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indicators of persistence and their influence on the first year experience of university students from low socio-economic backgrounds http://hdl.handle.net/11343/37863
Abstract
This study focuses on the first year experience of Australian university students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. Firstly, it examines pre commencement expectations and post commencement experiences from the perspective of six indicators of persistence identified from the literature. It then explores considerations of university drop-out and transfer from the same perspective.
... Having a model of transition can help curriculum designers target specific times for tailored induction activities to minimise information overload common during orientation. Tinto's (1975) interactionist model of student persistence provided the starting point for many revisions (Tinto, 1988(Tinto, , 1997b and for reimagining the role of persistence in the FYHE (for examples see Bean, 1982;Braxton & Hirschy, 2005;Jardine, 2013). Based on Durkheim's (1951) theory of suicide, Tinto theorised that dropout is less likely to occur when a student is socially integrated. ...
... A key criticism of Tinto's model of persistence is that it was initially developed at residential universities using participants from the socio-cultural majority (Jardine, 2013;Tinto, 2006-7). Diversity in learning style and ability is also largely absent from the literature. ...
... There is increasing recognition that a more diverse student cohort may benefit the workforce and medical school learning environment. Amongst other strengths, diverse students are understood to contribute a better understanding of diverse populations (Guiton, Chang, & Wilkerson, 2007;Morrison & Grbic, 2015;Saha, Guiton, Wimmers, & Wilkerson, 2008;Whitla et al., 2003), multilingualism (Flores, 2000), as well as resilience and persistence to overcome barriers (Cleland & Medhi, 2015;Jardine, 2012). Diversity in the workplace may not only improve the competence of staff, but also provide the workforce with more practitioners who choose to work in underprivileged communities, locations and specialties (Bailey & Willies-Jacobo, 2012;Cooter et al., 2004;Dowell, Norbury, Steven, & Guthrie, 2015;Komaromy et al., 1996;Larkins et al., 2015;Puddey et al., 2014 The topic of workforce planning is currently high on the political agenda in the UK as there are significant doctor shortages in many specialties and localities (NHS Improvement, 2016;UKFPO, 2016). ...
Although driven by policy and investment, the available data suggests that, to date, UK efforts to minimise the barriers into professions such as medicine have had mixed success. We explore the myriad social, individual and structural reasons why the resources invested in widening access (WA) activities have not significantly increased the representation of applicants from lower socio-economic groups within medical schools. We discuss the different discourses of widening access/increasing diversity in the UK context—notably those of ‘social mobility’ and ‘increasing diversity to improve workforce efficiency’—and how these are interpreted and enacted ‘on the ground’. This includes examining the synergies and tensions between widening access and maintaining quality, and the gap between political directives and policy enactment within medical schools. We discuss if the different discourses of widening access can be reconciled, and if so, whether this can be done in a way to support widening access.
the synergies and tensions between WA and maintaining quality;
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