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Department of Psychology

Project Background

Supporting Black Asian Minority Ethnic students Learning and Student Experience

Dr Jagjeet Jutley-Neilson, Noorin Rodenhurst, Paige Clarke-Jeffers, Dr Adrian von Muhlenen, Professor Derrick Watson, Professor SotaroKita, Dr Amy Cook, Inchara Athreya, Sabiha Khan, Filipa Azevedo (order in contribution).

The Project Aims

1.“BAME” students’ academic learning experiences
2. Creation of an “inclusive good practice pedagogical toolkit”
•This toolkit would include pedagogical exemplars for staff to use
•These exemplars are supported by capturing students' lived experiences of learning and student experience voices through digital storytelling

Research Methods Used

  • Mixed Methods
  • Co-production
  • Participatory Action Research principles to survey and interviews
  • Digital storytelling of lived experiences

The Research Team

We ensured that our research team had lived experiences of being students and staff of colour at all levels of HE - e.g., Undergraduate, PhD, Associate Professors and Professor. We ensured that white staff and students were also involved in the project. As a team, lived experience and allyship were at the heart of the project. Please take a look at the pictures of the research team below.

the research team

Research Design: Mixed methods approach

mixed method

Source: Harvard Research Catalyst: https://catalyst.harvard.edu/wp content/uploads/2021/09/HCAT_CEP_MixedMethodsResearch-Accessible.pdf

Mixed Methods Design - 50 questions survey that was co-created with students followed by semi-structured interview.

To create the survey questions we used co-production and PAR principles.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) attempts to disrupt hegemonic knowledge (Fernández, 2021). PAR has been used for decades in medical and health-related research. PAR has recently been a common approach in community psychology (Langhout, 2016). Cornish et al., (2023) outline four principles of PAR (1) authority of direct experience (2) knowledge in action (3) transformative process and (4) collaboration through dialogue. We used PAR to create our research design and methodology.

Co-production: This toolkit used principles of co-production. We took an authentic co-collaborative approach to the design of this study and ensured we recruited an ethnically diverse research team.

Storytelling and toolkit as a means of dissemination: Digital storytelling has been widely used in educational settings and healthcare settings to explore the lived experiences of people.

Survey Questions for all 195 students

•The Psychology Curriculum (4)
•Representation (1)
•Approaches to Learning
•Personal Tutoring (3)
•Resources (5)
•Student Engagement outside of the curriculum (4)
•Student Voice (5)
•Peers (4)

BAME students only

  • One question on terminology,
  • 10 questions on academic support, student awareness and adjustment around issues around race
  • free text comments

Interview

Semi structured interview provided flexibility and topics to naturally arise
  • 24 students of colour
  • 3 White students
  • Thematic Content Analysis

Results

Please see preliminary results from the BPS conference in Nov 2022 here

watch this space!