TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF POST-GRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE UK

David Scott

Four Types of Transitions

Pure to Applied Discipline International Context to UK National

Context Work Intensification From Traditionally Under-

Represented Backgrounds to Academic Setting 

Pure to Applied

This transition refers to students who, having taken a first degree in a non-applied subject such as physics or philosophy, then undertake a higher degree with an applied orientation. Movement is from a disciplinary base with an agreed set of methodologies and approaches to a new practice-orientated setting.

International Context

This refers to the gap between an international student’s expectations about learning, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and UK HE approaches to learning, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

Work Intensification

This transition involves the addition of part-time study responsibilities to full-time work. Students may encounter a number of problems in making this transition, including those related to time, energy, and commitment.

Non-Traditional BackgroundsThis transition refers to those students undertaking Masters-level courses having non-traditional backgrounds and particularly how this relates to current policy issues relating to widening participation (WP) agendas.

Some Characteristics of Transitions (1)

Time (all transitions are characterised by movement from one time moment (Ta) to another (Tb), and onwards to a series of other time moments (Tc to Tn));

Cultural Embeddedness (this refers to factors such as duration, intensity, import, etc.);

Pathologising Capacity (i.e. whether and to what extent the transition is understood as a normalizing and thus pathologising mechanism);

Position in the Lifecourse;

Position in the Lifecourse Lifecourse as a stepped system of statuses. Lifecourse as a stepped system of learning

markers. Lifecourse as a stepped system of resource.

accumulations (resources are here defined as capital accumulations, such as cultural, social, economic and emotional.

Lifecourse as a stepped system of career events, and thus as age-related

Lifecourse as a stepped system of identity moments.

Some Characteristics of Transitions (2)

Focus (for example, learning transitions, which refer to issues such as familiarity, receptiveness, assimilation, negotiation, rearrangement, formalisation, assessment/ accreditation, and the like);

Progressive or Teleological Nature (i.e. how the transition relates to some end-point); 

Transitions made by the person which do not fit expected and sanctioned forms of learning;

Some Characteristics of Transitions (3)

Environmental Transitions; Identity Transitions; Learning Transitions: Learning can be

depicted as a journey of gaining familiarity and ultimately mastery of discourses and literacies belonging to new learning contexts and environments;

Embodied Transitions; Discursive/Narrative Transitions.

Identity

Identities created; ‘Becoming’ and ‘Surviving’ the Post-

Graduate Journey; End Points: Public and Private; Start Points: Learning the Rules; Generic, Disciplinary, and Site

Processes: incompatibilities.

Disciplinarity

The Complexity of Learning…; … in relation to the Generic Training

Model; ‘Deficit’ Learners; Training v. Education? Political as

well as Learning; Conformity and Resistance to ‘New’

Rules.

Control and Power

Temporal Regulation: Stepped Model;

Prescribed Rules: Inspection; ‘Abstract’ Trust (contra Mediated,

Concrete and/or Personalised); The Power of Disciplinarity; Epistemological Constraints:

Sanctioned through Policy, Controlled-Financially.

Practice (1)

Tension between forms of learning/experience of non-traditional students and forms of learning demanded by institutions.

  Use of grades – over-emphasis on grades which

cannot act in a formative sense – confusion between processes of formative and summative assessment.

Students experience discipline-specific teaching approaches, interpretation of criteria, marking, etc. and in addition, students conceive of the experience of study in different ways.

Practice (2)

 

International students were critical of unhelpful organisational arrangements and inadequate feedback as they developed their unique personal and professional coping mechanisms.

They were also highly critical of unhelpful organisational arrangements and bureaucratic assessment practices.

Formal acknowledgement of learner progress and offering negotiation around published schedules were proposed as examples of showing such respect to these learners.

Practice (3)

Creating connections between work and assessment

Opportunities to collaborate with peers.

There is a problem with being overloaded with assessments at key transition points.

Practice (4)

Self-direction is paramount for part-time learners, but showed that while such learners expect to be autonomous, they are not always successful at self-management, although this ability develops over time.

There is an issue of level. Not only concerns about how academic levels are set but also the question (probably the most frequently occurring) of “how am I doing?”

There is an issue of identity. For example, the very personal question: “what is this course doing to me as a person?” Or, “who am I becoming as result of this course?” How is any such change or transformation measured: against other students; against teachers, mentors and other staff members (including as role models); and against work colleagues?

Practice (5)

There are house-keeping issues. Questions about how the group and individuals are being treated. Some quite intense concerns have arisen about mutual respect, about potential double-standards, as reflected, for example, in aspects of communication, of organisation, of rule-making and rule-breaking, of expectations and delivery (including of resources), and of administrative standards in general.

There are a bundle of technical issues, including about IT environments, writing (format, style etc.), timetabling, and the scope of discretion and flexibility.

