Abstract
While equal access to legal education in Sri Lankan universities has expanded through national higher education policy reforms and merit-based university admission regulations, students from underprivileged, rural, and vernacular-language backgrounds experience numerous barriers that affect their academic achievement, employability, and the ability to simply survive and thrive at law school. Many consider state-funded free university education a privilege for students, and meeting its competitive entry requirements is widely regarded as a marker of success in university and life beyond. However, there are numerous layers of social, political, and educational factors that endanger students’ full potential and capability.Drawing on Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach (1995; 1999; 2005) and Unterhalter’s (2009) equity framework (equity from above, middle, and below) as one analytical layer, and Billings’ (1994; 2014) culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogy, alongside Freire’s (1974) notion of critical consciousness as a second analytical layer, this study investigated how curriculum, pedagogy, and the medium of instruction at university intersect to either enhance or suppress students’ capability and intellectual readiness for employability and for actualising self-esteem-based needs. Together, these frameworks provided a nuanced way of understanding how curriculum structures, language policies, and pedagogical norms either expand or restrict students’ capabilities.
The study was guided by three research questions:
(1) What are lecturers’, curriculum developers’, and reviewers’ views about equity?
(2) What are the barriers to the promotion of equity?
(3) What strategies do they propose to address these barriers?
To answer these questions, a mixed-methods exploratory sequential design was used. In the first phase, 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted with university curriculum developers, lecturers, and reviewers across three state universities. These interviews offered qualitative insight into how equity is perceived and enacted in academic settings. Informed by these findings, two surveys were developed and distributed to graduate and undergraduate law students. The second phase resulted in 217 responses. This design enabled triangulation of educator and student perspectives, highlighting both shared concerns and key divergences.
The findings collectively revealed forms of epistemic injustice, where students are not excluded by lack of access, but by a systemic disregard for the social, cultural, and linguistic ecologies of their educational starting points. This disregard manifests as capability deprivation, inhibiting students’ ability to convert educational access into meaningful outcomes. Although the students are admitted on merit, the findings pointed to the fact that they are unable to fully engage, contribute, or grow within the existing system. This calls for a shift in how legal education is understood: from a transactional model focused on professional outcomes and the mere production of graduates, to a transformational model that fosters well-being, critical consciousness, empathy, and social mobility. Equity, in this framing, as the findings revealed, is not about equal access, but about enabling every student, regardless of privilege, to thrive, participate fully and meaningfully, and become the person they have reason to value. This study contributes to both national and global debates on social justice in higher education by offering a conceptual and practical framework for identifying and dismantling invisible educational barriers.
| Date of Award | 2026 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Maya GUNAWARDENA (Supervisor), Naomi DALE (Supervisor) & Janet HOPE (Supervisor) |
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