Joel Simpson shares his university experiences and helps to address the Black, Asian and minority ethnic attainment gap, and suggests what more needs to be done by universities to close the gap. He shares that its crucial for BAME students to have BAME role models as staff, and if students recognise that the staff are activiley equitable learning environments then BAME students will feel recognised by staff.
Daniel Akinbosede speaks about his experiences of racism in his phD. “In science and technology subjects, Black scientists are less likely to complete their degree at all levels, less likely to be awarded a “good degree”, less likely to get PhD funding, less likely to secure post-doctoral positions, less likely to be awarded a research fellowship, and of course less likely to climb the ivory tower all the way to professorship.”
Read more at: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/racism-is-still-pervades-the-academic-sciences/
Maisha Islam interrogates ways to get beyond “BAME” with a focus on students’ lives and experiences.Research has found large and statistically significant gaps seen in both degree outcomes and progression rates between White and Asian UK-domiciled students. The research found by holding focus groups with students self-identifying from Asian backgrounds as well as utilising student research partners within our institution, the centralisation of student voice (particularly from a group which does not often get heard) was very much at the heart of what made this research successful.
Read more at: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/bame-doesnt-help-us-understand-students/
Poster by Prof. Bhavik Patel.
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.
Over the last couple of months we have been busy behind the scenes, working on setting up key aspects of the project.
To date, we have:
We are very excited to welcome you to our project blog, and introduce you to our project ‘Beyond the ‘Usual Suspects’: Exploring the adoption of ‘good practice’ recommendations for closing the BAME attainment and continuation gaps at UoN‘!
The project is funded by the University of Northampton via the Learning Enhancement and Innovation Fund.
You can find out more about our project here, its rationale here, and the project team here.