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Meaning and structure in Black students’ ways of experiencing academic achievement
Abstract
Historically White universities in Britain have a long history of misrecognizing
the experiences of Black students and rendering their struggles and aspirations a matter of scrutiny. More recently an intense higher education policy focus has been placed on addressing outcome differentials between various ethnoracial groups. Little however is known about how minoritised groups of students experience and understand academic achievement. In our phenomenographic study Black students’ ways of experiencing academic achievement vary from broad expectations of gaining good grades to developing as a person and contributing to the society. Seen through a relational lens, the results can be utilized to identify the aspects of university life that warrant further attention to improve Black students’ experiences during their studies and achieve equitable outcomes
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The persistence of degree‐awarding gaps and anti‐Black racism warrant an exploration of the quality and effectiveness of academic support offered to Black undergraduate students in British higher education, and how such support is perceived by students. Our phenomenographic study found that Black students’ conceptions of academic support range from broad expectations of help with their studies to more advanced understandings of their own agency and the context of academic support. Our results highlight that attempts to enhance academic support should revisit three interconnected areas: what type of academic support is provided, where, and by whom. Most importantly, we propose a new inclusive direction that replaces existing deficit models with approaches that will strengthen Black students’ agential effectiveness within historically White institutions.
The permanence of systemic racism in the UK and USA means that Black people are disadvantaged in myriad ways, including within the Academy. While the disproportionate impact of COVID-19, alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, has increased awareness of the challenges faced by Black communities, these issues remain, both in and beyond higher education. Furthermore, there is still a paucity of research individualising the experiences of Black people, who are often homogenised with other ethnic minority groups. This paper explores the impact of COVID-19 on UK and US Black students and academic staff, utilising a critical race theory (CRT) framework. Analysis revealed that Black students and staff experienced COVID-19 against the backdrop of racism as a “pandemic within a pandemic” (Laurencin and Walker, Cell Systems 11:9–10, 2020), including racial (re)traumatisation, loneliness and isolation. Other themes included precarious employment and exploitation. Recommendations are offered for penetrative interventions that can support Black students and staff in the wake of strained race relations neglecting their adverse experiences and a global pandemic.
Our research, conducted with 30 Black students at a predominantly White institution, used mixed qualitative methods to investigate Black students' sense‐making of experiences that signalled their non‐belonging. All participants experienced both overt and covert racism including the n‐word, racist humour, and negative stereotyping; and this occurred in public and intimate spaces. Our reflexive thematic analysis centred on interactional dynamics that can explain how racism on campus is rendered acceptable; and how and why this is consequential for how Black students can act. We found that White students' practices of “acceptable” racism entailed the denial of responsibility and the privileging of White experiences to deflect responsibility. Importantly, these devices signal that the use of racist discourses does not always arise from unconscious bias or naivety. The perceived power dynamics whereby White students decide who belongs and what is acceptable contributed to Black students' inability to act on their own terms.
“Old” universities in the UK are typically populated with White middle‐class students who hail from White majority hometowns, whilst “new” universities have more diverse cohorts from diverse hometowns. Our research conducted with 17 Black students at a predominantly White university, examined the initial encounters in which Black students first realise their minority status on campus. We found that White numerical dominance combined with White students' racialised place‐based assumptions about who belongs where, had an immediate and powerful impact on our participants. Importantly, our findings suggest that for Black students coming from diverse hometowns, experiences such as being the only Black person in lecture halls, being told that you are the first Black person your peers have met, and being expected to use urban street slang and sell drugs constituted both a denial of their student identity and a misrecognition of their Black identity. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering the diversity within institutions alongside Black and White students' place‐based histories with diversity; and how these are consequential for Black students' experiences of (mis)recognition and (non)belonging on campuses. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.
This article explores undergraduate students' conceptions of what constitutes excellent teaching. The analysis of semi-structured interviews with students at two English universities yields five qualitatively different conceptions of excellent teaching. In contrast to the current intense policy focus on outcome factors (e.g., graduate employability), students predominantly discern process factors as conducive to excellent teaching: how the subject matter is presented, what the lecturer brings to the teaching process, how students' personal understanding is supported, and to what extent the questioning and transformation of disciplinary knowledge is facilitated. More importantly, this study demonstrates that an expansion of students' awareness of the nature of teaching is internally related to the expansion of their awareness of the nature of disciplinary knowledge.
