An alumnus of the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University, she is the author of Conjugal Rites (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Conjugality (Palgrave Manmillan, forthcoming), and a co-author (with Chris Beasley and Mary Holmes ) of Heterosexuality in Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2012). Dee Michell lectures and conducts research in gender studies and social analysis at the University of Adelaide.
Outline of the book
Reconceptualising: transition and universities
The third concept of transition is Transition as Doing (T3) which challenges normative accounts of university transition. This reconfigures ideas of transition from a simple view of the ins and outs of the university student.
Revaluing: 'non-traditional' student groups in higher education
In the end, she asks us to consider the fruits of our research-learning practice. Coming to urban universities from culturally 'different' rural areas, and without the support of a network of peers and family members, these students are often characterized as inherently disadvantaged and 'deficient' in terms of a number of areas, including peer involvement and social integration.
Realising: transformations on campus
Expressing confidence in the talents, skills, and abilities that well-supported students bring to their first college experience, we argue in sum that modeling the transition for nontraditional students as an exercise in restoring a deficient student is misguided. We hope that in the essays presented here, some alternative conceptions - from the general to the particular - can be identified and championed.
Reconceptualising
Abstract
Introduction
Background
Among HE institutions, practitioners and researchers, this expansion has increased the centrality and importance of student transition in HE (Heirdsfield et al., 2008; Hultberg et al., 2009; Kift, Nelson and Clark, 2010), an importance that often expressed in the context of the first year in higher education (FYHE) and the first year experience (FYE), and, increasingly, undergraduate study more generally. Given their potential to 'lead to different ideas about how to manage or support transitions' (Ecclestone, Biesta and Hughes) these three conceptualisations frame the discussion of student transition in HE research that follows.
Transition as induction (T 1 )
Indeed, research into students' transition to T1 suggests that the first year is "arguably the most critical time" (Krause can "inform students' success or failure in tertiary settings" (Burnett, 2007: 23). This "joint" institutional approach to FYE is embodied in what Kift and her colleagues (e.g., Kift, 2009; Kift & Nelson, 2005; Kift, Nelson, & Clarke, 2010; see also Nelson et al., 2006) refer to as “transitional pedagogy,” a rational and comprehensive approach to the formation of higher education, which, as summarized below,
Transition as development (T 2 )
Indeed, critics of transition stages point out that often 'the rhythms of young people's learning lives do not synchronize with the fixed time frames offered to them' (Quinn. One of the reasons that students find the transition to university so turbulent is that it often challenges existing views of oneself and one's place in the world.
Transition as becoming (T 3 )
It is therefore impossible to speak of student transition to HE in the singular, in the same way that 'there is no such thing as an identity or a discrete moment of transition' (Quinn's emphasis added). Becoming', as conceived here, rejects notions of the linearity and normativity of life stages implicit in much student transition research.
Conclusions
Third, the current dominant conception of student transitions in HE tends to lead to policies, research and practices that are largely system-driven and system-serving. Finally, to date, interest in student transition to HE has focused narrowly on undergraduate students, particularly those in their first year, who are taking courses in a select group of disciplines.
Acknowledgments
The first year university experience: Using personal epistemology to understand effective learning and teaching in higher education. 12th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference: Preparing for Tomorrow Today: The First Year Experience as a Foundation.
Research and teaching: core university practice?
More recently, Coaldrake and Stedman (2013) argue that the stakes of the college game have once again been raised. In their analysis of conversational and textual discourse,8 a major Victorian university at one point referred to research and teaching as 'the two peaks' of academic practice.
Research-learning: paradigmatic and richly variegated practice
As with struggle, change must be recognized at the heart of any analysis of research-learning areas. I argue that research-teaching practice constitutes and is constituted by the practices of people in communities of practice.
Communities of research-learning practice
First-year courses (such as “Anthropology 101,” for example) introduce students to a field of research-learning practices because they recognize them as the most peripheral of legitimate peripheral participants. Over the course of their studies, students can consolidate their participation by concentrating their studies in one area of research-learning practice (for example in a major sequence, or in a major sequence leading to a year of Honors focus in Australia's current system ).
Loci in the university field
For each member, there is often an important dynamic tension in the overlap between communities of research-learning practices. Transition, whether into, within or 'outside' a class, a field or a site of practice, is a fundamental feature of membership in communities of research-learning practice.
Putting theory into practice
If there is a tension between research and teaching for academics in Australia, there is also a tension between local universities' communities of practice and an academic's (global) field of research, learning practice and struggle. Brew, I think, signals the way forward: situate students and their learning at the university in practice and through communities of research-learning practice.
A practicum approach to research-learning
Students already working in the field of Native Title anthropology are encouraged to negotiate a project with them. Then they will be asked to critically assess the usefulness of the method in Native Title analysis.
