Marcia Devlin Executive Director, Academic Programs and Services Open Universities Australia

Effective teaching and support of Australian university students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds: Findings from a national study

Marcia DevlinExecutive Director, Academic Programs and ServicesOpen Universities Australia

1. Context and evidence base2. Conceptual framework3. Key advice for teachers4. Other outcomes from the research

Overview

Funding and partners Scope and method

1. Context and evidence base

Funded by ALTC/OLT, DIISRTE (2011-2012) Led by Deakin University, in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology and Charles Sturt University Open Universities Australia and James Cook University also acknowledged

1.1 Funding and partners

National study, international reference group 18 month timeframe $220 000 budget Focus on practical outcomes for busy teachers and leaders New conceptual framework developed

1.2 Scope and method

National environmental scan of effective practice Review of recent peer-reviewed and other significant literature (200+ papers)115 individual interviews (89 students, 3 unis; 26 staff, 6 unis)


Study focussed on success: Environmental scan of ‘what works’ Interviewed successful students who were

LSES and FIF and asked them “What has helped you succeed?”

Interviewed staff known for their expertise with LSES students and asked them “What helps LSES students succeed?”



Overview

Derived from the literatureGuided the research Underpins the outcomes: Guide for teaching staff Guide for leaders and policy makers Resources for professional

development Database of effective curriculum and

practice

2. Conceptual framework

A rejection of deficit conceptions:around students andaround institutions

Recognition, instead, that there is incongruity between the social and cultural capital of LSES students and that of the institutions in which they study.

2. A new conceptual framework

‘Sociocultural incongruity’ (Devlin, 2011)

Instead of a deficit conception, a conception that sociocultural incongruence should be bridged

A recognition of the agency of students (and of institutions)

2. A new conceptual framework

The bridge


Overview

1. Know and respect your students2. Offer flexibility, variety and choice3. Communicate your expectations

clearly and in plain language4. Scaffold student learning5. Be available and approachable to

assist student learning6. Practice reflectively

3. Key advice for teachers





Understand that LSES students are time poor; communicate with them, embrace and integrate their diversity and enable contributions of their knowledge to everyone’s learning.

3.1 Know and respect your students

Understand their contextThey have to undertake paid work; often they have multiple roles and caring responsibilities; they are time poor.

…unless this is going to improve their learning outcomes, they’re not interested. Unless it’s going to make it easier to do that assessment task in a timely way, they’re not going to engage in it because they are very time poor [COL_021]


Understand what they bring to study

…students who came from public high schools tended to do better and last longer and succeed faster,...[they] have fewer fails in things, so progress faster at university, than students who came from private schools...[the public school students] never had the resources handed to them and they always had to fight for everything and they were much more independent learners [COL_013].


Understand what they bring to study

…stats have shown in our course that, generally speaking, our low SES students tend to do better. They’re slightly better motivated and probably more capable students…[COL_014]

Consider eliciting and integrating the knowledge students bring with them to study:


…being able to pull in people’s different experiences because they’ve come from different areas can actually be really insightful. …when we’re talking about developing marketing strategy,…we’re talking to different groups and we want to know why one group might look at that marketing communication and go ‘That’s…a joke’, whereas another group might look at it and go ‘It’s perfectly believable’, and it’s because of that diversity in their backgrounds. So I’m very strongly in favour of …[teachers] trying to get as many different voices … into the mix as possible [COL_013].


Embrace and integrate diversity

…use as much diversity as possible in your pedagogical practices, because there’s all sorts of different learners. Don’t presume that groups all learn in certain ways, watch out for generalisations [COL_026].


Suggested strategies:

Use student cohort demographics to begin to understand who your students are at a broad level. As far as possible, learn and use students’ names. Examine the extent to which you include the student voice and student opinions in class or online.






While upholding academic standards, offer LSES students flexibility, choice in assessment and variety in teaching and learning strategies.

3.2 Offer flexibility, variety and choice

So to me, to respond to the diverse situations …it’s about flexibility and responsiveness to a person’s situation and thinking about what is the contextual factors around them that are impacting on their ability to meet all the demands of the course [COL_009].

When I’m designing my teaching delivery approaches, I’m quite supportive of not requiring students to be in a particular place at a particular time… [COL_027].


High standards (and assumptions)I’ve found that...low SES kids ...[are] very smart and determined people ...[COL_007].

…we take students who are low socioeconomic and first in their family…and last year and the year before that we had 25% of them graduate with distinction [COL_023].