The development of doctoral students as university teachers has received substantially less attention compared with their development as researchers, with a similar deficit extending to research on how they experience and understand university teaching. This article reports the results of a phenomenographic study of education doctoral students’ conceptions of teaching in higher education. Using samples from two education departments in England and Sweden, we conducted interviews to identify variation in doctoral students’ experiences of university teaching. Analysis of the transcripts produced six qualitatively different conceptions of teaching: doctoral students conceptualised university teaching as a means of (A) transmitting knowledge, (B) presenting contrasting concepts of education, (C) communicating and engaging with students, (D) enabling students to apply knowledge and skills, (E) enabling students to interpret and compare concepts of education, and (F) promoting personal, professional and societal development and change. While in broad agreement with previous studies on university teachers’ conceptions of teaching, the study offers a unique insight into how the subject of education is understood by doctoral students who teach. The findings also underline the need to introduce common frameworks of academic development for academics and doctoral students alike that prioritise ways of representing and engaging with the structure of the subject, rather than the acquisition of teaching skills.
With changing demographics and the advent of mass higher education, there has been a significant impact on graduate transitions which has led to greater inequalities in access to social support during the transitionary period between undergraduate study and entrance into the labour market. This article explores the experiences of students in their final year of undergraduate study by drawing on 43 interviews with Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students. Using Bourdieu, we argue that BME students preparing to enter the labour market display a ‘specialisation of consciousness’: a set of practices framed by their prior background and experience, choice of university and the support derived from attending university. ‘Specialisation of consciousness’ is an ongoing process in which BME students identify and understand racial inequalities in higher education and accept the limiting consequences these have on transitions into the labour market or further study.
Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities continue to experience inequalities within the United Kingdom (UK) mental health system despite major government policy initiatives. Access to higher education for many ethnic minorities remains problematic. Within higher education, BME students consistently face barriers in terms of accessing culturally appropriate services including a lack of cultural understanding, communication issues, and where and how to seek help. This paper attempts to address the problems facing ethnic minorities with regard to accessing mental health services at university. Importantly, this paper highlights that barriers to accessing mental health support for ethnic minorities directly impact upon attainment outcomes and psychological well-being. This study utilizes the narratives of 32 BME university students to examine the impact of negotiating racial inequality and discrimination at university and the impact upon mental health. Aspects examined considered the impact of belonging, isolation, and marginalization on mental health and how this consequently affects university participation for BME students. Utilizing a thematic analysis paradigm, the key findings presented point towards differential healthcare outcomes for ethnic minority university students experiencing mental illness. The empirical findings in this paper suggest that currently ethnic minority service users experience overt discrimination and a lack of access to culturally appropriate services that are cognizant of the racialized plights faced by BME individuals. These findings inform an overarching dialogue, which suggests that mental health service providers need to work more collegially with people from BME communities prior to service design and delivery. Furthermore, the findings suggest that, upon presenting mental health issues, information should be made available in appropriate languages for ethnic minorities to support understanding about their illnesses and how they can seek professional intervention and help. Conclusions and recommendations provided advocate greater diversification of mental health support systems for ethnic minority students within universities. Conclusions drawn will also consider how existing systems can function to dismantle racial inequality within the mental health profession.
The paper reports the results of a phenomenographic study on academics’ conceptions of e-assessment. A cohort of 21 academics from 17 disciplines participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their experiences of using web-based technologies for formative and summative assessment purposes. Through iterative analysis of the interview transcripts, the study identified four qualitatively different ways in which academic teachers understand e-assessment. It was seen as a means of: (a) efficiently managing and streamlining the assessment process; (b) facilitating dialogue and student engagement; (c) enhancing student learning; and (d) developing (digital) identity and the community. Six interrelated dimensions of variation were also established: the benefit of e-assessment, the role of the assessing teacher, the role of the assessed student, the role of the medium, the purpose, quality and level of collaboration, and, finally, the relationship between e-assessment and teaching and learning. The results thematise how university teachers relate to technology-enabled assessment and represent incrementally expanding levels of agency within relatively recent, often hybrid assessment milieus. More importantly, the reported dimensions of variation can be utilised to inform which aspects of e-assessment warrant further attention for the improvement of formative and summative assessment design and practice.
