Student experiences of academic transition: Undergraduate STEM to postgraduate Social Science
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56433/my9hrj96Keywords:
Initial Teacher Education, Postgraduate taught qualifications/courses, Disciplinary tranistionAbstract
This research contributes to developing a deeper understanding of student lived experience of navigating the transition from undergraduate to taught postgraduate study. As reported in the literature, this is generally an under-studied phenomenon (e.g. McPherson et al., 2017). In this research we specifically focused on exploring the experience for students who are making an interconnected disciplinary change as part of their shift from undergraduate to Master’s level study.
This research explores the lived experience of a group of pre-service physics teachers in Scotland as they transition from their previous undergraduate academic studies in the field of STEM to postgraduate academic study in the field of Social Science. To be successful in their current academic studies they need to acculturate to a discipline with noticeably different assumptions and underlying ways of thinking and knowing. To explore the students’ lived experience of this interconnected transition we adopted a phenomenological methodology, gathering data through semi-structured interviews which we then thematically analysed.
Areas for reflection for educators teaching students undergoing similar transitions are identified in the paper. These include the need to recognise the complexities of moving between academic disciplines at the same time as moving from undergraduate to taught post-graduate study. The students in this study articulated holding prior conceptualisations, expectations of, and responses to what makes for knowledge, theory, testing theory and using theory. They further articulated having to reconcile those conceptualisations with new ways of thinking and knowing as they undertook a disciplinary transition as part of their undergraduate to taught postgraduate transition. Students implicitly, rather than explicitly, identified challenges in acculturating to epistemological differences through the articulation of developing strategies.
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