Promoting equity by illuminating academic roles and identities in teaching students from diverse backgrounds

ABSTRACT

While university participation has widened, retention and success rates remain lower for some diverse Australian undergraduate cohorts, e.g. students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, Indigenous students and students with disability. Institutional characteristics and culture are more important factors in attrition than student characteristics. This paper explores how universities could develop learning and teaching communities that are more inclusive through insights into some complex relationships between student diversity, academic roles and identities. Using a critical discursive psychology approach, we identified 12 different subject positions that Australian academics from 19 universities adopted in constructing their identities as teachers of students from diverse backgrounds. We critically discuss illustrative findings from one academic who adopted seven different subject positions to explore the impact of institutional context on social positioning and dynamics related to learning, teaching and student diversity. We conclude that a ‘students-as-partners’ approach could help universities to better recognise and value diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• inclusion
• academic roles
• academic identities
• staff-student partnerships

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Greer Lamaro Haintz to this project, including early CDP analysis, which built on analysis conducted with Sophie Goldingay in our previous study. Paige Mahoney conducted interviews and provided invaluable research support during the data generation phase. We also appreciate insightful feedback from reviewers which helped us to clarify our research findings and goals. We are especially grateful to the participants in our study for generously and openly sharing their perceptions and experiences as academics teaching students from diverse backgrounds.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Deakin University School of Health and Social Development Australia [Grant number SG16-07].