Dr Stuart Middleton is currently Executive Director of External Relations and Student Affairs at the Manukau Institute of Technology which is located in the City of Manukau in the Southern Auckland Region of New Zealand. He has throughout his career had an interest in research and development related to the education of linguistically and ethnically diverse communities.
He has previously been Principal of a large multicultural secondary college and held senior posts in teacher education institutions. He has been a member of numerous national groups in New Zealand concerned with curriculum development and qualifications reform. His professional activity has included consulting throughout the Pacific especially on issues of institutional strengthening and in the Britain and Australia. He lectures widely throughout New Zealand on a wide range of topics but especially on educational leadership and responses to diversity.
He is the Chair of the City of Manukau Education Trust, a not for profit organisation that provides advocacy, leadership, integration and co-ordination to education services and delivery across the City of Manukau, New Zealand’s most diverse city. He is a Life Member of the NZ Assn for the Teaching of English and a member of many professional organisation sin New Zealand and Australia.
Dr Middleton has received a number of awards that have included a Commonwealth Trust Fellowship and various QANTAS media awards as the Best Social Issues Columnist in New Zealand for his regular column in the NZ Education Review.
Select Publications
- Middleton, S. (2004) Assessment for A Diverse Student Group in Dobric, K. (ed.) Focus No.2, Education Development Centre, Manukau Institute of Technology, NZ
- Middleton, S. (2005) Setting Off: Road Maps for the Super Highway, in Langley, S. (ed.) New Zealand Assn for the Teaching of English, Christchurch, NZ
- Middleton, S. (2005) Literacy: Today’s Version of Checkpoint Charlie in Gibbons, J. NZRA Forum, New Zealand
- Middleton, S. (2006) Retaining students from backgrounds that challenge tertiary education institutions in Robinson, D (ed) Proceedings of the Higher Education Futures: A Strategic Approach to Dynamic Markets Conference, The Knowledge Partnership, Cambridge University, UK
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The Challenge of Diversity and Increasing Access, Retention and Success in Higher Education
Higher education institutions have conventionally secured their students from the ranks of those who successfully achieve the required levels of academic preparation in the K-16 sector. But the K-16 sector faces challenges of its own due to the increasing levels of diversity among the student population. This has threatened the traditional pipeline of student enrolment in many areas where a majority of students come from groups that have been under-represented in higher education and which, when they present themselves for higher education programs, continue to challenge the capability of higher education institutions to achieve equality of outcomes across the full range of students.
The City of Manukau in Auckland is inarguably the most diverse community in New Zealand from both an ethnic perspective and in terms of socio-economic status. The Manukau Institute of Technology working in collaboration with its partner institutions (the University of Auckland and the Southern Cross University of Australia) has instituted strategic programs that aim to increase the recruitment, retention and success of students from groups that have in the past under-represented. These projects are showing much promise in terms of graduation rates of these students. Working with the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California at Berkeley, the proposed study is aimed at generating models for increasing the extent of the successful interface between K-16 and higher education. The strategies that lead to students making the transition from K-16 into Higher Education will be developed and described in ways that allow them to be implemented in a variety of settings.
This study will also seek to establish the relationship between those key issues and the characteristics they share with global issues of access and equity in higher education. |
