This chapter addresses the issue of educationalisation via Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal and uses this concept to consider why educational research and researchers often fail to interrogate the validity of policy claims that frame social problems as educational problems. Here in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, higher education is promulgated as a means of addressing the interrelated problems of social and economic inequality and widening participation strategies are intended to tackle socially generated injustices.
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Watts, M. (2008). Higher Education and Hyperreality. In: Smeyers, P., Depaepe, M. (eds) Educational Research: the Educationalization of Social Problems. Educational Research, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9724-9_10
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