Abstract
Culturally-Aware Access for Success is a collaboration between Leeds Trinity University’s Race Institute (LTU RI) and Go Higher West Yorkshire (GHWY) with Nathan Ghann from The Educate Group.
LTU’s RI emerged from their innovative race equity work which enabled their institution to become the first University in Yorkshire to achieve the Race Equality Charter award, and the need to keep race and racism on the national agenda to enable sustained transformational change. bGHWY is a partnership of 13 HE providers in West Yorkshire, bringing together HE-in-FE providers of varying size and scope, universities across all HE mission groups, and a conservatoire, with the aim of reducing student lifecycle inequalities. Benefits include collaborating to address common issues, with learning across different institutional contexts. The Educate Group is a social enterprise dedicated to enabling degree success for underrepresented student groups by advancing staff development and deploying targeted student success initiatives.
Inequalities for racially-minoritised students exist at all lifecycle stages, and HE attendance decisions in particular are influenced by cultural and religious factors. Detailed understanding of this – or the opportunity to implement it – can be missing from outreach/access teams, who can be drawn to the work from an interest in helping others but are not always representative of the groups they are trying to reach. Activity can take a colonial perspective influenced by long-standing unequal power dynamics with hierarchies of knowledge creators/holders versus learners, which does not always take account of learners’ wider lives and experiences.
Cultural competence is defined as “a set of congruent behaviours, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations” (Cross et al., 1989, p.4). Cultural competence focusses on making changes at the individual, organisational and policy level (Bennett &
Keating, 2008). Therefore, cultural competence has the potential to make a real difference to the HE sector to meet the needs of racially minoritised students.
We are coming to the end of an innovative project, funded by Advance HE, which looks to support staff who participate in access and outreach activity to better understand cultural competence in HE, its measurement and development. Through this broader understanding, the research aims to influence policy and practice to develop deeper and broader cultural competence in HE in pursuit of greater equity in access, experience, progression and attainment of minoritised students.
LTU’s RI emerged from their innovative race equity work which enabled their institution to become the first University in Yorkshire to achieve the Race Equality Charter award, and the need to keep race and racism on the national agenda to enable sustained transformational change. bGHWY is a partnership of 13 HE providers in West Yorkshire, bringing together HE-in-FE providers of varying size and scope, universities across all HE mission groups, and a conservatoire, with the aim of reducing student lifecycle inequalities. Benefits include collaborating to address common issues, with learning across different institutional contexts. The Educate Group is a social enterprise dedicated to enabling degree success for underrepresented student groups by advancing staff development and deploying targeted student success initiatives.
Inequalities for racially-minoritised students exist at all lifecycle stages, and HE attendance decisions in particular are influenced by cultural and religious factors. Detailed understanding of this – or the opportunity to implement it – can be missing from outreach/access teams, who can be drawn to the work from an interest in helping others but are not always representative of the groups they are trying to reach. Activity can take a colonial perspective influenced by long-standing unequal power dynamics with hierarchies of knowledge creators/holders versus learners, which does not always take account of learners’ wider lives and experiences.
Cultural competence is defined as “a set of congruent behaviours, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations” (Cross et al., 1989, p.4). Cultural competence focusses on making changes at the individual, organisational and policy level (Bennett &
Keating, 2008). Therefore, cultural competence has the potential to make a real difference to the HE sector to meet the needs of racially minoritised students.
We are coming to the end of an innovative project, funded by Advance HE, which looks to support staff who participate in access and outreach activity to better understand cultural competence in HE, its measurement and development. Through this broader understanding, the research aims to influence policy and practice to develop deeper and broader cultural competence in HE in pursuit of greater equity in access, experience, progression and attainment of minoritised students.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2024 |
| Event | NEON Summer Symposium 2024 - University of West London, London, United Kingdom Duration: 13 Jun 2024 → 14 Jun 2024 |
Academic conference
| Academic conference | NEON Summer Symposium 2024 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| City | London |
| Period | 13/06/24 → 14/06/24 |