In order to move this project forward a review of literature has been completed to identify and evaluate existing bodies of work produced by researchers, scholars and practitioners surrounding the relationship between Attainment, Retention, Progression and Continuation and BAME students. This review revealed a huge amount of sources that were relevant to this topic, mostly in the form of published reports, however just one was identified that specifically focused on the attainment and retention of BAME students studying within HE Art and Design programmes; revealing that there is gap in the knowledge of understanding of the experiences of BAME students who study Art and Design at HE. The review also supported in establishing the most suitable methodology for this research.
This study will utilise mixed methodology using quantitative research via questionnaires and qualitative via semi structured interviews. One-to-one interviewing will be the most utilised methodology within this study and will be used to gain an in-depth insight of the lived HE experiences of BAME art and design students and graduates (Giddeons and Sutton, 2017: 50). This method will be effective in gaining culturally specific information about the values, opinions, behaviours, and social contexts relating to this topic. It will allow participants to communicate, explain and reflect upon their learning experiences clearly and in order; producing informative data based on their perspectives and personal experiences in relation to the research topic.
Participants will include BAME art and design students at various levels of learning, BAME art and design graduates and HE educators. This data will be analysed along with UoN classification results, attainment, retention, progression and continuation data in relation to ethnicity. Questionnaire topics will include: Nationality and Ethnicity, Education and Diversity and University experience.
Within the next few weeks the focus will be to complete the following:
- Appoint a Junior Research Assistant
- Confirm and complete all ethical information i.e. privacy/ use of data information signature forms
- Obtain UoN art and design student attainment, retention, progression and continuation data by ethnicity from UoN Management Information & Systems
- Analyse and evaluate art and design student attainment, retention, progression and continuation data from UoN Management Information & Systems
- Produce Participant Consent Form
- Produce interview schedule