Category: Students

  • We need to talk about culture

    We need to talk about culture

    For a few years now when touring around SUs to deliver training over the summer, me and my colleague Mack (and in previous years, Livia) have been encountering interesting tales of treatment that feel different but are hard to explain.

    We tend to kick the day off with a look at the educational journey of student leaders – the highs and lows, the setbacks and triumphs, all in an attempt to identify the aspects that might have been caused (or at least influenced) by institutional or wider higher education policy.

    And while our daft and dated student finance system, the British obsessions with going straight in and completing at top speed, or local policies on assessment or personal tutoring or extenuating circumstances all get a look in, more often than not it’s something else that has caused a problem.

    It’s the way a member of staff might have responded to a question; the reaction to a student who’s loaded up with part-time work or caring responsibilities; the way in which extracurriculars are considered in a meeting on study progress; the background discussions in a misconduct panel (which, for some reason, the sector still routinely forces student leaders on to); or the way in which departmental or local discretion in policy implementation might have been handled by a given school or department.

    Sometimes the differences are apparent to a student that’s well-connected, or one that’s experienced a joint award, or one that’s ended up winning their election having completed their PGT at another university (often in another country) to those who haven’t. Often, the differences are invisible.

    It was especially obvious in the years that followed those “no detriment” policies that popped up during Covid. Not all ND policies were the same, but just for a moment we seemed to have moved into an era where the pace at which someone completed and the number of attempts they’d had at doing so seemed less important than whether they’d reached the required standard.

    The variable speed and enthusiasm accompanying the introduction of “no detriment” policies was telling in and of itself – but more telling was the snapping back and abolition of many of the measures designed to cope with student difference and setbacks just as soon as the masking mandates were over.

    Sometimes the differences are about the nuts and bolts of policies that can be changed and amended through the usual round of committee work. Sometimes they’re about differences in volumes of international students, or wild differences in the SSR that central policies pretend aren’t there. But often, especially the ones that are apparent not to them but to us, they’re differences that seem to say something about the way things are done there.

    They are, in other words, about culture.

    Aqui não se aprende, sobrevive-se

    I’d been trying to put my finger on a way to describe a particular thread in the explanations for years – was it a misplaced notion of excellence? Something about the Russell Group, or STEM? Something about those subjects that are externally accredited, or those that fall into the “higher technical” bracket? Or was it about working with the realities of WP?

    But earlier this year, I think I got close. We’d accidentally booked a cheap hotel in Lisbon for one of our study tours that just happened to be opposite Tecnico – the “higher technical” faculty of the University of Lisbon (“Instituto Superior Técnico”) that has been turfing out Portugal’s most respected engineers (in the broadest sense of the term) since 1911.

    And buried in one of those strategy documents that we tend to harvest on the trips was a phrase that said it all – what students had described back in 2019 as a “meritocracia da dificuldade”, or in English, a “meritocracy of difficulty”.

    Courses at Técnico were known to be hard – even one of our Uber drivers knew that – but that had in and of itself had become the institution’s defining currency. Students, staff, and alumni alike described an environment where gruelling workloads, high failure rates and dense, encyclopaedic syllabi were worn as badges of honour.

    Passing through that kind of system was not just about acquiring knowledge – but about proving your ability to endure and survive, with employers reinforcing the story by recruiting almost unquestioningly on the basis of survival.

    Se os alunos não aguentam, não deviam estar aqui

    Academic staff featured prominently in sustaining that culture. Having themselves been shaped by the same regime, many prided themselves on reproducing it for the next generation.

    Any move to reduce content, rebalance workloads, or broaden learning was interpreted as an unacceptable form of “facilitation”, “spoon feeding”, “dumbing down” or pandering. What counted, in their eyes, was difficulty itself – with rigour equated less with the quality of learning than with the sheer weight of what had to be endured.

    The insistence on difficulty carried consequences for students. Its emphasis on exams, for example, meant that learning became synonymous with “studying to pass”, rather than a process of deep engagement.

    The focus often fell on maximising tactics to get through, rather than on cultivating lasting understanding. In turn, students grew risk-averse – seeking out past papers, recycling lab work, and avoiding uncertainty, rather than developing the capacity to tackle open-ended problems.

    O Técnico orgulha-se das reprovações

    Non-technical subjects were also undervalued and looked down upon in that climate. Humanities and social sciences were frequently dismissed by staff and students alike as “soft” or “fluffy”, in contrast with the “seriousness” of technical content. That hierarchy of value both narrowed students’ horizons and reinforced the sense that only subjects perceived as hard could be respected.

    It left little room for reflection on social, ethical, or cultural dimensions of high level technical education – and contributed in turn to a broader lack of extracurricular and associative engagement that caused problems later in the workplace.

    And underlying all of that was the sheer pressure placed on students. The combination of high workload, repeated failure, and a culture that equated merit with suffering created an environment where wellbeing was routinely sacrificed to performance.

    Scattered timetables, heavy workloads, and complex commuting patterns left little space for students to build social connections or help each other to cope. And those demanding schedules and long travel times also discouraged students from building a connection with the institution beyond the academics assessing them.

    Staff, proud of having survived themselves, were routinely unsympathetic to students who struggled, and the system’s inefficiency – with many repeating units year after year – was both demoralising and costly. For some, the relentless pressure became part of their identity – for others, it was simply crushing.

    As humanidades são vistas como perda de tempo. Só conta o que dói

    I recognise much of what’s in the Committee on Review of Education, and Pedagogical Practices of the IST CAMEPP report in the discussions we’ve had with student leaders. We may not have the non-continuation or time-to-complete issues (although a dive into OfS’ dashboards suggests that some departments very much do) – but the “culture” issues in there very much sound familiar.

    One officer told me about an academic who, when they explained they’d had to pick up more shifts in their part-time job to cover rent, sniffed and said that university “wasn’t meant for people who had to work in Tesco.”

    The implication wasn’t subtle – success was contingent on being able to study full-time, with no distractions, no commitments, and no compromises. The message was that working-class students were in the wrong place.

    Another described a personal tutor meeting where extracurricular involvement was treated as a sign of distraction – a dangerous indulgence. A student who had been pouring energy into running their society was solemnly advised to “park the hobbies” until after graduation, as though the skills, friendships, and confidence gained outside the classroom were worth nothing compared to a clean transcript.

    The sense of suspicion towards student life beyond the lecture theatre was as striking as it was disheartening for a commuter student who’d only found friends in this way.

    We’ve heard countless variations of staff dismissing pleas for help with mental health, reframing them as either “just stress” or, worse, a valuable rite of passage. One student leader said they’d been told by a tutor that “a bit of pressure builds character,” as if panic attacks were proof of academic seriousness. In that culture, resilience was demanded, but never supported.

    We’ve also heard about students being told that missing a rehearsal for a hospital appointment would “set the wrong precedent,” or that seeking an extension on a piece of groupwork after a bereavement was “unfair on others.”

    Others describe the quiet pressure to keep going after failing a module – not with support to improve, partly because the alternative offered was repeating the year, all with the subtle suggestion that “some people just aren’t cut out for this.” Much suggests a yearning for the students of the past – rather than a view on what the actual students need in the future.

    Quando pedimos ajuda, dizem-nos que todos já passaram por isto

    There are tales of students told that asking questions in lectures shows they “haven’t done the reading,” or that group work is best approached competitively rather than collaboratively – each message subtly reinforcing a culture of endurance, suspicion, and survival rather than one of learning and growth.

