Anita Olds

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new tensions and pressures for universities. While students and staff already experienced time pressures in competitive neoliberalised economies, these strains accelerated during the pandemic. The aim of this autoethnography study was to capture the lived experience of eight practitioners working in teaching, leadership and professional practice within the field of enabling education, across six Australian institutions between 2020–2021. The problem of ‘time’ emerged as a dominant theme. Without adequate time to balance work and life, sustaining personal and collective wellbeing became precarious. This paper engages with ‘precarity’ (Butler 2004, 2012) as manifested in workplace anxiety, stress and insecurity experienced by enabling education practitioners. It endeavours to tether these lived experiences to the temporalities of the digital neoliberal university (Bennett & Burke, 2018), particularly through Adam’s (1995) concept of the inequitable time economy and its disciplining workplace ‘machine time’ which is always ‘running on and out’ (Adam 1995, p. 52) at the expense of marginalised workers. Despite such challenges, the researcher/participants emerged passionate about making a difference to the lives of their students, many of whom are from non-traditional and equity backgrounds. The autoethnographic process itself fostered a new sense of solidarity, resilience and agency.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought global disruptions to the way universities operate. Online learning abruptly took priority, as the physical campuses in Australian universities became deserted. Staff had to instantly adapt to major changes in work practices, whilst continuing to support students’ engagement and maintain quality teaching and learning. This article discusses how change fatigue during the pandemic impacted the wellbeing of staff working in the enabling education sector. As staff and student wellbeing is interdependent, gaining a better understanding of the influences on staff wellbeing in the post-pandemic era is worth exploring in the context of discussions around student wellbeing and success. Autoethnographical reflections of eight practitioners at six Australian universities working in teaching, leadership and professional practice in enabling education, were thematically analysed. Emergent data reveals the superordinate theme of change fatigue and sub-themes of time, online fatigue, and emotional labour. This article highlights the impact of workload intensification and change fatigue in educators. Our findings demonstrated that practitioners prioritise their workload and students, to the detriment of their own wellbeing. These findings hold relevance for institutions as they look to address student wellbeing and success, and highlights the value of embedding cultures of care and compassion across all levels of the university.

A growing body of literature and rhetoric from the secondary sector recognises that traditional senior secondary curriculums are not catering to all university aspirational students. This need created an opportunity for University Preparation Pathways (UPP) at Murdoch University to provide a transitional path for an underserviced cohort. FlexiTrack High (FTH), a pioneering school-based enabling program, demonstrates how effective course design can create opportunities for underserviced cohorts, contribute to the Government's goal of raising tertiary participation rates amongst young people and foster connections between tertiary and secondary institutions. Utilising a second -generation Enabling Transition Pedagogy (ETP), this report explores the pedagogical underpinnings of an effective school-based program. Autoethnographic data obtained through a unique collaboration between Murdoch and partnerships schools, as well as quantitative progression data and student surveys, provide early indicators of the wide range of impacts an explicit model of this nature can have on students and schools.

Students in enabling programs bring richness, diversity, and complexity to the teaching and learning environment. They are often from under-represented backgrounds, have experienced educational disadvantage or disruption, belong to multiple equity groups, and face academic and non-academic challenges, including mental ill-health. This pilot study explored academic staff experiences in teaching and supporting students in enabling programs. Using a collaborative autoethnographical approach, four members of a multi-institutional research group wrote first-person reflections in response to guiding questions. From generative and reflective discussions, different themes arose. A major theme was the high ‘emotional labour demands’ of teaching a vulnerable cohort, with both positive and negative effects on staff. Other major themes included: the diversity of emotional responses and coping strategies; the complex, sometimes contradictory, role of the enabling educator; the importance of communities of care and support; and the impact of witnessing students’ transformations. Within these themes, the challenges, rewards, and protective factors, which mitigate stress among enabling educators, were identified.

Due to the ‘Bradley’ review of Higher Education in 2008, there has been a shift in demographics of students entering universities in Australia (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008). Moreover, the uncertainty around university funding has created additional challenges for many universities. However, as Jobs once stated “innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not a threat” (2011), and emerging from this space arose an opportunity at Murdoch University to create OnTrack Sprint, which specifically aimed to capture school-leavers aspiring to university but achieving an ATAR just below the cut-off for direct entrance (i.e. between 60 - 69.95). This four-week intensive program was offered for the first time pre-semester one, 2015. Of those who started the course, 92% were retained and 96% of retained students progressed to enrolling in an undergraduate course at Murdoch University. The effectiveness of this enabling program stemmed from a curriculum that was informed by the learning needs (Kift, 2009) of this targeted demographic. This paper dances with the idea that a successful student-teacher relationship is reliant on ‘knowing’ your learner (Hattie, 2009) and refers to the program OnTrack Sprint to demonstrate how an effective transition pedagogy that is cognisant of the learner can be intentionally constructed and delivered to effectively engage and transition enabling students.