suc-cessful education for all
Asunción Manzanares-Moya, José Sánchez-Santamaría, Francisco J. Ramos-Pardo, María José Galván-Bovaira, Uni-versity of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Keywords: Educational equity, Higher Education, Justice, In-clusion
General Description
Equity is a priority for many Universities around the World (Espinoza & González, 2010; Sellar & Gale, 2016). It is gradu-ally taking on an enhanced role in the European context. Em-pirical evidence tells us that equity serves as a framework of university teaching in promoting educational success for all students (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2013).
Furthermore, there are several international and European re-searches on equity of access (supply, enrolment, input) and eq-uity of result (performance, outcome, social impact), and not so many in terms of equity of process within the context of the
European Higher Education (Boliver, 2012; Whiteford, Shah
& Sid Nair, 2013).
One of the challenges of the current research on equity is to obtain a deep understanding of the pedagogical challenges for a successful educational process (equity of process) at Univer-sity. So, identifying research paths and practices on this topic is relevant in a time when university systems are facing new social challenges and demands, and where University should combine its twofold objective: training professional and capa-ble people to build a democratic, pluralistic and fair society (Sánchez-Santamaría & Nogueira, 2014). This approach is aimed at generating know-how linked to inclusion and justice principles (Sánchez-Santamaría & Ballester, 2012) from a pedagogical perspective with implications for teaching policy, management and practice at University.
In this sense, the aim of this paper is to show and discuss the main scope involved in the development of a conceptual and methodological framework for promoting a successful educa-tional process at University through equity-based practices (Ramos Pardo et al., 2014; Sánchez-Santamaría & Nogueira, 2014).
From a descriptive methodology, it focused on critical review of empirical knowledge generated from research conducted by the GRIOCE (Research Group on Guidance, Quality and Eq-uity in Education) at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain).
The specific targets are three:
• Identifying the relevant scientific literature pub-lished in the prestigious journals on educational equity re-lated to the Spanish university system.
• Proposing an update definition about equity in Higher Education.
• Defining the main analysis dimensions to evaluate the promotion of equity in the teaching and learning process at University
Methods
A descriptive method is used. It combines a quantitative and qualitative approach according to the objective of this paper (McMillan & Schumacher, 2014). It allows us to set the scien-tific context about equity at University (quantitative ap-proach). At the same time, it is proposed an updated defini-tion about equity and a set of dimensions and indicators for its evaluation.
In the case of quantitative approach, it is based on a census study of scientific articles published in the last 5 years (2012/
2016). The source of information are two relevant databases:
WoK-ISI and SCOPUS. It tends to obtain information of scien-tific interest on equity in Higher Education. It also analyses the content of the articles around three categories: equity of access, equity of process and equity of results.
The qualitative approach reviews the epistemological knowl-edge about equity generated from the research process by
GRIOECE over the last few years. In such a way, three essen-tial questions are answered:
a) What does equity mean from the perspective of a successful education for all in Higher Education? (epistemo-logical setting).
b) Which are the relevant dimensions to define a model of evaluation of equity in Higher Education? (methodo-logical setting).
c) Which could be, therefore, the indicators to evalu-ate equity as a process in Higher Education? (procedural set-ting).
Results
The quantitative analysis indicates a relevant concern on eq-uity in Higher Education (33 papers in WoK-ISI/ 28 papers in SCOPUS).
In these papers the content of equity is focused on issues of so-cial stratification and inequality from a sociological perspec-tive (equity of access: 60 % of papers).
The pedagogical perspective is referred to academic perform-ance (equity of results: 20% of papers), to a lesser extend in educational survival (equity of process: 10%), and mix (equity of access/results: 10%).
The inclusion and educational justice linked to the curriculum begins to emerge strongly as a new relationship between
eq-uity and excellence as defining elements of a new framework for successful education for all.
Figure 1. Number of papers by category and database (Source:
Sánchez-Santamaría & Manzanares-Moya, 2016)
Other results of this study allowed us to delimit an updated concept of educational equity based on the perspective for a successful education: It is a set of pedagogical conditions and strategies for generating experiences so all students be able to get relevant and meaningful learning and providing them the necessaries resources to become citizens (Sánchez-Santamaría & Ballester, 2012; Sánchez-(Sánchez-Santamaría &
Manzanares-Moya, 2012; 2016).
And finally we are identifying three dimensions for the analy-sis of equity in Higher Education (Sánchez-Santamaría y Manzanares-Moya, 2016):
- Inclusion: related to promote participation under-stood as to be and to take part.
- Fairness: related to foster educational capabilities.
- Guidance: related to address the educational needs (decision-making and adjustment of the educational re-sponse)
Figure 2. Dimensions to analyze educational equity in HE (Source: Sánchez-Santamaría & Manzanares-Moya, 2016)
Moreover, a set of indicators to evaluate the contribution of educational practices to the equity process are proposed (10 indicators).
Table 1. Indicators to evaluate educational practices aimed to promote equity in HE
This work encourages us to a further research on factors asso-ciated with equity in Higher Education from the perspective of a successful education. It also requires an intensified research in the scientific contrast of successful education about quality criteria subject to empirical rigor (Apple, 2016).
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