    Then there are the stories about labs where “presenteeism” rules supreme – students dragging themselves in while feverish because attendance is policed so tightly that missing a practical feels like academic self-sabotage.

    Or the sense, especially in modules assessed exclusively (or mainly) through a single high-stakes exam, that students are competing in a kind of intellectual Hunger Games – one chance, one shot, no mistakes – a structure that turns learning into a gamble, and turns peers into rivals.

    Some of it is structural – student finance systems in the UK are especially unforgiving of setbacks, reductions in intensity and differences in learning pace. Some of it is about UK perceptions of excellence – the ingrained idea that second attempts can only be granted if a student fails, and even then capped, or the idea that every assessment beyond Year 1 needs to be graded rather than passed or failed, or it can’t be “excellent”.

    But much of it was just about attitudes.

    Facilitar seria trair a tradição do Técnico

    Again and again, what has struck me hasn’t been the formal policy frameworks, but the tone of the replies students received – the raised eyebrow when someone asked about getting an extension, the sigh when a caring responsibility was mentioned, the laugh when a student suggested their part-time job was making study harder, the failure to signpost when others would.

    It was the quick dismissal of a concern as “excuses,” the insistence that “everyone’s under pressure,” or the sharp rebuke that “the real world doesn’t give second chances.” To those delivering them, they may have just been off-hand comments from those themselves under pressure – but to students, they were signals, sometimes subtle, sometimes stark, about who belonged, who was valued, and what counted as legitimate struggle.

    And worse, for those student leaders going into a second year, it was often a culture that was hidden. Large multi-faculty universities in the UK tend to involve multiple faculties, differing cultures and variable levels of enthusiasm towards compliance with central policies or improvement initiatives.

    Almost every second-year student leader I’ve ever met can pick out one part of the university that doesn’t play ball – where the policies have changed, but the attitudes haven’t.

    And they seem to know someone who was a champion for change, only to leave when confronted with the loudest voices in a department or committee that seem determined to participate only to resist it.

    Menos carga lectiva, mas isso é infantilizar o ensino

    Back at Tecnico, the CAMEPP commission’s diagnosis was fascinating. It argued that while Técnico’s “meritocracy of difficulty” had historically served as a guarantee of quality and employability, it had become an anachronism.

    Curricula were monolithic and encyclopaedic, often privileging sheer quantity of content over relevance or applicability. The model encouraged competition over collaboration, generated high failure rates, and wasted talent by grinding down those without the stamina — or privilege — to withstand its demands.

    The report argued that the culture not only demoralised students – but also limited Técnico’s global standing. In an era of rapid change, interdisciplinarity, and international mobility, the school’s rigidity risked undermining its attractiveness to prospective students and its capacity for innovation.

    Employers still valued Técnico graduates, but the analysis warned that the institution was trading on its past reputation, rather than equipping students for uncertain futures.

    For students, the practical impact was devastating. With teaching dominated by lectures and assessment dominated by exams, learning was often reduced to tactical preparation for high-stakes hurdles. A culture that equated merit with suffering left little space for curiosity, creativity, or critical reflection.

    Non-technical subjects were trivialised, narrowing graduates’ horizons and weakening their ability to engage with the ethical, political, and social contexts in which engineers inevitably operate.

    For staff, the culture had become self-perpetuating. Academics were proud of having endured the same system, and resistant to change that looked like dilution. Attempts to rebalance workloads or integrate humanities were dismissed as spoon-feeding, and student pleas for support were reframed as evidence of weakness. What looked like rigour was, in practice, an institutionalised suspicion of anything that might reduce pressure.

    Temos de formar pessoas, não apenas engenheiros

    Against that backdrop, the Técnico 2122 programme was deliberately framed as more than a curriculum reform. The commission argued that without tackling the underlying values and assumptions of the institution, no amount of modular tinkering would deliver meaningful change.

    It set out a vision in which Técnico would be judged not only by the toughness of its courses but by the quality of its culture, the richness of its environment, and the breadth of its graduates’ capacities. The emphasis was on moving from a survival ethos to a developmental one — a school where students were expected to grow, not simply endure.

    One strand of the proposals was the deliberate insertion of humanities, arts and social sciences into the heart of the curriculum. It introduced nine credits of HASS in the first cycle, including courses in ethics, public policy, international relations and the history of science – all to to disrupt the hierarchy that had long placed technical content above all else.

    It was presented not as a softening of standards but as an enrichment, equipping future engineers with the critical, ethical and societal awareness to operate in a world where technical solutions always have human consequences. The language of “societal thinking” was used to capture that broader ambition — an insistence that engineering could no longer be conceived apart from the contexts in which it is deployed.

    Preparado para colaborar, não apenas competir

    Another aspect was a rebalancing of assessment. Instead of relying almost exclusively on high-stakes examinations, the proposals argued for a model in which exams and continuous assessment carried roughly equal weight. The aim was to break the cycle of cramming and repetition, and to create incentives for sustained engagement across the semester.

    Via rewarding consistent work and collaborative projects, reforms intended to shift students away from tactical “study to pass” behaviour towards deeper and more creative forms of learning. A parallel ambition was to build more interdisciplinarity — using integrated projects and cross-departmental collaboration to replace competitive isolation with teamwork across different branches of engineering.

    Just as important was the recognition that culture is shaped beyond the classroom. The plan envisaged new residences and more spaces for social, cultural and recreational activity, developed in partnership with the wider university. These weren’t afterthoughts – but central to the project, a way of countering the lack of associative life that the workload and commuting patterns had made so difficult.

    And alongside new facilities came the proposal to give formal curricular recognition to extracurricular involvement — a statement that student societies, voluntary projects and civic engagement mattered as part of the Técnico experience.

    The review committed to embedding both extracurricular credit and communal spaces into the fabric of the institution, all with an aim of generating a more balanced, human environment – one in which students could belong as well as perform.

    And in conjunction with the SU, every programme has an academic society that students can access and get involved in – combining belonging, careers, study skills and welcome activity in a way that gives every student a community they can serve in, as well as both a representative body (rather than just a representative) at faculty and university level to both develop constructive agendas for change and bespoke student-led interventions at the right level.

    At every stage, the commission stressed that this was a cultural and emotional transformation as much as it was a structural one – requiring staff and students alike to accept that the old ways no longer served them best.

    Change management was presented as a challenge of mindset as much as of design. It was not enough to alter syllabi or redistribute credits – the ambition was to cultivate an atmosphere where excellence was defined by collaboration, creativity and societal contribution rather than by survival alone.

    I don’t know how successful the reforms have been, or whether they’ve met the ambitions set in the astonishingly long review document. But what I do know is they found inspiration from higher technical universities and faculties from around the world:

    • Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands had been experimenting with “challenge-based” learning, where interdisciplinary teams of students work on open-ended, real-world problems with input from industry and civic partners.
    • ETH Zurich in Switzerland had sought to rebalance its exam-heavy culture by integrating continuous assessment and project work, with explicit emphasis on collaboration and reflection rather than competition alone.
    • Aalto University in Finland had deliberately merged technology, business, and arts to break down disciplinary silos, embedding creativity and design into engineering programmes and fostering a stronger culture of interdisciplinarity.
    • Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden had restructured large parts of its curriculum around project-based learning, placing teamwork and sustained engagement at the centre of assessment instead of single high-stakes hurdles.
    • Technical University of Munich (TUM) had introduced entrepreneurship centres, interdisciplinary labs, and credit for extracurricular involvement to underline the learning and innovation often happen outside formal classrooms.
    • And École Polytechnique in Paris had sought to rebalance its notoriously demanding technical curriculum with a stronger grounding in humanities and social sciences, aiming to cultivate graduates able to navigate the societal dimensions of scientific and technological progress.

