Joanne Lisciandro

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.

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.

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.

Introduction: Pre-tertiary enabling programs have become an increasingly popular pathway to university in Australia in recent years, however little is published about how well enabling students fare once they start university. This paper examines and compares first-year retention and academic outcomes of students that entered Murdoch University between 2014 and 2016 via successful completion of its enabling program, OnTrack. A greater proportion of students transitioning via OnTrack were from equity and disadvantaged backgrounds than any other entry pathway; thereby demonstrating an important function of this enabling program in boosting the representation of these students at the university. Further, OnTrack-pathway students were retained at a rate that was similar or better than students entering via all other admission pathways, despite poorer academic performance. This persistence suggests enhanced resilience amongst this cohort, potentially built during their enabling education experience. Multivariate regression modelling was also undertaken, revealing that admission pathway, demographic and enrolment factors collectively explainedvery little of the observed variation in student outcomes for all first year students, and were particularly poor predictors of academic underperformance. Thus, once students are enrolled in undergraduate study, student outcomes may be better explained by student variables not captured in university databases, such as personal circumstances or psychological factors. In summary, these findings provide empirical data to support the notion that enabling programs have been successful in ‘enabling’ access and participation of students who are capable but otherwise lack opportunity, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, enabling pathway students may experience ongoing challenges that impact their academic performance, and thus future equity and access policy should address appropriate mechanisms for supporting the broader transition experience of these students.

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.

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.