Veritas

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FACE Conference 2009

• Report in Progress
• BME Students
• Great Expectations

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Aims for session

• Doing educational research
• The project in progress
• Issues when taking on an existing project
• Collaborative research at a distance
• Tentative results
• Sharing knowledge and experience
• Next steps

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Getting in and staying in

• Staffordshire, Stoke on Trent, Shropshire and
  Telford and Wrekin Lifelong Learning Network
• An invitation
• Original project proposal
• Negotiations with sponsor and stakeholders
• Revised project and action plan

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Kicking Off

• Consultation with LLN and stakeholders
• Three FECs
• Meetings with individual FECs and key players
• Development and delivery of questionnaire
• Focus groups out in the community
• Individual interviews with respondents

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Harsh Realities

• Securing buy-in from college staff
• Meeting deadlines
• Developing and proposing alternative ways to
  obtain relevant data
• Liaison with sponsor and stakeholders

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Hands-on

• Literature Review
• Issues defining BME learners
• Constructing the questionnaire
• A closer look at the questionnaire
• Interim results and some key findings

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Great Expectations

• Literature Review
• Why the Difference?
• A Closer Look at Higher Education Minority Ethnic
  Students and Graduates
• (Connor, Tyers, Modood, Hillage, 2004 )
• Key Messages

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• Minority ethnic people are more likely to take HE
  qualifications than White people
• aspirations and expectations of the value of,
  and benefits from, higher qualifications is a
  more significant positive driver for minority
  ethnic than for White students
• Great Expectations
• But when the findings in Why the Difference are
  disaggregated Connor et al found

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• The minority ethnic population does not
  participate in HE in a uniform way
• All minority ethnic groups do not do as well in
  degree performance as White students on average

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• when gender is also taken into account, the
  female Bangladeshi participation rate drops
  below that of both the White male and female
  groups
• Minority ethnic students are clustered at certain
  universities, mostly post-92 universities in
  London This pattern relates to locality (high
  representation of minority ethnic population in
  the London area and many students stay locally)

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• So BME is not really a very useful aggregation as
  it is very difficult to say anything about this
  group that you do not have to qualify
  immediately
• The Devil is in the detail
• Questionnaire design is rather like playing
  battleships you phrase the questions hoping
  to hit some aspect of truth

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Construction of questionnaire

• Initial review of literature
• Brainstorming
• Feedback from stakeholders including key members
  of ethnic minority communities
• Final draft reviewed by LLN Steering Group
• Test administration with a small number of BME FE
  students to check general comprehensibility

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Questionnaire structure

• Five sections
• Ethnicity (using Census categories) and other
  demographic data
• Education experience to 16
• Present experience if in education now
• Any discontinuities in education - reasons
• Future plans focused on HE

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Questionnaire content

• Aim to obtain rich data field hence length
• Mixture of multiple choice, checklists and
  short-answer open-ended items
• Attempt to reduce complexity by using sectional
  structure

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The sample

• Convenience sample of minority FE and 6th FC
  students (N47)
• Includes mature students recently arrived in UK
• At present shows bias towards Indian and
  Pakistani origins (No Bangladeshi respondents)

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The questionnaire in use

• Average completion time 15-20 minutes
• Apparent length may be inhibiting some
  respondents
• Poor response to some items
• Difficulties in comprehending some questions
  (e.g. Q.28)
• See questionnaire -

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Some Data

• Age Range 16-48 yrs, Median 21 yrs
• Sex Males 23, Females 24
• 29 different languages spoken in homes

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Thank you

• For your interest and participation
• Any further questions?
• Key Reference
• Why the Difference?
• A Closer Look at Higher Education Minority Ethnic
  Students and Graduates
• Connor, Tyers, Modood and Hillage ,
• Institute for Employment Studies 2004