For some time now the terms ‘transition to university’ and ‘first-year experience’ have been at the centre of discussion and discourse at, and about, Australian universities. For those university administrators, researchers and teachers involved, this focus has been framed by a number of interlinked factors ranging from social justice concerns — the moral imperative to foster the participation and success at tertiary level of ‘non-traditional’ students from socially diverse and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds — to the hard economic realities confronting the contemporary corporatising university. In the midst of changing global economic conditions affecting the international student market, as well as shifting domestic politics surrounding university funding, the equation of dollars with student numbers has remained a constant, and has kept universities' attention on the current ‘three Rs’ of higher education — recruitment, retention, reward — and, in particular, on the critical phase of students' entry into the tertiary institution environment.

In recent times, reforms launched by the 2009 Federal Labor Government (in office from 2007-13) sharpened the focus on student transition into university and the ‘three Rs’. The aim of those reforms was to increase the number of graduates between the ages of 25 and 34 years from 32 per cent of the population to 40 per cent by 2025.

Abstract

Developing positive relations with peers at university has long been recognised as a key to academic success for transitioning students. This chapter explores this issue from the perspective of Regional and Remote students in their first year at the University of Adelaide, through their experiences as related by them. While it might appear self-evident that these students would be particularly disadvantaged and ‘deficient’, relative to their urban peers, in terms of peer engagement and social integration, this chapter adopts a student-centred view of transition as ‘becoming’, and a ‘strengths’-based focus, to demonstrate how students problematise such normative assumptions. Through their experiential narratives and commentaries, the students not only affirm their own competency and agency but also point to challenges faced by city school leavers in navigating the increasing diversity of peer social domains.

Introduction

Many studies have highlighted the importance of social integration and the development of positive relations and networks amongst peers as a key to academic success at — and, in particular, in the critical transition to — university. As James, Krause and Jennings (2010: 43) have reminded us:

Abstract

Student transition into higher education (HE) has increased in importance in recent times, with the growing trend in OECD nations towards universal HE provision and the concomitant widening of participation to include previously under-represented groups. However, ‘transition’ as a concept has remained largely uncontested and taken for granted, particularly by practitioners but also by many researchers. Based on an analysis of recent research in the field, the chapter suggests three broad ways in which transition can be conceived and, hence, three approaches to managing and supporting student transition in HE: as (1) induction; (2) development; and (3) becoming. The third — transition as ‘becoming’ — offers the most theoretically sophisticated and student-sympathetic account, and has the greatest potential for transforming understandings of, and practices that support, transitions in HE. It is also the least prevalent and least well-understood. Apart from being explicit about how transition is defined, this chapter argues that future research in the field needs to foreground students' lived realities and to broaden its theoretical and empirical base if students' capacities to navigate change are to be fully understood and resourced.

Introduction

The focus of this chapter is on ‘transition’, specifically on how it is conceived in relation to students and higher education (HE). It is premised on the understanding that its different interpretations variously inform policy, research and practice in the field and that despite a growing level of interest in HE, transition remains a largely unconsidered concept.

Abstract

In 2009, the University of Adelaide embarked on a co-creation process, with the aim of providing the best on-campus experience within the Australian national tertiary sector for all our students. Completed in September 2011, on time and on budget, the project involved more than 9,000 individual student hours of consultation and over 3,000 hours of staff participation and discussion, and acted as a catalyst for a profound change in the relationship between the university and its students.

The construction of a $41.8 million student learning hub (the Hub) enabled the university to develop and implement an innovative method for consulting with its student population. By involving the university-wide student cohort, via a number of mechanisms throughout the life of the project, the university has given ownership of the Hub's final outcome to those for whom it is intended, the students.

Located in the ‘heart’ of the university's main campus on North Terrace, the new dedicated learning space now supports up to 25,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled at the University of Adelaide. It brings together informal learning and social spaces with student information services and food and service retail outlets. It integrates with the Barr Smith Library and provides new connections through to existing lecture theatres and across campus.

Background

In the past five to ten years, significant changes made within the Australian higher education sector have impacted on the University of Adelaide.

