Following the call for applications to the Teaching and Learning fund, the research lead - Dr. Karisha Kimone George, sought to understand how a project around the curriculum could be developed in a way that would lead to change within the University of York. 

This led to specifically important sources that are strongly recommended:

• Arday, J., Branchu, C., & Boliver, V. (2022). What do we know about Black and minority ethnic (BAME) participation in UK higher education?. Social Policy and Society, 21(1), 12-25.

• Broecke, S., & Nicholls, T. (2007). Ethnicity and degree attainment.

• Bunce, L., King, N., Saran, S., & Talib, N. (2021). Experiences of black and minority ethnic (BME) students in higher education: applying self-determination theory to understand the BME attainment gap. Studies in Higher Education, 46(3), 534-547.

In light of the struggles being highlighted by students within Psychology, and when encouraged to use interdisciplinary methods by the Teaching and Learning fund, the staff lead sought out potential co-researchers outside of STEM who were equally passionate about creating change. 

Interdisciplinary work enables a wider impact for change but also every discipline carries distinct insights which, when combined, makes a project more effective in achieving its goals. This search led to a partnership with the Department of Economics (with Dr. Yaprak Tavman as the lead) - a partnership which continues to be fruitful. 

Following the success of our application, we began the recruitment process. Together we developed interview questions and discussed what was particularly important for us to see in the interns who would successfully obtain the post.  Subsequently, all interviews were performed by two staff members on the project, to ensure objectivity in selections made. 

Across the departments, we were able to hire strong candidates, who had the seeds of becoming change-makers!

Once hired the interns' first tasks were to get familiar with the literature, and to review the draft interview questions developed by the staff leads. Given the short timeline of the project, we felt that the students needed a framework to build off of rather than develop questions from scratch - that is why this method was chosen. We developed a set of questions specifically for BAME students and another for non-BAME students - these mainly differed in the use of the word 'ethnicity' compared to 'diversity'. 

The students were also tasked with developing a data collection and advertising strategy. This involved:

• blurb and posters advertising the study

• sign-up sheet (developed on a Google form)

• creation of a demographic measure (again developed on a Google form)

• a list of contacts (e.g. societies and department contacts) that can be used to spread the word about the study

The next task was to prepare the students for interviewing. We held the interview training in two stages:

• a general introduction to interviewing

• specific role play with a staff lead where different interview scenarios were practiced

The students were also trained on how to record their videos on Zoom. 

The students then took charge of the research process. They advertised the study among their various networks and we met frequently to keep track of how the process of participant recruitment was going. At the same time, they were left to practice interviewing on their own and let us know when they were ready to start interviewing.

Generally the students felt prepared once they had around 5 participants each who had filled in the demographics measure. This had given them enough time to practice on their own and so feel comfortable in actually performing the interview. 

Once the students had begun the interviews, we introduced them to thematic analysis. As our main aim was to help them develop a range of skills, we trained them to do thematic analysis using the NVivo programme. This involved an in-person training session using an anonymised interview transcript. During this session, we also reviewed any emerging codes from the transcipt and explored any emerging themes. 

The students were then given the responsibility of coding their interviews, and we met frequently to review any updates made to our 'Emerging themes' Google document. 

As the project analysis came to an end, the focus shifted onto developing means of disseminating our results. This involved presentations at the Decolonising and Diversifying the Curriculum Symposium and the Teaching and Learning conference. 

We also made plans of how we can put into place the areas for change highlighted by the project. These are reported in the Outputs section on this site.