Finding the way to higher education: Miranda and Rochelle
Abstract:
This chapter highlights the impact of family background and geography on access to higher education. We introduce Miranda and Rochelle, two women who completed their studies as mature age, off-campus (distance education) students living in rural locations at some distance from their university. Their comments draw attention to the different ways that disrupted early schooling experiences affected these women’s sense of themselves as learners, and inform their commitment to completing their studies once they enter higher education. Following their stories, we consider the implications for managing the transition to higher education and supporting the first year experience of students enrolling from pathways such as these.
Introduction
We begin with the stories of Miranda and Rochelle, using their experiences to focus on the complex pathways to higher education that are often encountered by students who come to university from non-traditional backgrounds. Miranda’s and Rochelle’s stories, like those that follow in later chapters, provide a wealth of information regarding issues related to managing and supporting student diversity. You may wish to return to their stories as you consider further issues in later chapters.
There are similarities and differences in the ways that Miranda and Rochelle found their way to higher education, and in their perceptions of themselves on this journey. Both were from rural areas, were the first in their families to attend university, and their stories illustrate how serendipitous encounters can have a crucial effect on key decisions that lead to higher education. Miranda, from a single-parent family, developed early confidence in her abilities as a learner, which helped her through various further education courses, eventually resulting in her enrolment in an undergraduate university course. In contrast, Rochelle, from a background where ‘everyone’s a tradesman’, received considerable practical and financial support from her parents but did not perceive herself as a good learner, and her route to university was characterised by lack of information, unsuccessful applications, and a variety of work experiences related to her love of animals. As you read their stories, consider the implications of the experiences revealed in them for managing and supporting the transition of students from similar backgrounds. We will consider further implications for assisting transition in Chapters 3 and 4.
Miranda’s story
Pathway to higher education
Miranda was in her mid-thirties and the parent of a school-aged daughter when she started her course. She was the first in her family to attend university. She lived in a rural area, and studied as an off-campus (distance education) student.
Family background
Miranda’s parents separated when she was two and she described herself as coming from ‘quite a line of solo parents’. She has an older sister and a younger half-sister. Miranda often moved from place to place with her mother when she was young, attending nine different primary schools (the first seven years of school – age approximately 5–12 years):
I don’t really remember a whole lot about primary school – my primary school life or age was marked by my home life, and that was where my focus was.
This constant moving left Miranda feeling as if she was always the ‘new kid’:
… because we always moved, nothing was ever long-term. There was a huge feeling of temporariness about everything that we did … we knew that we didn’t have to worry about things for too long because that would change. So commitment was very difficult.
As a consequence, Miranda learnt to be independent and to interact ‘superficially’ with people. With every move to a new location, Miranda’s mother would throw out their old possessions:
I have one childhood toy – we could take one thing and she was constantly getting rid of our things. She thinks that if you hold on to something for more than a year … you’re hoarding it. She has like a phobia – she’s very much a clean freak.
Miranda recalled her mother resisting the stigma of single parenthood:
… she had a very sterile environment. She fought the assumption a lot that ‘single parent – kids probably feral’. And I was born in ’69, so it wasn’t common to be in a single parent family. Unless the father had died.
Miranda was aware that she and her family were ‘different’:
I remember when I was about in Grade 5 [the penultimate year of primary school] … we were playing chasey [chasings] up the stairs and I remember telling a girl who was in my class that my parents were divorced. And she didn’t know what that was.
Miranda’s older sister was ‘so rebellious and just so contrary to everything – she was very feisty and fiery’:
You couldn’t say boo – she’d create an argument out of that. She left us when she was 13. She spent a lot of time homeless and couchsurfing … [She] still has never held a job and she’s 40 now. She’s now married. She did have a child. The child was removed through the state when she was 17.
The removal of her sister’s child and the baby’s experience of abuse and neglect led Miranda to reflect on her own life experience and developed her awareness that she wanted to contribute to child protection in her later life. She learnt from this ‘that safety should be a right, not a privilege’.