Abstract

Throughout history, human movements beyond borders — geographical, cultural, intellectual or otherwise — have narrowed the distances between peoples and expanded their horizons. Border crossings and the physical annihilation of space enable peoples to interact and learn from one another and consequently alter the relationships between those involved (Dewey, 1993). Globalisation in higher education has created one of the most momentous border crossings in Australia's history; it has not only changed the face of students' population in Australia, but also transformed the social relations between university policymakers, academics and students. This chapter examines the effects of changing social relations in Australian higher education where first-year international students are concerned. In the context of students' diversity, the chapter seeks to question the appropriateness of essentialising and teaching a particular type of ‘critical thinking’ that erases the cultural borders these students have crossed. It engages with the ongoing debates on negotiating identities in the globalising university ‘contact zone’ (Kenway and Bullen, 2003), and attempts to demystify certain characteristics of the ‘Chinese learner’. Taking up the theoretical concept of a ‘social imaginary’ advanced by Rizvi and Lingard (2010), this chapter argues for an alternative imaginary to conceptualise the identities of international students in higher education. It advocates a Confucian educational paradigm that regards everyone, irrespective of where they come from, as educable and having the right of equal access to quality education.

Abstract

As higher education populations further diversify, new thinking and approaches are needed to ensure the successful transition to university of all students who are given access to higher education. This chapter challenges the notion of the student as ‘the problem’ when considering the transition to university of students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. Based on an examination of key literature from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and North America, this chapter argues that a deficit conception of students from low SES backgrounds is limited. It further argues that a deficit conception of the institutions into which these students transition is equally limited. Drawing on a recent national study (Devlin et al., 2012), this chapter examines a recently developed new conception, which positions successful transition to university for students from low SES backgrounds as a joint venture toward bridging socio-cultural incongruity (Devlin, 2011). This new conception privileges the agency, experience and contributions that these students bring to higher education, as well as institutional efforts to help students make the transition. The chapter proposes teaching and learning the discourse as a critical way to contribute to bridging socio-cultural incongruity and thereby assist students from low SES backgrounds to transition successfully to university.

Introduction

In an increasingly massified higher education system with greater numbers of students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds studying alongside more traditional cohorts of students, it is not only appropriate, but also essential, that institutions work towards successful experiences for all students (Devlin, 2010).

Abstract

In 2010 we taught a large first-year class of Women's Studies students. The previous year we had reviewed the literature amassing in support of the Federal Government's push to increase the representation of Indigenous, low socio-economic status (SES) and rural students at university in the wake of what is known as the Bradley Review (2008). This reading had sensitised us to the situation that some students were at risk of dropping out, particularly those who were first in their family at university, a category of students which overlaps with those who are Indigenous, rural or from low SES backgrounds, as well as some who are refugees. Not wanting to put students on the spot, but wanting to identify those who might need some extra support, we designed a ‘getting to know you’ questionnaire for students to complete in the first tutorial. While we both had a keen intellectual interest in the information we gathered, and while we both would have characterised ourselves as committed and conscientious teachers, we were unprepared for the transformative effect the exercise had on us.

Introduction

Marcia Devlin and Jade McKay (Chapter 4, this book) assert that ‘to enable, facilitate and support student agency, university teachers and other staff should know their students’ (106). According to Rose Zimbardo (1993), a US academic, knowing something about our students is crucial to effective teaching because a student's personal history is bound to affect their experience of the classroom.

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the current emphasis placed by government and universities on graduate skills, in the face of considerable uncertainties about what these might involve and how they might be developed. One of the key areas of graduate skill development which tertiary students are meant to experience during their university degrees is their transformation into critical thinkers (Rigby, n.d.; ACER, n.d.; Moore and Hough, 2007; DEEWR, 2011; Chan et al., 2002). We note that accounts of critical thinking as a desirable skill for these students are inclined to constitute critical thinking as having an indeterminate meaning. The literature on critical thinking and university education further suggests that this inexactitude leads students to not understand or be unclear about critical thinking. The ‘problem’ in terms of graduate skill development is deemed to lie in students' failure to grasp its meaning, which results in their failure to develop this important graduate skill in spite of its value to them. We wish to provide an alternative approach that is rather at odds with the ‘student deficit’ approach employed in much of the literature. In order to outline this alternative approach we draw upon the findings of a survey and focus groups carried out in 2011 amongst transition students at the University of Adelaide — specifically, students of first-year Politics courses.

