Enhancing student transition experiences: Initiatives guiding the development of essential resources

ENHANCING STUDENT TRANSITION EXPERIENCES

Initiatives guiding the development of essential resources

Thanh Pham and Behnam Soltani

Introduction

The previous chapters of the book have evidenced and discussed the significance of various fonns of capital. Chapters 11 and 12 have proposed initiatives that students and institutions could implement to enhance students’ transition experiences. This chapter presents exemplar programmes and activities that schools, universities and teachers can develop to enhance students’ transitional experiences. The scope of each programme is determined by the amount of time, funding and human resources. As discussed in the previous chapters, students’ transitions are determined by a range of different factors at various levels. Therefore, it is important that any programme that is developed to support students’ transitions should include as many stakeholders as possible and support students to develop and utilise different types of resources. The chapter has two parts. Part I consists of three exemplar programmes which are designed to enhance transition experiences of students with special needs, school - university transitions of international students and communication competencies of international students. Part II discusses activities that classroom teachers can implement to support students to enhance key forms of capital.

Part I: Exemplar programmes

Programme 1: enhancing transition experiences of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are characterised by impaired social behaviour, communication and language, and tendencies to repetitively engage with a narrow range of interests (WHO, 2019). There is a very small number of

ASD students completing schools and going to university. Only 19% of school- leavers with ASD complete post-school education in Australia (Autism Asperger Advocacy Australia, 2015). There is a range of factors that have been found to have negative impacts on ASD students’ transitions. At the policy level, policies including the Disability Support Program (DSP) (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, 2020) aim to improve higher education outcomes for people with disabilities, including ASD. Although these funding schemes are useful and could help ASD students at universities, they mainly focus on the financial but not social aspects. Also, ASD students should be supported holistically prior to entering the university but not just after they enter the university. This initiative gives these students enough time to acquire essential resources and forms of capital to succeed in university.

At the meso level, schools have been found to provide insufficient support to ASD students in various areas. For instance, they do not guide ASD students well enough about possible post-school destinations (Cai & Richdale, 2016). Besides, social networks are crucially important for post-school journeys but schools do not make efforts in building communities that can support ASD students. At the individual level, Hillier, Goldstein, Murphy, Trietsch, Keeves, Mendes and Queenan (2018) evidenced that ASD students do not know appropriate social behaviours expected when interacting with others and how to collaborate with peers. Other people do not also often accept ASD peers in their group projects, causing self-esteem, stress and anxiety of ASD students (Hillier et al„ 2018).

There are many ways to support ASD students to build essential resources that are needed for their transitions to the tertiary education level. Below is an exemplar programme that aims to enhance forms of social and cultural capital of ASD students that school and teachers can organise. The programme is held for two years at Grades 11 and 12 at school. As claimed by Pham (2020), developing forms of capital requires a journey, thus a two-year programme aims to give ASD students enough time to develop these resources. The programme consists of 12 workshops of which each is held in the first week of ever)' second month.

There are some notes about this programme. First, the programme brings various stakeholders together including representatives of schools and universities so that two sides can exchange information and provide ASD students with what should be prepared prior to their transitions to tertiary education. The programme intentionally includes activities to enhance social capital at the beginning because students need to develop social capital but not social networks to support their transitions and it takes time to turn social networks into social capital. Second, the programme involves all other students so that they could understand ASD students. It is well documented that students with ASD can feel marginalised and do not support initiatives that single them out, especially when attending mainstream schools (Locke, Ishijima, Kasari & London, 2010; Saggers, 2015). Therefore, there is a need to develop an inclusive approach. Third, the programme aims to be held

TABLE 13.1 Programme to enhance ASD students’ transition experiences

at both school and university settings so that students can maximise opportunities to enrich their cultural capital and obtain real-life insights. Finally, the programme is designed in a feasible manner that allows individual teachers and/or schools to organise it. When developing curricula and extra-curricular, it is crucially important for teachers and schools to think about funding, feasibility, sustainability, collaborations of various stakeholders especially with students who can give free support and practice their professional skills.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. Have you had experience in working with students with special needs? If yes, what kind of support do you think they often need?
• 2. What kind support have your local schools offered to support students with special needs?
• 3. What kind of strategies would you think students with special needs could use to obtain better outcomes in their study and work (based on your own observant experiences)?

