Disparities in Student Attainment: A Tale of Two (City) Universities Professor Glynis Cousin Dr Debra Cureton

Overview Context General Findings Conceptual Issues Working with Sensitive Issues Interventions, Impacts and Outputs

Context Collaborative project between the University of Wolverhampton and Coventry University and funded by the HEA 2. Looks at the attainment gap between white and BME students. It is also important to mention here that all our research has been based around the HESA categorisation of ethnicity, so we recognise that this isn’t ideal but we had to work with data the way it was collected institutionally and be consistent with our categorisation of further data. 3. Projects investigates Institutional data Student and lecture perception Practical intervention 4. The project is exploring the issues from a number of perspectives Practice – Exploration of issues Learning and Teaching/ Pedagogic interventions Theoretical – Pygmalion Effect, categories vs beyond categories, self identified categorisation Methodological – Consensus Oriented Research Approach & Related tools. 5. Disparate data – some inductive, some deductive, some hunches, some quantitative, others qualitative, some large scale explorations other small studies. 6. Also the we are aware that this is a complex issue – one single solution to the issue is unlikely – if there was, we would have found it by now. Funded by

Data Collection Data Findings

General Findings Pedagogy Relationship Cultural and Social Capital The findings tell us what academic staff and students believe are barriers to academic success. There were four main areas that our finding fell into: Relationships, Academe factors, Psychological factors Cultural and Social issues. Relationships Both lectures and students tell us that the quality of the relationship between students and lecturers is important in student attainment. Relationships might not be equal and can effect the disparity between student attainment. The most important findings from this aspect of the research are: that student and lecturers perceive their relationship differently, which suggests that both violate each others’ perceptions of what the other should be doing within the relationship. The lecture can act as an Interlocutor in the student learning process – engaging the student with an academic discourse through what they do, what they say and who they are (role model) Cultural Capital Staff made no comment about this. Institutional data suggests that this is a major issue – which I will now hand over to Ruth Fairclough to explain to you this data. An example of this is Students told us that they didn’t really understand degree classifications and why a good degree is important. More importantly, they revealed that they and their parents do not understand degree classification, Parents/families also don’t understand what is required of a student at university Parents and families do not understand the implications of getting/not getting a good degree on employability/future study. Psychological process Unconscious processes, such as stereotyping & biases, that can affect attainment or cause disparities in attainment. They stem from misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the lack of social capital and impact on the relationship between student and lecture – students don’t trust/like lecturers they perceive to be biased against them Academic Issues Academic system issues that might affect student attainment. The most important findings are from this aspect of the research the link between assignment brief quality and attainment Fit to submit (dictionaries) Psycho-social Processes

Conceptual Issues Conceptual Developments Categorisation and post-race approaches The Pygmalion effect & folk pedagogies (Bruner, 1996) Empowering student partners The impact of the affective domain to learning and attainment The psychological contract (Rousseau, 2000) The lecturer interlocutor (Cousin, 2011)

Working with Sensitive Issues Empowering Methodologies Playful Reflection

Interventions, Impacts and Outputs Action Research Assessment Choice/ Type Peer monitoring Blind marking Aspiration raising The Advantage Module Outputs Information for parents website How to guides: lecturers How to videos: students Impacts Accessible assignment briefs Fit to submit criteria Annual monitoring Reduction of the attainment gap

Contact Details Professor Glynis Cousin Dr Debra Cureton Website G.Cousin@wlv.ac.uk Dr Debra Cureton D.Cureton@wlv.ac.uk Website www.wlv.ac.uk/disa