Equity in higher education – An Australian researcher

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

  • So many firsts for me!

    Wow life has been a whirlwind since my last post! I’ll start with the little bits and pieces and go from there.

    First there was the autoethnography peice that was accepted with minor revisions. Well they have been done and it has been resubmitted.

    I have done some work on the ethics application for my PhD. Not a lot, but maybe a couple of hours. At least it’s a start.

    I resubmitted my confirmation of candidature report. Neither of my supervisors read it from top to bottom in the last couple of weeks. I guess that was a little disapointing and worrisome but also a compliment because they obviously trust me to edit it well. I had to cut around 10% of the word limit out, so again, they obviously trust that I didn’t cut out anything important etc. Their attitude was a little blasé and I think that sort of stuck with me a bit.

    Then there was the conferences! I travelled on my own for the first time ever which is slightly more complex as I am a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump. But that part was pretty smooth. The first conference was the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) which went from a pre-conference day on Sunday to Thursday last week. One of the first things I learnt was that I was unsuccessful with the voting to get on the committee. But other than that the first day was excellent. I spend most of this conference with Amy C and Karen from FedUni. We have different interests and often attended different sessions but also met up for meals most days. Amy was in the hotel room right next to mine. We had some super good chats, about life, research, work, well about pretty much anything and everything.

    Ondine didn’t arrive until the Tuesday and we were presenting Wednesday just after lunch. Fair to say I missed most of the sessions from Tuesday afternoon until then. We were not prepared. I had done everything I was asked to do. But I guess that was the issue… I sat back and waiting for Tim and Ondine to give me instructions for whatever was next. I mean, they are the first 2 authors so it made sense… but it also spoke a LOT about my confidence. I’m determined to be more on top of things next time. Anyway, we shared a couple of meals together as well. It was very excellent meeting them in person.

    In the end our presentation was great. Tim mumbles a bit when he’s nervous but I think he spoke so that all could hear and understand him. Ondine speaks very smoothly and confidently and I did as well. We got lots of nods from the audience and about 5 questions. Natalie Downes was there too which was pretty nice! I reflected on it later and there was no cringe moments that I recalled, so WIN!

    What else might one want to know about the conference? Uni SA was a wonderful location because it was close to shops and food and coffee and just lovely. All the technology worked perfectly and I would love to work there! The food was pretty good. It’s too hard to pick a favorite speaker, many were excellent. My accomodation was great until I had to move for the National Association of Enabling Educators, Australia (NAEEA) conference. The best contact I made was Amy Robinson who is the enabling program leader at The University of Adelaide. She is inspirational and bubbly and we are very like-minded (at least so far). I really enjoyed the Social Justice SIG meeting as well. Tim is stepping back a bit in 2023 so there could be some good opportunities there too.

    Next year AARE is in Melbourne and I’m already hoping to go. I’ll work out what I can present on later! Now I might just leave it there and talk about the NAEEA conference in another post… I don’t want this one to be thesis length!

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  • Confirmation and Conferences

    I can’t deny it, things are getting exciting! I leave in 8 days to fly to Adelaide for not one, but TWO conferences!

    First is the AARE – Australian Association for Research in Education – https://www.aare.edu.au/events/2022-conference/

    I have one presenatation in the program which is associated with the team including Tim Fish, Ondine Bradbury and Rickard O’Donovan. It’s not always the most productive team but it’s one of the most fun. Good people make all the difference. I’m not feeling entirely prepared for this presentation… yet and I think this is the one where we are also going to publish a conference paper through AARE. The paper hasn’t been written yet but I could be mistaken – perhaps the plan is to publish elsewhere. Anyway, this will be my first ever conference presentation, my first ever face-to-face conference and I am rather excited.

    After AARE finishes on Friday I will have the weekend to hang out in Adelaide and then NAEEA on Monday!

    Second conference is NAEEA – National Association for Enabling Educators, Australia – https://naeeaconference.com.au/

    I am part of two presentations in this conference. The first is the team from the Mental health and Wellbeing Special Interest Group (from NAEEA). We are also working on a submission for a special issue of the Student Success journal which is due on the 30th. Another great team! I’m one of the last authors on the paper we are presenting on, just so happened that I got funding to go to the conference. There’s 2 out of 8 (Juliette and I) of us that are actually attending and therefore presenting. This one we ARE quite prepared for. Juliette and I have met together a few times already and the slides are basically done.