    Criatividade e contributo, não apenas sobrevivência

    There are real lessons here. I’ve talked before about the way the autonomous branding and decision-making in the faculty at Lison surfaces higher technical in a way that those who harp on about 1992 and the abolition of polytechnics can’t see back in the UK.

    But the case study goes further for me. On all of the “student focussed” agendas – mental health, disability, commuters, diversity, there’s invariably a working group and a policy review where one or more bits of a university won’t, don’t and never will play ball.

    A couple of decades of focus on the “student experience” have seen great strides and changes to the way the sector supports students and scaffolds learning. But most of those working in a university know that yet another review won’t change that one bit – especially if its research figures are strong and it’s still recruiting well.

    Part of the problem is the way in which student culture fails to match up to the structures of culture in the modern UK university. 1,500 course reps is a world of difference to associative structures at school, faculty or department level. Both universities and SUs have much to learn from European systems about the way in which the latter cause issues of retention, or progression or even just recruitment to be “owned” by student associations.

    Some of it is about course size. What we think of as a “course” would be one pathway inside much bigger courses with plenty of choice and optionality in Europe. The slow erosion of elective choice in the UK makes initiatives like those seen elsewhere harder, not easier – but who’s brave enough to go for it when every other university seems to have 300 programme leaders rather than 30?

    But it’s the faculty thing that’s most compelling. What Técnico’s review shows is that a faculty can take itself seriously enough to undertake a searching cultural audit – not just compliance with a curriculum refresh, but a root-and-branch reflection on what it means to be educated there, in the context of the broader discipline and the way that discipline is developing around the world.

    It raises an obvious question – why don’t more faculties here do the same? Policy development in the UK almost always happens at the university level, often driven by external regulatory pressure, and usually framed in language so generic that it misses the sharp edges of disciplinary culture.

    But it’s the sharp edges – the tacit assumptions about what counts as “hard” or “serious”, the informal attitudes of staff towards struggling students, the unspoken hierarchies of value between technical and social subjects – that so often define the student experience in practice.

    A review of the sort that Técnico and others undertook forces the assumptions into the open. It makes it harder for a department to dismiss humanities as “fluffy” or to insist that wellbeing struggles are just rites of passage when the evidence has been gathered, collated, and written down.

    It gives students’ unions a reference point when they argue for cultural change, and it creates a shared vocabulary for both staff and students to talk about what the institution is, and what it wants to be. That kind of mirror is uncomfortable – but it’s also powerful.

    And if nothing else, the review reminds us that culture is not accidental. It is constructed, transmitted, and defended – sometimes with pride, sometimes with inertia. The challenge is whether faculties here might be brave enough to interrogate their own meritocracies of difficulty, to ask whether the traditions they prize are really preparing students for the future, or whether they are just reproducing a cycle of survival.

    That’s a process that can’t be delegated up to the university centre, nor imposed by a regulator. It has to come from within – which makes me wonder whether finding those students and staff who find the culture where they work oppressive need to be surfaced  and connected – before the usual suspects (that are usually suspect) do the thing they always do, and preserve rather than adapt.

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  • Creative approaches to teaching math can help fill AI talent gap

    Creative approaches to teaching math can help fill AI talent gap

    Key points:

    Not surprisingly, jobs in AI are the fastest growing of any in the country, with a 59 percent increase in job postings between January 2024 and November 2024. Yet we continue to struggle with growing a workforce that is proficient in STEM. 

    To fill the AI talent pipeline, we need to interest kids in STEM early, particularly in math, which is critical to AI. But that’s proven difficult. One reason is that math is a stumbling block. Whether because of math anxiety, attitudes they’ve absorbed from the community, inadequate curricular materials, or traditional teaching methods, U.S. students either avoid or are not proficient in math.  

    A recent Gallup report on Math Matters reveals that the U.S. public greatly values math but also experiences significant gaps in learning and confidence, finding that: 

    • 95 percent of U.S. adults say that math is very or somewhat important in their work life 
    • 43 percent of U.S. adults wish they had learned more math skills in middle or high school. 
    •  24 percent of U.S. adults say that math makes them feel confused  

    Yet this need not be the case. Creative instruction in math can change the equation, and it is available now. The following three examples from respected researchers in STEM education demonstrate this fact. 

    The first is a recently published book by Susan Jo Russell and Deborah Schifter, Interweaving Equitable Participation and Deep Mathematics. The book provides practical tools and a fresh vision to help educators create math classrooms where all students can thrive. It tackles a critical challenge: How do teachers ensure that all students engage deeply with rigorous mathematics? The authors pose and successfully answer key questions: What does a mathematical community look like in an elementary classroom? How do teachers engage young mathematicians in deep and challenging mathematical content? How do we ensure that every student contributes their voice to this community? 

    Through classroom videos, teacher reflections, and clear instructional frameworks, Russell and Schifter bring readers inside real elementary classrooms where all students’ ideas and voices matter. They provide vivid examples, insightful commentary, and ready-to-use resources for teachers, coaches, and school leaders working to make math a subject where every student sees themselves as capable and connected. 

    Next is a set of projects devoted to early algebra. Significantly, research shows that how well students perform in Algebra 2 is a leading indicator of whether they’ll get into college, graduate from college, or become a top income earner. But introducing algebra in middle school, as is the common practice, is too late, according to researchers Maria Blanton and Angela Gardiner of TERC, a STEM education research nonprofit. Instead, learning algebra must begin in K-5, they believe. 

    Students would be introduced to algebraic concepts rather than algebra itself, becoming familiar with ways of thinking using pattern and structure. For example, when students understand that whenever they add two odd numbers together, they get an even number, they’re recognizing important mathematical relationships that are critical to algebra. 

    Blanton and Gardiner, along with colleagues at Tufts University, University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Texas at Austin, Merrimack College, and City College of New York, have already demonstrated the success of an early algebra approach through Project LEAP, the first early algebra curriculum of its kind for grades K–5, funded in part by the National Science Foundation.  

    If students haven’t been introduced to algebra early on, the ramp-up from arithmetic to algebra can be uniquely difficult. TERC researcher Jennifer Knudsen told me that elementary to middle school is an important time for students’ mathematical growth. 

    Knudsen’s project, MPACT, the third example of creative math teaching, engages middle school students in 3D making with everything from quick-dry clay and cardboard to digital tools for 3D modeling and printing. The project gets students involved in designing objects, helping them develop understanding of important mathematical topics in addition to spatial reasoning and computational thinking skills closely related to math. Students learn concepts and solve problems with real objects they can hold in their hands, not just with words and diagrams on paper.  

    So far, the evidence is encouraging: A two-year study shows that 4th–5th graders demonstrated significant learning gains on an assessment of math, computational thinking, and spatial reasoning. These creative design-and-making units are free and ready to download. 

    Math is critical for success in STEM and AI, yet too many kids either avoid or do not succeed in it. Well-researched interventions in grade school and middle school can go a long way toward teaching essential math skills. Curricula for creating a math community for deep learning, as well as projects for Early Algebra and MPACT, have shown success and are readily available for school systems to use.

    We owe it to our students to take creative approaches to math so they can prepare for future AI and STEM professions. We owe it to ourselves to help develop a skilled STEM and AI workforce, which the nation needs to stay competitive. 