Drawing on a secondary analysis of official statistics, this paper examines the changing scale of the inequality of achievement between White students and their Black British peers who identify their family heritage as Black Caribbean. We examine a 25-year period from the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), in 1988, to the 20th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 2013. It is the first time that the Black/White gap has been analysed over such a long period. The paper reviews the changing place of the Black/White gap in education debates and notes that, despite periods when race equality has appeared to be high on the political agenda, it has never held a consistent place at the heart of policy. Our findings shed light on how the Black/White gap is directly affected, often in negative ways, by changes in education policy. Specifically, whenever the key benchmark for achievement has been redefined, it has had the effect of restoring historic levels of race inequity; in essence, policy interventions to ‘raise the bar’ by toughening the benchmark have actively widened gaps and served to maintain Black disadvantage. Throughout the entire 25-year period, White students were always at least one and a half times more likely to attain the dominant benchmark than their Black peers. Our findings highlight the need for a sustained and explicit focus on race inequity in education policy. To date, the negative impacts of policy changes have been much more certain and predictable than occasional attempts to reduce race inequality.
It is uncontested that British African Caribbean men are minimally represented in elite UK higher education institutions. Even as data demonstrates that African Caribbean males are more likely to study further education than White males1 and that the proportion of UK-domiciled Black students pursuing higher education has increased since the 2003/04 academic year (ECU, 2014), the representation of Black students throughout the Russell Group remains low.2 Less than 3% of the entire Russell Group's student population comprised British African Caribbean students in 2011/12 and 2012/2013 (ECU, 2013, p. 203; ECU, 2014, p. 358). However, according to the 2011 Census, ‘Black’ people represent 5.5% (3.1 million) of the total UK population (ONS, 2015). For the few Black men who are successful in attaining acceptance at these exclusive universities, to what assets or capitals do these young men attribute their ability to get to and successful graduate from these institutions? Interviews with 15 Black male students who attended Russell Group universities in England and Wales were analysed and several ‘capitals’ or resources were identified as beneficial to their ability to succeed. Drawing on Bourdieu's work on cultural and social capital, this paper advances the concept of ‘faith capital’ as a unique recognised asset that six of the participants described and reflected upon as being influential on their academic trajectories. Based on findings from the ESRC-funded research Exploring the narratives of the few: British African Caribbean male graduates of elite universities in England and Wales, this paper discusses these six participants’ accounts of their higher education journeys in relation to how they identified faith as a resource that was influential to their academic success.
Adopting an approach shaped by critical race theory (CRT) the paper proposes a radical analysis of the nature of race inequality in the English educational system. Focusing on the relative achievements of White school leavers and their Black (African Caribbean) peers, it is argued that long standing Black/White inequalities have been obscured by a disproportionate focus on students in receipt of free school meals (FSMs). Simultaneously the media increasingly present Whites as race victims, re‐centring the interests of White people in popular discourse, while government announcements create a false image of dramatic improvements in minority achievement through a form of “gap talk” that disguises the deep‐seated and persistent nature of race inequality. The paper concludes by reviewing the key elements that define the current situation and notes that they fit the essential characteristics used in law to identify the operation of a conspiracy. It is argued that conceiving the racism that saturates the system in terms of a conspiracy has a number of advantages, not least the insight it provides into the workings of “Whiteness” as a fundamental driver of social policy.
Racial microaggressions are brief, everyday interactions that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racially minoritised group. Compared to more overt forms of racism, racial microaggressions are subtle and insidious, often leaving the victim confused, distressed and frustrated and the perpetrator oblivious of the offense they have caused. Drawing on the counter‐narrative aspect of critical race theory that stresses the importance of understanding the role of race in the world through the experiences of people of color, I demonstrate the subtle but powerful ways in which racial microaggressions can manifest within a fictional academic setting and the consequences for those involved. It is argued that while engagement with overt forms of racism, notably through the recording of racist incidents, remains crucial towards the fight for race equality, this has tended within both education and wider British society to obfuscate understanding of these more nuanced, everyday forms of racism with which those of color must contend.
