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Bridging the gap between school and higher education
Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:00
Dr Felicity Coughlan
Schools must play an active role in preparing – socially and emotionally - young people
for tertiary education. And such preparation should not merely be ad-hoc but rather part of an
active strategy that encompasses everything from how content is taught to the way in which
days are structured, says education expert Dr Felicity Coughlan.
In order to address the high drop-out rates of new students, tactics must be put in place to aid a
successful transition into higher education, she says.
“There is a reason it’s called ‘making’ a transition and not ‘surviving’ a transition. Success is
built on the former, not the latter. The transition has to be consciously approached and
structured, not just muddled through.”
Coughlan, education commentator and Director of the Independent Institute of Education, says
that by understanding the attributes and behaviours of students who are successful in higher
education, schools can structure the experiences of their students to maximise the chances of
success and ease the transition.“Aptitude counts, but it is not enough. Schools must consider
how they can build on ability.”
Addressing the local chapter national conference of International Boys’ Schools Coalition, an
independent not-for-profit global body dedicated to the education and development of boys
worldwide, Coughlan this week said that young people did not wake up “all grown up” one
morning.
“Thinking through things is a learned habit and schools need to constantly facilitate the process
of making connections between how impulses are acted upon and consequences of the chosen
behaviour.”
She says four elements must be present to ensure a successful transition:
• personal-emotional adjustment (confidence, ambition, clarity of purpose, resilience,
persistence, and self direction)
• social adjustment (the ability to appropriately and responsibly interact with peers and
educators)
• academic adjustment (the ability to conceptualise tasks and structure answers), and
• institutional attachment (the ability to adjust to the size, independence, diversity, and culture
of a tertiary institution).
“Educators must deliberately create opportunities for young people to succeed, by creating
opportunities for them to manage their own time relative to deadlines and with meaningful
consequence, and demonstrating the value of balancing effort by steering clear of ‘test and
exam’-milestone chasing. Teach learners to communicate their thoughts and not just their
recollection, and develop an understanding in them of their individual abilities and ways in
which they can improve.”
Coping at a tertiary institution also requires strong interpersonal skills – for working with one’s
peers as well as the academic staff, says Coughlan.
“Balance is needed between respect and a lack of assertiveness, as with the latter the student
will not be able to engage in the debate required in most higher learning spaces. And while ‘old
fashioned’ skills like competent writing, note-taking, reading and synthesizing information are
positively associated with success, they remain under-developed in too many schools.”
Coughlan says it was essential that ambition was sparked in learners.
“To spark ambition, young people should be exposed to career opportunities in a field of
possibility; rather than being presented with a list of jobs. Provide real knowledge about careers
and don’t rely on boring career days or job shadowing, which is often viewed only as a chance
to dodge the classroom. Ensure that the curriculum is linked to careers, and that content is
enriched in the classroom by people who actually use it in their line of work,” she says.
But Coughlan says that, while schools have a responsibility to ensure the readiness of
matriculants to head out into real life and higher education, matriculants also have the
responsibility to come to grips with a few hard facts.
“Life is not always fair, and there is not always a straight line between effort and reward.
Success is hard-earned, and the world out there is far less concerned about your self esteem than
it is about your contribution.”
A bit of “tough love” at school, backed up by sound teaching that is focused beyond the final
exams, create a more solid platform for success than coaching, spoon feeding and protection
can do alone, Coughlan says.
“The best outcomes arise when a balance between support and challenge is achieved.”
http://www.skillsportal.co.za/page/education/higher-education/1201280-Bridging-the-gap-
between-school-and-higher-education
Talking Teaching
May 11, 2010
bridging students in from secondary school
Filed under: education, science teaching, university — Tags: philosophy of teaching, secondary
teaching, tertiary teaching, university — alison @ 9:46 pm
Today I went along to a meeting of the University’s ‘Teaching Network’. It was great! Two
whole hours of talking about teaching with like-minded folk.
Now, before you accuse me of ignoring the huge amount of good teaching done by my fellow
academics, I need to justify my first comment. Most university lecturers are not trained
teachers. They’ve typically been taken on for their research skills & it’s generally assumed that
they’ll pick up the necessary teaching skills & strategies as they go. Which generally happens.
