Ongoing projects
Students' experiences of the curriculum
Karisha George, the DDC committee, and the Department of Economics successfully obtained a Teaching and Learning fund to explore BAME students' experiences of the curriculum. This project contended that the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) attainment gap (HEFCE, 2014), and reduced BAME engagement in postgraduate study (Williams et al., 2019; Arday, Branchu and Bolivier, 2021) are related to feelings of being 'othered' within the education system, based on the largely white curriculum which limits their aspirations (BBC, 2020). It thus sought to explore the experiences of BAME students whilst at the University of York, with a specific focus on evaluating the impact of the level of diversity present in their degrees on their feelings of 'belonging' within their departments, and their confidence in their academic potential. Research questions focused on a broad understanding of diversity including the degree of diversity in their undergraduate curriculum, and the diversity they perceive to be present at the postgraduate level. We recognised that there were different ways that the curriculum could be diversified (e.g. disability, LGBTQ+), and so our comparative sample consisted of both BAME and white students across different departments (specifically Psychology, Education, and Economics), thus adopting an interdisciplinary approach to provide interesting insights and perspectives into the impact of the existing levels of diversity. We aimed to uncover potential tangible areas for improvement (such as in the existing curricula) which can support current and potential students who may feel like they do not belong or are not represented in their University of York degrees.
The results (presented at the DDC Symposium) can be found below, with further information available on our project website:
Based on this project, several steps have been taken within the Psychology department:
EDI Academic Skills module
As part of the compulsory Academic skills module offered to students within the Department, the DDC committee got a small pot of funding from the Psychology department to develop an EDI-related aspect to the module. Within this module, students engage with a range of material related to sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, gender and social class; and then complete a range of multiple choice questions.
Some example material can be found below:
EDI Year 2 Option module
As part of the funding received from the Psychology department, the students also developed a Year 2 option module (which shall be launched soon!). The module aims include:
To give students a deeper understanding of diversity-related issues within education and how this needs to be addressed.
To provide an opportunity to critically evaluate the origins of curriculum content and to consider diversity across their course materials.
To adopt an interdisciplinary approach to explore areas of the curriculum that are acting against decolonisation and diversification efforts.
To highlight the contributions made by diverse academics to their relative fields.
Some example material that will be covered in the module can be found below:
Contributions of typically ignored scientists in colonisation efforts and the shady backgrounds of those most known in the field
Tokenism in terms of race (poetry) and queerness (film)
White males being the standard participant / limits to minority participants
Taking examples from disability and cross-cultural research in order to consider how researchers use these examples in practice
Anti-racist practice in real life
Module diversity feedback assessment
Based on the results, the Psychology department has also added an item which allows students to evaluate levels of diversity within the material taught.
See the example item here -->
BAME students' experiences of Psychological research
The DDC students and Karisha George successfully obtained YCEDE funding for a small research project exploring BAME students' perspectives on Psychological research. Through focus groups, several themes were identified:
1) Theme 1 - Superficial: Attempts to diversify research are shallow - more focused on ticking the box of having included participants from various demographics; rather than a step towards real change based on insight gained from the input of diverse participants.
2) Theme 2 - Biases: Perceptions of psychological research (and psychology as a wider field) as being preferential towards the ‘standard’ white majority sample.
3) Theme 3- Incentives: Several factors were identified that increase participation.
4) Theme 4 - Reasonable adjustments: Adaptations needed to increase participation of the modern university student was outlined
Keep your eyes out for what we will do based on our results!
Workshop within the Teaching and Learning conference
The students then presented the findings in a workshop within the Teaching and Learning conference again in Summer 2023. They presented the various themes alongside scenarios which invited discussion.