Miranda’s younger half-sister was born with significant learning difficulties:
My sister was born with the cord wrapped around her neck several times, and it was quite tight and she was quite blue. And the doctors told my Mum that she does not have the full brain capacity, and it has affected her ability to remember things and stuff like that … I don’t know if that’s environmental or innate … [M]y mother’s response to that was … ‘Oh, well … don’t expect too much from her – she’s got this problem.’ And I don’t know if it’s because my sister was told that, plus because she’s the baby of the family … and so she believed it … But she did struggle a bit through school. She passed her Year 11 exams [in the penultimate year of high school] and that was it for schooling. And my Mum was ecstatic about that … my sister had to really study hard.
Miranda felt that her family situation contributed to her own stability:
… my Mum and my sister needed me – that’s why I was stable. I was the next in line … when my Mum was out of action … I remember being the adult … I had an obligation to my family to stay or what would happen?
Miranda’s mother married three times and also had a long-term de facto relationship. Miranda did not get along with any of her stepfathers: ‘we were happiest without them around. Like when there was just us girls, we were happier then.’ Poverty was a continuing issue for this sole-parent family at a time when welfare benefits were not available.
Miranda’s mother ‘had a nervous breakdown’ when Miranda was in her final year of primary school. She relied heavily on Miranda:
… because I’d been the adult of our family unit for a while, she saw me, I think, [as] older than I was … she saw me as someone she could soundboard off-against. And that sort of thing.
Miranda had several strong female role models. Her paternal grandmother, who Miranda resembled physically, was a stable, nurturing, warm figure:
My Nanna was everything. She was the sweetest, kindest woman. She was the only one in my family who – aside from me – has blue eyes … Nanna … brought out the importance of nurturing and caring for people and she would take in anyone.
Miranda’s paternal aunt was a determined career woman, who had strong political views:
… she has been a very supportive role model in that she’s let me see that women can do anything … you just need to be determined enough …
Miranda’s mother also taught her the importance of ‘manual working skills’:
… to contribute to society … you need to get up in the morning, you need to be committed to a job, and go to it and come home at the end of the day and feel you’ve done a good job.
Miranda’s younger sister demonstrated this family work ethic:
Mum’s saying that my younger sister … she’s got these problems with memory, she’s not going to achieve, go ahead and stuff … but she’s a real good, strong manual worker … she’s been working in the hospitality industry for years now. In the same job. And she’s happy and successful in that.
As role models, all of these women contributed to Miranda’s sense that if she was determined enough, she could achieve what she wanted.
Educational experiences
Miranda always believed that she was ‘smart’. This perception was reinforced by her mother and various primary school teachers:
I did well in primary school. I’ve always done well in school. No one’s ever worried about me, because they all know, ‘Oh, she’s so smart, she’ll be fine, don’t worry.’ And I always was.
Her mother constantly stated that she did not have to worry about Miranda and that Miranda ‘would be fine’:
[She] left me to my own devices … and when she spoke of me, to me, or about me, it was always, ‘Miranda’s fine. Miranda’s fine. She’s smart. She’ll catch on and she gets it – she gets things straight away and she lands on her feet.’ … They probably thought I would end up somewhere – like I would do something. I think they expected some further study, some sort of career, but I don’t know that they ever thought I would have gone to university. Because I am the first one in my family to go to university.
Miranda had few memories of primary school because of the constant moving. The possessions that her mother was constantly throwing out included school books, so Miranda and her sisters were never able to take books from one school to the next.
After her itinerant primary school education, Miranda stayed at one secondary school. She refused to move:
… even though my Mum made us move house, and we moved a significant distance from my high school, I still would not leave my high school. I had a really great bunch of friends there and [was] doing really well academically … And I was not prepared to give it up. So I would … leave home at six in the morning, catch two buses – a bus into the city and a bus out to my high school, to get there by nine, or ten to nine. And I wouldn’t get home till after five at night, but I was determined I was not changing schools. I refused to change high school.
Miranda felt accepted by her peer group at secondary school, was academically competent, and successful at sport and drama. In contrast to her primary school experiences, ‘[h]ighlights were all the time. Getting boyfriends and feeling accepted by my peers, and all that stuff.’
In the first year of high school, Miranda wanted to be a psychiatrist, but this ambition was quashed by her friends who said ‘you’d have to be crazy, because you have to deal with crazy people.’
