Widening Participation Students Research Articles

550 Implementation of Inclusive Initiatives at a Grassroot Level to Ensure Long-Term Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity in Surgery

Abstract Aim Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in surgery begins at ensuring accessible initiatives are executed at a grassroot level for prospective students. The Royal College of Surgeons illustrated that 20% of their surgical leadership positions were from BAME communities. SGUL MedEd Society aims to support students from widening participation (WP) backgrounds in their medical application by addressing disparities and providing support within these areas. Method We conducted free sessions aimed at different aspects of the medicine application with the intention of facilitating understanding and support for WP students. Multiple domains were covered such as a UCAT webinar, an ‘Experience into medicine’ simulated workshop covering the key learning styles employed in university as well as multiple mini-interview (MMI) preparation through an online webinar and in-person mock. Feedback forms were implemented before and after sessions using 5-Point Likert scales to measure changes in confidence. Results An increase in confidence applying to medical school was observed in the ‘Experience into medicine’ workshop (n=25) with a 60% rise in students rating 4/5. Statistical analysis was carried out on the results obtained from the MMI webinar (n=169) using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test which suggested the initiative significantly improved students’ confidence (w=14, a=0.005). This was followed by a practice MMI session (n=68) whereby 50% of students reported feeling more prepared for a real MMI. Conclusions These results suggest there is a substantial improvement in confidence in WP students after the event, increasing the likelihood of inclusivity in medicine. This has wider implications in supporting applications into surgery in the future.

Supporting Widening Participation Students Without Creating Dependency or Leaving Them Unprepared for Work in the Neoliberal Era

In a rapidly changing employment context, research holds that the desirable attributes of grit, resilience and context adaptation will become fundamental to the ongoing employability of current students. The employment landscape has become atomised and volatile under neoliberalism, exemplified by the broken psychological contract between employer and employee. Graduates from widening participation backgrounds entering the labour market will see their existing barriers to career success exacerbated by these changes in the world of work. For students from widening participation backgrounds, the neoliberal policies that underpin these changes are congruent with other policies that exacerbate their socioeconomic and educational disadvantages. Consequently, universities must play an increasingly important role in supporting students within and outside of the taught curriculum. This paper explores ways universities can continue to provide students with the necessary support without building dependencies or expectations of support that would inhibit the development of grit, resilience, and context adaptation. As a starting point for further discussion, this paper proposes guiding principles for universities to inform institutional Teaching and Learning strategies.

Widening Participation in Scotland 1997–2021: A semi‐systematic literature review and avenues for further research

AbstractThis article sets out and critically analyses the state of current knowledge on Widening Participation at higher education institutions in Scotland and sets forth avenues for further research. Through a semi‐systematic review of the literature, six discrete but overlapping themes relating to Widening Participation are identified, namely, (1) factors affecting the decision to apply to university, (2) the transition from high school or further education into university, (3) contextualised admissions, (4) completion and level of attainment, (5) economic, social and cultural capital and (6) equality, diversity and inclusion. The study finds that while clear progress has been made by higher education institutionstowards achieving quantitative government targets for student recruitment from underrepresented groups, there is an absence of studies and knowledge about the qualitative lived experiences of students as they transition through university, how students negotiate a sense of fit with institutional systems, and what targeted supports they may require to succeed. Avenues for further research which addresses these gaps in the knowledge base are put forward, namely, (1) broaden the academic base and interdisciplinarity of Widening Participation research, (2) reform and extend measures of success beyond admissions and attainment, (3) evolve institutional level support for transition into higher education, (4) develop more nuanced understandings of contextualised admissions and (5) investigate and gain deeper understandings of how the lived experiences of Widening Participation students shape and inform their journey through, experience of and attainment at university.

Quantitative Analysis of Challenges Encountered by UK Widening Participation Medical Students in Comparison With Their Non-Widening Participation Peers.