A recent analysis of the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) indicates a White British–Black Caribbean achievement gap at age 14 which cannot be accounted for by socio‐economic variables or a wide range of contextual factors. This article uses the LSYPE to analyse patterns of entry to the different tiers of national mathematics and science tests at age 14. Each tier gives access to a limited range of outcomes with the highest test outcomes achievable only if students are entered by their teachers to the higher tiers. The results indicate that Black Caribbean students are systematically under‐represented in entry to the higher tiers relative to their White British peers. This gap persists after controls for prior attainment, socio‐economic variables and a wide range of pupil, family, school and neighbourhood factors. Differential entry to test tiers provides a window on teacher expectation effects which may contribute to the achievement gap.
This paper reports on an empirical study which shows that qualitatively different approaches to teaching are associated with qualitatively different approaches to learning. More specifically, the results indicate that in the classes where teachers describe their approach to teaching as having a focus on what they do and on transmitting knowledge, students are more likely to report that they adopt a surface approach to the learning of that subject. Conversely, but less strongly, in the classes where students report adopting significantly deeper approaches to learning, teaching staff report adopting approaches to teaching that are more oriented towards students and to changing the students conceptions. The study made use of a teaching approach inventory derived from interviews with academic staff, and a modified approach to learning questionnaire. These conclusions are derived from a factor and cluster analysis of 48 classes (involving 46 science teachers and 3956 science students) in Australian universities. The results complete a chain of relations from teacher thinking to the outcomes of student learning. Previous studies have shown relations between teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning and their approaches to teaching. Numerous studies have shown correlations between students' deeper approaches to learning and higher quality learning outcomes. The results reported here link these two sets of studies. They also highlight the importance, in attempts to improve the quality of student learning, of discouraging teacher-focused transmission teaching and encouraging higher quality, conceptual change/student-focused approaches to teaching.
The purpose of this article is to identify some necessary conditions of learning. To learn something, the learner must discern what is to be learned (the object of learning). Discerning the object of learning amounts to discerning its critical aspects. To discern an aspect, the learner must experience potential alternatives, that is, variation in a dimension corresponding to that aspect, against the background of invariance in other aspects of the same object of learning. (One could not discern the color of things, for instance, if there was only one color.) The study results illustrate that what students learn in a sequence of lessons is indeed a function of the pattern of variation and invariance constituted in that sequence. All teachers make use of variation and invariance in their teaching, but this study shows that teachers informed by a systematic framework do it more systematically, with striking effects on their students' learning.
The disproportionate exclusion of Black Caribbean pupils has gained attention among policy makers and parents, but little research has been undertaken to understand the causes behind overrepresentation. Black Caribbean pupils were nearly four times more likely to receive a permanent exclusion than the school population as a whole and were twice as likely to receive a fixed-period exclusion. The aim of this research is to explore the experience of Black Caribbean pupils in school exclusion in England and to investigate the reasons for overrepresentation in exclusion statistics. Complementary case studies and focus groups were used to explore the research question. The key criteria for the selection of the schools were above national average number of Black Caribbean students and some evidence of exclusion in the schools. Schools then selected at random the respondents in this study. A number of reasons for overrepresentation of Black Caribbean pupils in exclusion statistics were suggested by the study. These included definitions as to the meaning of racism in schools, teachers’ low expectations and institutional racism, lack of diversity in the school workforce including teachers, educational psychologists and SENCos, and lack of effective training of staff on multicultural education, diversity and race issues. The research findings in this article also contain a number of important messages for policy makers and schools, including the need to recognise that the disproportionate exclusion of Black Caribbean pupils is a national concern and to develop targeted initiatives to tackle overrepresentation in England's schools.
This chapter takes a black feminist embodied approach to investigating the intersectionality of gender, race, faith and culture as it manifests itself in our overwhelmingly white places of teaching and learning in post-race times. The research study looks at the accounts of white Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) tutor’s ‘best practice’ when teaching and engaging with black and minority ethnic students. The three ‘best practice’ narratives of the tutors demonstrates the ways in which gender, race, religion, and other social divisions are simultaneously experienced as lived realities on and through the Muslim, black, male and female bodies of Keith, Sam and Kusbah. All three students were constructed as ‘bodies out of place’ in the ‘best practice’ equality narratives of the tutors. In each case the student’s embodied raced and gendered human agency framed their struggle for life chances and determined their academic well-being and progress through the course.