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  • Autistic College Students Face Dramatically Higher Rates of Mental Health Challenges, New Research Shows

    Autistic College Students Face Dramatically Higher Rates of Mental Health Challenges, New Research Shows

    Autistic college students are experiencing anxiety and depression at significantly higher rates than their non-autistic peers, according to new research from Binghamton University that analyzed data from nearly 150,000 undergraduate students across 342 institutions nationwide.

    The study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, represents one of the most comprehensive examinations to date of mental health challenges facing autistic students in higher education—a population that researchers say has been historically underrepresented in academic research despite growing enrollment numbers.

    “What we found is really staggering—autistic individuals endorse much higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their non-autistic peers,” said Diego Aragon-Guevara, the study’s lead author and a PhD student in psychology at Binghamton University.

    The research team analyzed data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which in 2021 became the first year that autism was included as an endorsable category in the survey. This milestone allowed researchers to conduct the first large-scale comparison of mental health outcomes between autistic and non-autistic college students.

    “We were really excited to see what the data would tell us. It was a big opportunity to be able to do this,” said Dr. Jennifer Gillis Mattson, professor of psychology and co-director of the Institute for Child Development at Binghamton University, who co-authored the study.

    The findings come at a critical time for higher education institutions as autism diagnoses continue to rise nationwide and more autistic students pursue college degrees. The research highlights a significant gap in support services that could impact student success and retention.

    “We know the number of autistic college students continues to increase every single year,” Gillis-Mattson noted. “We really do have an obligation to support these students, and to know how best to support these students, we need to look beyond just autism.”

    The study reveals that campus support systems may be inadvertently overlooking mental health needs while focusing primarily on autism-specific accommodations. Aragon-Guevara, whose research focuses on improving quality of life for autistic adults, said this represents a critical oversight in student services.

    “Support personnel might address an individual’s autism and, in the process, overlook their mental health issues,” he explained. “More care needs to be put into addressing that nuance.”

    The research underscores the need for institutions to develop more comprehensive support frameworks that address both autism-related needs and concurrent mental health challenges. The findings suggest that traditional disability services approaches may need significant enhancement to serve this population effectively.

    “We want to provide the best support for them and to make sure that they have a college experience where they get a lot out of it, but also feel comfortable,” Aragon-Guevara said.

    Dr. Hyejung Kim, an assistant professor in Binghamton’s Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership, noted that the complexity of factors affecting autistic students requires deeper investigation. 

    “This population often skews male, and interactions between personal factors and conditions such as anxiety and depression may shape overall well-being in college,” she said.

    Kim also pointed to additional considerations that institutions should examine. 

    “Autistic students are also more likely to pursue STEM fields, and many report different experiences with faculty and staff across institutional settings,” she said. “We still have much to learn about how these and other contextual factors relate to mental well-being.”

    The Binghamton team views this study as foundational research that confirms the scope of mental health challenges among autistic college students. Their next phase will investigate specific contributing factors, including social dynamics, faculty support, campus accessibility, and other environmental elements that influence student well-being.

    “There are so many elements that go into being comfortable in the new environment that is college,” Aragon-Guevara explained. “We want to look into that and see if there are any deficits in those areas that autistic college students are experiencing, so that we know where we can help support them, or create institutional things to help improve quality of life as a whole.”

    The research is part of a broader effort at Binghamton to better understand and support autistic students in higher education, with plans to collaborate with campus partners to develop targeted interventions based on their findings.

     

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  • For some students, home doesn’t feel like home

    For some students, home doesn’t feel like home

    In Britain, we can be oddly squeamish when talking about class, whether known or implied through a person’s accent, appearance, or behaviour.

    But not having an honest conversation with ourselves and our institutions about it is actively harming our students, especially the ones who are from the area where our institutions sit.

    I was one of a team of authors that published a report at the back end of 2024 exploring the role of social class and UK home region at Durham University. Our research, which was supported by the university, found that students from North East England had a lower sense of belonging than their peers.

    This is in comparison to students from other northern regions, the rest of the UK, and international students. And it is true even if they are from more advantaged backgrounds.

    I’ll say that again – students from North East England feel excluded from Durham University, which is in… North East England. This highlights that a problem at Durham University is not only class, but preconceived stereotypes based on how a person speaks, acts, or their family background.

    This article explains how we built our evidence base, and how the university responded, including by integrating our recommendations into the new Access and Participation Plan, and resourcing new staff roles and student-led activity.

    From anecdote to evidence

    The student-led report came out of the First Generation Scholars group in the Anthropology department in 2022.

    Having heard repeatedly the issues that first generation students were facing, and feeling it ourselves, we decided to move beyond anecdotal stories which were known in the university, and produce something concrete and legible which couldn’t be denied.

    We devised a survey and sent it to every student, with a 10 per cent response rate. Follow up focus groups were conducted to add additional context to the quantitative findings and ensure the voices of those who had been let down were heard.

    The findings were grouped into seven areas – overall sense of belonging at Durham, peer relationships, experiences in teaching and learning, college events and activities, college staff relationships, experiences in clubs and societies, and financial considerations.

    Across all these areas, social class had the strongest and most consistent effect. Students from less privileged backgrounds were more likely to feel ashamed of the way they speak, dress, and express themselves.

    They students felt targeted based on their background or personal characteristics – and said they were:

    …being told countless times by a flatmate that I seem the ‘most chavvy’ and continuously refer to Northerners as degenerates.

    …at a formal dinner, students laughed at my North-east accent, they asked if I lived in a pit village.

    The irony is that due to rising housing costs, many students really are being forced to live in pit villages.

    These instances weren’t only present in peer interactions – but also took place in the teaching and learning spaces. One student said that during a lecture, the lecturer mentioned that they couldn’t understand what the IT staff member was saying due to his North East accent – which was the same as the students’.

    Another noted that their peers were “sniggering when I made a comment in a tutorial.” Comments like these have led to students self-silencing during classes and, in some cases, changing their accents entirely to avoid stigma.

    Anecdotally, I’ve heard students say that their families laugh when they hear their new accent. If we are implicitly telling students that they have to change who they are in their own region, their own city, amongst their own family in order to fit in, we are telling them that they are not safe to be authentically themselves. That message lingers beyond university.

    The report notes that other groups of students also experienced exclusion. These included women, LGBTQ+ students, and students with a disability – although only disability came close to the magnitude of effects explained by social class and region.

    It should be noted that these are protected characteristics, while class and region are not. But there was also an interaction between these characteristics, class, and region. Women from less advantaged backgrounds from North East England had a worse time than their southern peers – which they reported as being due to their perceived intelligence and sexual availability. One North East female student stated,

    I was a bet for someone to sleep with at a college party because ‘Northern girls are easy.’

    Tackling the sense of exclusion

    The report also highlights instances of real connections for students. It was often in the simplest gestures, such as having a cup of tea with their college principal, porters saying hello in the corridor, or a lecturer confirming that they deserved to be at Durham, despite the student’s working-class background.

    We were worried that the university might be quick to dismiss, bury, or simply ignore the report. However, they’ve stepped up. The report has been used in the new Access and Participation Plan (APP), underpinning an intervention strategy to increase students’ sense of belonging through student-led, funded activities.

    That builds on the creation of new, instrumental staffing positions. In discussions following the launch event for the report, there was a real buzz and momentum from colleagues who spotlighted the work they were doing in this area – but with an awareness that more needs to be done.

