For the last few weeks myself, Aura and Siobhan have been working behind the scenes creating our questionnaire. We have made our first draft, and are in the process of finalising this. We are excited about the progress we made in our meeting today and are looking forward to the next steps which will be posting it on online surveys!

Over the past week we have conducted a literature search to see if there is any new relevant research relating to our project over the past year.

Some of research provided interventions for universities. The list below is a summary of interventions that universities should consider to close the BAME attainment gap.

1: Reflection on personal biases and its impact on educational practices.
2. Evaluating teaching assessment methods.
3. Listening and valuing BAME student voices.

Hello everyone! I am really excited to introduce myself to the ‘Usual Suspects’ project today. My name is Brittany and I am the Research Assistant on the project. I’m looking forward to sharing with you all a bit about me! My first degree was in Psychology where my main research interests were, intellectual disabilities, mental health and neuroscience. After enjoying my Psychology degree, I furthered my education and studied Cognitive Neuroscience MSc. I found this fascinating; I believe this is where my passion for research started. My research used fMRI scans to investigate the neuronal activity of repetitive behaviours in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Aside from my psychology background, I am also interested in sociology which I studied at A-Level. I am passionate about social change and interested in the consequences of human behaviour, especially the debates surrounding equality, justice and inclusion. I feel this is what drew me to the present project. I am really looking forward to researching the BAME attainment gap, I am particularly interested to see some of the reasons why this is occurring and what we can do to close this gap.