Professor of Higher Education and Head of

Learning Enhancement University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland

Ray Land is Professor of Higher Education and Head of Learning Enhancement at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow UK. His research interests include academic development, threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge, research-teaching linkages, and theoretical aspects of digital learning. He is the author of Educational Development: Discourse, Identity and Practice (Open University Press 2004) Education in Cyberspace (RoutledgeFalmer 2005), and Research-Teaching Linkages: Enhancing Graduate Attributes (QAA 2008). He has also co-edited three books on Threshold Concepts – Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts & Troublesome Knowledge (Routledge 2006), Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines (Sense 2008) and Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning (Sense 2010). 

Liz McKinley & Irena Madjar

Elizabeth McKinley, of Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa and Ngāi Tahu descent, has worked extensively in Māori education in New Zealand. In secondary schools she specialised in teaching science, and for fourteen years held lecturing and management posts at The University of Waikato before joining The University of Auckland in 2005. Liz was appointed the Director of the Starpath Project for Tertiary Participation and Success in 2007, where she has been responsible for project leadership and a team of researchers. The aim of the Starpath Project is to transform educational outcomes for Māori and Pacific students, and students from low decile schools with academic ability and potential, who are currently under-represented in degree level tertiary education.

Irena Madjar, a European New Zealander of Ruthenian background, has worked in nursing education and health research in New Zealand and Australia. Her particular area of expertise is in qualitative research methods and she has a long-standing interest in cross-cultural issues in health and education and in research ethics. She joined Starpath in 2007 and has led a small qualitative research team as well as providing support across the project as a whole.

Irena and Liz have recently co-edited a book called “Uni Bound? Students’ Stories of Transition from School to University” (NZCER Publishers).

Bridging the gap: Students’ experience of transition from low-mid decile schools to university

Research indicates that NZ European/Pākehā students transition to tertiary education at a higher rate than any other ethnic group. However, even making it to tertiary study does not guarantee success. Surviving the transition from school to university can have a big impact on whether Māori and Pacific students succeed at tertiary level. A recent Starpath study followed the transition of 44 students, of whom two thirds were Māori or Pacific, from two urban and six rural low-mid decile schools. The students were followed over their last term of high school (October 2007), through the summer, to the end of their first semester of tertiary study (July 2008). Of the original group, 37 went on to tertiary study, and 29 stayed in the research project until the end of their first semester. Twenty five of these students agreed to be followed up until the end of 2009. The findings of this study raise questions about the adequacy of transitional and ongoing support for students who clearly struggle to become academically engaged, to find direction as their initial study choices prove inappropriate or too challenging, and to persist despite stumbling blocks on their pathway to academic success. The fact that some students require more than one year to find their way suggests a need for stronger transitional support both early in their student experience and in the period between the first and second year of study. This presentation will report on the findings of the study and the implications it has for institutions.