KIFT ALTC SENIOR FELLOWSHIP: ARTICULATING A TRANSITION PEDAGOGY

December 2008

Alf Lizzio

Commentary on first year curriculum case studies:

Student efficacy perspective

Author:One of my goals is developing students’

professional and generic capabilities through both curriculum and assessment-related

approaches ... I have a particular interest in approaches that enable students to become

more self-regulating and reflective.

Commentary on first year curriculum case studies:Student efficacy perspective

2 Kift ALTC Senior Fellowship: Articulating a Transition Pedagogy

Transition points (given that they are times of

unfreezing) may also be an opportune time to sensitise commencing

students to the various modes of learning (of

which unlearning is one) that they may have to engage with in order to be successful at

university ...

Author01.Associate Professor Alf Lizzio,

Griffith University, Brisbane (a.lizzio@griffith.edu.au).

02. I have taught large undergraduate classes in psychology for several years. One of my goals is developing students’ professional and generic capabilities through both curriculum and assessment-related approaches and I have published some of this work. I have a particular interest in approaches that enable students to become more self-regulating and reflective. I have held a number of academic leadership positions concerned with the design and change management of not only school but also institutional-level programs for first year student retention and engagement.

The first year curriculum perspective03.I have reflected on the case study

material from a number of related perspectives. The spirit of my

comments is to ‘initiate conversation’ rather than to ‘make pronouncements’.

The case studies

Theory of learning04. Several cases commented on the role of ‘unlearning’ in facilitating the transition process (for example, de-schooling, challenging preconceptions). Students’ unlearning can occur at a number of levels:

• study habits or learning strategies• ideas about ‘what is a university?’• the respective roles of staff and

students• epistemological beliefs (for example,

what is knowledge and what is worth knowing?).

05. Transition points (given that they are times of unfreezing) may also be

an opportune time to sensitise commencing students to the various modes of learning (of which unlearning is one) that they may have to engage with in order to be successful at university (for example: learning new things; relearning things they thought they knew or had mastered; unlearning ways of thinking, behaving or relating; ex-learning or learning from experience; and meta-learning or learning about how we learn and our learning preferences). Most novice

learners, understandably, have a relatively ‘sedimentary’ model of learning, whereby learning just involves the ‘adding-on’ or layering of new information.

06. So the more explicit we can be as to the learning repertoire that we expect of our students, the more able we will be to put this systematically into practice. So, as well as identifying a content based list of key skills, we also need to identify a process based framework to support this.

07. The literature on students self-positioning or role schemas (for example, as a consumer, apprentice, etc.) in an educational context may also be relevant here, as some modes (for example, consumer) tend to preclude/minimise transformational learning.

Questions:• What are the most critical aspects of

unlearning for commencing students?• Can we develop a transition-supportive

unlearning framework?

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• How do we address these with novice students?

• What is the match or ‘goodness of fit’ between different students’ beliefs (for example, school leaver, mature aged etc.) and those required for success?

Motivational levers08. The challenge of motivating and engaging commencing students was implicit in all of the case studies. The domain of motivational strategies suggested was:

• personal relevance: using examples and/or tasks within the students’ life experience

• community relevance: locating the program/degree in a local context

• contemporary relevance: using current issues or debates to illustrate material

• future relevance: locating tasks or material in terms of job utility

• narrative relevance: locating tasks in an ongoing story or constructed reality.

09. I am fully supportive of an ‘engaging educational environment’ and all of the above approaches have a useful role to play in this. However, student disengagement has complex causative and maintaining factors (some beyond the curriculum) and academics should (in the interests of their own sanity and own continued motivation) appreciate that, despite their best efforts, many students just are not ready to engage at this stage and place of their lives.

10. Perhaps this speaks to the need for a meta-conversation at the beginning of semester about the respective contributions and roles of staff and students to ‘being and staying engaged’.

Questions:• What is our motivational repertoire?• What de-motivates commencing

students?• What are the limits of ‘motivating

students’? At what point have we ‘done enough’ to engage?

• At what point do we expect students to be self-motivated by higher purposes and goals?