Few studies have captured the experiences of widening participation (WP) medical students, and none have compared their experiences to their non-WP peers. This study aims to identify which challenges WP students are more likely to face. A 22-item questionnaire was distributed to medical students across all UK medical schools. Students were asked yes or no questions on whether they faced challenges in finances, socializing, physical and mental health, academic attainment, and COVID19-related teaching changes. One-hundred seventy-six medical students from all year groups across the UK responded, with 97 students from a WP background. WP students were significantly more likely to have their personal background impacting their mental health (OR = 2.65, WP = 0.002), more than twice as likely to feel that their job impacted their studies (OR = 2.53, P ≤.05), more likely to feel limited by their financial situation (OR = 2.29, P≤.05) and to receive support from student finance (OR = 2.08, P < .05). WP students were more likely to face challenges in mental health and finances in medical school compared to their peers. These findings, further informed by qualitative insights can aid in advancing equity in medical training.

Widening participation to sandwich courses: temporal challenges

ABSTRACT Within the UK, sandwich courses, i.e. degree programmes that include a year spent on a work placement, usually during the third year of a four-year course, are increasingly offered by higher education institutions to maximise the proportion of their graduates moving into employment and, particularly, jobs that are deemed ‘graduate-level’. Indeed, there is evidence of a strong positive correlation between participation in sandwich courses and employment. Although this positive impact is particularly marked for students from widening participation (WP) backgrounds, such students are also significantly less likely to undertake a sandwich course. The article draws on 50 interviews with higher education staff and students to argue that many of the most significant barriers experienced by WP students are related to various temporal challenges. In doing so, it expands the body of work on the frequent mismatch between hegemonic university time and the time of students from under-represented backgrounds. In addition, it argues that WP students are less able than their more privileged peers to take advantage of the ‘slow time’ necessary to undertake a work placement, and that the rhythms of external actors are also relevant when explaining the challenges faced by WP students.

Balancing family, education and work: a qualitative study of mature women studying in higher education

This article explores the transformative experiences of ten mature, female, widening participation students, and their families, as they merged higher education (HE) study into the home to manage diverse demands. Set in a university in Northwest England, this smallscale, qualitative approach, influenced by social constructionism and feminism, incorporated semi-structured interviews (10) and a focus group. It explores experiences of work-life balance (WLB) and wellbeing as HE study was added to daily life and merged into the home sphere. The findings reveal the benefits of home-based study and work-based learning for mature learners with varied responsibilities. The women developed academically and practically, and transformed as they experienced university life to gain an increased sense of belonging, which normalised university attendance in households, a change here referred to as the 'l earning family'.

The intermediate steps to widening university access: recognising and responding to the post-16 challenges encountered by those from under-represented backgrounds

ABSTRACT The institutional move associated with embarking upon post-16 study is part of the learner journey taken by many young people in England, including those from widening participation (WP) backgrounds. However, it can present a challenge, although one that has received comparatively little attention from researchers, practitioners and policy makers. To understand the nature of the challenge, this article draws on the experiences of two groups of WP students: those yet to experience this move and their older counterparts who have made the transition. It is also from the same two groups that suggestions are made for how the move from school to college can be supported. The English regulator for higher education, the Office for Students, has asked universities to work more closely with schools in widening access. The evidence presented here highlights the importance of universities, and those overseeing outreach, developing strong working relations with colleges as well.

Access to business attire as a widening participation issue in UK law schools

ABSTRACT Despite the suit being the very iconography of the lawyer, access to business attire is a curiously overlooked aspect of academic work on our most marginalised aspiring legal professionals, namely widening participation (WP) students. This article seeks to address that omission. Taking an interdisciplinary approach drawing on fashion and textile studies, sociology, urban geography, cultural and gender studies, it frames the issue of formal attire and access to the same explicitly as a WP issue. It discusses the “hidden curriculum” surrounding professional dress, maps out the subtle and unexpected ways in which certain students can be excluded from the textiles marketplace, and problems within that marketplace itself. While recognising that WP categories can often intersect, the article takes a thematic approach, grouping the analysis around disability; gender; fast fashion, sustainability and class; the influence of the pandemic; and graduation. Although clothing loan schemes and limited bursaries are understandable solutions, the argument proposed is that these reproduce and exacerbate existing inequalities, and that choice, ownership and access to materials of quality which recognise the full funding implications of a professional wardrobe are essential if WP students are to have parity of access to correct and adequate attire with their non-WP peers.