Conclusion
Kreber (ed.), The university and its disciplines: teaching and learning within and beyond disciplinary boundaries. 34; Who do you think you're talking to?'—the discourse on learning and teaching strategies'.
Revaluing
In this chapter we introduce the term 'classism' into the higher education debate in Australia. On taking office in 2007, the Labor government (2007-13) commissioned a comprehensive review of the higher education sector.
Classism: towards a definition
The emphasis on low social esteem and low cultural esteem, which presupposes a deficit model of people with low SES, constitutes the most important aspects of our preferred definition of classism. It is the discursive construction of low SES people that we now explore in the Bradley Review.
Understanding problem representations: equality as a contested problem
I call this implied 'problem' - described by Dean as the 'problem space of rule' - a problem representation. To treat problem representations as socially constructed is not to infer that it is never appropriate to claim that some social phenomena are problematic.
Equity, class and the Bradley Review
Importantly, the aspiration formulation proposed in the review aims to engage low SES students in terms of their private aspirations. To be clear, our intention is not to suggest that this is a deliberate omission or that the authors of the Review personally or consciously believe that low-SES students are 'needed'.
Classism on campus?
Bridging socio-cultural dissonance: Conceptualizing student success from low socio-economic status backgrounds in Australian higher education. This chapter adopts a framework for conceptualizing the transition of students from low-SES backgrounds into higher education based on socio-cultural dissonance.
Reframing 'the problem'
40 of the 89 low SES students interviewed (45 percent) commented on the importance of seeking help to succeed in college. This distinction between understanding and fulfilling expectations is important in relation to conceptualizing the transition of students from low SES backgrounds.
The first deficit conception: students are 'the problem'
The second deficit conception: institutions are 'the problem'
Summarizing the most influential research on widening participation in the UK, Billingham (2009) argues that the focus on barriers to non-traditional students needs to expand from situational and dispositional barriers to those created by institutional inflexibility. Tett says that 'the role of the educational institution itself in creating and perpetuating inequality must be considered.
The socio-cultural conception: incongruence must be bridged
This proposal is underpinned by an assumption that the deficit lies with the student for not understanding existing structures and expectations and with the institutions for not being clear enough about how they expect students to fit into these existing structures and expectations. (Devlin, 2011). Billingham (2009) suggests active engagement by institutions in a 'joint venture' with the new population of students.
Student agency
Devlin (2011) suggests adopting the idea of a bridge in the conceptualization of changes that could be made to reduce or ease sociocultural incongruity for students from low SES backgrounds at university. In their research, Read, Archer and Leathwood found non-traditional students who refused to accept a position of marginality in the academy and instead worked '…to adopt the pragmatic practice of "adapting" to this culture in order to achieve it.
Knowing the students
Another factor seen in the literature as important for students from low SES backgrounds is family support. A final characteristic associated in the literature with students from low SES backgrounds is aspiration.
Cultural capital and academic discourse
The final section explores the teaching and learning of academic discourse as a contribution to bridging sociocultural discordance. McKay and Devlin (2014) explain that students from low SES backgrounds often enter university without knowledge of academic discourse - neither the language nor its conventions.
Socio-cultural empowerment through teaching and learning the discourse
The final component of teaching and learning the discourse concerns the guided navigation of students through the discourse (Northedge, 2003a, 2003b; . McKay and Devlin, 2014). Matusov and Hayes also argue that '[students] require guided initiation into the discourse', as it is 'crucial to become active members of a community of practice.
Acknowledgements
Diversity and achievement: developing learning of. ed.), Improving student retention in higher education: The role of teaching and learning. This chapter examines the effects of changing social relations in Australian higher education in relation to first-year international students.
Higher education and the changing social relationship
The rationale for higher education institutions is grounded in the real place where the function of transmitting universal knowledge occurs. Large amounts of research have come to light in the last two decades, discussing the challenging issues related to the existence of higher education.
Policymakers and empirical realities of academics
The newcomer's performance is measured against the perceived ideal in the host institutions. Many of the issues that academics are most dissatisfied with concern the core activities that shape their collective identity.
Empirical realities of international students and their first-year experience in Australia
First-year experience
Instead, academic research has consistently attributed the difficulties international students experience in their first year to their inadequacy in English and to their cultural heritage. Many researchers note that international students in English-speaking countries can be very diligent and conscientious in their first year of study, demonstrating higher levels of motivation in learning than local students (Ramburuth and McCormick, 2001).
The myth of the 'Chinese learner' and 'critical thinking'
Central to the "deficit" construction of the "Chinese student" is the argument that these students lack critical thinking skills. A student's capacity for critical thinking begins "from the earliest days of a child's school career" (Doddington.
In conclusion: the urgent challenge
This chapter explores this issue from the perspective of regional and remote students in their first year at the University of Adelaide, through their own related experiences. In the language of the deficit model, it is assumed that Regional and Distance students are simply absent.