    A key issue is connecting this discrete but interconnected work. Many activities or initiatives are happening in silos within departments, colleges, faculties, or within the central university, with few outside those realms knowing about it.

    In a time when every university is tightening their belts, coordinating activities to share resources and successes seems like an easy win.

    It would be easy to dismiss the problem as unique to Durham – the university and its students have often been under fire for being elitist, tone deaf, or exclusionary. But it’s likely that students at other institutions are facing similar barriers, comments, and slights.

    I’ve spoken to enough colleagues in SUs to know that it isn’t just a Durham problem, not even just a Russell Group problem. There will be those who are afraid of what they might find if they turn over that particular stone, actually having a good look at how social class impacts students belonging.

    But I’d argue it’s a positive thing to do. Bringing it into the light and confronting and acknowledging the problem means that we can move forward to make our students’ lives better.

    Read the full report here, including recommendations, and the university’s comments.

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  • The maintenance loan now covers only half of students’ costs

    The maintenance loan now covers only half of students’ costs

    I’m in two minds over whether it was a curse or a blessing – and I may be retrospectively overstating its impact.

    But when I sat down to watch a bit of telly back on Tuesday 13th May 2003, I had no real sense of the extent to which it would end up causing me lost sleep over silos.

    The Day Britain Stopped was a BBC1 docudrama, set in the near future, that explored how a devastating chain of events could leave the country completely paralysed.

    First, a national rail strike pushes huge volumes of passengers and freight onto the roads, overwhelming the motorway network.

    Then the M25 becomes jammed after multiple accidents, including one on the Dartford Crossing. Poor coordination between highways management, police, and emergency services slows response times, and conflicting rerouting decisions worsen the congestion, leaving rescue crews unable to reach incidents.

    Then severe delays ripple through the air transport system, compounded by diverted flights and congested airports. And these all lead to a mid-air collision between two aircraft near Heathrow – killing hundreds – as communication and coordination systems fail under strain.

    Gridlock

    I was thinking about The Day Britain Stopped on a campus a few weeks ago. Student leaders were explaining a proposal from their university to take 30 ECTS credits or so of most degrees (ie a semester) and turn them into a compulsory placement.

    A “mini sandwich” is not, all things considered, a terrible idea. Students would gain valuable work experience – which we know helps with graduate outcomes – and in aggregate there would end up being a moderate reduction in teaching and assessment costs.

    But on the assumption that it would often be unpaid, given the maximum maintenance loan is now significantly below the National Minimum Wage (when chunked out at 30 weeks for 35 hours a week), working full-time for a semester would pretty much prohibit students from earning the extra that many need to now.

    Just like the two teams each re-routing traffic down the same country lanes around the M25, it’s a classic case of not seeing the full picture – and when combined with the HE sector’s preference for policy over scenario planning, potentially disastrous. But nothing like that could be coming in the year ahead, surely?

    Britain’s best days are ahead

    This does nothing for my doom-mongering street cred, but back in May 2024 – when HEPI and TechnologyOne published work from Loughborough University on a Minimum Income for Students (MIS) – I allowed myself a little optimism.

    In a sea of information that seemed to be designed to entice participation rather than be realistic about the costs of it, I imagined that the headline figure – that students need £18,632 per year outside of London to achieve a baseline student experience – would start to adorn .ac.uk cost of living webpages offering budgeting advice to students.

    Given the methodology for calculating the MIS was close to that used by the Living Wage Foundation, and given the Westminster government’s intent to ask the Low Pay Commission to (to all intents and purposes) replicate that methodology for the National Living Wage, I even allowed myself to imagine for a few moments that government might commit to closing the gap between available support and liveable income. It surely wouldn’t be committed to a liveable income for work but not one for study?

    Alas, it wasn’t to be. Vanishingly few of the universities that offer “typical” or “sample” student budgets quote anything like that figure – and that’s if they offer one at all. International students are still misled into thinking that the maximum maintenance loan will cover their costs, parents are still completely in the dark about what they’ll really need to contribute, and many of the survival stories that I’m told by new student leaders every summer have gone from amusing to heartbreaking.

    The MIS report even recommended that when students apply to higher education, UCAS could compare the support available from the student’s home UK nation with their expected living costs. But at the time of writing, the admissions service’s webpage on budgeting instead offers “average” spend figures from 2020, and somehow omits the £2,110 that the source study found students spending when preparing for higher education.

    Governments, meanwhile, did little. This coming September, Scotland is offering up a freeze (real terms cut) on maintenance support, Northern Ireland has an increase that still falls significantly short, and both Wales and England are increasing the maximum by 3.1 per cent. A frozen means test threshold means even fewer will get that max in England – and right now both RPI inflation and CPI inflation are in fact running at 4.1 per cent.

    Update: It’s all worse

    As such, if last year’s report was like a warming sign, the 2025 update to the MIS report ought to be like a fire alarm. The update expands on the 2024 research by examining first-year students and those living in halls for the first time – and through focus groups across five UK cities, researchers found that first-year students face the highest costs of any student group – £418 per week including rent to reach a minimum acceptable standard of living.

    This represents a “first-year premium” of around £14-20 more per week than continuing students, driven by both “setting-up” costs (laptops, kitchen equipment, bedding) and “settling-in” costs (freshers week activities, food wastage while learning to budget, and higher social spending to establish friendships).

    The financial pressure on students has intensified dramatically across all UK nations. In England, even students receiving maximum maintenance support can only cover half (50 per cent) of their actual living costs, forcing them to work over 20 hours per week at minimum wage to make ends meet.

    That, I add in passing, is 20 hours more a week than most politicians’ alma mater allows students to work to have a fulfilling student experience:

    Studying at Oxford is an exciting experience with plenty of opportunities and a high number of contact hours. For this reason, paid term-time employment is not permitted except under exceptional circumstances and in consultation with your Tutor and the Senior Tutor.

    Students from different UK nations face different circumstances – Welsh students have 63 per cent of their costs covered by maintenance support, while those from Northern Ireland receive support covering just 42 per cent of their needs. The gap between what students need and what they receive has created what the researchers term a “hidden parental contribution” – one that now exceeds £10,000 annually for English families.

    I still regularly encounter those who expect to see mass dropouts as a result of the growing gap – but anyone that works closely with students will tell you that it’s a slow participation implosion that we’re seeing rather than a non-continuation explosion.

    Two-thirds of students now work during term time, the highest on record – pressure that is squeezing out various aspects of university life, as students report less time for independent study, fewer opportunities to join activities, and increased commuting distances. Many are experiencing a fundamentally different university experience than they expected, with a third having less disposable income than planned, and 1 in 5 buying fewer books or course materials.

    Over a three-year degree, the total cost of reaching minimum living standards ranges from approximately £59,000 in Wales to £77,000 in London, excluding tuition fees. And these figures are what students need not for luxury, but simply to participate fully in university life with dignity. Even living in accommodation that is “purpose built” for students, while providing important social opportunities, is typically more expensive than shared private housing – with rent making up to 47 per cent of total living costs in London.

    Thanks to Terry Nutkins, Gordon Banks and Let Loose

    One particularly pleasing aspect of the report is the “surprising” costs that so many miss when casting round the marcomms office for a couple of student ambassadors to cobble up a budget.

    Practical necessities include storage costs between academic years when halls contracts end, insurance for phones and laptops used outside accommodation, and mattress protectors for the “really cheap and uncomfortable” beds typically provided.

