Exploring practice and participation in transition to post-graduate social science study
- Start date: 2006-09-01
- End date: 2007-09-01
- Amount: £28882
- Status: complete
- Funding Initiative: Higher Education Academy
An understanding of educational transitions is becoming increasingly important in constructing learning environments because the nature of individual students' transitions can shape their study experience and may impact on their eventual level of success.
Whilst there has been a research focus on transitions in schools and transitions to undergraduate study, postgraduate study has largely been ignored. It is the purpose of this project to address this oversight and to set in motion discussion and research surrounding such transitions. The project partners, the University of Bradford, the University of Glasgow and Manchester Metropolitan University, are committed to a widening participation agenda and it is intended that this project will form a useful contribution to understanding the processes of inclusion in postgraduate education, which has not, to date, featured strongly in the WP agenda. The project seeks to include the voices of both staff and students in generating data which will enable the generation of practical recommendations to HEIs surrounding the design of postgraduate environments and importantly, recommendations for students and staff for managing learning and ensuring inclusion. The research begins with an assumption that learning is a distributed process. This means that in place of the traditional transmission model (teacher speaks, learner absorbs), a distributed model emerges. That is, learning is seen as participation in the practices of the learning community through which individual identities are shaped by processes of inclusion or exclusion. In this model the quotidian activities of the learning environment are conceptualised as important data in understanding student performance and student participation in such practices is neither seen as inevitable nor understood as an individual responsibility. The project seeks to generate recommendations in the form of briefing notes, website contributions, journal papers and participation in conferences, for HEIs, staff and postgraduate students to enable more effective postgraduate learning environments.
Organisation/Institutions:- University of Huddersfield