The impact of the pandemic on widening participation students: the teaching professionals’ perspective

A number of studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately adverse effect on the education of those from more disadvantaged backgrounds. However, less is known about the pandemic's impact on the educational ambitions of the same young people and their prospects for progressing to higher-level study. Although those engaged in widening access have continued to provide support to these students, the circumstantial evidence suggests that the lockdowns and school closures associated with the pandemic may have further widened the participation gap between young people from more affluent backgrounds and their less advantaged peers. Now schools have reopened and things have return to normal, there is a need to understand the progression challenges those from widening participation backgrounds face. This study seeks to do this by drawing on the insights of 14 teaching professionals from a selection of schools and colleges in the English West Midlands with catchment areas that draw heavily on disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Conducted in spring 2021, the semistructured interviews with these teachers presented an opportunity to reflect on the impact of more than 12 months of educational disruption and to consider what is now needed to widen university access.

Financial well-being and capability of widening participation students and a text message intervention to improve it

University students are frequently cited as having some of the poorest financial well-being of the adult population, particularly those from widening participation backgrounds. Therefore, in a randomised controlled field experiment in 15 higher education institutions in England, we examine the impact of a light-touch text message intervention (over 10???12 weeks) aimed at improving the financial capability and well-being of widening participation students. The results suggest that such an intervention has little impact on improving financial well-being or capability from baseline levels although some effect was found on improved financial attitudes, peer comparison and information seeking. Overall, such an intervention is too light-touch to have a meaningful impact and future interventions are likely to need to be stronger nudges, perhaps changing the context and cognition simultaneously, if meaningful impacts on financial well-being are to be achieved.

Inclusivity in transitioning to medical school.

Inclusivity in transitioning to medical school.

Widening participation students’ experience and perception of flipped learning statistics compared with traditional teaching in higher education

This paper presents data from a study comparing student experience and attainment when teaching statistics using Traditional Teaching (TT) and Flipped Learning (FL) approaches on a Foundation level module at a UK university. A survey of students’ experience and perception of FL was conducted at the end of the year. The results showed that the students liked the flexibility of FL and believed that studying asynchronously encouraged them to improve their independent learning skill and motivated them to search for more information for the subject, a finding broadly supported by other studies (Price and Walker, 2021). However, what was surprising, is that students believed they learned ‘better’ with TT than with FL, a perception supported by student overall attainment data. The study concludes that careful considerations must be made to make FL effective. These include the student demographic and their mathematics competency, the module contents and difficulty level. Otherwise, the use of FL may reduce students’ engagement and academic performance in Maths at Foundation level.

Embedding employability into the curriculum: five recommendations to improve widening participation students’ graduate employability

Ensuring students succeed during and beyond their degree, no matter their background, ethnicity, disability or demographic has been outlined in the mission of the English higher education regulator, the Office for Students (Office for Students, 2018). Additionally, there are endless strategies, agendas, research projects and discussions around improving Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within universities, yet there is less literature relating to EDI activity relating to graduate employability. This paper argues that the areas where greater attention is required within EDI is the work of academics and careers support services, to enhance graduate outcomes, through the development of core employment and recruitment skills (Underwood, 2022), through embedding professional literacies into the curriculum. From making parallels with strategies to support academic literacies, this paper argues that certain employability development elements should be embedded into the core assessed curriculum of degrees, to support all students in developing their professional literacies.