Miranda left school at the end of her penultimate year of high school to escape a family life of conflict with her latest stepfather. She worked at a supermarket full-time for a year, and then started studying hospitality and tourism at a further education college to ‘see what else there was to life’. She was too young to work in hospitality when she completed the course, so she worked in a department store, and then in a restaurant. At 19, Miranda went grape-picking with her husband-to-be, and then they moved into a house together. Miranda returned to further education and completed a women’s studies course, which gave her insight into her own and her family’s circumstances. She also ‘started volunteering’:
… my Mum had been volunteering … she … went into community services too … in her forties … [through her nervous breakdown] she gained a lot of information, through counselling, about self-help.
Miranda then undertook a community studies certificate. She married and gave birth to her daughter and this led her into early childhood studies at a further education college and then a diploma at a regional university:
I worked in that for a while. But at the same time I was having my child and seeing to my child and she was little, and then my own marriage ended when my child was nearly three. So there was a bit of a pattern, perhaps. From there I ran a crèche for a while at a local gym.
Encouraged by a Salvation Army officer she met at a job network, Miranda applied for a ‘government job’ as a Rural Youth Information Service Officer. Without that encouragement, she would not have had the courage to apply:
… fate dealt a hand or something. I don’t know. We just got talking about the position, about what I’d done, and he said, ‘Just try!’ … [I] would never have considered even looking at a job like that. It had a government stamp on the top.
After ‘a couple of years’ in this job, Miranda felt the need for further information on the issues confronting the young people she worked with. She gained admission to a degree in community welfare, which she completed by distance education. Miranda then became aware that she was ineligible to work in child protection in her home state without a social work degree, so she applied for and was accepted into her current course.
Miranda believed that her mother’s ability to change and move taught her determination and pluck to take chances and meet challenges as she worked towards achieving her educational goals:
I think I got some foundations for entering university … Mum, with all her faults, she’s never afraid to move on and to try something new. We always embraced change. Newness. So that’s where I get my pluck!
Miranda commenced the course believing that she was a capable learner:
I think that the expectation that I was smart … went a long way into me getting here, because I believed them.
Managing study
Planning
Miranda stated that the key to her success in studying was planning:
I needed to have a chat with my daughter. I always sit her down at the beginning of the year. And let her know my work plans and my responsibilities to her as well as to my workload and my employment and whatever else – other commitments. And I check in with her to make sure she feels that’s OK, or whether she thinks she’s going to need a little more of my time.
She also ‘had a chat with my fiancé … because he’s not really used to what my workload might be’.
Miranda acknowledged that there are sacrifices in studying:
… my daughter has just made school captain … and I missed it, because I’m here [at a residential workshop]. And you know, I felt like I’ve missed a milestone … so it’s one of the sacrifices that I make to do this, and in the long run she’ll see that this is what you have to do – you have to work hard and do things to reach the goals that you’ve set yourself.
For Miranda, part of her planning involved balancing commitments. This involved juggling her part-time workload and her financial commitments, including her mortgage repayments, as well as her responsibilities to her daughter.
Managing
Miranda studied in the evening after her daughter was in bed, on weekends, and occasionally at work. To manage the demands on her time, she was assignment-focused:
I look at the question … and I’ll write out as much as I know about it already and I try to make a plan of the things I’m going to need to look up, and I’ll just get to the point. I don’t read anything I don’t have to read … If I have to research a particular thing, I will break that down. I will look at the things that I don’t know and I’ll research those and then I’ll look at the things that I do know and I’ll find supporting academic references for that.
These demands required her to be ‘very efficient in [her] time management’, developing strategic reading skills:
I think you learn to cull things a lot – you’re a lot harsher as you get older. Well, I have been. I’ll cull out the things I don’t need and then wade through them to see what I can take … I read the end of [a book] first, like backwards, and I’ll only read the relevant bits. I can’t remember the last time I read a whole book, cover to cover … I don’t think I have since I was pregnant, I think, which was 13 years ago, 14 years ago … I never read an entire book: I only read what I need.
Miranda used a computer as she studied:
I need to be taking notes because it’s solution-focused reading, it really is. It’s not reading for the pleasure or the fun of it. I need to be able to make notes there and then and I don’t like to deface books.
