What is gained and lost by the approach?

Initially, the main dilemmas of the study rested on the decision to focus on a documentary analysis. Weighing up whether the analysis of a relatively small number of policy texts would be too restrictive in scope, and whether it would yield sufficient and robust findings in relation to the chosen topic was an

important part of the research design. On the one hand, locating the study within one phase of the policy cycle (text publication) would not address how the texts were composed, by whom and with what emphases, nor how they were

interpreted and re-worked by practitioners. On the other, there appeared to be sufficient potential merit in pursuing a close analysis of the texts as published documents and, most importantly, as primary instruments of intended

Government policy. The latter consideration fitted closely with the motivation to understand how Government formally portrayed its ideas about opportunity and equity in higher education, and in relation to the economy and society.

The cumulative and incremental nature of policy was of interest when considering which phase(s) of the policy cycle should be addressed by the study. As Ball (2010) notes:

Most policy works by accretion and sedimentation, new policies add to and overlay old ones, with the effect that new principles and innovations are merged and conflated with older rationales and previous practices. There are rarely ‘clean slates’ for policy makers to work with and practitioners are as a result frequently left with inconsistencies and contradictions that they must solve, suffering criticism if they do not. Policy always has to be viewed in terms of both change and continuity – what changes and what stays the same (p. 55).

The notion that policy ideas, motifs and concepts can change over time further strengthened the case for a historical documentary analysis, in order to understand how expressions of the main concepts had evolved over time. Any chosen approach had to appreciate the organic nature of policy and the inter- relationships between its different phases of development, presentation (and re- presentation), interpretation and implementation. The decision to critically analyse policy as produced text was justified, therefore, in relation to the base of knowledge and understanding generated by a comparison of core themes in a sequence of high-level policy texts. The assumption made was that the findings and insights offered by such an analysis would inform and complement studies that explored how such texts were read, interpreted and re-made in the career of the policy.

As discussed in Chapter 4, a dilemma emerging alongside the decision to

concentrate on four key texts was whether supplementary interviews with policy actors should be combined with the critical analysis of the documents, and whether such an approach would strengthen the overall analysis. Undertaking an analysis of the text production and produced text phases would certainly have been an alternative approach, and was given considerable thought during the research design process. However, as the readings of the core texts progressed it became clear that attempting to cover both phases would have compromised one or the other. Instead, concentrating on the texts as the primary source of data allowed for a comprehensive, fine-grained and in-depth reading of the documents as texts. Interviewing those involved in the creation of policy texts would have

posed its own problems of selection (who should be interviewed?) and memory (what might be remembered?) over a period stretching back to the 1980s. As a practitioner, I had also noticed the tendency for myself and colleagues to only focus on the specific aspects of official policy documents that impact directly on one’s own area of work, rather than undertaking a full and careful reading of the documents as a whole: in part due to competing priorities and, often, the need to implement required changes within short timeframes.

By focussing on published policy texts, the analysis of access-participation- mobility could be located within the overall programme of reforms presented in each core text. In turn, this shed further light on the ideas shaping their

articulation over a period of twenty-five years, the drivers informing them and their relationships with the other policies presented. A detailed analysis of successive White Papers also highlighted the role they played in framing and prioritising (or otherwise) issues of opportunity and equity. As Ball (2010) shows:

Policy strategies, Acts, guidelines and initiatives are often messy, contradictory, confused and unclear. Policy is an enlightenment concept, it is about progress, it is about moving from the inadequacies of the present to some future state of perfection where everything works well and works as it should (p. 7).

Taking into account these observations, the comprehensive readings of the core texts enabled the study to highlight the extent to which specific social concepts and issues are simplified in official published policy. How these processes of simplification can underplay ambiguities and tensions associated with policy motifs for equity, as a form of social power, would also need to be highlighted. Including the policy creation phase in the study may not have allowed the space for these issues to come to the fore, at least to the extent they did within the present study. In this way, attempting to fully capture the essence of the policy documents as well as the character and nature of their creation, with their own nuances and complexities, might have limited the breadth and depth of the documentary analysis within the study.

Choosing to pursue a documentary analysis was not, however, made on the assumption that policy creation and produced text should always be examined

separately. Dedicating the study to a text analysis enabled a detailed understanding of the White Papers, their genre, policies and articulation of access-participation-mobility to be formed. The findings of the study would, therefore, provide a strong foundation for further pieces of research

encompassing a wider range of types of policy text as well as interviews with Ministers, Advisers and Civil Servants. This might offer new perspectives from which to build on the analysis of the core texts in this study. Stakeholder

perspectives would also shed light on the negotiations and struggles underpinning the White Papers and their presentation of access-participation-mobility matters. The influence of specific ministers over the nature of the published documents could also be explored in this context. Furthermore, examining the creation of the White Papers might complement, strengthen or, indeed, challenge the findings of this study.

As acknowledged in Chapter 4, the readings of the core texts have produced only one interpretation of the documents. Reflecting on positionality presented specific dilemmas for how the analysis should be undertaken, to ensure the approach was as appropriate, relevant and robust as possible. Turning to the research methods, Hyatt (2013) illustrates how Doctoral students of education are often confronted with a ‘dilemma of needing to engage with policy analysis, whilst also experiencing a lack of certainty in how to accomplish such an inquiry’ (p. 834). This dilemma was compounded by the recognition that ‘many of the terms used in policy analysis and in policy texts are slippery and consequently meanings are often elusive’ (Ball, 2010, p. 6). As a consequence, the research design was carefully developed to avoid constructing the policy documents as a static product existing outside of their social, historical, political and economic contexts.

The critical analysis of discourse and the concepts used in the policy texts sought to locate the documents in their broader settings. Each reading of the White Paper set out the socio-economic and political backdrop to each policy era, as demonstrated in Chapters 5 to 8. The review of developments in English higher education since 1945 in Chapter 2 also provided a wider lens for examining the documents under investigation. Indeed, the analysis and findings of the research were able to draw on an historical and contextual understanding of events leading

up to, and situating, each of the four documents. Without these

contextualisations, it would have been difficult to make sense of the texts, their drivers and the sets of ideas they carried and communicated.

The nature of policy and, in particular, the proliferation of policy texts in the latter phases of the twenty-five year period presented specific challenges in selecting a corpus of related texts to draw on in the analysis. As the White Papers are the main vehicle for Government policy and legislation on higher education, the analysis used related texts, such as official reports, guidelines and strategy papers, to help build a fuller picture of the White Papers, their contexts, policies and key narratives. Further research studies might bring other policy texts into the main analysis to explore their own representations of access-participation-mobility. Such a study would respond to the following observations about the character of policy as a process:

Policy that is “announced” through legislation is reproduced and reworked over time through reports, speeches, “moves”, “agendas” and so on. Therefore, policy is not treated as an object, a product or an outcome but rather as a process, something ongoing, interactional and unstable (Ball, 2010, p. 7).