BAME Awarding Gap Funded Project: The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment

The project aims to close the BAME awarding gap at The Bartlett through a programme of peer mentoring, creative workshops and collaboration between teachers and students, which will focus on optimising and improving the teaching of undergraduate BAME students in the faculty specifically in relation to areas where they feel their cultural experience and hinterland leaves them most vulnerable or unprepared to take risks in their education.

The rationale for this project stems from work on ‘intellectual risk taking’ in education, and the perceived rewards for students who are “resourceful, [try] new things, and [ask] questions even at the risk of making a mistake or feeling inadequate” (Dachner et al, 2017, p. 415; also, Clifford, 1991).

The central focus of this project is two-fold: (1) To build knowledge and tactics amongst UK BAME students to take calculated intellectual risks. This will be achieved through intergenerational mentoring between 1st year undergraduate students and mentors drawn from postgraduate taught and postgraduate research students and alumni. (2) To build awareness and resources amongst educators and students that allows the former to recognise and subsequently reward risk-taking by UK BAME students, and potentially change their pedagogy and approach to risk taking. This will be achieved through a series of creative workshops that centre student-educator collaborations and create a space for open dialogue on intellectual risk and reward.

References:

Clifford, M.M. (1991) Risk Taking: Theoretical, Empirical, and Educational Considerations, Educational Psychologist, 26:3-4, 263-297.

Dachner, A., Miguel, R.F., Patena, R.A. (2017) Risky Business: Understanding Student Intellectual Risk Taking in Management Education, Journal of Management Education 41(3):415-443.