    First-year students face particular financial pressures during their settling-in period, wasting money on food while learning to shop and cook independently, plus ongoing laundry costs in halls that can reach £5 weekly for basic washing needs.

    Academic periods bring additional expenses, from extra food costs during exam sessions when students spend long hours in libraries, to transport costs for third-year students attending job interviews and graduate recruitment events.

    Basic costs related to social participation and mental health are also included. They include individual crockery and cutlery in halls to avoid hygiene issues when sharing with strangers, a £20 (!) annual personalisation budget for room decoration that prevents students feeling like they’re “in prison,” and £50 annually for clothing required for university social events and society activities.

    They are seemingly minor expenses – but they all add up, and they highlight how the “minimum” standard isn’t about luxury, but about enabling students to participate fully in university life, maintain their mental health, and avoid social exclusion.

    There’s also dehumidifier packs to combat poor ventilation and condensation from drying clothes, tabletop ironing boards to fit cramped spaces, and overdoor hooks because standard furniture is insufficient for storing belongings across shared living arrangements.

    Technical necessities include extension leads for inadequate electrical outlets and Wi-Fi boosters for poor connectivity, while protective measures like upholstery and carpet cleaners become crucial for avoiding deposit losses. Even basic items like door mats for communal cleanliness and shower caddies for bathroom storage represent additional shared costs when five people live together.

    Beyond accommodation, students face numerous individual costs related to campus life and practical necessities that all accumulate quickly. They include water bottles and Tupperware containers for daily campus use and food storage, delivery and returns costs reflecting modern shopping patterns, and small airers for bedroom clothes drying when shared facilities are limited.

    Admin costs like provisional driving licences at £34 become the most practical form of student ID, cheaper and more portable than passports. And there’s eye tests every two years with potential glasses purchases, and a small budget for everyday medicines and a couple of prescriptions annually – along with significant variations in personal care costs, the report particularly noting “the higher cost of hairdressing for afro hair in particular,” while emphasising that regular haircuts are deemed essential for being “presentable” and maintaining “self-respect”. Luxuries these are not.

    Parental contribution

    The report repeats last year’s calls for urgent, system-wide reform based on five principles: simplicity, transparency, independence, sufficiency, and fiscal neutrality. Key recommendations include increasing maintenance support so students can reach minimum living standards through a combination of government support and reasonable part-time work, providing a “first-year boost” to help new students establish themselves, and raising parental contribution thresholds so families only contribute when they themselves have achieved minimum living standards.

    The researchers argue reforms could be implemented without additional government spending – although the proposal is to reintroduce much-maligned but fairly progressive real interest rates on student loans, ensuring those who benefit most from higher education contribute accordingly. Sadly, they’re usually the loudest too.

    Without reforms, they warn of three critical risks – increasingly unequal access to higher education, declining quality of student experience, and threats to sector sustainability as students struggle to afford university attendance.

    But forgive me for the doom. Any or all of that will have to wait until at least September 2026, and even then is looking increasingly unlikely, given that the Treasury is said to be staring at a £41bn hole in its budget, and is currently borrowing the money on the bond markets to lend to students at an interest rate of 4.5 per cent – a far cry from 0.5 per cent nine years ago.

    And it could all be about to get much much worse.

    Basket cases

    Whether you use RPI or CPI is almost immaterial – it’s the basket of goods that matters, and neither basket captures the basket of a student typified in the MIS. Students spend more on food than the average consumer, and in that basket they’re less able to “trade down” through the brands.

    The Bank of England expects food inflation to be around 5 per cent Q3, rising to 5.5 per cent by the end of the year – higher global commodity prices, higher labour costs and Extended Producer Responsibility regulations that come into effect from October of this year all driving the change.

    In June, Beef and Butter were up at 20 per cent, Coffee was at 12.5 per cent and Chocolate was running at 16 per cent. Decent rent data is hard to come by – but it always seems to increase by more than inflation. If not included in their rent, energy prices have shifted from being a drag on inflation to providing a boost – Ofgem’s price cap for households is £1,720 for July-September 2025, almost 10 per cent higher than the same period last year.

    And the BoE’s key mitigation measure – to cut the Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4 per cent at its August meeting – might be helping students’ landlords, but it won’t be impacting student budgets.

    Meanwhile, if students have been steadily increasing their term-time work (both in numbers of students and hours worked), that could be a coming problem too. Employment growth has stagnated, and job vacancies have fallen significantly. And while two-thirds of students say they’ve been in work during term time, 89 per cent of applicants are now expecting to find work – rising to 93 per cent of care leavers, 94 per cent of international students and 96 per cent of estranged students.

    Either there’s lots of spare jobs going, or the UK may be about to run out of part-time work for students. That’s a problem few will see coming, will be almost certainly be worse in some cities than in others, and would be exacerbated if the usual ratio of students spending in businesses v those working in those businesses shifts significantly – both having grown gently in tandem as student numbers have grown. The need to convert more jobs on campus to those that students can do has never been greater – even if they sound like the first to have gone as teams have contracted in recent years.

    Some will find work that’s further and further away from campus, some will find work that’s more and more punishing on them both mentally and physically, and some simply won’t find it at all. Many – like the international student leader I met last week – will find themselves working for less than minimum wage just to pay their fees, in a country that couldn’t seem less interested in those sorts of labour market abuses if it tried.

    God forbid a student has a setback, an accident or a costly health problem. Or happens to be a student in a year when if nothing else, there will be major and un-modelled impacts on student housing supply as a result of dramatic reforms to the way that an already scandalously poor rental market is regulated.

    Implosions v explosions

    Maybe a crisis is coming – the classic unplanned-for crisis of the sort in The Day Britain Stopped, when various factors conspire in a single period to multiply each other into something that few saw coming. But even if it isn’t an explosion and we see non-continuation rates fall off a cliff, we can see what’s coming – students choosing to stay at home just as their local university closes courses, students choosing against the extracurriculars that would make up for the skills their course supplies but are no longer needed.

    Students breathing in the spores of black mould as they literally choose between heating, and eating.

    In the 2024 MIS report, the authors warned against any increases to maintenance support that would come at the cost of lower participation in higher education, “for example if an increase could only be paid for by capping the number of students who can study in higher education”. The kneejerk makes sense – neither governments, universities nor students are ever keen on measures that might limit opportunity.

    But offering students a loan that only covers half of their basic living costs, and then asking them to work a minimum 20 hours a week during term-time isn’t “opportunity”, it’s a scam – one that sells “student life” but for those on low incomes offers the kind of experience associated with labour market outcomes they’re less likely to achieve anyway, and one that allows lots of people to pat themselves on the participation back while plunging unsuspecting students into poverty.

    If the country really can’t afford mass participation in higher education, and students can’t afford to be students, the only morally right thing to do is admit it. And if telling students they need £21,126 per year to live on might put some of them off, then maybe it should.

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  • North Carolina Launches Expanded Direct Admission Program for 62,000 High School Seniors

    North Carolina Launches Expanded Direct Admission Program for 62,000 High School Seniors

    North Carolina is taking bold steps to democratize college access with the expansion of its NC College Connect program, which will offer direct admission to more than 62,000 public high school seniors this fall. The initiative represents a significant shift toward equity-focused admissions practices that prioritize accessibility over traditional application barriers.

    The program targets students who complete their junior year with a weighted GPA of 2.8 or higher. By eliminating the often overwhelming application process, NC College Connect removes financial and procedural obstacles that disproportionately affect first-generation college students and those from underrepresented communities.