I had someone who got High Distinctions, who came to see me to be better [COL_001].


Teaching with technology …the recordings have been really popular...[COL_030]; The uploading of lectures with the PowerPoint slides attached to them... ...[COL_002];

…the online interactive …presentations … [STU_051]; ... the eLive sessions [STU_001]; The online module... [STU_008]; ... audio…podcast and…video... email[ing] your lecturer...24-hour access to your learning material [STU_045];


Use a wide range of teaching strategies I try to provide resources that meet every learning style… because not everybody learns in the one way [COL_011].

I...use YouTube, or I use a lot of photos or images in my teaching that represent diversity ... to illustrate any of the kinds of content that I teach [COL_008].


Use a wide range of teaching strategies I guess you could almost see it as an ‘epistemological equity’ in some ways because it’s meeting students where they’re at, it’s student centred, you know if a person’s unable to figure out how to use the technology, no problem, let’s find something else you know[COL_009].


Interactive teaching and learning I think that it’s much more useful for students to have a conversation evolving around concepts so that they can explore and unpack things that they don’t understand as you’re going along [COL_027].

I use an interactive lecture style..., so ‘What do you think about this?’ and I’ll give them a scenario just to see where they’re at. [COL_024].


Interactive teaching and learning …the interactive lectures where they ask questions…[and] they might have quizzes throughout the lecture, that’s helpful... It gives you the time to sort of draw aside and talk with the people next to you or get out your calculator and work out the quiz question or whatever. That’s really good as well to get you involved in the lecture rather than just sitting there, falling asleep [STU_010].


Variety in assessment (mode) …assessment at university…relies too much on the formal written word, and on the traditional types of assessments, like essays and reports, and yes, there definitely is a place for those kinds of assessments. But in this changing world, we need to bring in more variety in modes of assessment, so not just a formal essay, but a variety of ways, to meet the diversity of our students as well [COL_012].


Variety in assessment (mode) … [in] many of the assessments, they have been able to do it online, as a report, as an essay,…as a collection of interview information [COL_001].


Flexibility re assessment due dates I need flexibility because with work arrangements ...sometimes that all changes and I just need a few days’ flexibility here or there [STU_036].

...with three kids... at times... [teachers] have assisted, whether it be [through] extensions, or special consideration... If they weren’t available, I don’t know what I would’ve done [STU_054].


Suggested strategies Examine your unconscious assumptions about LSES students and challenge yourself about the potential impacts of any biases you might hold. Reflect on your preferences in teaching strategies and assessment practice – ask yourself how the range of these might be widened to encompass more interaction and a greater range of student learning needs, without compromising standards.






Speak and write in plain language to ensure students understand the concepts being taught, the expectations of them and what is required to be a successful student.

3.3 Communicate clearly in plain English

…It can be daunting to kind of sit down and write your first five thousand word assignment…so definitely a clear structure…helps [STU_057].

Because they’re the ones marking my assessment…it’s good to know what they want in the assessments or exams [STU_074].


…if you lay the guidelines out…you say, ‘This is what I would like, this is what you can do’, they know very clearly what it is you want [COL_001].

…they’re told to write these essays and they want to see what an essay looks like. It’s like trying to teach them how to ride a bicycle without the bicycle… But if you’re teaching something, and if you can show an example of it, the students can see the expectation, they can see the level of what is expected of them [COL_012].


Accessible language and examples I feel like they’re using big words and big sentences when they can say the exact same thing in simple language and half the amount of words…In other words, ‘What does it actually mean?’ So I’ve had a few teachers that I really couldn’t understand and they were just so sort of theoretical that I found myself tuning out which was really difficult and it also can get maximally hard to relate to if they’re speaking in really high academic language… [STU_035].


Real life examplesI do like the ones who ...have a more practical approach…they’re actually giving their life examples or speaking about their experiences and…I find that ... beneficial [STU_037].

...the tutors...[are] quite personal, ...they’ll relate their own experiences, which is really good because you have something to go from rather than it being really abstract... [STU_088].


Suggested strategies

Record a typical class and review your use of language for the use of jargon, acronyms, complex vocabulary, long sentences, the absence of clear explanations and the like. Ask a small group of volunteer students or a colleague to listen to you teach and give you feedback about your use of language and your clarity.


Suggested strategies Actively practice simplifying your oral and written language and using explanations of greater depth. Try to include a small number of short anecdotes or stories in each class to engage students and help them understand and remember concepts.






Take a step-by-step approach to teaching to ensure students build on what they bring to higher education and are taught the particular discourses necessary to succeed.

