Equity in higher education – An Australian researcher

Ana Larsen – Australian research about enabling programs and equity in higher education

  • NAEEA 2024 Conference – Darwin +

    Sad news first of all. My principle supervisor Anna Fletcher has had to pull out due to some very serious health issues. It does not look good at all and I think Stuart, my remaining supervisor and I are both in a bit of shock. It has all happened quite quickly so no doubt Anna is too. She’s only young, probably early 50’s so it’s all rather horrific. I am trying to focus on the positives. Recently that has been the NAEEA conference!

    The picture above is my with the Self-Efficacy SIG poster. I had feedback from a couple of colleagues but most of it was my work and I’m quite proud of it. I have had other posters but in the past I’ve been only one person in a team and haven’t actually had that much input into the overall feel of the poster. This was my baby though!

    All 6 conference presentations went well. The one on trauma and self-care was a bit rushed at the end. SOOOOoooo much good has come of that though because I’ve now realised that Amy C, one of my favorite FedUni people works in that area and WE can do research TOGETHER on this! My pilot study only had 3 students BUT they explicitly explained how a past trauma had impacted their journey to university AND (more importantly) their self-efficacy. It is a huge gap in the enabling literature and Amy and I are going to fill it! Very excited about that… I DO need to get permission from my now solo supervisor I think.

    Another good thing to come from the conference was that it introduced me to a few teaching techniques. First is Mechano where one person makes a statement and then others can connect to that (physcially) by standing behind them (to back them up) or beside them to agree etc. The other they called snowballing where you write your idea on paper, scruntch it up, throw into the middle of the room, grab someone else’s and add to it… repeat! Both of these came from a workshop on the 4CTL Learning Disposition Wheel which is based on self-regulated learning.

    I think in enabling education where we like to explicitly teach it might be of value for me to use it exactly as they did in the workshop. They introduced it, then the activity was conducted and then we were asked which slice of the wheel we “used” the most in that activity. In other words which skills we needed, used, drew on etc. Different people choose different parts of the wheel because multiple were used in each activity… and that was the point! Use multiple wherever possible.

    Here is the wheel for reference – I got it from here (sorry it’s after 4pm I can’t be bothered to reference correctly!!!) https://www.4ctransformativelearning.org/the-learning-disposition-wheel

    I’m not sure what else to add about the conference. It was excellent all around. It had a great warm and friendly vibe to it. All the speakers were excellent, especially Sarah O’Shea. I felt like I knew a few people, from FedUni and CQUniversity of course but also Murdoch and other places too. I made a great contact with one of the folks from Macquarie University as well. I hope to get in touch with their senior teaching staff soon and welcome them into the Self-efficacy SIG.

    As I mentioned, after 4pm so that’s all for now. In summary great conference. Loved it.

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  • PhD life goes on!

    I guess the initial excitement of being able to continue to receive the stipend (RTP Scholarship) payments has worn off a little, but then I look at my bank account and I am happy again! Despite this I am going to apply for a second part time position (online) and hope for the best. It’s unlikely that I will get it, so if I don’t post about it again, assume that!

    I have struggled with motivation a little bit lately but that is mainly due to personal issues that are still ongoing and the associated trauma which is still impacting my generally. I have however been very good at self-care lately and I am proud of that. I have lost weight, done more exercise than usual and taken the time to just walk around the building multiple times during the day. That is keeping my step count up, but improving my mood as well. The gardens and the weather here on campus are lovely. I’m also drinking more water… so you see all these things should be improving my performance at work. I’m just not sure if that is the case or not. I can say that I’m not a total mess and I have managed to keep going so perhaps it is just all balancing out!

    So my PhD is just ticking along. I’m doing little bits and pieces of the literature review and SLOWLY collecting data.

    The book chapter that I wrote with Ondine has finally come out! Perhaps I shouldn’t say finally, but it really FELT like a long process to get it published. It can be found here:

    Larsen, A., Bradbury, O. (2024). Examining Strategies to Support Teacher Self-Efficacy When Working with Diverse Student Groups: A Scoping Literature Review. In: Burke, J., Cacciattolo, M., Toe, D. (eds) Inclusion and Social Justice in Teacher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67612-3_5

    The same day that was live online the PhD article (scoping literature review number one) was rejected by a second journal. Again, perhaps there is balance there? Hahaha. That makes 10 publications for me and 2 this year so I am happy with that.

