Ethical Action Plan, Version 1

1. What is your project focus?

The Mental Wellbeing of Pre-sessional Students.

The context is a course of short duration (up to 12 weeks), high workload, and high stakes (not making the grade means not being able to progress onto chosen course), and so potentially high stress.

2. What are you going to read about?

Areas I’m presently considering to explore are:

1. Embedding wellbeing into the curriculum (time within the Pre-sessional course does not allow for additional material to be added)
2. How the arts can benefit mental health
3. Teacher language, and its effect on students’ wellbeing
4. Possibly, mental wellbeing of online students (time/space may not allow, and this more generic area has likely already been explored in depth, and its inclusion may cause this research to lose its primary focus).

3. What action are you going to take in your teaching practice?

Present expectation is that there are two areas where action can be taken:

1. Tweaks, or emphases, that can be applied to the existing curriculum
2. Adoption of appropriate teacher language that encourages students to make maximum effort whilst not inducing unnecessary anxiety.

4. Who will be involved and how?

As Pre-sessional will not be running again until the summer of 2025, there will not be the opportunity to apply the findings of this research during its cycle. In lieu of this, I plan to consult with the Pre-sessional lead team for their feedback.

What I need advice on is whether I should be involving others during the research. I could attempt to contact recent Pre-sessional students, perhaps with a questionnaire or alternatively short interviews, but I am unsure how I would approach this given that it may be such a sensitive topic for many, with students not wishing to display any weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Because of this, I have not (yet) taken time to properly consider what kind of questions may be asked.

N.B. If any of your participants/co-researchers will be under 18, please seek advice from your tutor.

5. What are the health & safety concerns, and how will you prepare for them?

Largely not applicable, but I should proceed with the awareness that discussing mental health issues may be difficult for some.

6. How will you protect the data of those involved?

Any references to actual students will be generalised and anonymised.

7. How will you work with your participants in an ethical way?

With sensitivity, and any discussions with colleagues/students will be applied to ‘students in general’ and not directed to individuals.

Reflections on Tutor Feedback

The principal concern addressed by my tutor is that I am not sufficiently focused, with my scope being too broad. The topic of mental health and wellbeing is actually two topics! That was certainly not my intention, and is likely due to my naïve understanding of the terminology. I present four areas for reading, and again there’s too much to take on board. I feel that all four ideas are valid, but I can see that I need to be fixed on one only – others could be subject of future research.

The advice is to have one focus, one area, one action, one method. Although it is suggested that I may examine a range of these chains before deciding upon one. So my next step is to refine my initial focus, developing an appropriate research question to guide me through the chain of four.