"They have different information about what is going on": Emotion in the transition to university
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Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
Most new students experience school to university transition as challenging.
Students from backgrounds with little or no experience of higher education are
most vulnerable in this transition, and most at risk of academic failure. Emotion
appears implicated in the differential way in which first-generation students and
students with family familiarity of university experience the transition. This
article draws on the voices of first-year dental and oral hygiene students at a
South African dental faculty regarding university transition experiences. It
draws on the construct of capital and Archer’s(2002) understanding
of ‘competing concerns’ to examine how emotion shapes students’ experiences
of university transition and how they position themselves with regard to these
experiences. The article explicates the ways in which emotional commentary
and classed locations intersect, exploring the extent to which this intersection
shapes young people’s framing of their concerns of ‘being a student’ and
‘becoming a dentist’. The article identifies aspects of the university’s material
and cultural environments which shape students’ emotional responses and which
consequently are implicated in the perpetuation of class-based differential life
chances.
Description
Keywords
First year students, Higher education, Professional education, Student diversity, Student experience
Citation
McMillan, W. (2014). ‘They have different information about what is going on’: Emotion in the transition to university, Higher Education Research and Development. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2014.911250