This book explores successful transition strategies to, within and from university for students from around the globe, with Macquarie University, a large Australian university, studied in depth. It addresses the meaning of success taking a variety of perspectives, including student, staff and employer views. The chapters present a series of initiatives that have proven to be successful in assisting students in developing their academic potential throughout university and beyond. The authors of the chapters use a variety of methodologies and approaches reflecting the diverse local contexts and requirements. These international perspectives demonstrate a triumph of practice that has led to the empowerment of individuals and groups. The approaches from twelve universities located in eight different countries stem directly from the coalface and provide many valuable lessons and tools that colleagues in the sector will be able to consider and adapt in their own contexts. Small interventions matter, from a mentor of a nervous student who goes on to achieve greatness, to the use of a curriculum design model that hooks a whole group of students into learning and achievement. This book covers both the small, individual victories and the larger scale strategies that support success. Contributions emanate from Australia, Bangladesh, India, China, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada, USA, Uruguay and South Africa.

This book explores the Business and Technology route into higher education and how students with these qualifications are often at a disadvantage compared to their peers at University. Strategies of intervention such as individual facing and system facing changes at universities are outlined to ensure more supportive learning.

Explores the experience of being an international student in higher education Over four-million people worldwide are currently studying abroad. These international student sojourns are, first and foremost, social experiences, with social interaction being both a success factor for and an outcome of this intercultural transition. But what's it like being an 'international' student? How is the experience different from studying 'at home', and what might make it a positive experience or otherwise? Schartner and Young detail how recent research has attempted to answer key questions related to the transition between different national learning environments, and show how it is helping to inform debates, policy and practice on the 'international student experience'. They also introduce a guiding conceptual model that captures the adjustment and adaptation trajectories of this unique and important group. This book: - Encompasses the full temporal range of the international student experience, from the decision to study abroad to the longer-term outcomes after the sojourn - Draws together findings from across a transdisciplinary range of areas including social psychology, education, applied linguistics and intercultural communication studies - Explores the international student experience and how it might be understood as an academic, psychological and sociocultural phenomenon of adjustment and adaptation - Provides a researcher toolkit showcasing a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, enabling researchers to study both processes and outcomes of intercultural transition in higher education Alina Schartner is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University Tony Johnstone Young is Reader in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Newcastle University

This book is designed to provide assistance to presidents, trustees, faculty, and other important stakeholder groups and help them avoid the pitfalls of poorly managed transitions.

This unique and timely book focuses on research conducted into the experiences of students from rural backgrounds in South Africa: foregrounding decolonial perspectives on their negotiation of access and transitions to higher education. This book highlights not only the challenges of coming from a rural background against the historical backdrop of apartheid and ongoing colonialism, but also shows the immense assets that students from rural areas bring into higher education. Through detailed narratives created by student co-researchers, the book charts early experiences in rural communities, negotiations of transitions to university and, in many cases, to urban life and students’ subsequent journeys through higher education spaces and curricula. The book will be of significant interest and value to those engaged in rurality research across diverse settings, those interested in the South African higher education context and higher education more widely. Its innovative, participatory methodology will be invaluable to researchers seeking to conduct collaborative research that draws on decolonising approaches.

Universities are social universes in their own right. They are the site of multiple, complex and diverse social relations, identities, communities, knowledges and practices. At the heart of this book are people enrolling at university for the first time and entering into the broad variety of social relations and contexts entailed in their ‘coming to know’ at, of and through university. For some time now the terms ‘transition to university’ and ‘first-year experience’ have been at the centre of discussion and discourse at, and about, Australian universities. For those university administrators, researchers and teachers involved, this focus has been framed by a number of interlinked factors ranging from social justice concerns to the hard economic realities confronting the contemporary corporatising university. In the midst of changing global economic conditions affecting the international student market, as well as shifting domestic politics surrounding university funding, the equation of dollars with student numbers has remained a constant, and has kept universities’ attention on the current ‘three Rs’ of higher education — recruitment, retention, reward — and, in particular, on the critical phase of students’ entry into the tertiary institution environment. By recasting ‘the transition to university’ as simultaneously and necessarily entailing a transition of university — indeed universities — and of their many and varied constitutive relations, structures and practices, the contributors to this book seek to reconceptualise the ‘first-year experience’ in terms of multiple and dynamic processes of dialogue and exchange amongst all participants. They interrogate taken-for-granted understandings of what ‘the university’ is, and consider what universities might yet become.

International students experience multiple and multi-dimensional educational and life transitions: moving to a new country, moving to a new educational system and moving to higher educational degree programmes. Within these transitions, they experience differences in the social and organisational cultures, languages, and interpersonal expectations, realities and relationships. Their transitions also lead to, and interact with, transitions of professionals, home students and their families. Multi-dimensional Transitions of International Students to Higher Education provides up-to-date literature, research and theoretical constructs that underpin international students’ transitions to Higher Education. This book will help you to understand the opportunities, issues, social-emotional-psychological dimensions and evidence-based interventions that are vital to support an individual through these educational and life transitions. Split into four sections, topics include: Theoretical Underpinning Research in Different Contexts Impact of Educational Practice and Social Systems Interventions and Strategies Used to Enhance International Students’ Affective, Behavioural and Cognitive Transition Experiences This book is essential reading for professionals, students and policy makers and provides significant research insights to academics and researchers in the area of education, psychology and sociology.