Improving educational outcomes for equity students must start with making an effort to understand their diverse challenges and needs.
A new paper out of by Curtin’s Mollie Dollinger and colleagues (mostly) from Deakin’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning finds that equity students can find themselves in a loop of repeated emotions and experiences, impacting their future behaviour towards their studies.
The paper says that different students have different time windows (the mother of two fitting study into small periods of time between other responsibilities, the young student fitting study around work, the student with mental health issues fitting study into moments of better health).
The clash of timescapes, when non-study work, health and caring responsibilities collide with study time, creates emotional and stressful experiences, which can reoccur semi-regularly because of recurring time challenges in the lives of students.
This is an article for the timetablers, the lecturers and those employed to support students more effectively in their hours of need. It is likely an issue for most students, but with a more frequent recurrence of stressors and the sense of being caught in a time loop for students on lower incomes / with greater caring responsibilities/ health or mental health issues.