    The main thing I am working on at the moment is the NAEEA conference. The program is now available here: https://agentur.eventsair.com/naeeaconference2024/program

    If you do a search for my name across the 2 days you’ll see how busy I am making Powerpoints right now 🙂 I’m also working on some sections of my PhD literature review about defining and measuring equity groups. I DID have a non-teaching term, but I think that is about to change with my workload going over the limit NOW and then it will be under next year. That will likely mean I wont have as many online students and will be more on campus which is A-OK with me. I do like both but probably have a slight preference for on campus teaching.

    The final thing which I have done recently is my whiteboard. Before, I had the goal of 25 publications before the end of 2025. But with the hassle of switching my PhD to full time, back to part time, from via publication then back to a standard thesis – well with all that I didn’t think I was going to make it. Mostly because I had to withdraw from a few projects when my PhD went full time. I was rather sad looking at my whiteboard and knowing it was a goal I’d set for myself and wasn’t going to achieve.

    But then I had a bit of a brainwave and decided to change the criteria. Instead of it only being “publications” including journal articles and book chapters I decided I would ALSO include conference presentations. Even if only the abstract was peer-reviewed and it was just a presentation, (not a Conference Paper). So I erased the whole darn board and started again.

    So now instead of being “25 publications by the end of 2025” I say it’s “25 research outputs by the end of 2025″… so when the book chapter came out I added that on and it is the 23rd thing! Just TWO MORE to go!!! So I AM going to achieve that goal and that made me feel better! On that note, I shall sign off for now! 🙂

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  • Got my cake and I’m eating it too!

    Last year I wont the RTP scholarship but after all the crazy stuff going on in my personal life I took 6 months leave from my PhD. When I got the scholarship I had to be doing my PhD full time to receive the payment (which significantly reduced my financial stress). But when my 6 months off from study was nearing the end I didn’t feel like I could go back full time. For self-care reasons I felt really anxious about being a full time student with a 0.5 FTE job on top of that. I had managed it for a few months but it was not easy and I really felt that I was not up to it. So I made the decision to go back to study part time instead of full time.

    That would mean that I wasn’t going to get my payments from the scholarship BUT I thought it would be less stressful overall and I was also comforted by knowing that I had won that scholarship already – it was already on my resume and whether or not I actually received the money didn’t matter – it only mattered that I was awarded it from a CV point of view. So I officially started back on my PhD on the 18th of September and I put in for it to be only part time. Then… much to my surprise… the policy has changed and I am now getting partial payments!!!!

    I really DID get to have my cake and eat it too. I feel like God was rewarding me for not being greedy and pushing myself just to get extra money. I am very thankful. No one has confirmed this but I think it has to do with the Universities Accord which (the final report) came out while I was on leave. The Accord highlighted that students from equity groups are more likely to NEED to study part time because of their other commitments (work, caring duties etc.) and it essentially said that offering part time study was important for equity.

    In other news I have 5 presentations plus a poster accepted for NAEEA in December and I’ve started preparing slides for a couple of those. I still have a fair bit to do before the first week in December. I have re-written my whiteboard to include conference presentations as well as just journal articles and book chapters. Because conference PAPERS are better but a presentation is still an academic output. I have 22 outputs once presentations and posters are included. My original goal was 25 so yes, happy with that!

    Not sure what else to include in this update. I wanted to share the good news but also write down that I am still struggling with personal issues and it is impacting my work, well my research and my motivation at least. I have done absolutely everything I can to make sure it does not impact my students and I am satisfied that so far it has not. I have finished my marking for the year – I am not teaching into the Enabling (Preparatory) program (STEPS) until term 1 next year now.

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  • Overdue update

    I have been playing around with Microsoft Designer lately. Below is an image I got it to create of myself… I’m not sure that my face is quite that round but I like it!