But it means that often they are researchers first & teachers second, & it can be quite hard to get
a conversation going about matters related to teaching: things like curriculum (I suspect some
lecturers think that means, the stuff they talk about in lectures, but it’s so much more than that),
assessment strategies, engaging students with the subject, bridging them in from school… you
can probably add to the list.
So you can see why today’s session was so good. The main topic for discussion centred on
bridging students in from secondary school, & while we went on to talk about a whole heap of
related issues, it’s the ‘bridging’ one that I want to talk about at the moment.
If you’re a lecturer reading this, then you’ve probably heard something along the lines of
‘students just aren’t as well-prepared for uni study as they used to be’… (I suspect you would
probably hear that every generation, but anyway.) One of the issues here, I think, is that we’re
all thinking back to when we were students. And for many of us, that was a loooong time ago.
(Oh, all right, 36 years ago if you insist!)
But here’s where I think there’s a major disconnect: between tertiary teachers’ expectations
(coloured by their own experiences) of what their students ought to know, and the prior learning
experiences of those same students. I’ll use my own area, biology, as an example.
First up: in the ‘old days’ (when I was at school), the only kids who went on to the 7th form (=
today’s ‘year 13) were those who were going on to university. This is no longer the case;
preparing students for uni study is only one of the tasks of a year 13 teacher.
Secondly, the school curriculum has changed. The ‘new’ version, in schools this year, is the
second iteration of the document since I began my teaching career. It differs in significant ways
from the previous (1993) one: not only is the content altered & moved around between year
levels, but also – & far more importantly – the ‘nature of science’ has become of overarching
importance right across the science disciplines.
Assessment has changed. The ‘National Certificate of Educational Achievement’ (NCEA) and
its attendant Achievement (& Unit) Standards were brought in a few years ago now, but with
the change in curriculum these are having to be realigned. Now, while assessment shouldn’t
drive what’s taught in the classroom, nevertheless this happens, & so from 2014 on students
arriving in my classroom will have studied different content, & in a different way, from their
predecessors who also gained their NCEA. Not least, they will have spent more time learning
what science is all about, & less time learning content. (Which is a Jolly Good Thing, in my
opinion.)
What’s more, way back when I was a student,& more recently when I started my secondary
teaching job, all schools pretty much taught the same stuff. With the NCEA & its Standards,
that has changed. Take biology: at present there are 7 standards, worth a total of 24 ‘credits’,
that schools can offer their students. Most of the teachers I know would teach 20 credits, max,
& may sometimes be under pressure to reduce that to make room in a crowded school
curriculum for a range of other material. It’s also possible for the actual standards taught to
differ from school to school: I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear, for example, that the
‘evolution’ standards aren’t taught in some ‘special character’ schools.
In other words, our incoming students’ backgrounds differ far more than would have been the
case 20 years ago. Now, surely this means that we (tertiary teachers) need to be aware of what’s
going on in schools, what’s in the curriculum & so on, in order to help us be more effective in
bridging students into their tertiary learning experiences?
I suspect I’ve got a bit of an advantage here: I used to be a secondary school biology teacher, &
I still work extensively with secondary teachers & students, & I’ve been involved in
development & review of our Achievement Standards (which give an indication of what
students are capable of, in a particular subject) & the ‘new’ curriculum that’s being
implemented this year. I do think that gives me an edge when it comes to helping students make
links between what they’ve already learned & the material I’d like them to take on board.
Yet a PhD study done here at Waikato (Buntting, 2006), which looked at universities across the
country, found that not all lecturers are aware of the gulf between their expectations &
assumptions and where their students are actually at. The study also found that there are things
we can do that are very effective in helping to bridge that gap, such as the use of concept
mapping (e.g. Buntting, Coll& Campbell, 2005: food for thought for another post, perhaps…).
Think how much more effective such interventions would be if they were used in the
knowledge of our students prior experiences of learning.
C.M.Buntting (2006)Educational issues in introductory tertiary biology. A thesis submitted in
the fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The University of
Waikato.
C.Buntting, R.K.Coll&A.Campbell (2005) Student views of concept mapping use in
introductory tertiary biology classes. International Journal of Science & Mathematics
Education4(4): 641-668. doi: 10.1007/s10763-005-9014-7
http://talkingteaching.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/bridging-students-in-from-secondary-
school/