While she was studying, Miranda had become engaged, bought a house, and her daughter got a puppy. She refused to let these life changes impact on her study:
… you have to have the attitude of, ‘it’s a priority’. It’s like work. It’s like my daughter – it’s up there – it’s important to me … I’ve never thought of giving up. I won’t. Difficult times come and go, but that’s life, I think. Nothing … [has] made me want to give up.
Miranda did not face any particular problems with her study, seeking clarification ‘on the odd occasion’ from the appropriate subject adviser, and reporting that she received the advice that she needed. She studied by distance education:
I’m very used to being an off-campus student. In fact, I prefer it. I don’t think I could work as well, as efficiently, within the confines of attending daily … I need the flexibility to be able to work and pay my mortgage now and to support my daughter – I really need the flexibility of external studies.
Support
Miranda received support from family, friends, university staff, and her employer. Key sources of support were her mother and her fiancé:
I have to admit that I would be dead in the water without my Mum and my partner – my fiancé. They just help out here, there and everywhere … like my daughter will walk to my Mum’s house two nights a week, because I know I’m working back … That sort of thing … she goes there after school and stuff like that because she hates going to out-of-school hours care … [My fiancé], he’ll give up his weekends to come out and watch her in the rain – play netball and stuff like that … and you know I might take a book out and he’ll tell me, ‘Oh, she’s got the ball, she’s going for a goal,’ or something so I can check and see the good bits.
However, there were some limitations to family support:
… my family are supportive but I’m the first one in my family to pursue tertiary education so the support was there, but the level of understanding wasn’t.
Miranda appreciated the support of one particular friend because she shared a similar experience of off-campus study:
… I’ve got a very close friend who has also studied externally in a different course … our friendship entailed something different than I had with anybody else around here because she was studying at university level and so was I. So she could relate to me a lot better and we supported each other quite a bit and she’s also a sole parent too … and working part-time as well, so up against the same sort of things …
Miranda felt that university staff supported her learning:
I think that they offered me as much information as I needed to fulfil my requirements as a student … and they conveyed that information to me fairly well, so … I haven’t really got any complaints about my education and support.
She did not seek additional support from the university:
I didn’t really know that there would be any there that would be appropriate for me. I didn’t think I really required additional support. So I didn’t really look into it.
Miranda summed up her sources of support as follows:
I have a supportive team at work. I’ve had a really supportive boss … he’s been wonderful. And the fact that I get study leave to come to residentials – it means that there’s no interruption on the income flow. A really supportive family, they’re all proud of me. And supportive university staff, so yeah, I’m getting support from everywhere. I feel really supported.
Reflections and future plans
Miranda completed her degree in the minimum time, continuing to work part-time while she studied, from two and a half to four days per week. At course completion she continued her half-time position (two and a half days per week) and began another position with an identical time commitment.
Reflecting on her experience at the conclusion of her degree, Miranda stated that though her studies did not change her as a learner, she became more efficient in her time management skills and increased her knowledge and her status in the workplace. These increased her confidence in herself as a professional:
I am more confident in the workplace now because I have an entitlement to do certain things that I didn’t have before … if you’re not a [graduate] … you can’t write certain reports and you don’t have these certain duties and responsibilities, and so that certainly boosts my confidence … knowing that I have an entitlement to do these things that goes along with the role.
Miranda appreciated ‘the learning that [she] gained’ from the course, particularly her ability to apply it in her workplace (‘I love doing that’).
As a result, she planned to undertake postgraduate study in the near future:
… probably ten years ago I wouldn’t have said I would have had the courage … to actually go out and study … I mean ten years ago I didn’t have any degrees … I’ve done … quite a bit of [further education] study and stuff like that but, as far as university study, ten years ago, I wouldn’t have thought to – I wouldn’t have had the courage to.
Miranda also felt she needed to spend the next few years providing stability for her now adolescent daughter:
Rochelle’s story
Pathway to higher education
Rochelle, a mature age student in her early thirties, came from a regional town in a remote part of Australia. She lived there with her parents until her final year of secondary school, when she moved several hundred kilometres away to a school near the capital city of her state to undertake her last year of schooling.