    I also used Microsoft Designer to create an image promoting a webinar that I did with the Mental Health and Wellbeing Special Interest Group (SIG). I probably should have written about this webinar BEFORE it happened – oopsy! Anyway the promotional email included this image:

    The webinar went really well and we have 40 people there which felt like a lot at the time. It was promoted through NAEEA – so you know, a national organization and it is a great thing to have on my resume. The same team had a presentation at the STARS Conference although sadly I couldn’t attend myself.

    I AM going to Darwin in December for the NAEEA national conference… and here’s THAT image/website: https://agentur.eventsair.com/naeeaconference2024/

    So I have 6 abstracts going in for that conference. That is one for the Self-Efficacy SIG that I facilitate as they have asked each SIG to have a poster promoting the SIG. Then there is two research projects, one for the Self-efficacy SIG and one for the Mental Health and Wellbeing SIG that I am part of. We intend to also submit articles to the special issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice that is associated with the conference. So that’s two projects, two conference presentations and possibly two articles to go with them.

    The next abstract I’ve submitted is again one that they requested because I received a small grant from NAEEA in 2022. I have not actually finished collecting data for that one yet, but I have 8 completed interviews so that was enough to know broadly what findings I am going to present at the conference.

    The final two abstracts I have submitted to the conference are related to my PhD. I figured I have done a pilot study with 3 students, I can present those findings as a case study. The second one is a shorter presentation about the trauma that they shared with me, how important self-care and self-reflection is when doing qualitative work and I’ll touch on the ethical considerations as well. Sadly my supervisors were unable to assist in any way with the conceptualization, writing, proofreading or editing of those abstracts as I am still officially on leave from study. I did send the first 250 word abstract to them but, as I mentioned, they were unable to look at them. As they had not contributed I removed both supervisors as authors. I had previously listed them because naturally they have supported me in the process leading up to collecting data from the 3 students I am presenting about. And you know, they’ve been a part of everything PhD related so I figured authorship was appropriate.

    The personal problems I have been dealing with are still there, but like most emotional things they are dying down as time goes on. I’ve been talking to friends and colleagues about it all and that has helped a lot too. I am still feeling anxious, like physically anxious when I think about going back to full time PhD study in October. When I reflect on that I realize it’s because I only have so much energy – generally speaking – but I’m most worried about emotional energy at the moment. More worried about the emotional energy than I would have been in the past. And the truth is that I believe my PhD takes more emotional energy than anything else.

    That is not because I am not motivated. It’s not that I procrastinate. It’s because I spend a lot of energy on managing my supervisor relationships. By now I should probably know what to expect from them but that doesn’t really help when I think about how much energy I spend on it. At this point I know I still have a couple of months to decide. I WANT to go back to full time study so that I can continue to receive the stipend payments but I know that is probably not what’s best for my emotional energy or my mental health. It is a decision that I am putting off.

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  • It hit the fan!

    I consider myself a professional. Today I really didn’t feel like being around people at all but I delivered a class that I think was exceptionally good. It was on paraphrasing and I started with a brief summary of the paraphrasing techniques that were discussed in the lecture. Then I asked students to paraphrase 2 long and academic sounding sentences. It would have been tough! I know that most of them had to Google the meaning of multiple words. There was a percentage of the class that didn’t get past the first hurdle; understanding what they were reading. I gave them almost 10 minutes to paraphrase around 40 words. Most did not get it finished and that was my point.

    From there we talked about the skills needed to paraphrase, and the importance of knowing where you are at in relation to those skills, so that you can accurately plan out the time you need for an assessment. We also looked at Turnitin and talked about those skills in terms of plagiarism. It’s all sounding lame as I write it but you have to believe me when I say that I got my on campus class of 13 students really engaged in a discussion on paraphrasing! I am a professional! Because what I was feeling and what I wanted to do was go home, curl up and have a cry and then a nap.

    I wont share too much in this medium I will just say that my personal life is a bit of a mess at the moment. I was on track doing full time PhD and part time work. I was keeping up, at least for a couple of months. But now that things have hit the fan I know that something had to go. I can’t do it all. So I have taken a 6 month leave from study and put my PhD (and the stipend) on hold. That will hopefully allow me the space and time to continue being a professional, put the energy into my students and my personal life and hopefully not drop too many of the other balls that I currently juggle.