Supporting the integration of first-year undergraduate widening participation sport students into university: the role of online programme induction

Programme induction activities are a central feature for supporting successful student entry into university, playing an important role in ensuring they quickly settle, feel included, are motivated to learn and able to form new friendships and networks with peers and staff. Research shows how entering university can be complex and challenging for all students regardless of background and experience. This is particularly the case for widening participation students, who often encounter excessive social exclusion and financial pressures. By using Student Involvement Theory (Astin in J Coll Stud Pers 25:297–308, 1984) as a guiding theoretical framework and peer mentors as interviewees, the primary aim of this study was to explore the effectiveness of an exclusively online programme induction in supporting the integration of newly arrived first-year widening participation sports students into a post-92 British university. The key study finding was that online induction was more successful in gaining academic than social engagement. Participants devoted time and effort into their studies but had limited social involvement with other students, both from their programme and the wider university community. Practical implications for developing future online induction programme schedules to better support the transition of diverse student populations into university are presented, as are future research avenues and limitations.

Supporting student writing and other modes of learning and assessment: a staff guide

Academic writing in Higher Education (HE) is contested practice freighted with meaning, never more so than for widening participation students, still placed as ‘outsiders’ and often left feeling unwelcome and ‘un-voiced’. Ironically, as Molinari (2022) argues, universities were originally more diverse in form and content, not heavily ‘literate’ but oral, discursive and creative. As HE has become ostensibly more ‘open’ the system has become more normative, more formally rule-bound, more ‘written’ – and hence more exclusive. A recent example in the UK is the Office for Students’ attack on inclusive assessment, pushing instead for more emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar.&#x0D; &#x0D; Alongside this tension, many in the Learning Development (LD) community feel that discipline academics do not see the ‘teaching’ of academic writing as part of their pedagogic and assessment repertoire, preferring to send students to LD ‘to be fixed’. However, academics and LDs engaged in discussion and free writing (Elbow 1998, 1999) on this topic at a LondonMet L&amp;T Conference presented views that were more nuanced and sympathetic. There was a deep appreciation of the ‘real’ work that academic writing does with and for students; but also a sense that they did not know how to build writing into their practice(s). And so was born this staff Guide: a playful, creative and yet intensely practical guide for academic staff who want to empower their students to write – often, playfully, experimentally – on their way to ‘becoming’, and becoming academic. Presenting the Guide in the resource showcase allowed us to highlight the continuing centrality of writing. Lecturers and university staff can use it to engage students in ‘writing to learn’ rather than ‘learning to write’.

How professionalisation of outreach practitioners could improve the quality of evaluation and evidence: a proposal

ABSTRACT Professionalising outreach and evaluation work would enhance the quality and rigour of provision, benefit widening participation students and achieve regulatory requirements (Bowes et al. [2019]. The National Collaborative Outreach Programme End of Phase 1 report for the national formative and impact evaluations. Office for Students; Rainford [2020]. “Working with/in institutions: how policy enactment in widening participation is shaped through practitioners’ experience.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 42 (2): 287–303). This article presents practitioners’ experiences of how social justice can often feel unaligned to the technical expertise required in rigorous project design and evaluation. Professionalising outreach would achieve both improved practice and meet practitioners’ needs for development and a united professional voice. A professional body sharing standard methods of practice, offering CPD and skills would elevate outreach practitioners to a ‘professional’ standing (Eraut [1994]. Developing professional knowledge and competence. Falmer Press).

The Cost of Asking: ‘Say that Again?’: A Social Capital Theory View Into How Lecture Recording Supports Widening Participation

Lecture recording, as a form of technology enhanced learning, has been purported to support equality in Higher Education. The introduction of lecture recording is often controversial, with some lecturers having concerns as to how recordings may change teaching and learning. A commonly reported motivation for incorporating lecture recordings is supporting the needs of widening participation students, students who are otherwise under-represented in higher education. In this study, we used focus groups to explore the experiences of widening participation students in higher education as they navigated their university programmes. We held four focus groups in three Scottish universities, and discussed and developed findings alongside a stakeholder group. We then applied a social capital lens to the data to explore whether recordings can be used to overcome a lack of social capital in widening participation students. Our participants identified areas where they lacked social ‘credit’, such as a lack of peer parity among colleagues and experiences which could be described as microaggressions. Students discussed reasons why the ‘cost’ of asking questions in class was too high, and how recordings support them by allowing them to save on this perceived cost. However students also recognised the tension of a lack of trust between lecturers and students, which could be exacerbated by recordings. We found good evidence to support a social capital view of ‘trust as credit’ in interactions between students and lecturers, and provide suggestions for how lecture recording can be used to support widening participation students in this area.