    “NC College Connect represents a fundamental shift in how we approach college admissions in North Carolina,” said Peter Hans, President of the University of North Carolina System. The initiative reflects growing national recognition that traditional admissions processes can perpetuate educational inequities.

    Maurice “Mo” Green, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, praised the collaborative nature of the effort.

    “When our entire education community works together like this, students win. NC College Connect removes barriers and creates clear pathways to college for thousands of our students,” he said.

    The program’s inclusive design addresses systemic challenges that have historically limited college access for students from diverse backgrounds. By providing direct admission letters and eliminating complex application requirements, the initiative particularly benefits students who might otherwise be deterred by navigating multiple institutional processes.

    Participating institutions span the full spectrum of North Carolina’s higher education landscape, including UNC System universities, independent colleges and universities, and community colleges. This comprehensive approach ensures students have pathways to various types of post-secondary education that align with their academic goals and financial circumstances.

    Dr. Jeff Cox, President of the North Carolina Community College System, highlighted the program’s potential to transform access to affordable education. 

    “By removing barriers and simplifying the process, we’re helping more students access the life-changing opportunities our community colleges provide—close to home and at a price they can afford,” he said.

    Community colleges have long served as crucial entry points for students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, offering both career preparation and transfer pathways to four-year institutions. The inclusion of community colleges in NC College Connect recognizes their vital role in democratizing higher education access.

    The program’s commitment to equity extends beyond admissions to address affordability concerns through targeted financial aid initiatives. The Next NC Scholarship and NC Need-Based Scholarship specifically support students from households earning $80,000 or less, covering tuition and fees at participating institutions.

    Additionally, students attending Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Western Carolina University benefit from the NC Promise plan’s $500 per semester tuition rate. These historically Black institutions and regional universities serve particularly diverse student populations, making the affordable tuition structure especially impactful for underrepresented students.

    Hope Williams, President of North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities, noted the unique value proposition of smaller institutions: the personalized attention and specialized programs that can be particularly beneficial for students who might struggle in larger university environments.

    The program builds on a successful pilot year that served more than 70,000 students, demonstrating the demand for streamlined college access. The expansion indicates that initial outcomes validated the approach’s effectiveness in connecting students with higher education opportunities.

    Students can verify their eligibility through the NCCollegeConnect.com portal or by consulting with high school counselors, ensuring multiple touchpoints for information and support. Eligible seniors will receive official admission letters this fall for the 2026-27 academic year, providing ample time for planning and preparation.

    NC College Connect positions North Carolina as a leader in reimagining college admissions to prioritize access and equity. As higher education institutions nationwide grapple with declining enrollment and questions about traditional admissions practices, North Carolina’s comprehensive approach offers a replicable model for other states.

    The initiative’s success will likely be measured not just in enrollment numbers, but in its ability to diversify the state’s college-going population and create pathways for students who might otherwise forego higher education. By removing procedural barriers and addressing financial constraints, NC College Connect represents a holistic approach to educational equity that extends well beyond the admissions office.

     

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  • 4 tips to support the literacy needs of middle and high school students

    4 tips to support the literacy needs of middle and high school students

    Key points:

    Today’s middle schoolers continue to struggle post-pandemic to read and write at the level needed to successfully navigate more complex academic content in the upper grades and beyond, according to a new report from NWEA, a K-12 assessment and research organization.

    Based on NWEA’s research, current 8th graders would need close to a full academic year of additional instruction to catch up to their pre-pandemic peers in reading. This trend was reiterated in recent assessment results from the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), with only 30 percent of eighth-grade students performing at or above the NAEP proficient level.

    While early literacy initiatives have garnered attention in recent years, the fact remains that many students struggle to read and are not prepared for the rigors of middle school. Students quickly find themselves challenged to keep up as they no longer receive explicit, structured reading instruction, even as they are expected to comprehend increasingly complex materials across subjects, like science, history, or English Language Arts.

    The report, Policy recommendations for addressing the middle school reading crisis, is co-authored by Miah Daughtery, EdD, NWEA VP of Academic Advocacy at HMH (NWEA’s parent company), and Chad Aldeman, founder of Read Not Guess.

    “Our current middle and high schoolers were just starting their literacy journey when the pandemic hit, and we cannot lessen the urgency to support them. But, middle school literacy is complex even for students who are reading on grade level. This demands intentional, well-funded, and focused policy leadership that includes support across the K-12 spectrum,” said Daughtery. “Simply put, learning to read is not done when a student exits elementary school; support cannot stop there either.”

    Policymakers and district leaders must adopt a systems-level approach that supports both early learners and the unique literacy needs of middle and high school students.

    The new report provides four components that can be leveraged to make this happen:

    1. Use high-quality, grade-appropriate assessments that provide specific data on the literacy needs of middle schoolers.
    2. Look at flexible scheduling and policies that promote literacy development throughout the entire school day and help districts more effectively use instructional time.
    3. Understand and support the unique literacy needs of middle schoolers across subjects and disciplines from a systems perspective and invest in teacher professional learning in all disciplines, including at the upper grades, within state and district literacy plans.
    4. Curate relationships with external partners, like community organizations and nonprofits, who share similar goals in improving literacy outcomes, and can both support and reinforce literacy development, stretching beyond the school’s hours and resources.
    eSchool News Staff
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  • AI teacher tools display racial bias when generating student behavior plans, study finds

    AI teacher tools display racial bias when generating student behavior plans, study finds

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, AI teacher assistants recommended more-punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white, a new study shows.

    These findings come from a report on the risks of bias in artificial intelligence tools published Wednesday by the non-profit Common Sense Media. Researchers specifically sought to evaluate the quality of AI teacher assistants — such as MagicSchool, Khanmingo, Curipod, and Google Gemini for Education — that are designed to support classroom planning, lesson differentiation, and administrative tasks.

    Common Sense Media found that while these tools could help teachers save time and streamline routine paperwork, AI-generated content could also promote bias in lesson planning and classroom management recommendations.

    Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, said the problems identified in the study are serious enough that ed tech companies should consider removing tools for behavior intervention plans until they can improve them. That’s significant because writing intervention plans of various sorts is a relatively common way teachers use AI.

    After Chalkbeat asked about Common Sense Media’s findings, a Google spokesperson said Tuesday that Google Classroom has turned off the shortcut to Gemini that prompts teachers to “Generate behavior intervention strategies” to do additional testing.

    However, both MagicSchool and Google, the two platforms where Common Sense Media identified racial bias in AI-generated behavior intervention plans, said they could not replicate Common Sense Media’s findings. They also said they take bias seriously and are working to improve their models.

    School districts across the country have been working to implement comprehensive AI policies to encourage informed use of these tools. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft have partnered with the American Federation of Teachers to provide free training in using AI platforms. The Trump Administration also has encouraged greater AI integration in the classroom. However, recent AI guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Education have not directly addressed concerns about bias within these systems.

    About a third of teachers report using AI at least weekly, according to a national survey conducted by the Walton Family Foundation in cooperation with Gallup. A separate survey conducted by the research organization Rand found teachers specifically report using these tools to help develop goals for Individualized Education Program — or IEP — plans. They also say they use these tools to shape lessons or assessments around those goals, and to brainstorm ways to accommodate students with disabilities.

    Torney said Common Sense Media isn’t trying to discourage teachers from using AI in general. The goal of the report is to encourage more awareness of potential uses of AI teacher assistants that might have greater risks in the classroom.

