argues for the ‘cultivation of voice’ and suggests that rituals, practices and procedures are necessary to engage poor people and to ensure that they navigate their social spaces effectively. Following Couldry’s (2010) notion of ‘people’s practice of giving an account of the world within which they act’, this paper explores how disadvantaged students cultivate and exercise their ‘voiced agency’ to in their educational engagement at the university.

For the purpose of this paper, educational engagement refers to the practices that students establish to access and engage their university education, as well as their engagement with the university processes and support infrastructure that are meant to  provide them their ‘opportunity to learn’ (Lee, 2010) in university context.  Based on qualitative research conducted within an interpretive tradition and the meanings generated by the interviews and focus groups, this paper analyses how disadvantaged utilise their ‘voice’ to engage with the education and support structures at university. The aim of the research is explore students’ capacity to exercise their voice and agency as they attempt to engage the educational platforms of the university.

Drawing on Barnett’s (2009) concepts of voice and student becoming this paper discusses the practices that disadvantaged students engage in to establish their educational becoming.  Barnett (2009) argues that recognising how students use their voice is one way in which to understand how they participate and engage in their learning and socialization at the university. Barnett (2009) distinguishes between students’ ‘epistemological voice’ and their ‘ontological voice’. He describes the epistemological voice as a process of engaging with the demands of the discipline such as academic writing, scientific experiments ad academic practices, while the ontological voice is developed through students’ sense of own worth, recognition and will to learn (Barnett 2009). Barnett (2009) suggests that the development of students’ ontological voice is crucial to their intellectual growth. This article expands on Barnett’s (2009) concept of voice to include Mcleod’s (2011) emphasis on listening, recognition and engaged dialogue to examine how students are able to exercise their voice and agency within the institutional structures of the university.  Mcleod (2011) calls attention to the power relations involved when students voices are heard, raises questions about who listens when students voices are heard and who takes responsibility for change in higher education.  She includes notions of ‘voice as strategy’ and ‘voice as communication’ as an essential part of understanding student equity in higher education. Mcleod (2011) suggests that a focus on student voice gives attention to students’ point of view, makes education more inclusive and recognizes the ‘embodied student’.

This article will focus on students’ educational engagement by emphasising the nature of their student voice. I concentrate on students’ engagement with lecturers, their peer engagement and their engagement with the supportive structures of the university.  Research on disadvantaged, first generation students’ accounts of their educational engagement at the university can potentially contribute to the extant literature on student voice and engagement at university. It will add to current understandings of the experiences of first generation students in comparative national context as well as in contemporary European situations.   

Appadurai. A. 2004. The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition. In V. Rao & M. Walton (eds.), Culture and Public Action. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 59‐84. Barnett. R. 2007. A will to learn. Being a student in an age of uncertainty. New York: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press. Boyatzis, R. 1998. Transforming qualitative information. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Couldry. N. 2009. Rethinking the politics of voice. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies23 (4), 579-582. Lee. C. 2010. Soaring Above the clouds, delving the oceans depths. Understanding the ecology of human learning and challenges for Education Science. Presidential address, 643-655 Mcleod. J. 2011. Student voice and the politics of listening in higher education. Critical Studies in Education 52(2), 179-189 Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). London: Sage. Ryan, G. & Bernard, H. (2003). Techniques to identify themes. Field Methods, 15: 85-109.