Programme 2: enhancing international students' transition from high school to university

Many studies have investigated the challenges that international students face in tertiary contexts (Kobayashi, Zappa-Hollman & Duff, 2017; Morita & Kobayashi, 2008; Soltani, 2018; Soltani & Loret, 2018). However, few studies have investigated the challenges and transition experiences of these students in the secondary contexts (Duff, 1995, 2002). Understanding the challenges of international students is important at the policy level because international students are an important source of revenue generation for the host countries. At the meso institutional level, the findings presented in Chapter 4 show that international students face multiple challenges in high school. Schools could more purposefully familiarise international students with the academic literacy norms so that they could achieve better in their studies. They could also establish more meaningful social networks among local and international students so that international students who are new to the host country do not feel isolated.

In what follows an exemplar programme and some guidelines are provided that could be used by the high schools to enhance international students’ forms of capital and make their transition experience more seamless. The programme comprises of 12 workshops, runs for two years and is specifically designed for Year 9 and Year 10 students but could be adapted for use with Year 11 and Year 12 based on the needs of international students. Each workshop could be conducted in the first week of every second month but could be tailored based on the needs of the international students.

TABLE 13.2 Programme to enhance international students’ transition experiences to university

TABLE 13.2 (Cont.)

Notably, this is a whole school programme because it requires the collaboration of various stakeholders including teachers, language and learning advisors, leadership team of the school, professional staff', international students, local students, families, and home stay parents. Because international students in high school are still very' young, the programme has intentionally focused on building strong communities and social networks at the school so that they could feel more connected to their school community and their new host country. To be able to connect further to their social networks, the programme lays emphasis on the development of linguistic and cultural forms of capital. Similar to the previous programme, this programme is designed in a feasible manner that allows individual teachers and/or schools to organise it.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. What were your transition experiences when you started your study in a new context?
• 2. What kind of support did your school/university give to support your transitions?
• 3. Reflect on your past transitions - what would you think you could do better?

Programme 3: enhancing communication competencies

Chapters 4 and 10 of this book have discussed the significance of communication competencies in determining the transition experiences of international students. The chapters revealed that communication competencies are not limited only to linguistic skills but relate to a range of factors including discourse (capacity to speak and write in a suitable context), actional (capacity to convey communicative intent), sociocultural (capacity to use culturally appropriate language), and strategic (capacity to learn the language in the context). It is, therefore, important to develop initiatives based on an examination of how international graduates’ communication competencies are related to other factors in a wider context.

The programme illustrated in Table 13.3 involves active collaboration among various stakeholders. To succeed in their programmes, students need to engage proactively with the social space of the new country they reside in. They need to have a great investment in not only the linguistic capital of the host culture but also the cultural, psychological, and social forms of capital so that they succeed in their endeavour and make their transition a less stressful experience. A note is that such a programme can be applicable to local students too. Research has consistently found communication competencies were one of the biggest concerns of employers when recruiting graduates (Graduate Outlook Survey (GOS), 2015; Scott, Chang & Grebennikov, 2010; Shah & Nair, 2011).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. Which areas of communication competencies do you feel you are good and weak at?
• 2. Share some tips that you have used to improve some weaknesses in social interactions that you used to have.
• 3. Reflect on a school/university programme you have joined and identify areas that you think the organisers should have done to better promote the social interactions of the participants.

TABLE 13.3 Programme to enhance international students’ communication competencies

TABLE 13.3 (Cont.)

Part II: Classroom activities

The classroom is the place where teachers spend most of their time. There are many activities that could enhance forms of capital and which teachers can embed in their own teaching. This part discusses a range of different activities that teachers can use to make students aware of the significance of forms of capital and how to enrich them.

Human capital

Human capital consists of two types including content knowledge and professional skills like multi-literacies, learning, problem solving, analytical (critical and creative) thinking, reflection, and evaluation. To enhance human capital, a range of teaching strategies can be deployed. However, it is noted that different strategies could bring about different learning outcomes. Table 13.4 summarises key teaching strategies and how these strategies should be used to enable students to achieve the learning objectives.

Besides, a number of teaching strategies have been evidenced as high impact teaching strategies. Therefore, teachers are encouraged to use these strategies in classrooms as much as they could. For instance, the Victoria State Government has published a list of ten high impact teaching strategies with key elements below.

TABLE 13.4 Relationships between learning goals and teaching strategies

TABLE 13.5 High impact strategies

TABLE 13.5 (Com.)

Adapted from High Impact Teaching Strategies: Excellence in teaching and learning. Available from www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/practice/improve/Pages/hits.aspx

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. How much are you aware of these strategies and their connections to learning outcomes?
• 2. How often have you used these strategies in your own learning and teaching?

