Humana (masculina) y resto

i) Socio-economic background of students:

The choice of universities, a private and a public university, were chosen to ensure a broad range of participation from different social and cultural backgrounds in the project (Chapter IV, p. 103). As a public university, it was expected that U1 would have students from a wider range of socio-economic backgrounds, while the private

university U2 would be expected to have a majority students from privileged

backgrounds as the fees paid were high and admission highly selective (Chapter V, p. 114 and 128-130).

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U1 did offer places to student mentors and mentees from diverse backgrounds and therefore students from more disadvantaged (widening participation) backgrounds could participate in the project. However, one of the departments at that university was highly selective in its admissions policies, and in practice, all selected student mentees at that department belonged to less disadvantaged backgrounds. U2 selected student mentees who were not local to the university and most of them were first generation HE entrants, and who therefore experienced the additional problems of living away from home. In this group were some scholarship students who did come from less advantaged backgrounds. While it was not intended to be achieved in this way, the effect of these selections in the two universities did indeed result in the selection of students from a wide range of backgrounds. The variable of socio-economic background was not one of the factors measured during the research but it was notable that mentors faced different kinds of issues with students from different backgrounds. As noted earlier (Chapter VI), some students faced greater problems with their use of ICT technology, and also with adapting to studies in English. These students were mainly from less advantaged backgrounds. However, these differences, important though they were to the mentees and mentors, were not significant in terms of the overall results. The reason for this was that the mentoring scheme was designed and intended to allow mentors to respond to the specific needs of the learning culture of the mentees and to address the authentic learning site of the students (James and Bloomer, 2001). The success or otherwise of the project was measured by the extent to which this was achieved, and in so far as the mentors succeeded in addressing the specific issues, the project was successful. ii) Gender:

It was ensured that there would be representation and participation of male and female students (mentors and mentees – see Chapter V, p. 130, Graph 2) and academics (mentoring coordinators) in the project. The basic principles of the project were equal opportunity and inclusion of the participants. While U1 had nearly 80% female students, the overall ratio of male and female participants in the project was approximately 1:1 (p. 130). In Chapter II and Chapter VI, the issue of gender in education in Pakistan is discussed. In practice, there appeared to be no significant differences in the ways in which male and female participants worked within the project.

183 iii) Subject areas/departments:

At U1 the student cohort was from two different departments; Humanities (Education) and Science (Biochemistry and Biotechnology). At U2 the students were not selected on the basis of the departments but from all subject disciplines university wide. This

included Psychology, Computing sciences, Business and Administration and Biomedical sciences.

The intention was to see if there were any significant differences in the willingness and approaches of students and staff from different disciplines to participation in the project, and also whether the different structures of learning in these subjects made an impact (p. 131). For example, students in the lab-based science subjects experience learning in a different way to those from a classroom-based subject. In practice, students from the lab-based subjects were much more willing to participate. However, given other

variables such as the fact that this group tended to have stronger academic backgrounds and also received encouragement from the academic staff, it is not appropriate to draw any conclusions from this without further study.

iv) The level of study of the participants:

Except for one department IER at U1, all the other student participants were from undergraduate degree courses. There were no significant differences found from the findings on the mentoring process of the impact of postgraduate or undergraduate level of study of the students involved. There was greater willingness and enthusiasm among the postgraduate mentees at the end of the academic year to volunteer as mentors for their junior/new students.

v) The researcher:

One constant amongst these variables was the researcher who administered the project, the survey, evaluation and the feedback. This enabled a consistency of approach in the gathering of data which was of particular importance in the qualitative methods such as individual and group interviews where interpersonal contact is central to the exchange and thus to the data gathered. It could be argued that, as a female with a middle class background, my positionality in relation to the students created a barrier which might have inhibited the responses that were given. One further factor related to the particular sample of students in the study is that my educational background is in science

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Master’s degree in Education and in Chemistry). The groups of students in the sample were students of these subjects. In meetings with students, my experience as a teacher with a high level of familiarity with both the subjects studied, the university setting and the cultural backgrounds of the students enabled me to achieve a degree of interaction with the students that allowed effective communication (p. 4, 83-85, 87, 103, 128, 141). As discussed in Chapters I and IV, there may be other important factors such as

personality, approachability or charisma that impact on the success of a project of this kind. However, while it is a requirement for similar projects in different situations to consider the variables associated with the researcher with sensitivity to the specific context, in the current project, I found no reason to think that my positionality had any bearing on the results shown.

It might be necessary to add one rider to this: where the response to the researcher is positive and enthusiastic, respectful (to me as a female and as a figure with some authority whose presence had been sanctioned by the university authorities) it is

possible that more positive responses would be provided in interview and other personal contacts. However, the use of questionnaires and logbooks as part of the triangulation offered the possibility to recognise possible bias in the results.