Family background
Rochelle was the first in her family to go to university. Neither of her parents had any experience of education beyond high school. Her father was a tradesman, and her only brother was also a tradesman:
… I come from a town where everyone becomes a tradesman … everyone’s a tradesman, everyone’s hands-on. My brother’s a tradesman, my Dad’s a tradesman … it’s really sort of earthy you know … I just reckon all the girls are hairdressers and all the boys are boilermakers.
The ‘tradesman story’ is a recurring motif in Rochelle’s narrative.
Educational experiences
During her primary school years, Rochelle was ‘always a middle of the road student’:
I was never really interested and if I felt like I couldn’t do something, I … just sort of snuck away from it … I never thought I was bright enough. I never thought I had the ability to learn, or the ability to get any better, and so I chose not to try very hard.
Neither her parents, nor her teachers, had any expectations of Rochelle and they did not challenge her about her perceptions of herself as a learner. She, too, did not challenge this view of herself:
[I] just didn’t think I was smart enough. Just thought, ‘That’s it. That’s how I am. That’s how it is.’
Rochelle was content to be a ‘bit of a daydreamer’, and thought more about horses than school work when she was at school. She had always loved animals and thought she would work with them when she grew up.
Rochelle attended the Catholic secondary school in her home town, although she found the presence of boys at her co-educational school a distraction. She enjoyed this time, as she liked being around people, but once again, she did not really try hard at school, and continued to be a C or D grade student:
… you went there and hung [out] with your mates and came home. You didn’t worry about studying. It was a tradesman’s town.
Rochelle’s parents were disappointed in her approach to school work and thought she was ‘hanging around with the wrong people’. When her parents sent her to boarding school for the final year of high school, she was happy – she was able to take her horse with her, and she could study agricultural science subjects. Again, Rochelle said she did not do any work. Having decided that she did not need to achieve a high final year school examination score, Rochelle concentrated on the agricultural science subjects that she enjoyed:
… I don’t know how I passed … I didn’t need a [high tertiary entrance] score. I didn’t need one of those. So I just didn’t bother … I never thought I was smart enough to be a vet. Never, ever, ever, thought that. But I liked that industry and I liked working with animals …
Rochelle tailored her academic performance to suit her goal, which was to work with animals as a veterinary nurse. However, she had underestimated the entry requirements for veterinary nursing courses offered at further education colleges, and failed to gain a place:
… I didn’t get in. So I was devastated … I couldn’t believe that I didn’t get in, so I went back … home.
Upon moving back to her home town, Rochelle enrolled in an environmental science course at her local further education college, and lived in a caravan. Again, she ‘didn’t really study’. Her grandmother died, and she withdrew from the course after the first semester. This affected her deeply:
… I felt like a real failure … I’ve never pulled out of anything! And it still bothers me that I pulled out … I still don’t like telling that bit of the story – that I pulled out. I didn’t like pulling out … [when you] start something you should finish it.
Even through this difficult time, the desire to be a veterinary nurse stayed with Rochelle. She returned to study to get a better tertiary entrance score, while working one day a week as a volunteer at a veterinary clinic. This time she succeeded in gaining entry to a veterinary nursing course and moved back to the city to study.
Once again Rochelle’s parents were very supportive of her education, funding her attendance at a university residential college for the first years of the veterinary nursing course.
Initially, she did not want to go to the residential college in the city, feeling:
I wasn’t as good as them [the other students]. They’re uni students and I’m only a [further education] student.
In time, Rochelle came to appreciate what the college offered her in terms of a supportive study environment, particularly through her friendships with fellow college students.
These friendships helped to boost Rochelle’s self-confidence and override the influences of her home town:
They just made me feel like I could do it. I could actually walk into a uni. Because it’s terrifying, that stuff … You’ve never been smart in school, you never thought of doing … a uni subject and you thought that you would never do one.
Rochelle obtained a job in her home town and completed, with difficulty, the remainder of the course by distance education. She ‘didn’t have the right attitude’ and it took a long time. She then worked for five years, including some time on cattle stations (large outback cattle farms), and travelled overseas. On her return, she moved to an isolated city in another part of Australia and again worked as a veterinary nurse.
About this time Rochelle began to feel frustrated that she wasn’t ‘using her brain’:
I don’t know why I decided I wanted to study. I don’t consciously know why. I just thought I wanted to study something … even though I still didn’t think I had a brain.