• 3. Share with your peers an experience when you observed how your teachers used these strategies effectively or ineffectively.
• 4. Think about an aspect of human capital that you are interested in and want to prepare for your students' transition. What is it? How do you support your students to enhance this?

To support students to enhance professional skills, teachers can set up individual task and group discussions about the following topics:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. What are your strategies to become a self-regulated and lifelong learner? Give examples from your own practice.
• 2. Reflect on how you deal with feedback. What kind of feedback do you usually take on board and what kind of feedback do you disregard? Why?
• 3. Reflect on what you do when you face a challenge in study and life. What are your strategies to deal with that challenge and find ways to overcome it?
• 4. Reflect on what you do to evaluate your own practice. How do you know when something you have done has worked or not?
• 5. Reflect on the process you undertake to gather information, analyse, and come up with decisions. Explain what sources you consult to come up with insights about an unfamiliar problem. Think of examples from your own experience.
• 6. Developing career building skills (skills graduates need to develop for particular roles) and learning to apply for jobs, preparing CVs, and e-portfo- lios, are essential for learners to become employable. What are some of the things which you have done to develop your career building skills?

Social capital

Bonding and bridging ties are important to build effective social networks and these can be achieved through storytelling and dialogue (Holmes, 2005), positioning oneself appropriately within the social groups at work, familiarising oneself with the dominant ways of doing work, getting to know about work contracts and responsibilities at work, and doing collegiality at work.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. People use a variety of strategies to maintain a positive relationship with others. One of the ways to do so is through storytelling. Discuss with your peers how storytelling could help build relationships with others. Think of examples from your own experience.
• 2. One of the ways people build solidarity (Schnurr, 2008) at work is through humour. Discuss with your peers how humour can create a positive environment at work and bring people together.
• 3. Discuss with your peers how people get things done from where they come from. What is the way of doing work in your experience?
• 4. Discuss with your peers some of the strategies one could use to extend their bonding and bridging connections? Explain how you build your networks and give examples.
• 5. What are some of the strategies you use to get to know about 'the rules of the game' in different contexts? Give some examples about 'the rules of the game' in the contexts you have been in.
• 6. How do you establish a relationship of trust, loyalty and integrity with others?
• 7. Employers often employ those with whom they share socio-cultural capital. Discuss some of the things they could do to increase learners' sociocultural capital?
• 8. Social capital is important in helping graduates to secure employment. Discuss some of the practical ways that help you or people you know connect with relevant disciplines or specific communities so that they increase their success rate in the recruitment process.
• 9. Discuss how social media could help students develop networks of practice. Give real examples from your own experience.
• 10. Discuss how digital innovations can foster graduates' abilities to build global networks across their discipline specific communities.

Cultural capital

It is important for students to be aware of the significance of the socio-pragmatic norms of encounter, small talk and storytelling, appreciating difference and diversity through engagement and conviviality, avoiding the tall poppy syndrome, and demonstrating embodied capital (Soltani & Tomlinson, in press).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Any context can be a 'micro-public' site that fosters actual engagement with different others (Amin, 2002). Not having positive encounters with others is often associated with bad manners or bad humour. Discuss some of the strategies you have used to attend to people's 'positive face' needs and maintain rapport (Brown, Levinson & Levinson, 1987; Spencer-Oatey, 2005)?

• 2. Discuss with your peers some of the strategies you could use in the workplace to appreciate difference and diversity. Refer to the host country's values where possible.
• 3. New Zealanders who raise their heads above the parapet are likely to be subjected to what Austin Mitchell described as 'the great clobbering machine' (1972, p. 26), and what has more recently been referred to as 'the tall poppy syndrome' (p. 1067). Discuss some strategies you could employ to avoid being constructed such an identity.
• 4. Cultural capital is often a source of inequality in society. People who are born in more well-off families are often naturally endowed with more benefits. Discuss strategies they could use to build a strong cultural capital especially if you come from a disadvantaged background.
• 5. Our bodies including our gestures, gaze, posture, and clothes reflect our cultural capital. How would you have to adjust these aspects when you come to a new context?
• 6. Enacting attentive listenership (Holmes, Marsdon & Marra, 2013) and providing feedback while others' talk is key to constructing a professional identity. What strategies could you employ to appreciate other people's perspectives in the workplace?