    In other news the article the Wellbeing SIG had published was mentioned in a Student Success symposium the other day and has also featured in the blog the Sally Kift edits! You can see it here: https://needednowlt.substack.com/p/unlocking-success-the-interdependence

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  • Mixed update

    I laughed at the title I just wrote – Mixed Update! Hahaha everything seems very mixed at the moment! Everything I tell you!

    I spent $200 to buy a better coffee machine for the staff room and no one uses it. That probably explains why no one has said thank-you.

    Recruitment has officially started for my PhD. I sent a proper newspaper style “advertisement” to go in the student newsletter. But between last year and now the newsletter has become a news website. I can just imagine that all students check that regularly – NOT! And the nice article I sent became one line without the QR code… and that one line invite is about 7th down the page. I’m really not surprised at all that I have not got one single response.

    I’ve also been in a fairly large amount of pain in my hip and knee because my pelvis is out of alignment at the moment and that is making me kind of miserable – impacing my sleep and ability to concentrate etc.

    So that is all the moans and whines I think!

    It looks like the NAEEA Mental Health and Wellbeing SIG I’m a part of is going to go for a grant next year – based on the autoethnography project that I am leading. So that is pretty exciting. We might even have someone else join us (email pitch is going out soon) but I wont say who unless they say yes 🙂

    I did have over 300 comments on my literature review and introduction chapter but now I have only 189 left. I was hoping to get that to 150 (ie half) by the PhD meeting I have this Wednesday but that is not likely. Most of them were fairly repetitive. I needed to go into more depth, or perhaps I should say I needed to unpack things more. I need to use more international sources then narrow down to Australian and finally down to Enabling Programs if I can. It all made sense to me. I guess I would summarize it by saying that I needed to lift the whole thing up a notch. There is also a lack of clarity because I’m trying to pack too many ideas (well too many nouns) into each sentence at times. My supervisors aren’t following my train of thought because it’s not clear enough. I mean they would never say that in their comments because that might show weakness and mess up the power dynamics. But it’s clear from their comments, and from my writing that that is what is going on.

    It’s also been amusing to see their self-efficacy in action. Both supervisors offer significantly more comments on the sections that are within their areas of expertise. I guess that wasn’t unexpected exactly, it was just a weird thing to observe. It was even weirder when one supervisor acknowledged that! I laughed and I didn’t know what to say. In the end I think I made a comment about “well that’s why I choose this supervision team” or something to that effect. Anyway, I do have all the bases covered as far as supervisors being all over the content, at least I do at this point.

    In other good news the Self-Efficacy SIG autoethnography project is swimming along nicely. I have a couple of tasks to do for that one, but nothing urgent or stressful so that is a win.

    I don’t have any other projects at the moment and I am struggling a little bit with that but it is forcing me to work on my PhD, even when I’m in pain and I don’t really feel like it. Overall I am ahead on the writing timeline by 3 weeks. I have that same 3 week to finish off the 189 comments I mentioned before and judging on how that has been going so far I think that is easily achievable. So writing and editing timeline is looking A-OK. It’s just the recruitment which I’m worried about.

    This is week 2 of term and so far teaching and the Academic Learning Centre (ALC) stuff is all going smoothly. I was just checking how to pronounce one student’s name prior to doing this update. I’ve got some short samples of student writing to look over but I’m otherwise on top of everything. I have to prepare a powerpoint for next week’s ALC workshop and I’ll update my Essay Writing powerpoint for class this Thursday. It’s a short to-do list really. Marking will change the relaxed nature of it all! But I have a couple of weeks yet.

    Well I guess that’s all folks. Mixed report card – some areas with no worries and some frustrations as well. Life must be normal or something!

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  • Term 1 Orientation

    Today is the main day for STEPS students Orientation for Term 1 here at CQUniversity. Orientation always makes me reflect on my own journey and it’s good because I have come a long way from when I first stepped foot on the Gippsland Campus of Monash University. Long way! But the journey has been hard and I typically share some of that with my students. Between then and now I have been married (twice actually!) and divorced (just the once – I got it right the second time). I lost my dad suddenly and my mum to cancer. I’ve dealt with being a type 1 diabetic every day and I have not worked full time in that 14 years (my bank account can confirm this!).

