Looking back to move forward: Tracing students’ experiences of transitioning to university

Abstract

A growing body of research conceptualises students’ transitions into higher education as non-linear and multi-faceted, extending beyond the first months of university. Nevertheless, focusing on first-year students’ experiences can provide important insights. We adopt Schlossberg’s (1981) theory of transitions in our study involving first-year arts and humanities undergraduate students at a Scottish university, who traced their experiences of adjusting to university life in the academic year 2020-21. We were interested in understanding this move from one educational stage to another amidst the potential added barrier of the COVID-19 pandemic. Collecting data during the pandemic captured students’ reflections on their educational experience in the rapid shift to online learning, and the impact of the lack of face-to-face contact with staff and peers. While perhaps expected that COVID-19 drastically impacted the specifics of the transitional experience, we were surprised to find in our data (written diary entries and interviews (n=5), supplemented with interviews with students not involved in reflective writing (n=8)) that there were more universals of the process than there were factors relating to the time of crisis, particularly with relation to the self. Furthermore, an argument is made for the wider impact of dialogic practice to ease the transitional process.