Does context matter Social and institutional mediations in the formation of university students' sub

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Does context matter?   Social and institutional
mediations in the formation of university
students' subject identities

• Yann Lebeau

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Laurie Taylor on aspects of the topic!"In the
shopping mall that is the modern university, the
chances that any two students have significant
intellectual experience in common are much
reduced" - Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox
of Choice Why More is Less, THES, May 28.
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The policy context

• Some of the consequences we are interested in
• Diversity of modes of transition to university
• A steady but unevenly distributed reduction in
  geographical study mobility,
• A diversification of modes of student
  accommodation ( rise of the student-commuter
  model.
• Individualisation of student experiences and
  fragmentation of academic culture

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Gaps in the UK literature on student learning and
experience

• The more complex disciplinary and social matrices
  of socialization tend to be ignored, or at best
  they are caricatured or polarised posh
  students in posh universities, getting
  holistic experience and being deep learners
  as opposed to the fragmented lives of
  economically, culturally and educationally poorer
  (also consumerist and surface learning)
  students, especially in post-1992 universities,
  ex-polytechnics. (Jary and Lebeau, 2007)

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What is learned at University? The social and
organisational mediation of university
learning(SOMUL)

• Focus of the project
• Student conceptions/perceptions of What is
  learned
• - as cognitive development,
• - as academic identity,
• - as personal identity.
• How this learning is affected by
• - its organisation within HEIs -
  organisational
• mediations,
• - the characteristics of and the
  relationships
• between the learners - social mediations.
• Comparison of official and student accounts of
  student learning

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Central concepts

• By organisational mediation, the project refers
  to the ways in which curriculum knowledge is
  organised, including the influences of
  modularity, extended student choice and different
  modes of study together providing the
  principles of curriculum organisation
• By social mediation, it refers to the life
  situations of the students on a particular
  programme of study individually and
  collectively and including the social and
  educational backgrounds of the students as well
  as features of the student culture within the
  particular institution or programme together
  providing the social context of study.

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Key research questions

• What are the conceptions of learning that
  underpin subject benchmarks, programme
  specifications and student assessment?
• What is their relationship to conceptions of
  learning held by students and graduates?
• How do student identities and conceptions of self
  relate to formal learning outcomes?
• How are student identities formed by the
  interactions of disciplinary cultures and student
  experiences?
• How are learning outcomes mediated by social and
  organisational factors?

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SOMUL framework
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Research Design
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Summary The social and organisational mediation
of university learning
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Exploring learning contexts in a single subject

• Why a single subject approach?
• How strong are subject identities at
  undergraduate level?
• Is that UK specific?
• Why sociology?
• How?

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Broad disciplinary groupings
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Knowledge and culture by disciplinary groupings
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Beyond the cognitive interpretation Student
diversity and institutional stratification
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Analysing the diversity of learning contexts 5
Sociology courses in the UK
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key site characteristics
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Student profile Region of originSource HESA,
2004
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Term-time accommodation Y1 Source HESA, 2004
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Term-time accommodation(Y2 and 3)
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Age Source HESA, 2004
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Ethnicity Source HESA, 2004
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Mapping student experience and engagement (from
F. Dubet, 1994)
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8 Types of Student Orientations in sociology
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• Type 1 The traditional well-rounded student
• Project
• Engagement
• Integration
• Ideal typical social and organisational matrices
  Although Type 1 orientation is by no means
  predetermined by institutional and organisational
  factors, departmental structures facilitate the
  identification process through spatial markers
  (common room, departmental library, sociology
  society, etc). A self-contained campus
  facilitates involvement in student societies.
  Often a student with good A-levels (often also
  in sociology) parents are graduates. Is
  interested in the subject reputation as well as
  or rather than institution reputational capital.

