Abstract
Objectives: Positive mental health in school predicts positive mental
health throughout the lifetime. Positive Psychology interventions (PPIs) in
secondary schools have been shown to improve mental health outcomes for
students. The Hummingbird Project, a brief, multi-component PPI, educates
secondary school students in a variety of Positive Psychology concepts, in
the hope of improving mental health outcomes in this cohort.
Design: Over a 4-year period (pilot, N = 90; full study year 1, N =
1,054; year 2, N = 876; year 3, N = 907), this intervention educated
secondary school students on the concepts of happiness, gratitude, kindness,
mindfulness, character strengths, hope, and growth mindsets.
Outcomes: The intervention led to improvements in; student well-being,
as measured by the World Health Organisation Well-Being Index (WHO-5);
resilience, as measured by the Bolton Uni-Stride Scale (BUSS); hope, as
measured by the Children’s Hope Scale (CHS); symptoms of mental distress, as
measured by the Young Person’s Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation
(YP-CORE).
Conclusions: These results show that a brief, multicomponent, PPI,
delivered by non-specialist staff, can improve mental health outcomes in
secondary school settings. This masterclass will show some of the methods
employed in the delivery of the Hummingbird Project, discuss some of the
various pitfalls one might encounter when attempting to deliver such
psychological interventions in a school setting, and give participants an
opportunity to try some of the activities involved in sessions. Participants
will leave with a clearer understanding of some quick, simple exercises that
can be performed with their students to improve mental health outcomes and
academic attainment.
Objectives: Degree awarding gaps on the basis of ethnicity are
persistent across the sector, whereby Black students are approximately 20–30
per cent less likely to be awarded a first class or upper second class
degree than white students. One way to address these gaps is to work with
our students to co-create and recreate curricula to increase student
representation and be anti-racist. The teaching practice that was developed
was a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic student advisory and discussion
group, who refer to themselves as The Global Majority Collective. They have
a paid student leader and approximately 20 students meet regularly online.
They are supported by a member of staff to whom the student leader feeds
back issues to the programme team.
Design: In order to empower these students and increase their
self-determination, we created an initial discussion group centred around
the themes in psychological needs theory: autonomy, competence, and
relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Students discussed the extent to which
they felt that they could be themselves (autonomy), felt capable of
achieving their full potential (competence), and felt a sense of community
and belonging (relatedness) - see
www.brookes.ac.uk/siip
Inclusion Project. Subsequently,
students set their own topics for discussion.
Outcomes: The group had a truly transformative impact on both staff and
student experience, from course content, to recruitment and admissions
strategies, to student satisfaction and performance. The former leader said:
‘As a Black student, I’ve seen an implementation of many issues we reported,
and I feel more represented’.
Conclusions: Teachers could consider setting up a similar platform in
their courses as one way to address inequitable degree awarding
gaps.
This interactive masterclass will present results and recommendations
from a mixed-methods research project about the experiences of Black Asian
and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students studying psychology and an online
decolonising psychology curriculum pedagogies toolkit. Delegates will be
able to have smaller directed group discussions about their experiences and
approaches to decolonising the psychology curriculum and pedagogies. This
masterclass will be a chance to discuss how we can share practices to better
embed Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion into the Psychology curriculum. We
will briefly report findings from the mixed-method project and invite
discussion about the project. The project used participatory action research
principles to co-design a quantitative survey. The survey was completed by
195 students, of which 105 were from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic
backgrounds and 89 students were from non-BAME backgrounds. All students
were studying UG and PG courses at two HEI in the West Midlands, the U.K. We
will present data that compared BAME and non-BAME students’ experiences and
views about their psychology curriculum, delivery of teaching, personal
tutoring support, course resources, peer relationships, representation,
course community, approaches to study and their engagement. We also asked
students from BAME backgrounds specific questions (both qualitative and
quantitative), and these students reported challenges in belonging, culture,
representation, terminology, and racism. Delegates will have the opportunity
to discuss these findings. Delegates will have the opportunity to use the
online decolonising psychology curriculum pedagogies toolkit and its
development. We will discuss how it may help psychology staff/departments
decolonise their curriculum and pedagogies.
Group-work assessment is increasingly common in higher education and
develops essential graduate skills in collaboration, communication and
problem solving. However, the group work process can be challenging for
students (Wilson et al., 2018), and staff faced the challenge of supporting
groups remotely in the pivot to online and blended learning (Wildman, 2021).
Our initial objective was to work in partnership with students to evaluate
current group work practices and resources and co-create recommendations on
how best to support the process and assessment of group work in online and
blended environments. Building on these recommendations, we co-developed the
Staying Connected Toolkit with students. The toolkit focuses on practical
activities to support group work, such as allocating group roles, improving
communication and encouraging group reflection. In this masterclass
delegates will apply the toolkit to their own teaching contexts and identify
strategies their students can use to improve collaborative working.
Qualitative and quantitative feedback from students and staff suggests that
the resources were helpful to students in initiating group organization and
allocating tasks, and useful to staff in signposting support within their
course. User analytics report higher student engagement with activities that
supported initial group organization than activities designed to address
issues in group work. The staying connected toolkit has over 300 users and
has been adopted by a range of subject disciplines to scaffold group
organisation and encourage reflective practice. Future work will focus on
how to increase accessibility of the tookit throughout the groupwork
process. Staying Connected Toolkit can be accessed at:
https://glasgowonline.gla.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=142
Enrolment
key:
groupwork
Background: Many imposter phenomenon studies report anomalously high
prevalence rates. The most common measure of imposter phenomenon is the
Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale (CIPS), however this has received little
critique beyond validation studies. Additionally, the CIPS has been used to
measure imposter phenomenon in university students, but there is little
research on the appropriateness of this scale for a student
population.
Objectives: To investigate how students interpret the CIPS and to
explore the student discourse surrounding imposter phenomenon.
Design: Participants (N=12) were undergraduates at the University of
Leeds from any discipline excluding psychology. Student-led focus groups
were conducted online where participants were asked to identify what the
scale was measuring (having first received de-identified copies) and how
they interpreted the wording and structure of the scale. Recordings were
transcribed, then analysed using an inductive and reflexive approach to
thematic analysis.
Results: Participants most frequently suggested the scale was measuring
self-doubt, self-esteem, and confidence. They also found many issues with
the scale, namely that it was tailored to current students, graduates, and
high-fliers and that it was culturally exclusive. They did not feel the
Likert scale could accurately represent their experiences and found the
phrasing confusing and hard to interpret.
Conclusion: Two factors may explain the rise in the prevalence of
imposter phenomenon: (1) students conceptualise imposter phenomenon more
broadly than the scientific community and/or (2) the CIPS is a weak
diagnostic tool.
Online, open education has transformative potential for students with
diverse learning needs who would otherwise not be able, or would prefer not,
to attend on-campus higher education. While open education programmes have
enhanced students’ ability to access HE institutions, an ableist academic
culture and various resulting barriers in teaching and learning
approaches/use of educational technology can negatively impact the level of
accessibility and inclusion within programmes. This presentation reports on
a project that is reviewing and redeveloping aspects of the online learning
design in a fully online undergraduate psychology programme in order to
improve levels of accessibility and inclusion. The project employs an action
research methodology to track and report on its progress. Data was gathered
through written feedback, interviews, and focus groups with students and
staff involved in the programme, as well as with ‘critical friends’ with
expertise and experience in accessibility and inclusion in higher education.
An aim of the study was to treat stakeholders as co-designers of online
learning. All project activity, observations, and materials were