    The second presentation in with the Social Innovation group here at CQU, led by Trixie. I’m certain it will come together but it’s not quite ready yet. We’ve just worked out the main points we will cover and planned an activity in the presentation too (always risky!). I created some slides but didn’t add any real content yet, so I guess we’ll see how that comes together in the next few days. I will remind Trixie and Anne (who I am presenting with) that I wont be here in the days leading up to NAEEA because I’ll be at AARE!

    Now, back to my PhD, well my confirmation report. I want to, well need to, hand it in before I head off to these conferences, so that gives me about a week. BUT, I had a meeting with my supervisors yesterday and they are pretty happy with where it is at. “It reads well” I think was the compliment I managed to pry out of them. I have a to-do list which fits on an A5 page (see picture below)…. they ONLY thing NOT on that list is that I will then have to cut it down under the word limit. At the moment it is about 760 words over. But sadly there are no decent sized sections I can cut out, so it is sentence by sentence editing.

    I didn’t actually count that list before… but just realised it’s 10 things! 10 minor things and cutting around 800 words, then I’m done with confirmation! My supervisors seem to be happy that I will pass it. I mean officially it has already been confirmed, pending minor edits, so it would be difficult to not pass confirmation at this point. I’m just really happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sadly, it’s not that exciting because the moment, and I do mean the very moment, confirmation is done I need to start on the ethics application. And FedUni does not have the amazing, easy to work with ethics team that we have here at CQU. I am not looking forward to it. Even just the fact that they have 1 large Word document/template for ethics instead of an online form that can be done (and saved) in sections. Their whole system is clunky in comparison. Sigh.

    And Stuart (associated supervisor) is worried that I’ll then need another month to get ethics approval from CQU. I informed him that last time I got CQU ethics after I already had FedUni ethics, it took 2 days. From the moment I hit that “submit” button on the online form, to the moment I had email confirmation I could go ahead with the project… 2 days! I love it when things are smooth. So I expect that will be the case again regarding CQU ethics… it’s just the FedUni side that will be nightmarish.

    Not much other news to report. I’ve done chunks of literature reivews for various projects, worked on Confirmation, Powerpoint slides, the survey for the Preparedness project and editing of the social innovation paper. I need to get back to the covid article, UNESCO coding and probably 100 other things. But I’m too busy feeling excited about confirmation and conferences at the moment! 🙂

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  • Chip, chip chipping away!

    My motivation, just in general, has gone up and down a little in the last little while. I have not been lazy, no not at all. I’ve just spent more time doing random things, replying to emails, reading, contemplating and so on, rather than really getting focused on one task. I guess it is a symptom of my overall strategy – have too many projects and bounce from one to the next as soon as I hit a brick wall.

    Sue and I have made some progress on the various projects we are working on. Firstly, we still havent’ heard back from the WPLL journal about our typology discussion piece but I have had some communication from them and I am now officially a rewiever for them. Ann-Marie gave me some feedback on our COVID article and now I’ve shared that with Sue we are going to take a slightly different direction. I’ve updated the abstract and the first small section, so again, progress. We have also had one good shut-up and write-type session working on the TAFE project article AND Sue FINALLY has made some progress getting access to the list of student details we need to send out the surveys. We have also made some progress on coding the UNESCO report. Slow and steady in that case.

    I have 2 sections of literature reviews to write. One is about the government incentives for teachers to relocate to Rural, Regional and Remote (RRR) areas and the other is around change fatigue. I’ve read quite a few things on RRR incentives and made a lot of notes but they are very much just spewed onto the document and not well written at all. Same sort of thing with change fatigue except I haven’t done quite as much reading. Those two things should be 2nd and 3rd priority for me at the moment as they both have due dates before the end of this year. The other thing is rehearsing for the 3 different presentations I have at conferences Nov/Dec!

    Then of course my confirmation report should be my number 1 priority at the moment, and I just haven’t been able to make it so! I spent an hour or so this morning looking at the interventions (my findings bascially) in the first scoping literature review. I added a column to the spreadsheet, classified them all and made a table in the draft of the article. That counts as PhD progress, just it should have been on the confirmation report. I did go through it on the weekend, at least up to the method section. I’m adding in better signposting and more clarity around the link to research questions and things like that. I’m around 1500 words over the limit at the moment but I will worry about that later. I still have a lot of work to do on the method section. THAT is the main thing I am putting off. Sigh.

