10 minute read
OPINION
DIVERSIT Y AND INCLUSION
Embracing difference
Educators and training providers need to help eradicate any form of discrimination, allowing students and teachers to achieve their full potential, says Anshi Singh
If you don’t see colour, you don’t see me. If you say you are indiff erent to colour, ethnicity or background in your interactions, you don’t see me.
I want you to see diff erent colours. I want you to see diff erent races. I want you to see diff erent genders. I urge you to see that we come from diff erent backgrounds. I want you to see that we are diff erent. Because if you see me as I am, then you accept me as I am.
Because it’s not about ‘you’ or ‘me’; it’s about our colleges which are committed to their communities. It is about where we want to be in terms of diversity and inclusion. It’s about bridging the attainment and achievement gaps.
Every time there is a movement to increase the representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people or an opportunity to voice an opinion, it makes me overtly positive that change is round the corner. But it also makes me sad that we actually need these movements to remind everyone that we are diff erent and we have to be more inclusive, not just in our lesson planning but in our lives.
A few years into further education (FE), an educator with high aspirations should be focusing on their teaching practice and leadership skills but I balance my full-time job with my work of representing the voice of the BAME community across the FE sector.
Whenever I would talk to someone about my aspirations, my BAME colleagues and friends only had one piece of advice for me: ‘They’ will never let you into ‘leadership roles’. Their
argument was always backed up by data and experience. I cannot give my best to my work, unless I feel I belong and stand an equal chance to grow.
Also, I realised, it is important that my fellow educators and students feel they belong and have a positive learning environment that promotes aspiration and equal opportunity for everyone. ‘Them’ vs ‘us’ is not what we need as educators building our next generation. As a sector that prides itself on education for people from diverse backgrounds, we must work together to bring change we want to see in society.
The impact of ignorance of our cultural diff erences on our younger generation is something that will take years to repair and, with the decline in the ethnic visibility in senior leadership roles, it looks like we are not getting any closer. I have lost count of the number of incidents shared by students where they felt they were not trusted, not listened to or not given an opportunity because they are from BAME background.
No matter how much I tried convincing them, it did not change their perspective because the bias they face in their everyday interactions was far greater than what one Asian teacher was telling them. If you watch critical thinking discussions on #BlackLivesMatter by Scott Hayden on Instagram, it gives you an insight into how much representation matters for our younger generation. We need to push for the change collectively.
Hosting a Twitter UKFEChat on the issue, and listening to my fellow educators’ views on how much they want to be part of this change, makes me feel that I belong and the work we are doing to raise awareness is heading in the right direction. The Black Lives Matter movements have given me the confi dence to be who I am and say what I want to because I know people want to change and to be more inclusive.
For my BAME colleagues, if my vulnerability – me being braver by saying ‘yes’ to every opportunity that comes my way to represent us, either by writing an opinion piece or by standing up in a hall full of people – can bring hope to even a single person that they can aspire, grow and achieve what they want, then my work here is done.
I am hopeful that I will see a change in policies, which will take pride in inclusion, and not on the quota or plans to fulfi l diversity. I am hopeful that we will work together to raise awareness on diff erent cultures and racial prejudice, and that there will be allies to lean on when we need support from each other.
I am hopeful that when the younger generation start their careers as educators, their aspirations will not be bound by the facts and fi gures from various organisations, but they will be guided by the diversity of people they will see around them in diff erent roles. Because I am hopeful – yes, I am!
ANSHI SINGH
is course director for computing at Basingstoke College of Technology @TeachAnshi
SUSTAINABILITY
Time for action
Armed with a new roadmap, the further education sector needs to act now to play its part in tackling climate change, says Steve Frampton
Many observers have been critical of the further education sector’s perceived slow response to the acknowledged climate crisis. Some have accused FE colleges of not engaging in the most serious challenge facing our post-Covid-19 world.
Until early 2020, this criticism may have been true of many within our sector, due to a decade of underfunding, an absence of accountability measures, and very little strategic and practical guidance. Many principals and governors were lost, and student governors frustrated and anxious about the lack of action.
But unless we are planning a sustainable green economic recovery, there will be no recovery at all. If we thought Covid-19 was a challenge, consider the impacts of truly global irreversible change aff ecting every citizen on our planet – economically, socially and psychologically.
Many of our current, and especially future, students cite the issue as their
most important concern, and one which often leaves them anxious and stressed, and feeling powerless and frustrated. Many of them understandably took to direct action, as colleges didn’t have the organised activity outlets that could make a diff erence for these passionate young people who realised this was their generation’s future at stake.