The structuring of knowledge

11. The need to ‘work across’ or ‘break down’ traditional knowledge structures was evident in some case studies. This was expressed through notions of ‘interdisciplinarity’ or ‘cross-functional collaborations’ or ‘integrated package across subjects’. The rationale for this was expressed in several forms:

• facilitating holistic thinking• anticipating the structuring of real

world problems/issues• building cross-group understanding• alignment of curriculum facilitates

students’ coherence and ‘sense making’.

12. This is a fundamental challenge for higher education in general, beyond just the structuring of the first year experience. The role of disciplines and professions is increasingly under scrutiny in terms of both their contribution to public good and the value added to knowledge. This is of course a highly contested area.

13. Given the silo-based structure of many programs, one question worthy of consideration is how to introduce the notion of ‘holistic thinking’ within a traditional curriculum.

Questions:• What forms of alignment or integration

are possible in programs that only comprise individual subjects in first year?

• What are the pros and cons of a core foundation year?

Lifecycle perspective14. The argument was strongly made in almost all of the case studies that the traditional notion of ‘orientation as a one-off event’ was no longer appropriate in the present context (if it ever was!). The

Commentary on first year curriculum case studies:Student efficacy perspective

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conceptual idea of the student lifecycle implicitly informed a number of strategies:

• pre-enrolment strategies• just-in-time interventions• whole of semester/year processes• identification of crisis or

reality-check points.

15. This is important not only from a practical perspective, but also it signifies a conceptual shift from a curriculum-centred to a student-centred way of thinking. The functional mind-set is ‘if we can better understand this from the students’ perspective we can better design support processes to facilitate success’.

16. The field is in need of a more systematic conceptualisation of the student lifecycle (well, actually lifecycles, as the journeys and trajectories of different student groups are relevant here). Maps of the student lifecycle are, of course, most powerful when they are shared with students and, in this sense, become an aid to self-regulation or self-management. Beyond this they can also be used to frame institutional strategy.

Questions:• What might be an integrating model of

the student lifecycle?• How might this be expressed in

student-centred language?• How might the lifecycle framework be

used to shape institutional strategy and policy?

Importance of language and framing

17. How we frame an event can influence the meaning people make of it. I was struck by the deliberate use of language and its potential impact on students in some of the case studies. For example, there may be a world of difference between something described to students as orientation week (‘O-week’) and alternatively as ‘A week of welcome’.

18. Similarly, when ‘program goals’ are described to students as ‘standards expected by future employers’ the meaning

space is fundamentally different; again, when ‘student groups’ are framed as ‘study groups’, the expectation emphasises ‘task’ as much as ‘relationship’.

19. It may be useful to frame ‘starting at uni’ from a cross-cultural perspective and to consider that both sides might need to learn a new language.

Questions: • What are the key aspects of the first

year experience that we might usefully consider reframing or re-labelling?

• What is the difference between student and staff language?

• Do we speak a foreign language and what translation is necessary?

Teamwork20. The notion of ‘working in teams’ was fairly common across the case studies. This was rightfully proposed as a necessary and learnable capability. However, from a student’s perspective this is a problematic learning mode. Student groups or teams that are supported (via team building, structured protocols or staff input) achieve superior learning outcomes and a reduced level of student conflict. This is particularly critical in first year as group work experiences are likely to be highly formative and either positive or negative. There is some empirical — and considerable anecdotal — evidence to indicate that staff underestimate (and under-support) the challenges and frustrations of placing students in collaborative learning experiences.

The field is in need of a more systematic conceptualisation of the student lifecycle

(well, actually lifecycles, as the journeys and

trajectories of different student groups are

relevant here).

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21. Beyond the pragmatic, when peers are positioned as ‘sources of learning’ there is often a need to legitimate this in their eyes. The common response is that ‘we are doing your work for you’. Once again this comes back to the broader and foundational point of enriching students’ ideas about learning.

22. An early precursor to placing students in teams is to better understand the meaning they make of this (for example, their history in groups, their sense of efficacy, etc.).

Questions:• What group support processes are

possible in large class settings?• When is team work contraindicated?• How do we genuinely stay in touch

with students’ group experiences?

