2,315 research outputs found
Data supporting the University of Southampton doctoral thesis 'Bursting bubbles: Exploring discourses, perceptions and experiences of widening participation in two UK medical schools'
No full textFocus group data associated with analysis presented in doctoral thesis, "Bursting bubbles: Exploring discourses, perceptions and experiences of widening participation in two UK medical schools".
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Bursting bubbles: Exploring discourses, perceptions and experiences of widening participation in two UK medical schools
No full textMany UK medical schools support students from underrepresented groups to access and gain medical degrees through widening participation strategies like Gateway programmes, which provide an additional year of study to support transition to university. Additional support through widening participation can lead to underrepresented students being viewed as lacking, leading to a student deficit discourse. Little is known about how increasing student diversity through gateway programmes impacts the experiences of all medical students.Through a qualitative, comparative case study, I explored the discourses, perceptions and experiences of increasing student diversity through widening participation at the University of Southampton (UoS) and University of Aberdeen (UoA) medical schools. A Critical Discourse Analysis of the relevant institutional webpages revealed different understandings about the purpose of gateway programmes. Although the UoS webpages challenged the deficit discourse by highlighting gateway students’ academic success and progression, neither institution promoted any benefits of increasing diversity. Medical students in Years 1-3 and staff at each institution participated in focus group discussions about their perceptions of widening participation, student diversity and integration in medical school; data were thematically analysed. Experiences of interacting with students from different backgrounds were explored in greater depth through narrative interviews with students in their clinical years (3-5) of medical school. At the UoS, gateway students were perceived as different to their peers and discrimination inhibited their integration. Nonetheless, their expressions of differences were valued and encouraged. UoA gateway students were integrated as equals within the main cohort, but the value of their ‘unique’ contributions was sometimes questioned. Some participants felt professional assimilation (being “moulded”) in the clinical years mitigated the potential for gateway students to have a positive impact on others’ learning.Interactions between students from different backgrounds triggered various epiphanies and realisations for my participants, which transformed their learning experiences by:• Bursting Bubbles: raising awareness of taken-for granted assumptions and ways of thinking, legitimising differences through experience, and transforming worldviews• Enriching all student learning: through cultural knowledge exchange and diversifying curricula• Enhancing soft skills: communication, teamwork, problem-solving with ‘Others’• Facilitating recognition of own strengths: “people have little things you could kind of add to them”These benefits must be widely promoted to eradicate harmful discourses of deficit and promote a culture that celebrates the diversity of insights, experiences and skills that are necessary to provide healthcare in our multicultural society. Medical educators should reflect on the aims of widening participation to ensure institutional goals and the potential rewards of increasing medical school diversity are achieved. Diversity and reflexivity training are necessary to create culturally safe spaces in which educators and students alike can benefit from identifying their own unique contributions, and what they can learn from other
Enhancing self-efficacy through life skills workshops
No full textUniversity attrition rates are often higher for students from groups under-represented in Higher Education (HE), for example those who have experienced social and educational disadvantage. Points of educational transition have been identified as key risk factors for progression and retention, and interventions to increase self-efficacy may act protectively to reduce higher attrition rates.This study presents an evaluation of an intervention implemented at one UK medical school, which aimed to enhance participants' self-efficacy and sense of belonging. Participants completed Schwarzer's General Self-Efficacy Scale and written evaluations. Qualitative data were examined inductively using thematic analysis. Average self-efficacy scores showed a statistically significant improvement six months after the intervention. Key themes including ‘it's not just me’ and ‘learning from the experiences of others’ were identified from the qualitative data and explored within a framework of self-efficacy.The intervention appeared to have a positive impact on self-efficacy through two key sources. Firstly, creating positive “physiological and emotional states’ enabled participants to engage in constructive discussions of personal difficulties they faced, such as imposter syndrome. Secondly, ‘vicarious experiences’, hearing how others had coped during difficult situations, improved participants' beliefs in their ability to cope with future challenges and imagine being successful. These factors may be key in supporting transitions for under-represented university students engaged with a range of disciplines
Challenging the deficit discourse in medical schools through reverse mentoring — using discourse analysis to explore staff perceptions of under-represented medical students
No full textIntroduction: despite the increasing diversity of UK medical students, students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, some minority groups and members of communities with protected identities remain underrepresented in medicine. In trying to ascertain why this underrepresentation persists, literature focuses on the barriers and challenges faced by underrepresented students as opposed to the institution’s responsibility to remove or mitigate these obstacles. One UK University created a reverse mentoring scheme enabling students to mentor senior members of the medical faculty to help them understand the perspectives and experiences of students from minority backgrounds. This paper explores whether changes in staff perceptions of underrepresented students resulted from engaging with reverse mentoring. Methods: this qualitative study explored the impact of the reverse mentoring scheme. Staff mentees were required to write a narrative text about the Higher Education journey of an underrepresented medical student before and after the reverse mentoring intervention. These texts were compared using discourse analysis to identify shifts in language use that demonstrated a change in perceptions. Results: the key themes from 5 senior staff members indicate a positive change in staff characterisation of the students and an acceptance of institutional responsibility for challenges faced. Initial texts revealed a superficial understanding of the student journey that focused on individual deficit but had fairy tale endings depicting the medical school as benevolent. The follow up texts revealed a deeper understanding reflected by the portrayal of students as capable agents and containing pragmatic endings acknowledging the responsibility of the medical school.Conclusion: these findings highlight how removed senior staff can be from the reality of the student experience and that engaging with reverse mentoring helps to raise awareness and challenges the students face. This suggests a route for constructive change in medical schools and endorses the benefits of facilitating open discussion around educational inequity. <br/