Six months on and the sector has come a long way. We now have a roadmap, co-constructed with the FE/HE climate commissioners, including fantastic students in our sector, and the support and expertise from the Nous group.
Launched in June 2020 by the FE/ HE Climate Commission, the roadmap is the strategic guidance all FE colleges need. An accessible and straightforward balance of strategic structural guidance and practical actions for colleges starting on their climate change journey, as well as those further on in their initiatives, plans and expertise.
The document has benefi ted from our FE colleagues in Scotland, along with our HE partners, who have shared their expertise and learning. This is the fi rst joint FE/HE venture of its kind and highlights the need for a more collaborative approach to this critical agenda. Climate change isn’t a competition, nor is it a marketing tool.
It also suggests we need to work with not only our current students, but also those who will be our future learners, currently in the primary and secondary sector. Any successful approach will need coordinated collaborative action across the entire educational ecosystem.
The roadmap is action-rich, accessible and practical. It provides our sector with what principals, governors, estates managers, staff and especially students really want and need, from easy lowhanging fruit all the way through to longterm energy investments.
It provides us with great opportunities for co-construction and action. It looks at opportunities for how we operate and learn and implement proactive changes to our estates. We are encouraged to look at our transport strategies, and how our staff and students travel to college.
Catering and other services, along with their supply chains, provide further opportunities for action, as does recycling, re-use and redesign of materials. WRAP provides excellent resources to help colleges in this aspect of their work. Some of the most interesting and innovative opportunities lie in co-constructing a more relevant, values-led curriculum that really addresses the needs of our students as global citizens.
In its latest ‘Future of Assessment’ report, Jisc highlighted the potential of new technology to contribute to the climate crisis, as well as improve the quality of experience for students. The roadmap not only highlights the potential for reducing the negative impacts of how we operate, but also how this can improve the teaching, learning and assessment experience, along with improving the mental health and wellbeing of our students.
It’s not a directive, but it does encourage us all to take meaningful action, establish a new college culture, and urgently. We can and must make a diff erence, and together the FE/ HE sectors can reach over fi ve million people, so let’s use that mass as a force for positive change. We aren’t lost any more, but are on an exciting and critical journey, together.
The FE roadmap can be found on both the AoC and EAUC websites
STEVE FRAMPTON
At the time of writing Steve was president of the Association of Colleges. His term fi nished in July 2020
Stay in control The ‘new normal’ means teachers need to be both resilient and able to cope with change. Sarah Lewis outlines a few tips to help you adapt
Even as the country’s FE providers start to open up, it doesn’t mean we are back to normal. We need to think instead of ourselves as moving forward into a new normal, and navigating this will take resilience and adaptability.
Resilience is about having the resources to cope with unexpected, diffi cult or adverse situations. It is made up of three things: having resources, being aware of having them, and being able to deploy them. Together, they help us to bounce back from adversity.
Being adaptable means being able to quickly and appropriately change our behaviour when circumstances change. Right now, this means teaching under conditions of physical or social distancing, having to monitor students’ handwashing activity as well as their general behaviour, and being able to spot and challenge those looking feverish, coughing or generally ill.
Many of our previous teaching strategies which may involve getting into groups, working together on projects, or sitting by a struggling student to off er hands-on help are no longer appropriate. Instead we must fi nd new ways to encourage cooperation and collaboration, off er support and make learning enjoyable and eff ective.
For both resilience and adaptability, being resourceful is key. These tips will help you build skills in those areas. 1 DRAW ON YOUR STRENGTHS One of our biggest sources of personal resources is our own unique strengths. They are the things that are natural for us to do and that seem easy to us. We each have our own set of strengths. For instance, some people are naturally empathetic, others inherently strategically minded. Some of us are good at logical analysis, others are great at developing others.
Sometimes, when we are stressed or anxious it is hard to believe that we can cope. In this situation, it can be helpful to remember other times when we did cope, when we got through a tricky situation or when we turned a situation around. Being in the grip of the present can prevent us from accessing resources from the past: our knowledge, our skills, our experience.
We can discover these hidden resources by remembering our best experiences, when we weren’t just coping but really fl ourishing and excelling. Once we’ve brought these experiences to mind, we can mine them for tactics, strategies, ideas or conversations that really made a diff erence then and that might be useful now.
Right now, we can remember our best experiences of teaching both during the lockdown and before. Think about what worked really well. How did you do that? How transferable is what you did to the current situation? Are there some principles of practice that you can extract but enact in a diff erent way?