Invocation of independence

23. Much is made of the need to ‘encourage independence’ in students. The most thoughtful cases operationalised this goal in terms of safe, progressive experiments

where students are required to complete ‘low stakes’ tasks. A student’s sense of academic efficacy (a belief that ‘I can do this’) is by far the strongest predictor of their future success; so efforts to deliberately strengthen efficacy through early success (ironically, relatively highly structured and supported, but de-scaffolded over time with increasing learner maturity) offer the greatest promise of ‘independence’.

24. Thus, paradoxically, a climate of safety and experimentation plays a critical role in building independence.

25. The above line of argument is central to addressing the social Darwinistic criticism that ‘if you support students too much in first year then all you are doing is delaying their inevitable failure in later years’.

26. I think it is a priority task for the field to develop more sophisticated understanding of notions of academic challenge, support and independence and how they interact.

Questions:• When and what forms of support are

not helpful?• What is ‘independence’, why is it

important and how do we facilitate it?

Feedback27. The cases rightfully emphasised the role of feedback in facilitating learning. Traditional learning environments are relatively ‘feedback sparse’, perhaps based on staff assumptions of learner self-determination and economy of effort. So designing ‘feedback rich(er)’ environments requires us to think systematically and creatively about both effective and sustainable sources of feedback, as well as the optimal mix of sources for a particular student/curriculum context.

28. Potential sources of feedback include:• peer to peer• online reflective tools• self-reflection or self-assessment• staff feedback on submitted work• incidental feedback embedded in the

classroom.

A student’s sense of academic efficacy (a belief that ‘I can

do this’) is by far the strongest predictor of

their future success; so efforts to deliberately strengthen efficacy

through early success (ironically, relatively

highly structured and supported, but

de-scaffolded over time with increasing learner

maturity) offer the greatest promise of

‘independence’.

Commentary on first year curriculum case studies:Student efficacy perspective

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29. It is also important to emphasise that optimal feedback has two components: knowledge of performance plus encouragement.

30. Thus, at a meta-level, feedback processes need to stimulate and maintain learning, rather than just provide information.

Questions:• What factors prevent students from

seeking feedback?• What factors (personal, structural,

contextual) prevent staff from providing students with feedback?

De-privatisation of the classroom and the (re)assertion of team

31. Several case studies framed their teaching environment from a whole-of-degree program perspective and made a virtue of crossing traditional classroom boundaries. The extent to which this may be perceived as counter-cultural in many schools should not be underestimated. This shift is underpinned by a belief in the educational value of collaboration, its time efficiency for individuals and the robustness of people (to handle the scrutiny of peers).

Questions:• What leadership is required to make

this type of program work?• What are the predictable challenges?

Leadership32. The virtue of involving senior academics (for example, professors, best researchers and full-time staff) in the first year was regularly asserted. The meta message was that ‘student contact’ was not delegated to part-time sessional staff (the skilled labourers of higher education) but rather that responsibility was taken.

33. From a student perspective this was seen to signify that:

• the academic ‘leaders of the tribe’ thought that they (students) were a worthwhile investment

• they were getting the best of cutting-edge knowledge.

Question:• When/what are sessional staff better

at teaching?

Additional comments and resources34.There is considerable good practice

evident in the presented case studies and the authors should be

congratulated for the quality of both their practice and critical reflection.

35. Some resources that may be of interest and that I am happy to share:

• I have developed and evaluated processes and tools to support the development of collaborative student teams (Team Learning System). These have proved to be quite successful in preventing or minimising common group problems.

• I have developed a range of online instruments to help students self-assess transition-relevant aspects such as:1. Generic skill profile2. Expectations of university3. Learner profile of behaviours.

• I have conceptualised common student transition tasks into a framework (The Five Senses of Success) and used this to design and evaluate student-centred practice.

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SupportforthispublicationhasbeenprovidedbytheAustralianLearningandTeachingCouncilLtd,aninitiativeoftheAustralianGovernmentDepartmentofEducation,EmploymentandWorkplaceRelations.TheviewsexpressedinthispublicationdonotnecessarilyreflecttheviewsoftheAustralianLearningandTeachingCouncil.

FurtherresourcesdevelopedunderthisALTCSeniorFellowship,Articulating a Transition Pedagogy,areavailableathttp://www.altcexchange.edu.au/first-year-experience-and-curriculum-design