Advocacy and awareness for equity in education

We are growing the community of practice through research initiatives that explore equity in education, enable expanded understandings and collaborations that promote enhanced learning opportunities for students.

Macquarie University's contributions to the knowledge of widening participation in education, include:

  • enhancing awareness of educational disadvantage and other challenges faced by students from equity backgrounds
  • enabling the university learning community to engage in initiatives that promote educational equity and inclusion of students from equity backgrounds
  • engaging stakeholders and partners to grow the community of equity in education practice
  • encouraging collaboration across the learning community to dynamically reshape discourse, practice and policy around equity in education.

View our research

The following research posters are among the ways we've shared our recent findings.

NCSEHE research grants

We're collaborative recipients of two grants awarded by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education in 2020. Both projects explore the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on equity groups.

This study explores the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences on the Australian higher education sector, with regard to growing domestic student enrolments, particularly those of equity cohorts.

Research focus

The research seeks to answer the following questions.

  • What are the equity opportunities – as identified by universities – with the imperative to grow the domestic student cohort following the COVID-related changes to the higher education sector?
  • How have universities changed their admissions requirements to accommodate non-ATAR pathways, and in what ways have they changed, if at all?
  • Have universities targeted particular equity cohorts as a result of the imperative to grow the domestic cohort?
  • Have equity groups been identified differently, given the whole 2020 cohort has been affected, and did equity groups have additional attention paid to them or were they be lost in the “big picture” of the pandemic?
  • What strategies have universities engaged with in order to attract and incentivise domestic enrolments, particularly with regard to equity cohorts?
  • Is there a growth in collaboration from the crisis amongst equity areas at universities and new approaches to partnering on pathways amongst universities and/or with TAFE?
  • Is there an intention for any changes (with regard to admissions, pathways, access and support) to be maintained beyond 2021?
  • What advocacy have universities engaged in with regard to equity cohorts and growing their domestic cohorts?
Institutional collaborators to this research project
  • University of New South Wales – Chief Investigator
  • Macquarie University
  • University of Technology Sydney
  • University of Western Sydney

This study intends to address the challenges and opportunities of (enforced) remote learning for culturally and linguistically diverse, migrant and/or refugee (CALDMR) students and their teachers and other university support staff through a qualitative, mixed-methods study underpinned by the strengths-based approach of Appreciative Inquiry. Working as a collective under the Refugee Education Special Interest Group (RESIG), we will work collaboratively, each taking a lead on an element of the data collection.

Research Focus

The research seeks to understand:

  • how CALDMR students in higher education have experienced the practical and emotional transitions to remote learning, including how these experiences are shaped by the intersectional variables of socioeconomic positioning, gender, culture and language
  • university educators’ experiences of teaching remotely, their understandings of the link between culture and pedagogy and their awareness of the needs of CALDMR students in both synchronous and asynchronous online learning including how – if at all – they have adapted their teaching practices and strategies to scaffold CALDMR engagement
  • the support needs of CALDMR students through engagement with ‘frontline’ university support staff, and to explore their experiences and perceptions of moving to remote forms of support
  • the awareness and understandings of educational developers of the links between culture and intercultural pedagogy as universities move courses online
  • the policy landscape to see whether universities update their equity policies post-COVID 19.

We then seek to produce a strengths-based, research-informed toolkit that outlines good practice strategies and practices for universities and students, and make recommendations for policy and practice shifts to better support CALDMR students and university staff in the post-COVID-19 context.

Institutional Collaborators to this research project
  • University of New South Wales – Chief Investigator
  • Macquarie University
  • University of Adelaide
  • University of Newcastle
  • Australian Catholic University
  • Western Sydney University
  • Curtin University
  • Central Queensland University
  • Victoria University
  • University of Queensland
  • Deakin University

Learn more about this research.

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E: Widening Participation Unit