Should I Stay or Should I Go?

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  • Title: Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Understanding Student Subjectivity, Institutional Discourse, and the Role Enabling Academics Can Play in Empowering Students within the System
  • Author(s): Sarah Hattam, Jennifer Stokes, Tamra Ulpen
  • Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
  • Collection: Common Ground Research Networks
  • Series: The Learner
  • Journal Title: The International Journal of Educational Organization and Leadership
  • Keywords: University, Enabling Program, Australia, Discourse Analysis, Social Justice
  • Volume: 25
  • Issue: 1
  • Date: July 24, 2018
  • ISSN: 2329-1656 (Print)
  • ISSN: 2329-1591 (Online)
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.18848/2329-1656/CGP/v25i01/1-14
  • Citation: Hattam, Sarah, Jennifer Stokes, and Tamra Ulpen. 2018. "Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Understanding Student Subjectivity, Institutional Discourse, and the Role Enabling Academics Can Play in Empowering Students within the System." The International Journal of Educational Organization and Leadership 25 (1): 1-14. doi:10.18848/2329-1656/CGP/v25i01/1-14.
  • Extent: 14 pages

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Abstract

By employing a critical lens to carefully consider the content of official communications and their potential impact on wavering students, educators can create more inclusive texts that are likely to generate a better outcome for all involved. Through program coordination from 2014 to 2016, the authors interviewed hundreds of enabling program students who were identified through the university system for the academic review process. From these interviews, archetypes have been developed, which highlight the types of issues and challenges that are experienced by students and may result in their being identified for academic review. The authors then applied a Foucauldian discourse analysis methodology to “texts” developed by an Australian university in the academic review process to review the impact the dominant discourses constituted in the texts may have on decisions of students enrolled in an enabling program to “stay or go.” The paper explores the challenges of neo-liberalism and cultural capital in university transition, offering an alternative approach to supporting students-at-risk, which involves challenging the binary of good/bad student and opens the subject position encouraging students to “stay instead of go.” Examining the complexity of the interactions with the university beyond the simple binary of “good” and “bad” students assists educators in identifying where positive change can be made to better support student connection to the institution and greater learning outcomes.