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/