For some students, there are really deeply-felt cultural sensitivities. Not just about language, nationality, and ethnicity, but also class and prior preparation, disability and special needs.

Learning Careers

..events, activities and meaning, and the making and remaking of meanings through those activities and events....in which other relevant human experiences, and ways of experiencing them, are described in terms of their relationships with the pivotal concept, learning.

Assessment Careers (1)

Assessment is rarely seen in the wider context of the student’s prior experience, external influences and identity transformations.

Much of the work focuses on students’ immediate and out of context experiences of assessment and feedback.

What is missing here is an appreciation of how assessment fits into a complex individual learning career.

It is suggested that it is helpful to view an assessment career as a significant part of a learning career.

Assessment Careers (2)

Assessment is an emotive process and we have already suggested that dealing with success or failure forms part of a learner’s identity. 

A focus on an assessment career highlights an underlying problem with many assessment regimes: that assessments are undertaken on a piecemeal basis and that there is little continuity.

Feedback tends to focus on the immediate task and, not surprisingly, rarely includes feed-forward to future assessment.

The concept of an assessment career is potentially very useful for capturing the complexity and diversity of experience of groups of learners and for recognising that there is not a distinct group of postgraduates, but rather individuals who may have commonalities with others because of the transitional moment of their learner career, their maturity and some overarching expectations for developing expertise and autonomy in postgraduate study.

Learning Environments (1)

• The student finds out for themselves rather than being given answers to problems – this is a problem-solving pedagogy.

• The student is required to engage in a series of interrogative processes with regards to texts, people and objects in the environment.

• The student is also required to use the skills of: information retrieval,

information synthesis and analysis, and knowledge organization.

Learning Environments (2)• The student may come up with inadequate, incorrect and faulty

syntheses and analyses. However, this is acceptable because the learning resides in the process rather than in the end-product.

• Learning involves the student in judging their own work against a curriculum standard and engaging in meta-processes of learning (i.e. understanding about processes of own learning; development of learning pathways; utilisation of formative assessment processes; development of personal learning strategies; internalisation of the curriculum, i.e. the standards).

Learning Environments (3)• Classroom talk which is not dominated by the teacher is an essential

pre-requisite of effective learning, and thus the teacher’s role is to organize activities which promote talk; this involves open-ended questioning.

• The teacher acts as a facilitator of the process and not as the giver of information or even as a knowledge organizer.

• The teacher needs to share learning intentions and success criteria with the learner; a prior articulation of a standard is an important step in effective learning.

Pedagogy

• A pedagogic standard (i.e. approach, technology, series of activities) is derived from a curriculum standard.

• The pedagogic standard might include: i) task setting; ii) negotiation

with the student about appropriate ways to meet the standard; iii) guidance about the contours of the task; iv) providing information to the learner on their performance to a standard (feedback).

Learning

Active Learning

• Dialogic Approach• Peer Cooperative Approach• Negotiating Learning Pathways• Teachers as Facilitators

Scaffolding

• Ownership by the Learner• Appropriateness of Task to Learner’s Stage of Development• Structured Approach to Task Completion• Collaboration between Teacher and Learner• Internalisation and Independent Performance

Assessment and Feedback

• Effective Classroom Discussions• Clarifying Learning and Sharing Learning

Intentions• Feedback on Performance• Active Process – Learner Ownership• Peer Learning

Overcoming of Task Uncertainty

A learner needs guidance about contours of task The teacher delineates features of task by explanation and

by exemplification Learner not given solution What is internalised is the means for solving similar tasks

Overcoming Contingency

Progressively reducing amount of control by the teacher

Aim – independent performance by learner Teacher intervention in relation to learner’s needs Movement from more structured to less structured

approaches

Learning

Five Key Factors:

1. Ownership by learner2. Appropriateness of task to learner’s stage of development3. Structured approach to completion of task4. Collaboration between the teacher and the learner5. Internalisation so that the learner can perform task independently

Processes

1. Modelling – remembered image2. Feedback – providing information to learner on their performance to a standard3. Contingency management – incentives, reinforcement, etc.4. Requesting specific actions, clarification of task, focus on parts of task, clarification on relations between parts

Processes

5. Questioning – providing a mental account of the process learner is going through

6. Cognitive Structuring – provides justification for new learning to help organise that new learning

7. Task Structuring – chunking, segregating, sequencing, turning a task into its parts or components

8. Meta-learning – reflecting on process of learning

Learning (2)

Processes Support Feedback Experimentation Structure Meta-reflection Deep Learning

Assessment for Learning

• Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions and learning tasks

• Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success

• Providing feedback that moves the learner forward

• Activating students as the owners of their own learning

• Activating students as instructional resources for one another

• Information about student achievement should be used to adapt instruction to meet learning needs of student