    In other news, my solo project around enabling educators views on equity discourses is moving along. I should have ethics approval very very soon. I have actually met all the requirements, I’m just waiting for Sue Evans to go into the system and change the status to approved. THEN I will write something for the NAEEA newsletter and the data collection will begin! It’s nice to focus on this as a postive thing. It’s exciting. The method section of my confirmation report is not. I just keep reminding myself of how much I have learnt and telling myself that if getting a PhD was easy, everyone would have one!

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  • Progress everywhere!

    I have certainly had my moments over the last little while. I’ve been terribly frustrated at a number of things, I’ve been confused and overwhelmed. I’ve been mistaken and I’ve been right. Well now I know what I have to do regarding my confirmation, I’m just fuzzy on a few things. The scary one of those things is wondering whether or not the two scoping reviews I have worked on still align with my new and improved research questions. I’m also just not sure what level of detail is needed for various things and I’m hoping (probably in vain) for my supervisors guidance in that area. But I have things I can be working on in the mean time and so I’m plodding along. The big breakthrough was getting my supervisors to agree that I should send participants the interview questions before doing the focus groups. That will allow them some time to reflect and then hopefully I will get the sorts of in-depth answers I’m looking for.

    In other news, I’ve resubmitted ethics for the staff project where I’ll be asking enabling staff about their views on equity discourses in higher education. It is going to be my first solo project and I am determined to NOT recruit a co-author at the last minute. So I can already say that I have done the ethics applilcation on my own and that is an achievement…. or it will be once it is approved. One step closer now!

    I handed off another article to a team member today as well. That is the one about digital literacy and COVID. Hopefully the other two team members will get the findings/disucssion section done before it gets back to me.

    Susan and I had a sort of a shut up and write session for the TAFE project and between us got around 800 words written which was excellent! Happy with that indeed.

    So when I look at my whiteboard now there are quite a few projects where I have nothing to do because I’m waiting for peer-review, team members or simlar. Then again there is a lso a few which just say I need to write them! Typical for an academic I guess.

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  • Just a quick post!

    My Facebook post

    Just wanted to share the Facebook post above which I put in a Facebook group called “Reviewer 2 must be stopped” which I follow just for laughs. I’ve never had over 1000 likes on a post before! I’m Facebook famous!! Of course I haven’t actaully got to the point in my PhD where all that failure has occured… yet! And I’m not actually as worried about it as this post would imply. I am just drowning in confirmation re-writing, I’m still annoyed that I have to use focus groups when I cannot see the advantage of them as a method for this particular study and my supervisors recently made some negative comments about my writing, which is usually my strength.

    Guess I’m just feeling a bit flat.

    On the bright side – no more hours for the Academic Learning Centre until March. I did 90 jolly assignments this term…90!!! No wonder I feel like I have had enough. My marking is also finished and I look forward to teaching essay writing next year as one of my coworkers has relocated to another campus. So they are likely to reshuffle everything and have me teach essay writing instead of the core/basic preparation skills. I do like a bit of variety in my teaching/marking. I think it looks good on the resume too.

  • Reflexivity

    Now that I know I actually have 16 weeks and not just 8 to do the revisions for confirmation I have relaxed, a LOT! But the next part I need to write does require more thinking and less reading and writing I guess. I have to add a section to the ethical considerations about reflexivity and my role in the project. My biggest challenge is knowing how much detail to go into and of course, what to share and what not to share. So this post is going to be more personal I guess – you’ve been warned! 🙂

    I’m also going to attempt to talk about behaviour, situational factors and cognitive factors, in line with Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). Just to add another layer of challenge.

    So I know that I need to talk about how both my parents passed away while I was a student – my dad during undergraduate and mum a couple of years ago. This allows me to empathise well with students experiencing grief very well but can also trigger my own grief. I also went through a divorce and that probably warrants a mention too!

    I’m not sure how I will talk about my move from FedUni to Mackay. Ultimately it was not my desire or wish to relocate and leave behind the beautiful area I had spent most of my life in. I didn’t want to leave behind my friends and support group. However financially I HAD to find work and this position was my best and only option at the time. It links to COVID for sure and so I could talk about how this impacted me and how students sharing similar troubles may also trigger me.

    So those are probably the big situational factors in my life that are likely to impact my project. I should also talk about my values and how they impact my teaching. I can talk about my own self-efficacy. Then I’m not sure exactly where I go from there. I would like to talk about how by using email interviews instead of LIVE interviews I will have more time to reflect and ensure that my responses are not being impacted to greatly by my own bias and emotions. But I’m still not sure what methodology I will be using. Reviewing the research questions and method wont come until later. Sigh.