3.4 Scaffold student learning

Well what I try to do is find ways in which I can scaffold the information…I…try and structure it so that every student has the capacity to look at the task and if they understand it to begin with, then they can move onto the next task...structuring the task… allows them to say ‘Okay, well, I’m at this point and I’m going to need some help to move into the next one’, whereas the other students who are doing better can just go, ‘ Yeah well I finished that one, let’s move onto the next one’. So everybody is sort of still moving [COL_013].


Teaching and learning the discourses...you might set an essay...Now, a culturally rich student audience will say, ‘Essay. Yes, I know essays. ...we learnt how to write an essay...I know how to get hold of literature and review...and critique it...’. [Other] students, however, may ...say, ‘You know, I’ve really not written very many essays...’, and they may ...be puzzling ...about what an essay actually is...So they’re not stupid, but the point is that they don’t have this cultural knowledge about how you write an essay [COL_016].


Teaching and learning the discourses

…what a student does… in a lecture…[is] they try to copy everything down religiously, because they’re not looking for the key points, and they have no idea…what they’re expected to do, and seriously, there are so many who have no concept of how to read academically, that it holds them back, so they stop doing it [COL_001].


Peer learning…you know that they learn from each other, half the time better than from you [COL_029]. My tutorials are basically all about group work and they are all about group work and interaction and everybody in the group gets a say…and it is very, very important we do that, because that binds them together with the other students and it also gets them to settle into the university in the first five or six weeks, and that is critical [COL_006].


Peer learning...I found that if you get out and mingle with other people - you make friends and then you can learn from them as well, so you don’t have to be sort of alone and solitary in your learning. [STU_044]. The thing that really does help me learn is having study groups with other people in my course ...it motivates me to study as well ... And if I don’t understand something, they can help explain it or I can help them as well, which helps me remember it [STU_074].…


Suggested strategies

Talk to an ALL expert about the best ways to approach teaching your LSES and other students the discourses they need to learn to be successful. Design and implement peer learning activities inside and outside class and ask students to provide feedback to you on their usefulness to their understanding and learning.






In addition to being available, be approachable so that students may make use of your expertise and guidance to improve their learning and performance.

3.5 Be available and approachable

Being available

It doesn’t matter how many fancy electronic resources you’ve got. If you haven’t got time for them, you’ve got problems [COL_011]. I think it’s just time. I think I would spend the most time with them. Isn’t that one of the most valuable resources that you can really give, is time? [COL_025].


Being available

It was always clear to us that if we needed support we could just go talk to the co-ordinator or our lecturers or anyone really…that’s a big benefit of coming here that they’re very accessible [STU_092]. I think having a lecturer available for help and to ask questions – like you can easily e-mail them …or organise a time to meet up with them for help. I think that’s really helpful [STU_074].


Being approachableI guess it’s just having the door open and trying to have as accessible an approach as possible. So where you are encouraging students to talk to you if something’s not right [COL_027].

I find some lecturers are really approachable if you’ve got a question and some aren’t at all. So you’ve just got to pick which ones are and…you can sort of tell by their mannerism and how they answer a question in the classroom whether they’re approachable in their contact time [STU_095].


Staff workload

Experienced staff frequently commented on the extra time they spent with LSES students assisting them to come to terms with university requirements and develop skills and confidence.

This is an institutional matter and can be addressed through embedded approaches, workload models and other means.






…it’s about...helping adults to learn, ...that’s my philosophy…the philosophy comes from an andragogical background which is the science of helping adults to learn. So that means always looking at my practice…and saying, ‘Well, how can I do this better?’ [COL_015].

3.6 Practice reflectively


Overview

Guide for teachersGuide for institutional leadersProfessional development materialsConceptual frameworkDatabase of effective practiceAnnotated bibliographyWebsite (lowses.edu.au)Numerous articles & presentationsNetwork across Australia and beyond

4. Research outcomes

Devlin, M., Kift, S., Nelson, K. Smith, L. And McKay, J. (in press). Effective teaching and support of students from low socioeconomic status: Resources for Australian higher education. Office for Learning and Teaching, Department of Innovation, Industry, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.

Devlin, M. 2011. Bridging socio-cultural incongruity: conceptualising the success of students from low socio-economic status backgrounds in Australian higher education. Studies in Higher Education, Online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.613991

References

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.613991

www.lowses.edu.au

Documents

Marcia Devlin Executive Director, Academic Programs and Services Open Universities Australia