ARU Peterborough
University House
Bishops Road
Peterborough
PE1 5BW
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These staff are primarily researchers and teaching/supervision takes up approximately 10% of their time. They are dependent on research grants to fund their posts as they do not have tenure and yet here they were committed to improving their teaching skills alongside recognising issues impacting on the lives of staff and students.
But if I had not been working with these staff, I would never have known of their interest in the link between social mobility and higher education. I don’t believe their voices are heard or their contributions noted when universities are writing their Access and Participation Plans, nor do I see them at conferences when widening participation is being discussed. Nor do I read papers written by these staff on these issues in the recognised widening participation journals.
So my question to readers of this blog is:
“How can we attract early career academics into the debate on the role of higher education and its impact on social mobility?”
Perhaps one angle is to recognise their expertise in evaluation. At LSHTM, The Centre for Evaluation who works with many members of academic staff, describes its aims as follows:
“The Centre for Evaluation aims to improve the design and conduct of evaluations of complex public health interventions through the development, application and dissemination of rigorous methods, and facilitate the use of robust evidence to inform policy and practice decisions.” https://evaluation.lshtm.ac.uk/
It seems to me that one way of harnessing the interest and expertise of staff like the ones I have described is to invite then to advise on the monitoring and evaluation frameworks universities are developing in their work with the OfS. But we do not often use expertise that is present. In the past, one could argue that Schools of Education should have been more involved in partnership work with schools and colleges than they were. Let’s not repeat the same mistake again and let’s start to work across boundaries and include expertise from across our rich source of university staff.
So to repeat the question:
“How can we attract early career academics into the debate on the role of higher education and its impact on social mobility?”
ARU Peterborough
University House
Bishops Road
Peterborough
PE1 5BW
© Forum for Access and Continuing Education 2024 | A charity registered in England and Wales. No 289413 | All rights reserved | Privacy policy | Website built by Global Bay