    “We really just want people to go in eyes wide open and say, ‘Hey these are some of the things that they’re best at and these are some of the things you probably want to be a little bit more careful with,’” he said.

    Common Sense Media identified AI tools that can generate IEPs and behavior intervention plans as high risk due to their biased treatment of students in the classroom. Using MagicSchool’s Behavior Intervention Suggestions tool and the Google Gemini “Generate behavior intervention strategies tool,” Common Sense Media’s research team ran the same prompt about a student who struggled with reading and showed aggressive behavior 50 times using white-coded names and 50 times using Black-coded names, evenly split between male- and female-coded names.

    The AI-generated plans for the students with Black-coded names didn’t all appear negative in isolation. But clear differences emerged when those plans from MagicSchool and Gemini were compared with plans for students with white-coded names.

    For example, when prompted to provide a behavior intervention plan for Annie, Gemini emphasized addressing aggressive behavior with “consistent non-escalating responses” and “consistent positive reinforcement.” Lakeesha, on the other hand, should receive “immediate” responses to her aggressive behaviors and positive reinforcement for “desired behaviors,” the tool said. For Kareem, Gemini simply said, “Clearly define expectations and teach replacement behaviors,” with no mention of positive reinforcement or responses to aggressive behavior.

    Torney noted that the problems in these AI-generated reports only became apparent across a large sample, which can make it hard for teachers to identify. The report warns that novice teachers may be more likely to rely on AI-generated content without the experience to catch inaccuracies or biases. Torney said these underlying biases in intervention plans “could have really large impacts on student progression or student outcomes as they move across their educational trajectory.”

    Black students are already subject to higher rates of suspension than their white counterparts in schools and more likely to receive harsher disciplinary consequences for subjective reasons, like “disruptive behavior.” Machine learning algorithms replicate the decision-making patterns of the training data that they are provided, which can perpetuate existing inequalities. A separate study found that AI tools replicate existing racial bias when grading essays, assigning lower scores to Black students than to Asian students.

    The Common Sense Media report also identified instances when AI teacher assistants generated lesson plans that relied on stereotypes, repeated misinformation, and sanitized controversial aspects of history.

    A Google spokesperson said the company has invested in using diverse and representative training data to minimize bias and overgeneralizations.

    “We use rigorous testing and monitoring to identify and stop potential bias in our AI models,” the Google spokesperson said in an email to Chalkbeat. “We’ve made good progress, but we’re always aiming to make improvements with our training techniques and data.”

    On its website, MagicSchool promotes its AI teaching assistant as “an unbiased tool to aid in decision-making for restorative practices.” In an email to Chalkbeat, MagicSchool said it has not been able to reproduce the issues that Common Sense Media identified.

    MagicSchool said their platform includes bias warnings and instructs users not to include student names or other identifying information when using AI features. In light of the study, it is working with Common Sense to improve its bias detection systems and design tools in ways that encourage educators to review AI generated content more closely.

    “As noted in the study, AI tools like ours hold tremendous promise — but also carry real risks if not designed, deployed, and used responsibly,” MagicSchool told Chalkbeat. “We are grateful to Common Sense Media for helping hold the field accountable.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on AI, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub.

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  • Adding a trauma-responsive lens for student support

    Adding a trauma-responsive lens for student support

    Key points:

    Across the country, our schools are being taxed beyond their capacity to support educational success. We’ve known for a long time that students need a three-dimensional structure of guidance and encouragement to thrive. That’s why the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework was created–it’s a prevention framework for early identification of varying student needs and the responses needed to maximize academic success. In theory, an MTSS supports academic, social-emotional, and behavioral needs in equal measure. However, in practice, many schools are struggling to incorporate social-emotional and behavioral components in their MTSS–even as many of their students come to school bearing the effects of adversity, trauma, or crisis.

    This imbalance is leaving millions of children behind.

    Each year, at least 1 in 7 children in the United States experience abuse, violence, natural disasters, or other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). By age 16, roughly two-thirds of children will have been exposed to at least one traumatic event. This can impair their ability to learn well and contribute to absenteeism, while secondary trauma spirals out from these students to classmates and teachers, multiplying the overall impact. Left unaddressed, the imprint of such events could warp the future of our school and public communities.

    Since COVID-19, schools have reported unprecedented levels of absenteeism and student distress, and supporting trauma-exposed students without training puts more pressure on teachers, who are already burned out and leaving the profession at high rates. Therefore, it is clear to me that creating school-wide networks of trauma-informed adults is essential for fostering supportive learning and growth for students, enhancing educator capacity to nurture trauma-affected learners, and ensuring effective trauma resource management within districts.

    Research has identified a supportive school community as a strong childhood protective factor against the effects of trauma. We should be hopeful about our path forward. But the vision and blueprint for this enhancement of MTSS need to come as soon as possible, and it needs to come from state-level education leaders and school district leaders.

    Gaps in support and expertise

    Consider this scenario: A student who recently experienced a traumatic car accident sits near a window in class, experiencing significant distress or dysregulation without outward signs. A sudden screech of tires outside activates their sympathetic nervous system (the one associated with fight or flight), and the student shuts down, withdrawing into themselves. Their teacher, unaware of the student’s trauma history and unequipped with relevant training, interprets the response as a continuation of past misbehavior or as an academic deficit.

    This sort of misunderstanding takes place in a thousand places every day. I would stress that this isn’t a reflection of bad intentions, but rather a symptom of fragmented systems and knowledge. Even when trauma is recognized, lack of intentional collaboration and training often result in missed opportunities or inconsistent support, which cannot maximize recovery from trauma and may, in fact, hinder it, as research on retraumatization suggests.

    There might be mismatched expectations when teachers send students to the counselor, not knowing that they themselves have a role to play in the healing. In other cases, students may be referred to a school counselor and have a productive support session–but on their way back to class, a seemingly benign statement from a third party can be misconstrued or cause dysregulation, unintentionally undoing the support they’ve received. The solution to all these problems is school-wide training on trauma-informed skills. This way, all educators and staff alike develop a shared knowledge, understanding, language, and responses as they collaborate and connect with students. With the right tools, adults on campus have better trauma-informed strategies to use in their relationships with students and in building a safe and supportive school community.

    The proof is all around us

    Trauma training works synergistically within MTSS: social-emotional and trauma-responsive support allows for better academic outcomes, which work to further reduce behavioral problems, and so on. At the Center for Safe & Resilient Schools and Workplaces, we see this play out often with our school district partners. For example, at Pasadena Unified School District, which was recently ravaged by the Eaton Canyon Fire, trauma-informed best practices and preparations have enabled district leaders to reopen schools with sufficient psychological understanding and interventions along with the needed material support for the 10,000 students who were affected.

    A truly effective MTSS model does not treat trauma as a peripheral concern. It integrates trauma-responsive strategies into every tier of support–from universal practices, to targeted interventions, to intensive mental health services. In that environment, every adult who comes in contact with students has the training to adhere to trauma best practices.

    We are at a juncture where the impact of trauma poses serious risks to the education system, but evidence-based approaches exist to solve the problem. Change from the state level down is the best way to transform school cultures quickly, and I urge state education leaders to take action. Any MTSS plan isn’t complete without a trauma-informed foundation, lens, and programming. And our students–each and every one–deserve nothing less.

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  • Call to promote university racism survey – Campus Review

    Call to promote university racism survey – Campus Review

    The Australian Human Rights Commission’s landmark Racism@Uni survey will appear in student and staff inboxes from August 11.

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