TRANSITIONS AND
TRANSFORMATIONS OF
POST-GRADUATE STUDENTS
IN THE UK
David Scott
Four Types of Transitions
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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 practiceorientated 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 Backgrounds
This 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)
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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
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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)
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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Tension between forms of learning/experience of nontraditional 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)
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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.
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Practice (4)
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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)
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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 doublestandards, as reflected, for example, in aspects of
communication, of organisation, of rule-making and rulebreaking, 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)
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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)
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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)
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The student finds out for themselves rather than being given answers to
problems – this is a problem-solving pedagogy.
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The student is required to engage in a series of interrogative processes
with regards to texts, people and objects in the environment.
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The student is also required to use the skills of: information retrieval,
information synthesis and analysis, and knowledge organization.
Learning Environments (2)
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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)
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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.
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The teacher acts as a facilitator of the process and not as the giver of
information or even as a knowledge organizer.
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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
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A pedagogic standard (i.e. approach, technology, series of activities) is
derived from a curriculum standard.
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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
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Dialogic Approach
Peer Cooperative Approach
Negotiating Learning Pathways
Teachers as Facilitators
Scaffolding
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Ownership by the Learner
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Appropriateness of Task to Learner’s Stage of Development
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Structured Approach to Task Completion
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Collaboration between Teacher and Learner
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Internalisation and Independent Performance
Assessment and Feedback
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Effective Classroom Discussions
Clarifying Learning and Sharing Learning
Intentions
Feedback on Performance
Active Process – Learner Ownership
Peer Learning
Overcoming of Task Uncertainty
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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
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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 learner
2. Appropriateness of task to learner’s stage of development
3. Structured approach to completion of task
4. Collaboration between the teacher and the learner
5. Internalisation so that the learner can perform task independently
Processes
1. Modelling – remembered image
2. Feedback – providing information to learner on
their performance to a standard
3. 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)
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Processes
Support
Feedback
Experimentation
Structure
Meta-reflection
Deep Learning
Assessment for Learning
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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