‘It all just clicked’: a longitudinal perspective on transitions within university

Abstract

This paper explores the transitions that a group of students, admitted from further education colleges as part of broader widening access initiative at a Scottish researchintensive university, made across the lifetime of their degrees. It investigates how they negotiate their learning careers beyond the first year, and how they (re)define their approaches to independent learning as they progress to the later years of their courses. Evidence is drawn from 20 students who were interviewed during each of their three or four years of study to provide a longitudinal account of their experiences of engagement and participation at the university. We draw attention to three ways in which the students made transitions across the course of their degrees: to increased knowledge of the conventions of academic writing; to enhanced critical skills; and to practical strategies to prioritise learning.

Conceptualising transformative undergraduate experiences: A phenomenographic exploration of students’ personal projects

“…Third, it is interesting that we found little change in students’ personal projects over time. However, it would be wrong to conclude that this challenges research that has focused on how students change through their engagement with university (for example see Scanlon et al ., ; Christie et al ., , ; Ashwin ; Reay et al ., ; Gale & Parker, ). This is because the more inclusive categories of description 4 and 5 are focused on students changing themselves and changing society.…”

“…Similarly, the literature on threshold concepts focuses on how students are transformed by their engagement with knowledge in their undergraduate degrees (Meyer & Land, ). A second area of literature does take account of students’ wider experiences at university but focuses on the extent to which these experiences support students in becoming ‘independent’ (Scanlon et al ., ; Christie et al ., , ) or ‘ideal’ learners (Reay et al ., , ; Gale & Parker, ).…”

“…The logic of students’ orientations is that adopting a particular orientation leads students to engage with their university experiences in particular kinds of way, which, in turn, leads to particular kinds of outcomes for both students and institutions (for example, see Clark & Trow, ; Beaty et al ., ; Morgan & Beaty, ; Sproken‐Smith et al ., ; Brint, ). This is in stark contrast to the research cited earlier (Scanlon et al ., ; Christie et al ., , ; Ashwin, ; Reay et al ., ; Gale & Parker, ), which highlights how the knowledge that students encounter at university can change their sense of who they are and, critically, the meaning of being at university.…”

Aspects of Graduateness in Computing Students' Narratives

“…[12] Graduateness, then, as part of a person's life story, is constantly reconstructed and incorporates learning experiences from the past and present, and beliefs and expectations about the future. In this paper, we propose a narrative construction of graduateness that centres on students' individual experiences and the sense they make of them.…”

Methodological diversity as an asset for transition‐focused higher education research with students from refugee backgrounds

“…Transition is a significant area of inquiry in the higher education literature (Ecclestone et al, 2010;Quinn, 2010;Field, 2012). In the context of higher education, there are several elements of transition that are attracting increasing scholarly attention, such as how to manage 'the first year experience' (FYE) through induction, orientation and 'transition pedagogy' (Kift, 2009;Palmer et al, 2009;Nelson et al, 2012;Goggins et al, 2016), and 'threshold concepts' in disciplinary knowledge (Meyer & Land, 2005;Land, 2011;Barradell & Peseta, 2016), and learner identities and emotions (Colley, 2007;Christie, 2009;Gourlay, 2009;Field, 2012;Maunder et al, 2013;Christie et al, 2016). All these fields of inquiry share a common interest in studying educational change-most commonly students' experiences-over time.…”