    I think I’m just going to write it and then submit it to my supervisors and if they don’t like it, they can say so!

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  • Happy! So happy! But on the other hand… are you freaking kidding me?

    I have not posted much recently because I have been rather busy! The 8 weeks I was given to do the “minor” revisions on my confirmation report was stressful. I have been struggling to wrap my head around some of the things I need to do. I have sent emails telling people I wont be able to do one thing or another that I had previously said I could. I spent longer than I would like staring at my calendar and wondering what I could possibly skip or ignore. It’s been a little over 2 weeks and my constant self-reflection has had me looking at all I have to do in 8 weeks and the stress levels rose a little higher.

    Then I got some news about a surgery I have to have, 1 day before a PhD meeting and about a week before my 8 weeks revision time is up. At that point stress hit the level high enough for me to ask if it was possible to get that time extended. Yep, it got to the point where I knew I just wasn’t going to get it done in time. So I sucked up my pride and sent that email request.

    Within 24 hours I had the official email from the university re-assigning my due date for confirmation revisions from Oct 13th to December 7th. That’s right folks 8 mroe weeks! Why? Well because that 8 weeks is for full time students and I am in fact part time.

    Happy! Joy! Relief! Yey! Happy dance! Mostly relief! Then…

    Are you freaking kidding me? I jsut rearranged my whole life for the next 6 weeks! I spent 2 weeks of very high stress attempting to do so! For no reason! Well actually the reason is pretty jolly obvious. I assumed the date they gave me was correct and no-one, I mean NO ONE picked up on it, at least not when they should have – which is the day I was given that date. I would say my happy and joyous feelings are well and truly tainted by feelings of frustration.

    Well all make mistakes. I skim read emails thinking I know what’s going on, then later realise I was wrong. I skip over things I think are unimportant when I should not. I make typos that I don’t pick up on. Heck read this blog there’s probably hundreds of them! But I don’t manage other staff. I have in the past and I can promise you that every single time I knew a task would affect my staff I paid careful attention. It’s simple to me – the higher the stakes the more attention something gets.

    Surely everyone involved knew that confirmation of candidature is about as high stakes as it gets for a PhD student. There are not really any other significant milestones until completion. They know that! It’s not a stretch of the imagination for them to understand how this one oversight has caused a lot of stress. I thanked the person who worked it out – I acutally emailed them and told them they were my favorite person in the entire world. But no-one apologiesed for the mistake. Nothing even close to an apology, although all comunication so far has been via email. I may get an apology when we meet via Zoom/Teams next.

    Don’t misunderstand – I don’t mind either way if there is an apology or not. It would just be nice for my supervisors to acknowledge that along with this glorious news there is some understandable frustration as well. Mixed feelings for sure!

  • Theoretical Framework

    I have been trying desperately to wrap my head around Social Cognitive Theory this last little bit. I just did NOT see how it applied to my project because I am not interested in student behaviors, their choices (agency) and I’m only interested in their environment in that I want to improve enabling programs. I kept thinking that I’m only interested in what improved their self-efficacy and whether or not we can implement whatever that is in enabling education more widely.

    So it took a few days of a frustrating cycle of reading, learning, thinking, dismissing, getting frustrated and then readings something else. In the end I rang Anna (supervisor) and asked what I was missing. Because I do feel like I understood everything that Bandura was saying about SCT… but I still didn’t see the link to my project.

    So Anna pointed out an article of hers where she had applied Bandura’s SCT to inclusive assessments (I think, I still haven’t read the whole thing). She defined “behaviors” as “learning and teaching acts” and the penny dropped! I am not interested in student behavior but I AM interested in the learning and teaching that goes on!
    Basically I had adopted a very narrow view of what was meant by behaviors, and environment (situational factors) for that matter too! So this was a little difficult for me to come to terms with. I have always prided myself on my ability to see different perspectives, to think critically and so on. But I just did not see that my issue was a narrow view, or should I say definition.

    Maybe I was resistant to seeing more because I was fundamentally opposed to the feedback, just because it was feedback? I don’t think so! Yes, initially I was struggling to come to terms with the feedback (a normal reaction I’m told) but I am certain I have moved past that. Even more certain now I see the value in applying this framework to my project.