Rochelle was living by herself in another part of the country, and began to consider re-enrolling in the environmental science course she discontinued when her grandmother died:
… because I liked cattle stations and I liked cattle and horses and … hands-on stuff, that’s why I think I thought environmental science was the way to go.
Although Rochelle was clear that she wanted to enrol in a course so that she could be ‘using her brain’, her knowledge of her options was limited to the careers she had seen in her home town, and in the isolated city where she worked as a veterinary nurse:
And I never thought [about] anything – you know, on the other side. Humanities, or anything like that. And [I] didn’t even know what humanities were, you know.
During this time, Rochelle had one male friend who ‘was really inspirational’ and had studied at post-secondary level. He and a female friend encouraged her to believe she had skills and abilities. Rochelle applied to enrol in the environmental science course and moved back to her home town and lived with her parents. Her application was not successful. Once again, Rochelle was ‘devastated’:
So I just went, ‘Oh my God! What am I going to do now? I didn’t get in. And I’m back at home and I’m nearly 30, and I live with my parents and I don’t know what I’m doing.’
Her parents persuaded her to visit a branch of a regional university in her home town. There Rochelle met a staff member who was ‘so … energetic and inspiring’, and helped her to see what was possible:
… ‘You can do it!’ That’s what she said to me. Just having that inspired you and then also empowered you, I suppose … And she made it sound fantastic … ‘You do some study … live at home … [It will] be fantastic’… so she made a positive out of living at home.
Reflecting on the skills that this woman had, and on the impact of meeting someone who really inspired her, Rochelle recognised that she had reached a point where she was ready to be inspired, admitting, ‘I was obviously receptive to that at the time, too.’ Persuaded that what she had to do was ‘just start somewhere’, Rochelle passed an English competency test and started studying social science in her home town.
During this time she was supported by a mentor who ‘really looked after’ her. Rochelle was working in a government department where she met a woman who went to university when she was 50. This woman provided support and encouragement, and most importantly for Rochelle, helped her understand better her experience of study:
If you’re in that environment I feel you’re all right. You get encouraged. And you don’t lose heart. But if you end up out of that environment, where no one understands you, and you can;t relate to anyone [it is difficult].
Soon afterwards, a part-time community work position became available in another regional town, which she commenced. This led Rochelle to think she would like to study social work. She enrolled as an off-campus student, which meant she could continue to live at home with her parents.
Managing study
Planning
Enrolling as an off-campus student in a remote area of the country, a long way from the university, provided Rochelle with some challenges.
First, she needed to re-organise her work schedule. She took up work as a track rider, exercising race horses for three and a half hours per day, six mornings a week. She also had to re-organise her responsibilities at home and her finances. In addition to arranging travel and accommodation for her visits to the university so she could attend the compulsory on-campus residential workshops, she had to meet the considerable costs involved. Because of the large distance between her home town and the university campus, the cost of Rochelle’s airfares was high. She also had to find the money to pay for accommodation while she was on campus.
Managing
As well as riding track work six days a week, Rochelle developed a routine of going to the local library and treating this study time as a working day:
I’m flat out from 4.00 [am] on, then I crash – [I] have two things – family and study. I manage by locking myself in the [municipal] library and by treating study as a work day. [My] family don’t necessarily understand this [i.e. that study is work].
In addition to managing the costs associated with the mandatory course residential workshops, Rochelle had to purchase expensive text books, as there was no library access for students from that university in her remote regional town.
Self-doubt was another barrier Rochelle felt she had to overcome, especially the feeling that ‘you’re doing it but you don’t really believe that you are’. She felt that university was somewhere she did not belong:
You just don’t even know the language, the uni language. You just don’t know anything when you’re not part of it. You’re not part of the culture. I’ve never been part of uni culture.
Juggling study and work was also a challenge for Rochelle, particularly accommodating two 70-day compulsory unpaid work placements. In spite of this, she commented that there were no really difficult times. Midway through her course, Rochelle reported that she had never felt like giving up because:
Support
As she was first in her family to attend university, Rochelle’s family were not able to share or understand her experiences as a student:
Because I studied … those heavy subjects … that challenged my thought processes … I had no one to talk to, because I studied by myself.
