Pathways to the Professions P2P

Main idea

Outline

The Pathways to the Professions project is a UCD University for All initiative which looks at how we can remove barriers to access, participation and success at each step along the pathway to a profession.

The Pathways to the Professions project extends access beyond the university and academic success to career preparation and achievement. It aims to provide wraparound support for students throughout their learning experience before and at university and which extends on to early career success.

The project strands therefore map to the student lifecycle: from pre-entry outreach, to university and academic success and on to early career progression and professional achievement for our graduates.

Underlying Construct:
The project model was initially developed with the legal profession. It now involves collaboration with other professions to research, develop and test a transferable ‘Pathways to the Professions’ model of best practice to mainstream inclusion across a range of professions.

This model will be developed into a digital P2P toolkit which will be a practical guide and roadmap to support anyone seeking to remove barriers to access, participation and success at any step along the pathway to professional success. It will be applicable across a range of professions.

The toolkit will be an umbrella ‘roadmap’ instrument collating the project strands and initiatives as models/illustrations of good practice for systematic rollout of the various pathway steps.

It will comprise standalone sections for each project strand and will include good practice guidelines, models/case studies and self assessment checklists to assess progress and support the identification of opportunities to build inclusion at each step in the pathway to a profession. (See image of pathway steps below). The learning from the inclusive workplaces project strand will be included in the project toolkit and will be developed into an accreditation for professions for inclusive workplaces.

Goals

1. Research, develop and test a transferable ‘Pathways to the Professions’ model of best practice to mainstream inclusion across a range of professions which will:

• remove barriers to access, participation and success at each step along the pathway to a profession.
• extend access beyond the university and academic success to career preparation and achievement. 
• provide wraparound support for students throughout their learning experience before and at university and which extends on to early career success.

2. Develop this model into a digital P2P toolkit which will be a practical guide and roadmap to support anyone seeking to remove barriers to access, participation and success at any step along the pathway to professional success. It will be applicable across a range of professions and will be an umbrella ‘roadmap’ instrument collating the project strands and initiatives as models/illustrations of good practice for systematic rollout of the various pathway steps. 

3. Develop the learning from the inclusive workplaces project strand into an accreditation for professions for inclusive workplaces.

Target group

Obstacles targetted:

• Economic obstacles
• Social obstacles

Students involvement

Focus groups were run with access law students during the first stage of the project to ascertain where there were gaps and what would be useful for students in terms of pathway progression. 

Depending on the project strand initiative, students are involved as embedded Module participants (Moot court Outreach Programme), volunteers (iDecide outreach initiative) or co-creators (Access Law Leadership Challenge).

As the project is in its pilot stages, we are constantly seeking feedback (via survey collection and focus groups) on the range of initiatives that are running under this project which is used to inform subsequent iterations.

Inspiration and evidence

Background

The importance of diversity has been well demonstrated (LSRA, Law Society, and The Bar of Ireland). Irish law firms have made commendable efforts to increase diversity in the legal profession.

However, findings from law students and graduates suggest that significant barriers to entry persist. 

Through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with Access students on UCD law programmes, we generated interesting insights into the barriers to the legal profession and the challenges that graduates from underrepresented groups face in their early career progression into the legal profession. UCD Access students are students from diverse backgrounds, including. 

• socio-economic groups that have low participation in higher education
• first-time mature students
• students with disabilities
• part-time/flexible learners
• lone parents
• further education and training-award holders.

Below are some of the focus group findings:

• There is a belief that Who You Know/ not What You Know is an advantage to progressing into the legal profession.
• Minority Tax – a burden to be diverse.
• Backing A Lost Cause – harder for those who are from rural areas and have less connections. 
• A Disembodied Profession – Firms need to do more outreach so that the profession feels more attainable. 
• They Love the story not Diversity – law firms do not know how to talk or train people from diverse backgrounds. 
• Fallacy of Meritocracy – hard work and high grades do not necessarily equate to progression in the legal profession. 
• Matching the Room – there is no room for diversity in the profession – you have to match the room. 

Inspiration:

That there would be a sense of continuity of access meaning that the idea of access and widening participation went beyond just university setting but continued as the student progressed from their studies into their careers. 

The evidence suggested that there was a problem in terms of low numbers of access students progressing into the legal profession. Over the course of the project, the project aims have broadened to research, develop and test a transferable model which could be used across a broad range of professions and to consolidate this in a digital toolkit and professional accreditation in respect of the inclusive workplaces element.

In addition to the focus group, below are other materials that informed the project:

• LSRA (2019) The Pathways to the Professions: The LSRA First Annual Report on the Admission to the Legal Profession.
• UCD Careers Graduate Outcome Survey (GOS)
• University for ALL toolkit
• Who Counts? University for All Data, Metrics, and Evidence 2020-21
• Open Doors Initiative Inclusivity Employment toolkit 
• Law Society of Ireland Annual Reports (2020-2021)

Success criteria

• Development of an accessible digital toolkit with good practice guidelines and self assessment/reflection checklists to promote stakeholders to identify what they are doing well and what further steps they could take to mainstream inclusion.
• Inclusion of student voice and  practical case studies in the toolkit to enable stakeholders to replicate initiatives in their context.
• Inclusive workplaces accreditation with flexible, online, self-directed content.

Points of attention

• To promote sustainability and facilitate scale-up, build capacity in UCD Schools themselves to assume responsibility for operation elements of project strands themselves.

Effectiveness

Yes: through –

• analysis of social media interactions
• numbers involved in each project strand and their feedback
• successful progression of students as the project progresses. 

We will analyse toolkit interactions and quantitative professional accreditation participant uptake and completion data. We will evaluate feedback on toolkit and accreditation effectiveness at meeting learning goals and impact on practice.

Do you feel you can effectively provide the support that students require?

Would you recommend this to other institutions?

strongly agree

Evaluation

Yes

• feedback from each pilot strand – through surveys & feedback forms, focus groups and workshops.

Communication

• Social Media 
• Webpage 
• Communication to relevant stakeholders 
• Information sessions
• Conference and event submission
• Direct email campaigns
• Newsletters, etc.

Timing

The project toolkit and professional inclusive workplaces accreditation will be available via the project website for access at any time by interested stakeholders.

Resources

• Dedicated budget 
• Project coordinator to drive project and foster stakeholder engagement

Extra information

Other materials: 

• LSRA (2019) The Pathways to the Professions: The LSRA First Annual Report on the Admission to the Legal Profession.
• University for ALL toolkit
• Who Counts? University for All Data, Metrics, and Evidence 2020-21
• Open Doors Initiative Inclusivity Employment toolkit 
• Law Society of Ireland Annual Reports (2020-2021)

Transferability

We think it is easily transferable to other contexts or groups.

Yes, it is informed by a universal design approach. 

The Toolkit will act as a roadmap on how to use the model within diverse professional contexts.