Joanne Lisciandro

Enabling education, a widening participation strategy for university access, has seen significant growth across Australia following the Bradley Review in 2008. Not only has there been enhanced uptake of students, particularly those from non-traditional and equity backgrounds, but the number of program offerings nationally has grown considerably. Currently, enabling education is not governed by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency’s (TEQSA) requirements, allowing differences in these programs both within and between institutions regarding content, duration, structure, and modes of delivery. Recently, it has been argued that all Australian enabling programs should have the same learning outcomes since the endpoint is the same: preparation of students for successful participation in undergraduate study. Extensive research has shown that enabling students arrive with a diversity of learning needs, aspirations, motivations, and past educational/life experiences, often influenced by geographical, community, and contextual factors. Within University Preparation Pathways (UPP) at Murdoch University, we have offered five different enabling programs across regional and metropolitan campuses over recent years, each designed to meet the specific needs of a different target cohort. In this chapter, we elucidate not only the value of common learning outcomes, but as informed by our second-generation enabling transition pedagogy (Jones et al. 2022), also recognize the need for common curriculum design principles that underpin enabling programs, in order to foster socio-emotional learning, accessibility, belonging, and engagement. Although our learning outcomes are consistent across our programs and with other programs nationally, we argue that there is a need to retain diversity and flexibility in approaches to enabling curricula across the sector to “do justice” to the learning needs of distinct student cohorts. Examples from our suite of enabling programs demonstrate how we apply these curriculum design principles to meet the targeted learning needs of our differing cohorts.

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.

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.

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part discusses some of the challenges that have arisen for educators as universities have increasingly operated within a global marketplace. It argues that neoliberal philosophies disempower both students and educators, impacting on their academic identities; and advocate for educators to challenge these dominant ideologies and continue to seek to make critical thinkers of their students. The part suggests that in order to be proactive about enhancing student academic outcomes, particularly during the stressful phase of transitioning to university, the responsibility for addressing student mental wellbeing has become everyone’s business, and not just that of centralised university Counselling services. It also discusses how student wellbeing can be supported by academics from within the student curriculum by embedding a philosophy of care into the pedagogies and practices of enabling programs.