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Reflections on relations, connections and mattering in research with students from refugee backgrounds

This presentation focuses on a major university programme that set-up a mechanism for UK-based forcibly displaced people to access a distance university. It draws on a study that investigated the concept of ‘transition’ (Baker & Irwin, 2021; Quinn, 2009), focusing on students from refugee backgrounds as they enter distance HE. To investigate this in more detail, the study involved ethnographic approaches, including observations in drop-in sessions with students, monthly academic support sessions with students, one-to-one meetings with key institutional stakeholders, email communication with students and tutors, and multi-stakeholder workshops, as well as semi-structured interviews with students (n=8; repeated) and with tutors (n=11). In this presentation, I will draw on Gravett’s (2023) notion of ‘relational pedagogies’ and ‘mattering’ and share evidence that emphasise the relational aspects of work that underpinned the programme, and the ways that these helped tutors recognize, and devise strategies to respond to, student needs, and anticipate issues that may arise. I will also discuss and offer some reflections on wider material contexts, spaces, objects and things, which entangle to impact upon the teaching and learning that happened at a distance in the first year of the implementation of this programme.

This online event is open to the public.