Ekaterina Pechenkina

Staying quiet or rocking the boat? An autoethnography of organisational visual white supremacy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on critical race theory’s application in organisational visuals research with a focus on forms of visual white supremacy in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the authors’ personal experiences as racialised “Others” with organisational white supremacy, this paper employs reflective autoethnography to elucidate how whiteness is positioned in the academic workplace through the use of visual imagery. The university, departments and colleagues appearing in this study have been de-identified to ensure their anonymity and protect their privacy. Findings – The authors’ autoethnographic accounts discuss how people of colour are appropriated, commodified and subordinated in the ongoing practice of whiteness. Research limitations/implications – Illuminating the subtle ways through which white supremacy is embedded in the visual and aesthetic dimensions of the organisation provides a more critical awareness of workplace racism. Originality/value ...

'It becomes almost an act of defiance’: indigenous Australian transformational resistance as a driver of academic achievement

Abstract Indigenous Australian underrepresentation in higher education remains a topical issue for social scientists, educationalists and policymakers alike, with the concept of indigenous academic success highly contested. This article is based on findings of a doctoral study investigating the drivers of indigenous Australian academic success in a large, public, research-intensive and metropolitan Australian university. It draws on the concept of transformational resistance to illuminate the forms that indigenous resistance takes and how identities of resistance performed by indigenous students complicate and speak to the students’ notions of academic success. By drawing on ethnographic data, this article demonstrates how indigenous academic success is fuelled by the idea of resistance to the Western dominance, where resistance becomes the very cornerstone of indigenous achievement.

Using a gamified mobile app to increase student engagement, retention and academic achievement

This study investigated whether the use of a gamified mobile learning app influenced students’ academic performance and boosted their engagement in the subject. Created to better engage students in lecture content, the app was used to deliver multiple-choice content-based quizzes directly to students’ personal mobile devices post-lecture and pre-tutorial. After measuring the relationships between students’ app usage and their engagement, retention and academic achievement in the subject, it is suggested that following the app’s introduction, student retention rates and academic performance increased, and there was a positive correlation between students’ scoring highly on the app and achieving higher academic grades. While the app’s affordances for learning are promising, the causal relationship between the app usage and improved student outcomes requires further investigation. Conclusions made in the context of the wider scholarship of mobile app enhanced learning and applied game principles in HE.

Instruments of white supremacy: people of colour resisting white domination in higher education

Abstract This article extends the critical race literature in education by theorising the ways through which white power passes through the bodies of people of colour in higher education institutions. Using autoethnographic inquiry of our experiences as non-white academic and professional staff in two Australian universities, we examine the ways we became co-opted into reinforcing white privilege while subordinating or marginalising students of colour. Rather than complying with the white supremacist ideologies and practices of our institutions, we explore the potentials for resistance against the institutionalised racial order, recognising that writing and publishing our experiences is one approach to speaking out against white supremacy at our universities.

Digital literacy and other factors influencing the success of online courses in remote Indigenous communities

Uneven distribution of resources and services based on geographical location (commonly referred to as spatial inequality) is likely to influence Indigenous Australian higher education outcomes. Online education could potentially resolve access to education, where distance is the primary barrier, by mitigating some of the impediments to Indigenous education such as travelling long distances or living away from home. Recent Indigenous higher education trends suggest that online courses are in fact succeeding in attracting and retaining Indigenous students, particularly in regional areas. However, little is known of how socio-technological barriers (such as Internet connectivity, ownership/sharing of devices and digital literacy) relate to and interact with other social and educational barriers. In this chapter we discuss online education in relation to digital literacy and related factors. We draw on evidence from Swinburne University of Technology’s Indigenous Futures Program, which is developing pathway programs for regional and remote Indigenous communities. The project is being conducted in partnership with not-for-profit organisations working with Indigenous individuals and communities in regional and remote areas.

Innovation-by-numbers: an autoethnography of innovation as violence

ABSTRACT This article offers an account of a university exercise in ‘innovation’ to illustrate how innovation discourses and processes can be a vehicle for violence in organisations. Presented as two narratives of the same event told from different perspectives, our stories of a curriculum redesign workshop explore the ways innovation became a form of symbolic capital that prompted struggles of control and compliance among individual staff. Schemes of managerial dominance were then in turn individuated, while the assault of innovation became institutionalised and ultimately shielded from critical interrogation. In presenting these accounts, we seek to challenge the rising dominance of innovation as something vital to economic growth and social needs, highlighting instead how its romanticisation is highly problematic.

Persevering, educating and influencing a change: a case study of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander narratives of academic success

ABSTRACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ experiences in Australian higher education continue to be influenced by the sociopolitical narratives of alterity which locate the students as more likely than their nonIndigenous peers to struggle academically and need support. These western-centric perceptions of indigeneities not only affect Indigenous students’ everyday university experiences but can even influence their decision whether to persist with their studies or not. Drawing on data collected in a large, metropolitan Australian university, this article presents a case study of Indigenous students’ ways of perceiving and resisting their positioning by the dominant university systems as ‘problematic’, at risk of failure and needing support. Specifically, the article explores educational pathways of three Indigenous students, their narratives exemplifying primary strategies of enacting and articulating resistances to the dominant education structures in order to fuel academic success.