    Anyway, there is a lesson in there somewhere that I think it worth sharing (obviously). First, think about the theoretical framework for all projects early on. You can start with research questions, but that’s not always the best option. And then of course, KNOW your framework, backwards! Then there’s a lesson about defining the key terms or concepts.

    Make sure your definition is not too broad or too narrow. Check out what others have done and get advice from as many people as possible! Also I guess, don’t be scared to choose a different framework but do your research first!

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  • 10 days later

    It has been 10 days since my confirmation of candidature. I feel more positive overall about it now. That is mostly because of the meeting I had with my supervisors where we were both able to acknowledge that time management leading up to confirmation wasn’t the best.

    They also presented me some very logical arguments around where to from here type thing. We are going to start with inserting the theoretical framework stuff on Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) that the panel requested. I know in my head I only ever use SCT as a way to introduce self-efficacy and I always think of self-efficacy as “the framework” but now I see I need to do much more around SCT as well. So I have been reading up on SCT, so far, remember this is 10 days… I have read the equivalent of one thing (around 3 bits). I have NOT done enough. But I have been fighting a lack of motivation and also the urge to catch up on all the other things I have been neglecting because of confirmation. I probably rely too much on the fact that I do almost everything faster than most of the people around me.

    So I have read a couple of bits and pieces, I have written 2 small paragraphs of notes and requested THE 1986 text by Bandura to be delivered to my front door from the library. It’s not nothing, it’s not enough. I have however made a bit of progress in other areas, on other projects.

    I had 2 things to do for the Tim Fish team, and I’ve done one of those. I’ve written a grant proposal for a small grant from NAEEA and lined up the next one as well. I’ve done my marking and all other student-related things in the STEPS program and I’ve started to catch up the hours I need to in the Academic Learning Centre (ALC). I have not got many student appointments so I have to find 10 hours per week worth of assignments to give feedback on. There are plenty submitted but staying motivated to do that many is hard. I would much rather 10 student appointments.

    Last weekend and this weekend I did some ALC assignments to try and catch up as I was 23 hours behind – that is 23 assignments. Now I’m 21 behind but I have already done 5 out of 10 hours for this week. So I will have done my 10 by Wednesday morning and then I have Thursday to do some of those 21 hours. It’s week 7, so I will have to keep doing at least 5 over the weekend for the rest of term to catch up I think. It’s rather depressing when I think about it like that.

    I’ve also done 1 out of 9 abstract reviews for the NAEEA conference which I stuck up my hand to do a while ago. I’m not regretting that, it’s great experience, but the timing is not the best. There are a lot of other bits and pieces I have spent my time on in the last 10 days but probably nothing worth noting here. I guess I just wanted to say I have not been slack, but I have not been focused and that is not the best!

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  • Got the email!

    A screenshot of my confirmation being accepted with minor revisions

    I am very happy I didn’t have to wait a whole week, they sent the confirmation report today! It is still hard to read in parts and feels negative but I just keep telling myself not to take it personally. One thing really positive they said was that my project was timely and really significant to the field. They also complimented my presentation despite the fact that they thought I had missing information from it.

    They had a bit to say about my research questions and method and I skimmed over that because I’m still not quite ready to take it on with the right attitude. I did like it that they pointed to the research questions as much as the method because I too was thinking their issues arose, not from a lack of understanding, but from my lack of communication. They didn’t understand what I was trying to achieve, so therefore they didn’t understand why my chosen method was the best. And when it comes down to it, that is a fault of mine, in writing the research questions and also communicating the aims of my project. Noted. But still difficult feedback to read.

    The other thing I found challenging was that they didn’t think my literature review was critical enough, but I would have said that was one of my strengths. Well perhaps I’m rusty on the critical side of things. Perhaps I was more trying to show the gap in the literature rather than be critical of what does exist.

    In the end I don’t feel like I did the other day. I think I can come out of this with MY project intact. And as I said, I will learn a lot and that is ultimately the most important thing. Plus every time I see the bit that says “Confirmed – subject to minor revisions” I feel very, very happy. MINOR revisions! There is a meme which I probably can’t source properly but I’ll add it:

    From Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/academicssay/posts/3170873736467735

    So yes, I am REALLY happy with that magic word “minor” in the official response.

    On that note, it’s Friday, 4:10pm and I’m sneaking off early because everyone else left 10 minutes ago and I have had a long week, very emotional and so on! Plus I’m doing nothing but assignment feedback for ALC students all weekend. I did finish my enabling students’ marking today though! Yey! x2

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