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 its 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 cre ating 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 ones 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 dont 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-gapbetween-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 Universitys 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. Theyve typically been taken on for their research skills & its generally assumed that theyll 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 its 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 todays 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, its the bridging one that I want to talk about at the moment. If youre a lecturer reading this, then youve probably heard something along the lines of students just arent 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 were 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 heres where I think theres 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. Ill 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 (= todays 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 shouldnt drive whats 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.) Whats 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. Its also possible for the actual standards taught to differ from school to school: I wouldnt be at all surprised to hear, for example, that the evolution standards arent 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 whats going on in schools, whats in the curriculum & so on, in order to help us be more effective in bridging students into their tertiary learning experiences? I suspect Ive got a bit of an advantage here: I used to be a secondary school biology teacher, & I still work extensively with secondary teachers & students, & Ive 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 thats being implemented this year. I do think that gives me an edge when it comes to helping students make links between what theyve already learned & the material Id 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-secondaryschool/