This article reviews some key literature of Phenomenography and Variation Theory of Learning as an outline of a pedagogical framework for transforming higher education. Transformation implies change in ways that can deliver on the promise of social justice or what we call socially just pedagogies. It implies that one must understand what needs to transform and how transformation can be made possible in higher education. This process requires an understanding of how the object of transformation appears to people before and after change; what individuals, communities and societies need to learn to act as agents of transformation in and across societies. It is this specific question of ‘what is to be learnt?’ that is the key focus of the proposed framework in relation to specific groups of people, educational contexts, and educational purposes, rather than generic processes of teaching, learning, teacher education or generic skills, such as thinking skills, teacher competencies, teaching styles and methods.
Volume 60(3) of the Scandanavian Journal of Educational Research (SJER) is a special issue on current trends in the phenomenography and variation theory research tradition. In the introduction to the special issue, Rovio-Johansson and Ingerman (2016) look towards the potential theoretical and methodological future of phenomenography and pose two questions: “Is phenomenography complete and finalised with no further development necessary?” and “Is phenomenography relatively insignificant in the future development of the tradition as it has been transcended by variation theory?” (p. 265). The aim of this paper is to address these two questions, and in the process elaborate the relationship between phenomenography and variation theory in educational research.
In UK higher education, ethnic differences in academic attainment are ubiquitous and have persisted for many years. They are only partly explained by ethnic differences in entry qualifications. They vary from one institution to another and from one subject area to another. This suggests that they result in part from teaching and assessment practices in different institutions and subjects. We do not really know whether ethnic differences in attainment are reflected in variations in the student experience. We do not know what factors are responsible for the ethnic differences in attainment that remain when differences in entry qualifications have been taken into account. Finally, we do not know what aspects of teaching and assessment practices are responsible for variations in the attainment gap.
This article analyzes 255 articles published in seven peer-reviewed journals over a 10-year period and presents examples of how higher education researchers undertake the study of campus racial climates; racial differences in access, outcomes, and attainment; and the experiences of students, faculty, and administrators of color on predominantly White campuses without explicitly considering racism or attributing quantified racial inequities to racist institutional practices. The analysis found three consistent trends: (a) racial disparities are overwhelmingly attributed to factors other than racism, (b) scholars use semantic substitutes for "racism" and "racist," and (c) critical race theory is rarely used for conceptual sense-making.
This study of black students' access to higher education and their progression into employment is based on two research studies conducted in England between 1989 and 1992 at a group of schools and higher education institutions. The text is illustrated throughout by quotations from students, educational staff, and the two research studies. The first chapter titled, "The Rhetorics of Access and the Realities of Exclusion," defines some of the fundamental aspects of the problem. The next chapters deal with: (1) strategies for access, (2) issues of quality and equality, and (3) methods for monitoring diversity and progression. Each chapter presents, first, examples and strategies derived from the research; and then develops the conceptual and theoretical implications. Chapter 2 (written with W.C. Yee) discusses strategies for working with and establishing partnerships with schools; the next chapter discusses outreach and dissemination strategies for communities, parents, and students. Chapters 4 and 5 consider staff and curriculum development in higher education and black support groups. Ethnic monitoring and progression into employment are discussed in Chapters 6 and 7. The final chapter presents a policy for equality. Some chapters suggest other useful texts. (Contains approximately 150 references.) (CH)
Although there is a considerable body of literature on black and ethnic minority students and schooling we know relatively little about those who are successful within the school system or about their experiences within higher education. This article focuses on the educational experiences of a small sample of black and ethnic minority undergraduates in Britain, examining both their schooling and their more recent experiences of higher education. It draws on these students' life histories to examine the impact of their educational experiences on their subsequent occupational choices. In particular it considers their attitudes towards teaching as a career. A number of exclusionary processes within higher education are identified and analysed and some consideration is given to the need for future policies and practices which might contribute to greater inclusivity.
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