From social relationships to social support: facilitating workshops to enhance widening participation students’ sense of belonging at medical school
No full textMedical students from underrepresented or widening participation (WP) backgrounds often feel isolated and lack a sense of belonging in Higher Education (HE) and medical school. Frequently, they have competing demands on their time, which can result in fewer opportunities to meet peers from similar backgrounds. In a previous article, we demonstrated how workshops facilitated by staff and WP graduates helped to increase current WP medical students’ self-efficacy and sense of belonging. This paper expands on previous findings by exploring the impact of these peer relationships on participants’ Social Support.Focus groups were held with 15 participants who had attended the workshops. The focus group transcripts were iteratively coded and analysed using inductive thematic analysis. A secondary deductive analysis was then undertaken using a theoretical framework adapted from Williams et al.’s (2004) composite definition of Social Support.Eight key themes pertaining to the nature and benefits of the peer relationships were identified within two primary Social Support Theory categories of social relationships and supportive resources. An additional theme of intimate resources, denoting the authentic sharing of personal experiences and concerns with others, was instrumental for both categories. Intimate resources and the themes within the Social Support categories build upon each other to create a sense of belonging.The inclusive environment of the workshops supported the creation and strengthening of relationships between medical students and graduates from underrepresented backgrounds. Our participants found that the accessible and reciprocal relationships they formed with these relatable peers and role models enhanced their sense of belonging through providing a unique combination of resources and emotional support
The Times, They Are Changing
No full textIn 2015, Rutgers became only the second accredited law school in the United States to select the open-source ILS, Koha. The merger of two unique catalogs at Rutgers Law School has presented unique challenges with respect to migration mapping, data recall for large records, and relevancy ranking, all of which affect search results and usability of the OPAC. System migrations always result in some data being lost or incorrectly transferred. The hope is to minimize just how much data is compromised while fixing errors that might not have come to light but for the migration.Peer reviewe
Heather McHugh, 4th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textThe author of Dangers, published in 1978 in Houghton Mifflin\u27s New Poetry Series, and A World of Difference, also a Houghton Mifflin publication (1981), Heather McHugh is a rare poet, known for her formal elegance, her piercing wit, and her supple use of rhyme and rhythm. The Denver Quarterly remarked on her interest in seeing doubly and double-talking and praised her passionate intelligence and affection for the tongue\u27s intimate intricacies. McHugh\u27s Thursday evening reading will conclude the 1981 Literary Festival. McHugh grew up in Williamsburg and now teaches at the State University of New York at Binghamton. She is a member of the board of directors of the Associated Writing Programs
Ep. #121 - Heather Paxson
No full textThis recording and transcript form part of a collection of podcasts conducted by the Cultures of Energy at Rice University. Cultures of Energy brings writers, artists and scholars together to talk, think and feel their way into the Anthropocene. We cover serious issues like climate change, species extinction and energy transition. But we also try to confront seemingly huge and insurmountable problems with insight, creativity and laughter.Dominic and Cymene plug Cultures of Energy 7—this year’s energy humanities symposium at Rice which begins today, details at culturesofenergy.org—and then they turn to cheese, why it’s funny, how it can be applied to cats, “cheddaring,” and much more. Is there an anthropologist who knows more about cheese than anyone? Yes of course there is, it’s MIT’s Heather Paxson, author of the award-winning The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America (U California Press, 2012). She joins us (14:59) to talk about her research on the microbiopolitics of food and naturally we begin with what’s in her fridge. Heather tells us about her investigation of artisanal cheesemaking and what it tells us about the shift from Pasteurian to Post-Pasteurian regimes of microbiopower. We hear about goat ladies as revolutionaries, the truth about vegan cheese, and debate whether artisanal foodmaking is an elite project. Heather discusses the search for moral meaning in everyday life as a throughline in her work and we turn to her latest research on food safety inspections, the porosity of food borders and the synecdochic reasoning of the state when it comes to managing food flows. We close by discussing the impact of feminist analytics of labor in her research. What is “beef candy China”? Listen on and you might just find out
HERStory Makers 2023: Heather Mcclelland
No full textHeather Mcclelland is a chartered psychologist and researcher at the University of Glasgow studying mental health. She took part in HERStory Makers 2023.What is HERStory Makers?HERStory Makers is a social media competition for female-identifying early career researchers to share their research, their career journeys, and to inspire the next generation. Winners are selected by public vote. HERStory Makers is also part of EXPLORATHON, Scotland's contribution to European Researchers' Night.In 2022-23, EXPLORATHON was supported by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/X020762/1].Author contributions to contentHeather Mcclelland conceived, planned, and recorded the video content. Kirsty Ross edited the video content to insert HERStory Maker credits, add subtitles, and ensured the video length was below Twitter/X limit of 2 mins and 20 secs.</p
Creating and Scaling Innovative School Models Through Strategic Partnerships
No full text· The Texas High School Project (THSP) was created in 2003 as a public-private alliance to support education reform across the state.
· This article focuses on the pivotal role of philanthropy within the THSP alliance to create early college high schools (ECHS).
· The model has been scaled at different levels to produce direct, affordable pathways for students to both attend college and attain skilled careers.
· The ECHS schools have higher test scores, greater credits earned, and reduced dropouts rates compared to traditional schools.
· Foundations with a track record for supporting successful work can increase the overall commitment to joint projects and attract additional members and support to an alliance.
· Lessons for successful partnerships include investing in time together, managing the partnership through one organization, and using data for decision-making
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