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Types 3 and 4 InstrumentalistsProject
Engagement Integration or -

• Typical of interview data from joint programmes
  at SOC 13 and 15 and most students from SOC11
• I only did Sociology because I had to do it for
  Criminology. If I could have done Criminology by
  itself I would have done. So yeah, Sociology is
  not something Im utterly interested in. I dont
  mind modern day Sociology stuff, which has a
  relevance, but there is some old Sociology and I
  have no interest in it at all (Soc 15 Yr3
  Soc/Crim)

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• Type 4 is differentiated from Type 3 by lower
  levels of integration - less involvement in
  departmental life or extra curricular activities
  with other students and may perhaps be seen as
  more problematic as an orientation to study. In
  neither case is academic engagement strong in
  comparison with Types 1 and 2 (and also Types 5
  and 6). The student has a clear particular or
  general professional project, but relatively less
  personal interest in the subject. The
  organisation of the curriculum appears
  influential on this configuration, where low
  engagement and perhaps weak integration and may
  be related to the highly modular type of
  organisation.

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• Typical social and organisational matrices more
  modular, weak frame and classification, with the
  exception of SOC 14 where instrumentalism is
  associated with the strength of the brand which
  surpasses the subject in influencing learning
  strategies and professional projects.
• Learning orientations and approaches to study
  More surface, orientation! Although this may
  change overtimes as was found with some students
  taking sociology and criminology.

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Type 8The anomic disengaged

• Project -
• Engagement -
• Integration
• This extreme illustration of a mass higher
  education system, may not have hit the sociology
  students of this country! In his research in
  France, Dubet has paid particular attention to
  this group (perhaps the students who never return
  questionnaires!) and talks of a sort of
  depressive experience to characterise it
  (students who made a wrong choice, high drop out
  rates, low integration because of socio-cultural
  barriers, etc).

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What is learned from this type of analysis of
qualitative data

• Generally in our analysis using an adapted
  version of the Dubet typology we feel that we
  have usefully identified types of student
  orientation and provided some indication of the
  influence of mediating influences on these.
  Compared with Becker and his colleagues our
  initial overall findings point to a perhaps
  somewhat greater overall continuity between
  faculty and student goals (student orientations
  such as Types 1, 2 and 5) alongside a range of
  more instrumentalist and predominantly grade-
  and brand- oriented students.

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More specifically.

• 1 - Students are utilising university learning in
  a variety of different styles and levels of
  engagement. But the endorsement of subject
  benchmark statements by students in responses to
  our questionnaires suggest high levels of student
  satisfaction across the seven types observed

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• 2 To some extent a differentiation of student
  orientations and experiences exists between
  institutions and in relation to variations in
  curriculum type. Equally however examples of our
  seven student types can be found across all five
  institutions. There is far from existing any
  one-one correlation between student orientations
  on the one hand and institutional and
  organisational type on the other.

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• 3 Rather than the sharp institutional
  polarisation of student experiences or the
  discontinuities with previous eras, clear
  communalities over institution type (and modes
  of curriculum organisation) and, arguably, also
  continuities over time remain- in Sociology at
  least.

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• What our questionnaires and interviews suggest,
  however, is that despite a degree of
  differentiation and fragmentation of the subject
  and the different kinds of student orientation
  and experience that exist our 7 types a
  recognisable basic sociological student
  experience is expected and obtained by most
  students. This is true for students studying
  single honours sociology and it is also true for
  those studying newer types of sociology course
  such as Crime and Society.
• Comparisons of students choices and expectations
  across subjects suggest that this is not the case
  in biosciences..

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Sources and references

• Dubet,F. (1994) Dimensions et figures de
  l'expérience étudiante dans l'université de
  masse. Revue française de sociologie 34.4 (1994)
  573-574
• Jary, D. Lebeau, Y. (2005) What Students Say
  They Learn the subject identity/identities of
  sociology students Paper presented at the
  congress of the British sociological Association
• Jary, D Lebeau, Y. (2007) Student experience
  and subject engagement A typology for diverse
  and stratified higher education. Paper submitted
  to Sociology, Oct 2007
• What is learned at University? The Social and
  Organisational Mediation of University Learning
  an ESRC-TLRP funded research project.
  http//www.open.ac.uk/cheri/SOMULhome.htm