Identity capital

Evidence was found that to construct a believable trustworthy identity, people are required to:

• 1. Invest in their learning and take ownership of their own learning
• 2. Engage in development conversations with others
• 3. Recognise who the person is by increasing one’s awareness of his/her investment in different activities
• 4. Understand how one’s identity is constructed by others
• 5. Enact a professional identity by demonstrating their professional practice through performing ethical codes of conduct of that profession, and
• 6. Re-imagine a future self by having desired career aspirations.
• (Soltani & Tomlinson, in press).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Compare and contrast the identity realisations (Norton & De Costa, 2018) of different cohorts of students. For example, if you notice any significant differences between local students and international students?

• 2. Give examples of two students with contrasting socioeconomic backgrounds. Ask students to think about their access to educational and digital resources and their impact on developing identity.
• 3. Discuss how individuals' use of language on social media constructs their identity.
• 4. Discuss how an investment in learning impacts the development and construction of identities.
• 5. Discuss some practical ways through which one could establish a professional identity in the workplace.
• 6. Discuss the significance of ethical and professional practice in establishing a professional identity in the workplace.
• 7. Discuss the significance of membership in workplace communities and its impact of professional identity of individuals. Probe further into practical ways graduates could enhance their participation and hence legitimacy in workplace communities.

Psychological capital

Psychological capital can be enhanced by including displaying a growth mindset, taking ownership of their learning, adapting to change, being aware of their own capabilities, and reflecting on their learning.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. Compare and contrast the notions of a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and their relationship to one's ability to build potential. How could people promote a growth mindset? Share your own experiences.
• 2. Workplace and schools/universities are learning sites. To be an effective member in a context, one needs to take ownership of his or her learning. Discuss some practical ways people could use to self-regulate and take ownership of their own learning. Give examples from your own experience.
• 3. Discuss the significance of learning from mistakes by reflecting on practice. Give examples from your own experience and mention a real case where you learned from your experience through critical reflection.
• 4. Failures in learning and employment are certainly stressful but they should be seen as lessons to learn. Share an experience showing how you failed and how you could continue to go on.
• 5. Discuss how you could build resilience and how you would build this capacity for your students.
• 6. When you apply for scholarships/jobs, how do you often manage your feeling when you hear the outcome be a success or a failure?

7. How do you think about differences in psychological capital of different types of students e.g. local, international, high/low SES backgrounds?

Agen tic capital

Pham and colleagues conducted several studies on international graduates and revealed that graduates could develop agentic capital to overcome a number of harriers (Pham & Jackson, 2020; Pham, 2020). Below are vignettes of two graduates who demonstrated that the exercise of their agency could enable them to navigate the labour market in the host country.

Son and Wen came to Australia as law and education students. They actively joined student clubs where they heard about the difficulties their friends had experienced in obtaining employment in these disciplines. High English proficiency requirements were certainly one of the reasons contributing to these difficulties; however, what Bauder (2003) calls 'nationally-based protectionism' exercised by educational and professional institutions to prioritized local people for certain types of job was an important hidden criterion that excluded international graduates from these professions. In Australia, lawyers and teachers are listed as locally shared professions because society, the authorities, and parents have preferences towards people with local knowledge and standard accents, who are often westerners in English-speaking countries. After being exposed to these stories, Son then decided to change his major to business because this new discipline opened up more job opportunities both in his host and home countries. In contrast, Wen continued to study education but concurrently completed a teaching certificate in her ethnic language after she saw some co-ethnic friends had secured Mandarin teaching positions after failing to secure general teaching jobs. Wen then became a Mandarin teacher but planned to gain more local teaching experience so that she could apply for a maths teaching job in the future. Wen was, in fact, using informal learning at the workplace, a very important experience for career progression (Richardson St Kirkwood, 201 7), to enrich her working record. In these cases, Son and Wen used social networks in their ethnic communities and language skills as navigation strategies.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. What are the key benefits that agentic capital can bring to students?
• 2. Identify an experience showing that you used agentic capital to navigate a difficulty in your life.

3. Which activities in teaching and learning could be used to enhance this capital in schools?

ANALYSIS ACTIVITIES

• 1. Find job advertisements in different sectors and analyse forms of capital in these advertisements. Compare how capitals are emphasised similarly or differently in these advertisements.
• 2. Find job advertisements of different types of schools in a country or in different countries and then analyse how capitals are emphasised in these advertisements.
• 3. Find job advertisements and promotion criteria of some positions and analyse how criteria differ. This analysis aims to show how graduates need to develop and utilise similar or different forms of capital for their employability negotiation.
• 4. Find job advertisements of some positions before and after COVID-19 and analyse to see how forms of capital are emphasised similarly or differently.

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