    Having said that I have received only 3 Credits and every other grade was a Distinction or a High Distinction. I have completed an undergraduate and Honours degree. I’ve started a new business (teaching rock and roll dancing) and I’ve got 8 publications while doing a PhD part time. That PhD is not finished yet and so I’ve reflecting on these achievements because things are just about to get tough.

    I’ve almost finished a rough draft of the literature reivew and my writing is fairly clear but it’s not great. It’s ok to good. So I KNOW that the comments are going to be brutal and I’m going to need some sterngth not to take them persoanlly and then to act on those comments with humility and the attitude of a lifelong learner.

    I’ve got to get back to the students now – although my part for the day is mostly done and it will be Kerry’s gig from here mostly. But I shall enjoy every minute of it. 🙂

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  • So far… So… So… something!

    My RTP scholarhip/Stipend kicked in on the 8th of January and I have been working on my PhD full-time since then. I WOULD say so far so good but that is not 100% correct. I should admit right now that I am not 100% clear on what goes in what section of my PhD thesis. I’ve put some stuff about Social Cognitive Theory as my framework in the introduction but I know it is going to do throughout. I’m nto exactly sure what I then need to put in the literature review. Plus I KNOW that I’ll put things in the literature review that should go in the discussion and visa versa. Helpfully Anna (principle supervisor) gave me a dot point “list” of the chatpers of a standard thesis and what goes where. It was very useful but not detailed enough. I know every thesis is different, so I understand why it wasn’t very detailed. Anyway I should have probably just said that I know absolutley nothing about how to write or structure a thesis this big – I guess until you do it, no one does!

    I’ve got a timeline and chunks of the thesis to write. I am keeping up with those very well so far – but I’ve only just got feedback back on the first chunks. Anyway the churn out words – that part is going well. I’ve been taking my confirmation report and adding in more details, few more sub-headings etc. Perhaps I should just stick to this – write, write write and then edit when I get my comments back. But I am me – and that wouldn’t be. So I’ve done a couple of things that have landed me in a spot of trouble really!

    First I put in an expression of interest for a RHD spot on the Research Board for Federation University. So that’s where my PhD is, not where I work. But I let my supervisor at work know – I guess that was my first mistake. It didn’t go down well because I have had to withdraw from a number of research projects, including one with the Associate Dean (who I absolutley LOVE). Anyway, I can see from a personal level how that was quite rude of me. Withdraw from her research project and then take on something else instead. I would apologise but she hasn’t spoken to me about it, only through my supervisor. To me that particular part is apples and oranges. I withdrew from an ongoing research project that would take up an unknown amount of hours over a long period of time. I replaced it with a fixed role for one year that involves 4 meetings plus some reading and thinking time. I estimated 20-40 hours over the year. Anyway – that is one part of it. The main consideration for me is that this is something I am chosing to do outside of my 18.13 hours per week of employment. I spoke to our HR equavelent and they agree – it’s my time, not the universities so they really have no grounds to be concerned unless they think it is impacting my job performance – it’s not. So that is one thing that has taken up a bit of my emotional energy lately. The other is a NCSEHE stipend.

    I beleive it is brand new because I would have surely noticed it, and applied, if I’d seen it before. They just want to give some money to a PhD or Masters student to help them prepare a journal article manuscript that can be submitted for publication. It’s like their good deed to promote the next generation of researchers in equity. So good on them! But gee I want to apply. A LOT. Of course I need my PhD supervisors to back me and THAT has been the issue. I mis-understood their initial comments and when I got clarification what Anna wants me to do is essentially write a substantial rough draft of the artilce that I’m going to write for the NCSEHE stipend… BEFORE she will back my application for the NCSEHE stipend! As I’m planing to do a Scoping Literature Review you can see how ridiculous that is right?

