CONSTRUCCIÓN DEL PROTOTIPO

The aim of the research was to better understand the experiences and contexts of students who are successful in the Business degree at City University. This was a first step in being able to identify how to build on those experiences and optimise my practice in the oversight of the Business degree, to take account of student contexts and to lead change in the practice of others involved in its operation. The study sought to achieve this through using a narrative approach, underpinned by hermeneutics, to explore student experiences and background prior to attending City University, and

experiences outside university when they were attending. A two-stage

analysis process was undertaken, and extensions of Bourdieu’s thinking tools, including the concepts of learning career, habitus tug and interrupted

trajectories, provided a guiding theoretical framework for the study.

Main research question

As noted in Chapter 3, there was an overarching research question and three sub-questions in this study. The overarching question was:

What do the stories of students’ prior experience and context tell us about why they succeed in the context of a university which is committed to widening participation?

In this question, the term “stories” describes the wider sense of the students’ narratives/stories which formed the data.

The students in this study articulated the features of an educated habitus which Nash (2002) argued supported educational success. The students showed a willingness to be educated in the particular area of study they were in, and they put in place practices to enable that to happen. By focusing on past experiences, the research question enabled analysis of how that educated habitus developed. This development was traced through the

students’ learning careers, with the analysis of the data showing that they had positive parental reinforcement about the value of education, and positive early associations with education. Analysing the data through a focus on their learning careers also showed that, while there were some interrupted

trajectories involving setback, there were also successes, which appeared to help the students align their dispositions to education with the values and expectations of their parents, and encourage academic confidence. This positive disposition to education, and parental and peer support continued at university. Although the students were from diverse backgrounds, they all expressed a positive view of the university environment and experience. Importantly, what this study reinforced was that prior experience and context

can tell us something about why the students in this study were succeeding at

university. While what is going on at university, inside and outside the

classroom, is highly relevant to whether students succeed, what is going on in their lives outside university and what has gone before, even going back to early educational experiences, is also relevant. This is because the students’ backgrounds and prior experiences support the development of the habitus and capital that the students bring when they encounter their higher

educational experience. Understanding prior experience and context is helpful for identifying where there is alignment between a student’s capital and

habitus, and the expectations of the higher eduation system once a student is at university. More importantly, looking at it the other way, it can illuminate how the higher education system and its institutions do not align with students’ habitus and capital when they come to university, and is a first step in

considering how institutions could adapt so as to better align with the habitus and capital of their students.

Sub-questions

• What are the students’ contexts and the life and educational

experiences they bring to City University?

The students’ stories in Chapter 4 answered this sub-question. These illustrated that there were differences in the individual trajectories toward successful university study and that, for most of the students, their path towards graduation was not a linear path. This would have had implications for the students in terms of cost and for institutions in terms of meeting their target qualification rates.

A key point that was illustrated by this study is that, while there were some similarities in some of the experiences, the complex combination of

background and experience meant that each student’s story was different from the others. While I acknowledge that, in order to create effective policy and practice in universities, students must be treated as a group, the stories highlight that we must also remember that students are not necessarily an homogenous group, and that even within similar socio-economic or ethnic groups their experiences can be very different, and that we should be cautious about categorising students based on socio-economic or ethnic status (Madjar, McKinley, Deynzer, & van der Merwe, 2010b).

• How do successful students explain their success?

The students in this study explained their views of success in wider terms than passing courses or achieving a degree, and in that respect their views aligned more with individual progression towards their own goals (Zepke & Leach, 2010) than the hard outcomes of qualification completion used by policy makers.

Success at university was explained by the students by reference to behaviours such as participating and attending class, and some

acknowledged the habits and skills they had acquired during their schooling years. Some spoke about external pressures such as home life creating challenges for success. Some also talked about learning from experiences during their school years or early on at university, showing that they too could see connections between past experiences and current success.

The views of the students in this study, who mostly did not mention grades in their definitions of success, but who took a wider view of the educational journey, provide a prompt for me as a higher education practitioner to take a more holistic view of success. It is also important for those staff advising students about academic progress to understand that a student may have a more holistic view of success than just passing and achieving high grades, as this may impact on the advice given.

The linkages the students were able to make between behaviours and

success are not new findings, in that participation and attendance at class are often emphasised as important to success. However, it is useful to have that reinforced by students making those connections themselves. The references by some students to previous experiences suggests that it may be useful to ask new students to explicitly address success at university and how they might achieve that success, by being encouraged to think about times they achieved success, what led to that success and how that could be translated into the university environment.

How do theories explain the contribution of these prior experiences and contexts to the success of these students at City University?

The complexity and individuality of the students’ contexts and experiences in this study reinforced that student success or withdrawal is not easily

predictable (Bloomer, 2001). The concept of learning careers provided a framework that aligned with the stories developed in Chapter 4. Within that framework, the concepts of habitus tug and interrupted trajectories enabled identification and examination of key points in the students’ learning journeys,

and, taken together, provided a theoretical framework that enabled an explanation of how each of the students developed an educated habitus. For the students in this study, there were some common elements throughout their learning careers that appear to have supported the development of an educated habitus. These were early positive associations with education, through parental values and schooling experiences which contribute to the development of habitus (Bourdieu 1976, Moore, 2012), the development of cultural capital through the emotional support of their parents for their education (Reay, 2000), the development of academic capital through successes and acquiring academic credentials (Naidoo, 2004) and social capital in the form of supportive peers (Thomson, 2012).

The capital and habitus of the students in this study did not align in all respects with either non-traditional students or middle class students in the United Kingdom, which was the context in which the concepts of learning career, habitus tug and interrupted trajectories were developed. In that

context, the literature advances the argument that non-traditional students can have an uncomfortable experience in higher education if they do not have cultural or social capital that middle class students are likely to possess, which would ease their transition to university, and that where their habitus is not in alignment with the middle class culture of the institution, this causes them to be in a state of habitus tug, which they have to reconcile somehow.

This (albeit overly simplified) trajectory was not clearly apparent for the students in this study, who were mostly non-traditional students. While there were some elements in common with non-traditional students in the United Kingdom, the importance of particular types of capital and habitus fit with institution were different in this study. For the students in this study, the development of habitus from the family environment in which education was valued, along with the family support that built emotional capital, seemed influential. The absence of reference to other forms of cultural and social capital, such as significant parental involvement and use of family connections to advance their child’s education, did not seem to have a significant impact

for the students in this study other than in terms of decision making. For varying reasons, the students in this study expressed feeling comfortable with the university environment – the feeling of being a ‘fish out of water’ was absent for these students.

These are interesting findings because they demonstrate that an explanation using concepts derived from Bourdieu’s toolkit for the reasons for the success of non-traditional students in higher education differs in the context of City University in New Zealand from the context in which the guiding theoretical concepts for this study were developed. In one sense, the finding that the students were not concerned about fitting in before they came to City University was positive, because it suggests that a level of anxiety that is present for non-traditional students in the United Kingdom was absent for the students in this study. In turn, this suggests the students in this study would not have adopted a “this is not for the likes of me” approach. That is an

encouraging sign for widening participation and City University’s role in that. It was also encouraging for widening participation to find that, while parental emotional support was important, familiarity or involvement with the schooling system did not seem to be essential for the students in this study. This is encouraging because, for some parents, active involvement in schooling may be intimidating.

What was not so positive was the apparent lack of information some students used for their decision-making. While for the most of the students in this study there did not seem to be adverse impacts of that lack of information, this may have been serendipitous and for some, such as Eva, lack of information led to a delay in her reaching university.