Nevertheless, her parents supported her to live at home with them, although they were not altogether comfortable with her choice of course:
Dad really questions – especially social work, you know. ‘Why would you want to hang out with those people?’
Rochelle was supported during her first professional placement by her placement supervisor and peers and friends. She felt very affirmed when she was offered a position with the host agency. This helped her to maintain her confidence both in herself and in her decision to study social work.
Rochelle felt she would have benefited from contact with the university during both placements. She missed the opportunity to tell her lecturers how she was faring: ‘I was really disappointed with the lack of contact during my 14-week placement.’ There was no contact from her supervisors: ‘No one [from the university] asked, “How are you going?”
I could have done anything.’ Rochelle also felt that assessments could have been better timed and organised, so that they did not clash with finishing the placement: ‘Instructions were not written down. It was very stressful.’
Rochelle did not access any of the university’s support services. She was able to get some library books through the regional university, which had a study centre in her home town and she also used their facilities.
Reflections and future plans
Rochelle successfully completed her course and found professional employment soon after. Looking back over her student experience, she considered that the most important gain for her during her course was her belief in herself as a competent learner and the accompanying growth in confidence. Prior to the course, she had ‘no confidence in my ability to learn’, but this grew as she progressed:
I started passing subjects, so started to grow in confidence … in the end [I] would give anything a go! It’s not rocket science! … After first year, once you have passed Year 1, you’re OK …
Some of the challenges she faced as an off-campus student from a remote rural town, such as going to the university for residential workshops, built her confidence: ‘having to come all the way to [an interstate city] was a big spin out’.
Having access to the library of the regional university’s study centre in her home town was of great assistance. This university provided study space and did not charge for materials posted from the main library. On the continued lack of support from her own university during her placements, Rochelle commented:
[There was] no follow up – didn’t improve on the second placement … [there were] no checks on how I was going or what I was doing.
She was sad to finish the course, and thought she might undertake further study, perhaps a Diploma of Education, sometime in the future. Having graduated, she felt she would ‘give anything a go if I want to do it’.
Implications for managing and supporting student diversity: transition to higher education and the first year experience
Miranda’s and Rochelle’s stories of entering higher education illustrate a number of factors that may affect students from diverse backgrounds. Among these are the varying levels of confidence in their learning ability on entering university and the complex routes they undertake in getting there, compared with school leavers. This, in turn, means that such students are often older; their age may be the only feature that visibly distinguishes them from other (school leaver) students. The barriers they have overcome to enter higher education, and which may continue to affect their studies, are not always evident. Those who do reach university tend to be well-organised and highly committed. These women’s stories also show the value of sometimes serendipitous expressions of support by others outside the university or the immediate family or friendship circle, in contributing towards participation and success.
Both Miranda and Rochelle were first generation students – that is, first in their family to experience a university education. This played out in ways which were evident even before they enrolled. Their stories show the importance of family support, which can take the form of emotional support, affirmation, financial support, and child care, among others, but their families did not understand what university study involved. Rochelle, herself, had no prior understanding of how university worked. This situation highlights the role of cultural capital in students’ alignment and adjustment, or lack of adjustment, to educational values and ways of operating (Bourdieu, 1986). A student’s family background can mean that they have no affinity with academic approaches, or feel unentitled to participate, as reflected in Rochelle’s comment, ‘I’ve never been part of uni culture.’
Studies undertaken in the UK (Leathwood and O’Connell, 2003; Read et al., 2003) found that students from non-traditional backgrounds were surprised at how little supervision they were given at university, as Rochelle experienced during her work placements. Not knowing the ‘uni language’ and not having anyone she could ask made her transition to university more difficult. Successful transition is also compromised for students when they don’t know what is expected in assignments or how to structure academic writing. As Rochelle observed: ‘Instructions were not written down. It was very stressful.’
Miranda felt that she gained all the support she needed for her studies. Her employer gave her study leave to attend the residential workshops, she had good support from teaching staff, and she did not seek assistance from the institution beyond this, but Rochelle identified some gaps in university support. A noteworthy characteristic of both these students was that they were studying by distance mode, which gave them flexibility to study successfully while remaining in their local communities, close to their families, local employment opportunities, and other forms of support.