With a little help from my friends: engaging with peers at university
Thus, the regional and distance students expressed continued confidence in their own abilities to relate to and befriend others and represented themselves as having agency and choice in their selective shaping of their own social circles according to their own emerging identities, interests, past experiences and future paths. In this chapter, I first provide a brief discussion of the importance of peer engagement in the university, particularly in relation to studies of regional and distance students in transition.
Regional and Remote students in higher education
Establishing strong and supportive friendships, which are relevant to and located within the academic learning environment, but which are also fostered and maintained beyond that in non-academic contexts, is clearly one of the keys to a successful transition. Godden discusses, among a number of factors affecting rural participation in higher education, the 'culture shock' of going it alone to independent living, the city and the institution, saying that in her 2007 study 'every focus group and 30% of interviewees reported, that some young people in the countryside experience homesickness and depression' (2008: 5).
Listening to Students from Regional and Remote Areas': a brief outline
The project was also framed by an appreciation of the strengths that students brought and used to meet the challenges of their transition to university, rather than by institution-based assumptions about their 'shortcomings'. This approach draws on the foundational work of theorists such as Deleuze and Guttari (1987) to challenge the notions of the 'theorists'.
Implementing the project: engaging with students
Situated in the broader context of subjectively experienced lifelong transformation, the transition to university is reviewed as neither 'a particular time of crisis', nor as 'part of a linear progression', nor as 'universally experienced and normalised' (ibid. : 31) ). Four of the students commuted to the university from rural areas around Adelaide while the rest moved from various regions in South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales, the ACT and the Northern Territory.
Facing up: meeting the challenge of meeting people and making friends
While a number were from relatively affluent families whose members had previous educational experience of university, seven were the first in their families to come to university and together with their families had made particular efforts and sacrifices in financial and other terms. In contrast, the students had considerable difficulty connecting and forming friendships with local students fresh out of high school, who often came to college in groups of high school peers.
New kids in town: challenges
These relationships were primary in two respects: they were usually the first relationships established, and also the relationships that remained most central and substantial in their social networks. The whole first semester I was just alone, I don't really have a problem with that, I'm happy to be alone, but it's not as nice as eating your lunch with friends and that kind of thing.
Breaking the ice: making connections and forming friendships
Additionally, a particular challenge for some students commuting to university from surrounding rural areas was that the distance and time involved made it more difficult to establish and deepen relationships with university peers through after-hours and off-campus interaction.
SmoothStart
For many students, SmoothStart was key to developing their social world at university. Crucially, making connections and friendships through SmoothStart gave students a sense of support and therefore the confidence to navigate socially during their first few weeks at university.
University accommodation
Campus life
For other students, the process of making friends through their course-based activities tended to be more gradual, but eventually happened. For example, a law student said that he 'had no problems' making friends because he was 'very talkative on tutes' (male, 19).
Not really meeting the locals: patterns of friendship
I started making friends with country kids who are infinitely more reasonable, much more polite, and I really tried because a lot of the students in my exercises tended to be young, male, privately educated, stupid. A few people in their 20s, they're really good, they're really interesting to talk to.
Measuring up: relative strengths
These cases, and those discussed earlier, point to the overwhelming tendency of students to form their primary relationships with students who were not local, and—among locals—with mature students rather than school students. Following Lawrence, I characterize these strengths and resources as 'sociocultural competences'.9 In relation to her reconceptualisation of 'the contemporary university' as 'an unknown and dynamic culture comprising a multiplicity of subcultures, each with their own discourses and languages, Lawrence draws on cross-cultural communication theory to emphasize the crucial role that 'socio-cultural competencies' play in enabling students in transition to cross subcultural barriers and engage in these multiple discourses.
Rural sociality
Students described rural styles of social engagement as cooperative and communal, in contrast to the more individualistic, self-focused, competitive styles of engagement in the city, which they saw as discouraging the formation of new friendships.
Life experiences
Many have worked, studied or holidayed across Australia and in various parts of the world including South America, South Asia, South East Asia, Europe, Japan and the Pacific. Because of] my experiences in tourism, I have always approached people confidently and talked to them.
Scholarly interests
The sheer emotional and financial investment that the students, with the support of their families, had to make in moving (or commuting) to the city and studying at university meant that they tended to be particularly bright, committed and passionate about their chosen studies. Students found that in many cases their academic passions enhanced their capacity for interpersonal communication with fellow students by providing a common interest and discourse that facilitated crossing the social divides between them.
Problematising deficit: competency, agency and identity
Therefore, and despite the difficulties they often encountered, the students expressed constant confidence in themselves and in their ability to connect with others and make friends with them. If there was little or no room in these worlds for local grads who, according to regional and remote students, often had a lot to learn about meeting people and making friends, then so be it; the loss was ultimately not theirs.
Concluding remarks
Melbourne: Center for Higher Education Studies and Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne. 4th conference Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education: Creating Futures for a New Millennium, 5-7 July, Brisbane.