Abstract

In this chapter we introduce the term ‘classism’ into the higher education debate in Australia. By ‘classism’ we mean the tendency to construct people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds as inherently deficient according to prevailing normative values. Using an analysis of the Bradley Review, we show that low SES students are constructed as inherently lacking in aspirations in current policy discourse and are regarded as ‘needier’ higher education students in comparison with their higher SES peers. This construction, we argue, is an example of classism, and therefore we suggest that adding ‘classism’ to existing understandings of disadvantage will help to raise awareness of discrimination as well as formulate best practice in higher education.

Introduction

On gaining office in 2007 the Labor government (2007-13) commissioned a comprehensive review of the higher education sector. Released in 2008 and known after its lead author, Professor Denise Bradley, ‘the Bradley Review’ (Bradley et al., 2008) identifies diversity and equity as key areas of concern in the sector. Consequently, the issue of equity in the Australian university system has re-emerged as a point of lively policy and public debate. Taking the Bradley Review as our starting point, in this chapter we examine the ways in which equity goals, as they relate to social class and socio-economic status (SES), are articulated in contemporary government policy.

Abstract

This chapter is about university transitions in practice. It seeks to extend the scope of enquiry from a narrow concern with undergraduate student transition (see Parker and Gale, Chapter 1, this book) to a university- and field-wide approach by developing a practice perspective on universities and the university field. Practice is our point of departure. Universities are the focus. The concept of research-learning is introduced as the generic but richly variegated practice at the heart of any university. Analysis moves to consider how fields of research-learning practice are constituted in and through communities of practice and how learning and transition are at the heart of communities of practice. This brings consideration to tensions at the intersection of potentially global and diasporic research-learning fields and their position in local universities and communities, broader social forms and the global university field. The chapter then turns to explore how these insights can inform the design and delivery of courses of research-learning practice in a university. I introduce a practicum approach to research-learning.

Introduction

In this chapter I seek, with Parker and Gale (Chapter 1, this book), to broaden the scope of inquiry into university transition. Student transitions, Parker and Gale argue — and especially the transitions of undergraduate students — have dominated inquiry. Such student-centred inquiries sit behind ‘transition programs’ orienting, inducting, informing and enhancing the first-year experience of neophyte students coming to university. Meanwhile, what a university is or does remains largely taken for granted.

Alert students will often tell teachers and university lecturers that there is sometimes a significant discrepancy between the same historical characters, settings or incidents in historical fiction and nonfiction. An illustration of this point arises with hugely successful author Bryce Courtenay's work of historical fiction, The Potato Factory (1995), and a subsequent work of nonfiction, which sought to put the record straight on Isaac (Ikey) Solomon, one of the principal characters in Courtenay's novel. Judith Sackville-O'Donnell, a Melbourne author, challenged Courtenay's depiction of Ikey Solomon, who was also believed to be the model for Charles Dickens's fictional villain Fagin.

Sackville-O'Donnell's The First Fagin: The True Story of Ikey Solomon (2002) sold about 1500 copies. While a commendable publishing feat, this fares very poorly in comparison with Courtenay's The Potato Factory, whose sales exceeded manyfold that of The First Fagin: ‘The Potato Factory was last year [2003] listed by Angus & Robertson as 17th on Australia's 100 favourite books. Gold Logie-winner Lisa McCune was among the stars in a TV miniseries based on the novel’ (Schwartz, 2004).

This is just one example of where a dedicated and motivated professional historian can take issue with the historicity of a piece of historical fiction. Clearly, if the sales of The Potato Factory are an index to the success of the novel then the demonstrated warping of historical fact does little to offend the reading public.