So what implications for managing and supporting student diversity are suggested by Miranda’s and Rochelle’s stories, particularly to assist students in their transition to higher education and support them during their first year of study?
As entry to higher education becomes more accessible to greater numbers of people, the pressure on institutions to prepare and support students towards success has increased. There is a growing body of literature exploring the particular needs of first year university students (e.g. Crosling, 2003; Kift et al., 2010; Krause et al., 2005). Students like Miranda and Rochelle, who face additional pressures associated with their path to university, highlight the importance of management and support by practitioners within higher education institutions. Yorke (2008) confirms differences in the first year experience of relatively advantaged and disadvantaged students and the impact of factors such as ethnicity, lack of financial security, and cultural capital on the latter group’s experience. Klinger and Murray note that language is a factor affecting students from non-traditional backgrounds. Even though most of them are native speakers, many ‘exhibit language that does not align with the academy’s expectations’ (Klinger and Murray, 2012: 27).
Emphasising the importance of the link between teaching and support which we noted in Chapter 1, Kift et al. (2010: 1) suggest that it appears particularly important for institutions to adopt a ‘transition pedagogy’ where the first year experience is regarded as ‘everybody’s business’ and addressed through ‘an intentionally designed curriculum by seamless partnerships of academic and professional staff in a whole-of-institution transformation’.
Some enablers to successful university transition include the availability of student support services, accessibility of information technology services, the usefulness of resources, and the relevance of study material and study skills support, as well as creating a strong campus culture and atmosphere, and encouraging peer and academic learning communities (McInnis, 2002). These activities can be incorporated in the holistic ‘everybody’s business’ approach to transition pedagogy proposed above, which has the benefit of including proactive support for students from all backgrounds.
Crosling et al. (2008) suggested that academic staff consider such strategies as:
establishing early engagement with students through pre- and post- entry induction activities;
finding out about students so that this information can inform the program and curricula;
developing authentic and relevant curricula building on students’ experiences, using inclusive language and relevant examples;
designing and implementing student-centred active learning;
integrating study skills (as above) to support the success of all students, with signposting to other support services as necessary; and
providing relevant, timely, and constructive formative feedback.
The involvement of academic and departmental professional staff appears to be particularly important in guiding students to appropriate support services (or bringing support services to the students) because, as we have seen from the stories of Miranda and Rochelle, students may not seek these out. While many students may be sufficiently persistent to succeed without additional support, it is the students who are at risk who are likely to benefit. Simply finding out about students that you come in contact with, and adopting a friendly and approachable manner, are important strategies in themselves, especially during students’ first few weeks at university. Note how Rochelle responded to the people who mentored her prior to her enrolment.
Summary
Miranda’s and Rochelle’s stories illustrate the diverse pathways that students might take into higher education. The factors that make their pathways into higher education so complex – such as low socio-economic background, having no one in their family with experience of higher education, and living in a rural or remote location – influence their studies in an ongoing way. Factors such as these must be explicitly addressed to support students’ participation and success. Students draw on a range of personal qualities to succeed, but structural issues need to be addressed and adequate support provided by university staff to maximise students’ potential for success.
We have focused on some of the implications for managing and supporting students from non-traditional backgrounds during their transition to university and their first year. You may think of others that may be particularly relevant for you in your institution. As we noted earlier, we will refer to some further implications in Chapters 3 and 4. Consider the discussion topics that follow.
Chapter 2: discussion topics
1. Think about your role in your institution. What strategies are you and your colleagues already using to manage and support students from non-traditional backgrounds in their transition to higher education? Are they working? How can you tell? If you don’t think they are working, why not? What else could you do?
2. Now consider the questions above but specifically in relation to first generation students. Are there any issues that these students face which you have not addressed? If so, what could you do to assist these students?
3. If you are teaching students such as Miranda and Rochelle, what additional teaching and support strategies could you consider using in the first weeks of the course? If you are in a student support role, or another role where you come in contact with students regularly, what additional strategies could you use?
4. Make a list of the demands students face in coming to university that are relevant for your role. Are some students better able to meet those than others, due to their life circumstances? How can you and your colleagues support all students to meet these demands?