Travels in extreme social mobility: how first-in-family students find their way into and through medical education

ABSTRACT

Higher education is understood as essential to enabling social mobility. Research and policy have centred on access to university, but recently attention has turned to the journey of social mobility itself – and its costs. Long-distance or ‘extreme’ social mobility journeys particularly require analysis. This paper examines journeys of first-in-family university students in the especially high-status degree of medicine, through interviews with 21 students at an Australian medical school. Three themes are discussed: (1) the roots of participants’ social mobility journeys; (2) how sociocultural difference is experienced and negotiated within medical school; and (3) how participants think about their professional identities and futures. Students described getting to medical school ‘the hard way’, and emphasised the different backgrounds and attitudes of themselves and their wealthier peers. Many felt like ‘imposters’, using self-deprecating language to highlight their lack of ‘fit’ in the privileged world of medicine. However, such language also reflected resistance to middle-class norms and served to create solidarity with community of origin, and, importantly, patients. Rather than narratives of loss, students’ stories reflect a tactical refinement of self and incorporation of certain middle-class attributes, alongside an appreciation of the worth their ‘difference’ brings to their new destination, the medical profession.     

Developing a collaborative pilot programme to promote innovation in higher education focusing on the reward and recognition of teaching

This paper provides a commentary on a significant collaborative international project to set up an effective system for promoting innovation in the Australian higher education sector. This project was the pilot Transforming Practice Programme (TPP), which was run in Australia in 2014. A sophisticated knowledge translation methodology, the TPP was influenced by the UK’s Higher Education Academy’s (HEA’s) thematic change programmes and focused on enhancing the reward and recognition of quality teaching in Australian higher education. The paper explains the intentions of the TPP and how it was run in conjunction with the HEA in both Australia and the UK. Thirteen Australian universities took part in the pilot, and nine UK universities took part in the UK version of the programme. Having detailed the content and process of the pilot TPP, this article also presents details of feedback received via surveys and interviews with participants, and closes with some evidence-informed conclusions on what worked in the pilot and why. Alongside these conclusions, recommendations are outlined regarding what people in other higher education sectors might learn from the pilot TPP.     

Student evaluation of instruction in higher education: exploring issues of validity and reliability

Many personnel committees at colleges and universities in the USA use student evaluation of faculty instruction to make decisions regarding tenure, promotion, merit pay or faculty professional development. This study examines the construct validity and internal consistency reliability of the student evaluation of instruction (SEI) used at a large mid‐western university in the USA for both administrative and instructional purposes. The sample consisted of 73,500 completed SEIs for undergraduate students who self‐reported as freshman, sophomore, junior or senior. Confirmatory factor analysis via structural equation modelling was used to explore the construct validity of the SEI instrument. The internal consistency of students' ratings was reported to provide reliability evidence. The results of this study showed that the model fits the data for the sample. The significance of this study as well as areas for further research are discussed.     

Research on Webbed Connectivity in a Web-Based Learning Environment: Online Social Work Education

This paper describes the preliminary data and analysis of how students in an online MSW program perceive their experiences, interactions, and responses to learning structure, material, and technology in the Web environment. The student perceptions, which have been used to refine the online program, highlight how important it is to students to feel a personal or webbed connection to faculty and other students in the Web environment. Rather than being a cold, sterile learning environment, the online learning world appears to be one that encourages professional webbed connectivity and relationship building.     

Predictive validity evidence for an assessment program based on the Work Sampling System in mathematics and language and literacy

This study examined the predictive nature of teacher ratings of student performance on the mathematical thinking and language and literacy domains of a state mandated curriculum-embedded performance assessment for children in first grade to student achievement on a criterion-referenced test in third grade in mathematics and English language arts, using a multilevel modeling approach. The sample included 1,281 elementary school children nested within 132 classrooms in an urban school district in South Carolina. Results showed positive associations between first grade teacher ratings and students’ third grade achievement. However, first grade teacher ratings were not found to uniquely contribute to the proportion of explained variance in third grade performance on a high-stakes statewide assessment, over and above student demographic variables.     

“Maybe That Concept Is Still with Us”: Adolescents' Racialized and Classed Perceptions of Teachers' Expectations

Teacher expectations for student behavior and academic performance have a lasting effect on student academic achievement—not only in the immediate school year, but also many years later. Yet, we know very little about how students interpret and understand teachers' expectations for them. This article expands the literature on teachers' expectations for students by drawing on student voice to examine how middle and high school students describe and experience the expectations that teachers have for them, and the implications of these expectations for developing positive student–teacher relationships. Findings indicate that traditionally minoritized and traditionally privileged youth harbor racialized and classed perceptions of teachers' expectations.

I feel like it's all around us too, like everything we hear kinda everything we learn about; it's kinda like minorities are oppressed. Like you learn about, a lot about, like, civil rights and all that; like you always kinda hear that, like, Blacks, minorities, all of them were kinda oppressed and that Whites were dominant at one point. So I mean it's not like it's the same; it's not completely different now, but maybe that concept is still with us. (Latina/o high school student)     

The most difficult career: Women's history in science

A short review of current feminist philosophy on the relationship between women and science is followed by a survey of recent work in the history of women's involvement in the sciences. The reasons for the late development of this sub‐field are explained, and the most recent work in it summarized. It is emphasized that women's history in science challenges received wisdom in both the history of science as ‘professionalization’ and current feminist philosophy, which, it is argued, proceeds from an insufficient concern with the historical diversity and complexity of women's relations with science.