    The money would pay a research assistant to apply inclusion and exclusion criteria to the thousands of search results. But I’m expected to somehow magically do that myself in 3 weeks??? Just so I can apply to get the funding to do that work in the first place. Anyway it’s ridiculous but it’s prompted me to dig my heels in and get stubborn. So I’m going to write the method section and findings with a whole lot of XYZ and X’s where I don’t yet have the data. Then I’m going to write “a substantial draft” of all the rest and see what happens. Hopefully my supervisor will see I can and will find time to do the systematice review and support my stipend application. I beleive I CAN do it for a few reasons:

    1. The funding is a pretty large motivator!
    2. We have done a scoping literature review looking at worldwide literature and this one would be systematic zooming in on the Australian literature. So a lot of the planning and thinking has already been done. Ie the research questions are already refined and ready to go.
    3. The NCSEHE know how long it takes to do a systematic literature review so they are not going to expect a 6 month timeline for the project. I can stretch it out a little bit so that the majority of the hours that I need to put into it will be AFTER I’ve submitted my thesis. I think that shows I understand the nature of research becasue NOTHING ever happens as fast as you think it will!

    In other news I’ve done two out of three focus groups for the TAFE project. One was horrible as a participant kept turning the TV on when I wasn’t speaking directly to them. They didn’t mute and the transcript is a mess. The other one got some great data, actually they both have some great data, it’s just buried in one transcript and clear in the other. It was a learning experience that is for sure! Had a good be-brief with Sue and then set clearer expectations in the second focus group which I think helped.

    I’m just about to finish off another emial interview for the NAEEA social equity discourses project. I believe that will give me 4 interviews so that is certainly enough for a conference presentation and probably enough for a journal article. There’s a couple of other participants that I hope will also finish their interviews so I am expecting 10 or 11 by the time I’m done. Could be a while though!

    Both autoethnography projects are plodding along nicely. No complaints. Progress is slow but it’s there and it’s encouraging. Same with the meme project – about to recruit for the survey this coming term. So no worries there – it’s just the other challenges around my PhD, the stipend application and managing my relationships at work when they are asking about things outside of work! So those are the challenges for me at the moment – keep up with the writing timeline (tick) and then deal with all the other rubbish (half a tick… maybe). Please send patience!

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  • Welcome to 2024!

    This morning I am reviewing a book chapter for an edited book that feels like it is running about a year behind! We submitted our chapter in March 2023 at which time I volunteered to also review someone else’s chapter. My due date for the review is Jan 31st with authors set to recieve feedback late Febuary. Almost a full year for the peer-review process does seem like a long time – however I know the editors of this book and they are likely to have given some authors a long extension so their chapters could be included.

    I am quite on top of things as far as students and the Academic learning Centre workshops go. I made sure of that over the break, even if it was just planning and putting things in my Calendar. It’s not like I have significantly fallen behind in other areas – but the ALC is most certainly the area where I am most ahead.

    I’ve done some writing for my PhD – organised some files and most importantly started using Zetero for the in-text references. I have a couple of sections “done” but I will revise them before my PhD meeting next week. What I haven’t done yet is code pilot study data. I have cleaned up the transcripts and read them, written some reflections etc, so I guess that is something!

    I have been attempting to start earlier and finish earlier too but so far this has just made me tired. I will stick with it for a couple of weeks and then reassess. Well I’m writing about my daily schedule so it must be time to sign off. The scholarship officially starts Monday so I can breath until then I guess!

    Happy New Year!

  • AARE Conference 2023

    There is a lot going on right now as we are still in the middle of Term 3. I have workshops with the Academic Learning Centre next week and the week after which I will need to prepare. I’m also trying to wrap up multiple projects including the interviews I’ve been doing for a co-worker, focus group invitations for the TAFE project and some peer-reviews.

    I did the pilot focus group for my PhD on Tuesday night. There were many good things and I certainly have some really useful data in the interview. There were some questions I will need to add and some things I will need to improve for the next ones. It was a good learning experience though.

    I thought I would quickly share a couple of photos from the AARE conference. This was my second time attending and I was delighted that many of the contacts I had made last year recognised me and approached me for a quick chat. The food was strange but the presentations were excellent. Stewart Riddle was extrordinary as usual and Ellen Larsen was warm and welcoming. One day I hope to be on the executive committee – but not yet! PhD first! I must finish that darn PhD first!

    Anyway I did 2 presentations – one on behalf of the Social Innovation working party and one from the book chapter that Trixie and I have submitted on self-efficacy using pre-existing interview data from enabling students. Both presentations had 10 or less people attending but it was still fun and really good practice.

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