What is marginality?

A recent sociological study defines ‘marginality’ as the ‘involuntary position and condition of an individual or group at the margins of social, political, economic, ecological, and biophysical systems’. While there are other (and sometimes contradictory) ways to discuss the term, it nonetheless represents one, important critical ‘lens’ through which researchers and policymakers have long been attempting to understand inequality in education.

Whenever you walk into a room of students as an educator, there are likely to be any number of modes of marginalisation in play. Some will relate to those ‘intersectional’ questions of race, gender, class, dis/ability, and so on, that have rightly been at the forefront of EDI debates in recent years. Others, however, are likely to be much harder to identify (if not entirely obscured) within the messy and unpredictable dynamics of the ‘lived’ classroom.

Yet, a student flagged as potentially ‘marginalised’ by the data may not feel themselves to be so whatsoever, at least within that context (nor, indeed, may they wish to be identified as such in advance).

Importantly, some students in the room may also be subject to kinds of marginalisation that, for one reason or another, are not easily captured by an empirical approach. Hence, the need for thinking about how we use this concept in research and practice.

Research into marginality and its problems

The notion of ‘marginality’ sits at the heart of recent UNESCO policy and continues to be explored by sociologists attempting to understand not only educational underdevelopment in general but also its complex intersection with a range of wider issues, including poverty, sexism, and racism.

However, numerous researchers have also pointed out the issues with such an approach, which often proceeds by framing certain groups or regions as ‘marginal’ on the basis of a preconceived and unscrutinised set of assumptions about – for example – the meaning of terms like ‘equality’ or ‘diversity’, or even the socio-political purpose of education itself. This can, in turn, lead ostensibly well-meaning research into marginality inadvertently to perpetuate the very issues it aims to address.

The concept of marginality in education research

Research on the topic of educational marginality is gradually emerging, yet remains relatively thin on the ground. There has been very little written on Higher Education in particular. The question that arises in the meantime is: how can we use our pedagogy to address such a patently complex and difficult set of issues?

My own research in recent years has focused on finding ways to avoid such pitfalls, while still tackling the power structures that underpin problems of marginality in education today. While various forms of quantitative or demographic data can be very useful for identifying possible issues of marginalisation at university, the years I’ve spent teaching in Higher Education so far have also suggested the limitations of such an approach – and thus the need to explore new and different methodologies in this area.

A ‘student-centred’ approach

One approach I’ve found especially productive in recent years has been to bring students themselves more directly and explicitly into the debate. This may sound fairly commonsensical but is surprisingly easy to overlook within the fast-paced, everchanging context of HE policymaking. As I now know from experience, it also tends to be much more difficult in practice than in theory!

In the most general sense, my own ‘student-centred’ approach in recent years has entailed undertaking a range of more and less ‘radical’ experiments in my teaching practice, from trying out ‘de-centralised’ approaches to course design and classroom discussion, to developing more open and imaginative ways of gathering mid-term feedback.

A more specific and intensive example, however, has consisted in my focus on developing more authentically collaborative forms of student partnership. At the end of the 2022/23 academic year, for example, I co-authored an article on educational marginality with a student (Cyrus Larcombe Moore) who had just completed my third-year undergraduate course on the topic. As is (I hope) reflected in the published piece, this collaboration reflected the ‘de-centralized’ approach that had informed the course itself, with Cyrus’s astute, student-centred analysis showing up both the strengths and limitations of my own perspective on marginalisation as an educator and researcher.

Meanwhile, in 2023/24, I worked with a student from Computer Science (Minahil Tariq) on a project exploring the potential of digital annotation to address different kinds of marginality among students. Again, Minahil’s perspective – as a student working in a distinctly different disciplinary area from my own (English Literature) – not only widened the practical and intellectual scope of the project itself, but helped me to address a number of potential ‘blind spots’ in my understanding of what marginalisation might mean in Higher Education. We hope that, when the final project report is published later this year, it will inform how lecturers and students alike understand marginality as it relates to the development of new and distinctive teaching approaches at the University of Manchester.

Conclusion

Clearly, there is no ‘quick fix’ for addressing problems of educational marginality. We must continue to work collaboratively and carefully, particularly in how we analyse the relationship between quantitative and qualitative forms of evidence about issues of equality, diversity, and inclusion within contemporary Higher Education.

However, one insight I feel I have gained in recent years is that that the most effective – indeed, perhaps the only – way to tackle such issues in future will be in partnership with our students themselves.

Dr John Roache, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Department of English, American Studies, and Creative Writing

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