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Conference theme: Transition and Adjustment
Title: Contesting
‘Transitions’ and (Re-)Engaging with ‘Subjectivities’:
Locating and
Celebrating the Habitus in Three Versions of ‘the First Year Experience’
at Central Queensland University
Jenny Simpson, Jeanne McConachie, Phyllida Coombes, Geoff Danaher,
R. E. Harreveld and P. A. Danaher
Abstract
Instead of the homogeneous and undifferentiated view of ‘the first year
experience’ implied by the term ‘transitions’, we prefer to
emphasise diversity and heterogeneity in mapping multiple experiences of university
life, particularly in ‘the first year’. This mapping includes –
in the context of Central Queensland University (CQU) – students in a
pre-undergraduate preparatory program with rich life experiences but limited
formal education; school leavers and mature age students in a first year undergraduate
program; and students with industry and professional experience in a pre-service
teacher education program with both undergraduate and graduate entry points.
Despite the considerable differences among these ‘first year experiences’,
they have in common a focus on the habitus (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990) as a framework
for locating and celebrating student and staff subjectivities and hence for
maximising student (re-)engagements with university life. The paper illustrates
these crucial processes in each of these versions of ‘the first year experience’.
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