‘You are your best thing: Addressing differential gaps through values based, person centred education‘, Dr Iwi Ugiagbe-Green

‘You are your best thing: Addressing differential gaps through values based, person centred education‘, Dr Iwi Ugiagbe-Green

1. You are your best thing: Addressing differential gaps through values based, person centred education. Dr_Iwi The changing face of educational development – Educational development in HE

2. Position statement Nigerian and Caribbean heritage – Made in Birmingham, UK Working class background - FSM and lived on a council estate Got to University via clearing Have now worked in HE for 24 (!) years In 2010, Serendipitously switched career from professional services into academia Part time PhD student with caring responsibilities and working full-time Am now a ‘lapsed accountant’ & academic activist – race equity is my focus – from a social justice perspective (some tensions with policy) I am not emancipated from this work – this work is very personal to me and has a heavy emotional load I am a Race Equality Charter panel member, TASO working group member and Chair of the WP PG group for NEON, Senior Fellow of Advance HE Worked at Leeds Beckett University, University of Leeds & Manchester Met Universities – all on Education, pedagogy and citizenship (EPC) pathway

3. An educational developer is an individual who helps colleges and universities function effectively as teaching and learning communities . These professionals collaborate with instructors, academic departments, and larger campus units on various teaching and learning activities. Their work can involve consulting with faculty members, designing and leading workshops, and contributing to course development and improvement. Educational developers often hold terminal degrees in their field or come from traditional discipline-based Ph.D. programs. They occupy a liminal position between faculty and staff , engaging in administrative, teaching, and research roles related to teaching and learning Generative AI – Microsoft Co-Pilot (2024) Educational development

4. SEDA is a values-driven organisation, committed to educational development , and underpinned by the following values: Developing understanding of how people learn Practising in ways that are scholarly, professional and ethical Working with and developing learning communities Valuing diversity and promoting inclusivity Continually reflecting on practice to develop ourselves, others and processes SEDA Community’s values Mission : Promoting innovation and good practice in HE

5. Answering the why? - Mentimeter Access the Mentimeter here Purpose statement

6. Purpose statement of SEDA - Key words

7. SEDA conference conversations

8. Who is an educational developer? (None of the people spotlighted in your community look like me)

9. Answering the who? - Mentimeter Access the Mentimeter here Who is an educational developer?

10. Collective identity of SEDA - Key words

11. Leading and supporting educational change Educational change  refers to the process of transforming educational systems , practices, and institutions . It involves deliberate efforts to improve or modify various aspects of education, aiming for positive outcomes in teaching, learning, and student development (Microsoft co-pilot, 2024) Educational developer Personal development - ‘Rules of the game’ (e.g. importance of networks, sponsors, mentors. advocates) Professional development – My capability and capacity to successfully create conditions of learning for myself and my learners (not only through teaching & assessment)

12. Answering the what - Mentimeter Access the Mentimeter here What actions are SEDA as an organisation taking to support and lead educational change?

13. Educational change - HE Context Actions are restricted within the scope of a very active regulatory environment – league tables, performance dashboards, metrics, lead indicators B3 Conditions – OfS framing of “good degree” and framing of “positive outcomes” Value for money, freedom of speech, culture wars, Cost of living crisis, financial precarity As a teaching and learning community, what drives our collective actions? (Consider values and purpose)

14. “Untold stories of students” (with Sunday Blake, Wonkhe) Untold Stories of students

15. MEASUREMENT OF (Racialised) DEGREE AWARD GAPS Useful information about conte xt & trends

16. Degree award gaps are a ‘wicked problem’ (impossible to solve) Numerous limitations with methodology of how gaps are measured (I’m an advocate for Quantcrit ) – use of counternarratives Issues with assumptions related to measurement of inequities at the ‘axes’ of intersecting characteristics Problematic framing of ethnicity (e.g. “BAME” - enforcing ideologies of social structures of power) Gaps are temporal and contextual, numbers are not neutral Why are international students excluded? Wicked problem of degree award gaps

17. All sorts of issues with measurement of gaps – ethnicity is the most significant factor Regression analysis shows that when you control for individual differences and institutional factors there is an “unexplained gap” This unexplained gap is linked to racialised experiences of students within the system Award gaps tell us how different groups of students experience the system (using award as a proxy for success outcome) Advance HE - Dr Natasha Codiroli-Mcmaster (2020) Degree Award Gaps – racialised (ethnicity is a proxy for race)

18. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-views/advance-he-launches-ethnicity-awarding-gaps-uk-higher-education-201920-report Current sector context

19. Racialised/Ethnicity Degree award gaps OfS Target: Reduce gap to 5.5% by 2025 Equality and Higher education, Student Statistical report Advance HE (2023)

20. Systemic effect Headline Result: Between 2018/19 and 2019/20 x10 times the average drop in the ‘BAME’ degree award gap – what changed?

21. Having an inclusive curriculum is ‘best’ practice – it’s what our students deserve but it alone will not address award gaps Systemic racism

22. Systemic racism Banaji, M.R., Fiske, S.T. & Massey, D.S. Systemic racism: individuals and interactions, institutions and society.  Cogn . Research  6, 82 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00349-3

23. What ACTION is SEDA taking? Who are your community members, leaders (Learners) What is the (racialised) diversity of your membership? Are your leaders intentionally inclusive? Is ‘valuing diversity and promoting inclusivity’ effective action? What SEDA conversations (conferences & journal) are taking place? What research projects are being funded? Governance practice (e.g. Equality impact assessments rather than bureaucracy) Is Anti-racism training part of members’ educational development? What are SEDA’s Bullying, harassment and discrimination policies?

24. Who are our learners? …Genuine learning development opens minds and hearts in just this way too because learning to study is not about knowing, it is about being (Pollard, 2023)

25. First generation Carer International student – sofa surfing Mother of 3 2 part time jobs and studying full time Financially Poor

26. Neuroscience of learning The brain learns better if we respect its learning conditions Motivation to learn – assessment for learning Conditions of learning - Controlling stress, anxiety, attention and memory

27. Removed barriers to learning e.g. cost, access to learning Centred our education policy on the learner Levelling of access and student experience Supported Engagement (learning was deconstructed, scaffolded, demystified) Met our students where they were - Relational pedagogy ( Gravett , 2023) Universal adoption of a pedagogy of care (Noddings, 1984) Student agency over their learning (Independent learning) and assessment choice (Unintended) Educational change COVID 19

28. https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-research/publications/lessons-pandemic-making-most Impact on differential outcomes – awarding gaps

29. SEDA Learner centred conversations

30. Educational development : Student centred learning Yahya_StrivePoem_Yahya Sayed.mp4 Educational change – Trying to disrupt systems, practices, enhance outcomes and bring about cultural transformation

31. “Please stop teaching” (Professor David Baume)

32. Provocations: (Teaching) Stops people believing that they can legitimately learn other than through being taught (Baume, 2024) Genuine learning development opens minds and hearts in just this way too because learning to study is not about knowing, it is about being (Pollard, 2023) As members of SEDA, what actions are you taking to enhance learning development within your learning communities?

33. “Brown knee brigade” (Brown, 2023)

34. Pollard (2024)