Creating Diversity in Tomorrow's Doctors: A Student Led, Widening Participation Outreach Programme.

Since its founding in 2017, InsideMed, an entirely voluntary medical student led innovation, has offered local London state school students a unique perspective exploring the application process and realities of a career in medicine. Our aim of promoting diversity and widening participation (WP) amongst future medical school applicants is reflected in the fact 80.2% of the students enrolled are from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic groups (BAME). Over an 18 month period, our students are invited to monthly seminars hosted at King’s College London (KCL), where all things “medical school” are explored. Students are paired with current KCL medical student ambassadors and are grouped into ‘Families’. Between sessions, students and ambassadors are facilitated to communicate freely, but safely through the online platform Brightside. Early establishment of our key stakeholders allowed us to anticipate how InsideMed would impact each in turn and, therefore, design our scheme to ensure maximal mutual benefit. Continual feedback and review ensures that we are constantly improving to meet the needs of our students. Feedback also allows us to identify how closely we have served our aims for each cohort; common themes which consistently arise include the creation of community, learning more about specifics of the medical application process, and building self-confidence and student independence. InsideMed has the unique quality of being designed by WP students and constantly updated to ensure the support provided best meets WP needs. This has fed into our tangible and impressive impact, whereby 7 out of 18 respondents from our 2017 cohort of students have been accepted into medical school. Going forward, we hope to expand our scope to include a wider catchment area and will continue online in the COVID era. We aim to create an expansive alumni community to inspire other students from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds that they too can have a career in medicine.

The experience of widening participation students in undergraduate medical education in the UK: A qualitative systematic review

Introduction: Most widening participation (WP) research is focused on medical school recruitment; there is a paucity of research examining whether the experience of medical school itself is an equal experience for both ‘traditional’ and WP students. Methods: This qualitative systematic review used the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) meta-aggregative approach to characterise the experience of undergraduate medical education in the UK from the perspective of WP students. Seven databases were searched, 27 studies were critically appraised, and 208 findings were grouped into 12 categories and four synthesised findings. Results: The majority of the research found relates to ethnic minority groups, with reports of other WP groups being less frequent. Whilst WP programmes attempt to alleviate disadvantages prior to entering university, our findings suggest that difficulties follow WP students into medical school. Unfamiliarity with higher education and lack of representation of WP staff in faculty can deter help-seeking behaviour and result in lack of trust. Furthermore, students from different backgrounds can find their identity conflicted upon entering medical school. Despite difficulties in establishing social networks with ‘traditional’ medical student peers, WP students form strong relationships with students from similar backgrounds. Conclusions: Ultimately, these students find that the uniqueness of their experience is a useful tool for communicating with diverse patients which they come across and are able to overcome adversity with the help of a supportive institution.

Campus closures and the devaluing of emplaced Higher Education: widening participation in neoliberal times

Widening participation (WP) in Higher Education (HE) is often positioned as key to resolving social inequality; it underpins arguments that increasing levels of education lead to reduced levels of poverty. Located within the tension of duty and need, WP is positioned as both the responsibility of the University and a financial imperative. This paper considers the student experience of this tension, specifically the contradictions between discourses of equality and diversity and neoliberal conceptualisations of HE as market. Drawing upon qualitative research conducted during the closure of a WP satellite campus, the paper explores the consequences of the withdrawal of HE provision for ‘local’ students. Utilising focus group methodologies to develop an approach for ‘thinking with’ seven WP students, the paper explores the material, social and affective contexts within which students experience university in their ‘hometown’. Foregrounding participants’ critical understanding of their ‘place’ within a marketised HE sector, we consider the formation of student identity as a site of struggles for value. We argue, the closure of satellite campuses must be understood within the context of deepening social-spatial inequalities. Developing a critique of individualised constructions of ‘social mobility’, we outline an alternative imaginary of HE as an intergenerational community resource.