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.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between philosophy, pedagogy, and practice when designing programs/units/courses for transitioning students to new spaces in higher education. It offers both theoretical perspectives and case studies that reveal the successes and challenges of using philosophically driven pedagogies with diverse transitioning cohorts. The University of Newcastle published a report that detailed the ethos, values, and practices that constituted enabling pedagogies in their own enabling programs and proposed that enabling pedagogies are necessary across all areas of higher education. The term ‘transition’ in the context of higher education is used to describe the academic as well as social movement and acculturation of students into new educational spaces. Most poignantly educational philosophies provide “a holistic conception of people making and world-making”. Reflecting on educational philosophies allows one to examine which educational values are promoted and which are marginalised.

Transitioning Students in Higher Education focuses on the relationship between philosophy, pedagogy and practice when designing programs, units or courses for transitioning students to new educational spaces in the university environment. The term ‘transition’ is used to describe the academic as well as social movement and acculturation of students into new higher educational spaces.

This book offers both theoretical perspectives and real-world practical examples that reveal the successes and challenges of implementing philosophically driven pedagogies with diverse transitioning cohorts. Drawing on examples from Australia, New Zealand, US and Canada, it writes through the relationship between philosophy, pedagogy and how it can effectively shape the practice of transition and develop the flourishing student. This book is split into three main sub-themes: Flourishing in Transition, Engaging Diverse Cohorts and Challenges for Educators, and sits at the intersections between philosophy and pedagogy in the practice of effectively engaging and transitioning different enabling groups.

This book will be of great interest to postgraduate students, researchers and educators working in the areas of enabling or bridging education, higher/tertiary education, distance learning, and indigenous as well as culturally diverse cohorts.

This chapter offers readers a way through the mire of complex choices when working in the transitional education space, and endeavours to distil the shared foundational philosophies held by a multidisciplinary team working in enabling education in Western Australia. Drawing on superhero metaphors, it outlines the benefits of explicit reflection on philosophies that inform pedagogy and practice. It proposes that pedagogies underpinned by philosophies of social justice and flourishing can emancipate enabling students from limiting self-beliefs, and build their academic skills and self-efficacy, which in turn can help them flourish in their transition to higher education. The chapter provides an example of how to enact such philosophies in practice by exploring the implementation of the ‘enabling transition’ pedagogy model and an innovative pedagogy we call the Engagement Zone. This three-pronged approach or ‘trident’ as seen in action in Murdoch University’s OnTrack and OnTrack Sprint enabling programs, sponsored engagement, belonging and learning.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book offers the critical pedagogies and the practices, such as the right range of supports, in order to move closer to social justice goals. Pedagogies of care also deeply align with philosophies of social justice and flourishing, support widening participation agendas and repel neoliberalist agendas that see students as profit rather than people. The book argues that establishing successful learning communities is key to flourishing students in transition, through lifting their engagement, sense of belonging, confidence, and motivation for learning. Critical pedagogies and opportunities for transformative learning featured heavily as a response to the desire of educators to enact social justice, emancipate their students from past disadvantage and push back against neoliberalist agendas. The book explains that empowering students enabled flourishing.

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.