Bridging the Gap, Enhancing Knowledge and Practice: Academics and ‘Blended’ Professionals Working Together at the Success at School Project

Author(s):

Cristina Devecchi (presenting / submitting) Christine Morgan (presenting) Liam Norton Julian Brown Paul Bramble

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

05 SES 09, Combating School Droput

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

11:00-12:30

Room:

B017 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Dolf van Veen

Contribution

This paper examines the working relationship between academic researchers and support professionals working at the Success at School (SAS), EU funded project, within a higher education institution. The SAS project (www.successatschool.eu) addresses the EU benchmark of less than 10% of early school leaving by 2020 (EU 2000) by developing and experimenting an pedagogical strategy involving volunteering and mentoring of young people aged 14-20 who have abandoned their education or at risk of doing so. Located in 6 European countries –United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Italy-, the project combined both academic and stakeholders’ input. Amongst the stakeholders, the University Centre for Employability and Engagement (UCEE) has been a key player in the development of the mentoring programme, and the training of mentors - students enrolled in the institution - and the young people as volunteers. The work that UCEE does articulates the new EU2020 strategy as enhancing Higher Education, working with young people, youth unemployment and volunteering are at the very heart of it.

Within the university, UCEE has a remit to provide a range of services which reach out into communities, primary and secondary schools, enhance the student experience, and improve graduate employability by engaging with staff in all parts of the university. Funded as part of the University’s Office for Fair Access Agreement (OFFA), everything UCEE does has an impact in widening participation, improving access to HE to underrepresented groups, improved attainment and retention levels, and enhancing student/graduate employability. It also provides a pivotal role in bridging the university and its students with communities and business. The development of these relationships opens up many new and unique opportunities to the University’s students, for academics engaged in research, and for UCEE to add real value to the ‘Experience’ element of the students’ CV.

Recently, the University has been designated an Ashoka U Changemaker campus in recognition of the University’s commitment to, and activities related to Social Enterprise, the promotion of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This designation requires that continuous improvement and development in these three areas are evidenced and that they are developed with student experience and attainment in mind. UCEE is uniquely positioned to embrace the “Changemaker” values for the University, by being the leader in implementing the values and principles of Ashoka U Changemaker, thus ensuring that the ‘Changemaker’ difference is experienced by every student and stakeholder.

The mission of UCEE ‘Inspiring the leaders of tomorrow’ picks up the ‘inspirational’ nature of what and how we deliver, and that it is about ‘the development of ‘leadership’. In this context, ‘leadership’ reaches out into the community, engagement with business, students, and primary and secondary schools. We work with all stakeholders in a way that adds value whether that is through the development of personal leadership, community leadership, or competitiveness in the work place.

In building and maintaining effective internal and external stakeholder relationships, a relationship management function is critical. Whitchurch (2008) describes four categories of professional relative to the space they occupy and the knowledge, relationships and legitimacies that they construct. Recent development of internal relationships between professional and academic staff indicate the emergence of a space in which less bounded professionals work alongside academic colleagues, sharing networks and contacts as well as alternative ways of working that have been developed through experience acquired in connecting environments such as the voluntary and community sector. The professionals and academics involved in this project have developed a mutually respectful relationship, sharing knowledge, key contacts and resources to ensure that the project is a success for students and young people in the community.

Method

The Success at School: Re-engaging young people in education through volunteering, is aimed at young people and a broad range of stakeholders who worked with and had a professional interest in supporting young people through volunteering. They included: teachers, youth workers, headteachers, policy-makers, youth associations, volunteering associations, and business organisations. The main objective of the project was to develop and experiment an alternative pedagogical strategy, a ‘detour’ strategy, through volunteering and mentoring to contribute to the reduction of early school leaving (ESL) for young people. The success of the project was in managing the coordination between its 7 workpackages: (WPs) WP2 and WP3’s focuses were on developing the programme for the volunteers and for their mentors respectively. WP4 focused on the experimentation; WP5 coordinated the meetings with stakeholders, WP6 dealt with the dissemination, and WP7 developed and carry out the overall evaluation. A case study approach enabled each partner to pay attention and adapt to their country’s circumstances i.e.; levels of ESL; education system; and access to young people and mentors) while ensuring the possibility of drawing cross-country comparisons. Specifically to the approach taken to develop, experiment and exploit the results of the combined pedagogical detour strategy using volunteering and the mentoring, a bottom-up constructivist and collaborative approach which drew from the knowledge of academics, stakeholders, young people and their teachers was used. Because of the contextual nature of the project, each of the 6 countries took different approaches. The one used in the UK, was to integrate the knowledge, skills and capabilities of different staff to build the intellectual capital needed for the project. In developing the collaboration, the partners drew from the University Changemaker and AshokaU’s principles: • Believe they have a responsibility to make positive changes in society; • Believe they have the power and resources (tangible and intangible) to make a difference; • Take initiative to bring about innovative change, local and systemic; • Work with others to maximise impact, working in groups and networks; • Know and live authentically according to their values; • Practice empathy; by entering, by a willed use of the imagination, another person’s world without judgement.

Expected Outcomes

The collaboration between the two academics, the overall lead researcher and a senior lecturer, and staff at UCEE developed and grew from an initial engagement as stakeholders, to staff from UCEE becoming central to the support of the project. First, as support professionals they enabled academics to access and co-construct the training of the university students as mentors for the young people. As the project moved from the phase of programme development to experimentation, the staff at UCEE became involved as co-researchers in the delineation of the mentors and volunteer training, and provided valuable feedback on research strategies and plans. Finally, they continued supporting the student mentors ensuring that they gained valuable employability skills. Likewise, they ensured, together with the academics, that student mentors and mentees gained the most from each other. Two important aspects are noteworthy in explaining the effectiveness of the collaboration. First, the partners shared similar values, which drew from both the AshokaU and the University mission of ‘transforming lives and inspiring change’. As the university is committed to social enterprise and social innovation, the partners in the team used the SAS project as an opportunity to realize such values and mission. Second, the collaboration was enabled by the partners’ willingness to overcome traditional distinctions between academic and support professionals. In accepting the value and applicability of each partner’s knowledge, expertise and capability, the team created a third space (Whitchurch, 2008). In such flexible space, the team members allowed and enabled each other to be professionals in their own right, unbounded by pre-determined roles and responsibilities. In doing so, the analysis shows how the roles of the academics and of the members of UCEE changed to overcome increasingly demanding challenges.

References

Irwin, W., (2014) University Centre for Employability and Engagement (UCEE) Development Strategy (Executive Summary) Whitchurch, C., (2008) Professional Managers in UK Higher Education: Preparing for Complex Futures. Research and Development Series. London, England: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education