Concept of Adjustment for First-Year Students at South African Universities
Abstract
The first year of university is a crucial time for most students. They experience various challenges that require them to learn and develop the skills needed to negotiate their new environment and discover a major that fits their talents and needs. This chapter focuses on the adjustment concept for first-year students. Their adjustment depends on various factors such as student support services in collaboration with academic staff, pre-entry work for the practical orientation to their studies, skills developments, institutional strategies, and assessment. It further develops a historical background of South African Higher Education. It demonstrates how peer group pressure influences the FYSs' experiences at South African universities. It establishes a conceptual framework for factors influencing peer groups and their formation among FYSs transitioning from high school to university. It discusses FYSs' experiences associated with the types of groups and peer pressure. It examines the advantages and disadvantages and factors influencing peer groups, peer pressure, and their formation.
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The aim of this paper is to explore how first-year university students at a regional university in Australia perceive and use Information Literacy (IL) as they transition from school to university. A survey method was used to gather data through pre- and post-intervention surveys with 1,333 first-year students enrolled in their first semester of study across all disciplines at the university. The study identified that between 25–35% of students did not enjoy reading, with many students preferring not to read. Students arrived at university with largely misguided confidence in their personal IL skills, especially the skills needed to meet the demands of university level coursework, with up to 47% of students unlikely to have experienced well-resourced libraries at school. The study concludes that implications for university teaching include gaining an early understanding of the IL skills students have when they arrive at university, and the explicit teaching of IL skills, given the identified impact of IL skills on student success and retention rates.
In his thesis, "A realist approach towards students' application of agency, culture and social structures in demonstration of competency in argumentative writing", the study explored intersectionality between first-year science students' cultural identities and the ways these aspects of students' epistemologies weave with their attempts to demonstrate competency in written, dialectical and rhetorical argumentation. The researcher employed Margaret Archer's (1995) morphogenetic model to divide students' experiences into three chronological phases. These time periods, which spanned the pre-university domain as well as the first and second semesters, were termed the conditioning, interactive and elaboration phases of students' Discourses (Archer, 1995). By analytically employing the morphogenetic cycle, this study simultaneously applied Gee's (2012) theory of Discourse to emphasise epistemic shifts, development and constraints in students' argumentation. The findings highlighted the interplay between and efficacy of on-and off-campus social structures, culture and agency as causal mechanisms in students' methods of participating in dialectical, rhetorical and written argumentation. Examples of active entities in students' argumentative Discourse emergence include their families, cultural communities, schools, degree programmes and professional communities. Findings from the study revealed that the majority of the participants experienced significant modifications to their scientific Discourses after reaching the end of the academic year. To argue effectively, first-year students had to modify their methods of participation in academic dialect and rhetoric that feed into their argumentative writing. The study concluded that due to the distinct cultural environment that universities represent when contrasted with the pre-tertiary experiences of all first-years, pedagogic mechanisms should be activated that facilitate their induction into argumentative, dialectical and rhetorical interactions, including writing, across the entire academic year. iii
There is a great deal of variability in the practice of orientation across the country at South Africa's universities, and there is limited knowledge of what exactly constitutes good practice in orientation. Many areas of enquiry remain unexplored, and remain blind spots for South Africa's higher education sector. The article addresses this central question: What constitutes good practice for orientation programmes in South Africa? The article argues that a structured and informed orientation strategy is critical in terms of matters of student retention and, in fact, may serve as the key linchpin of students' decision to stay or exit the higher education system. Accordingly, seven strategies to improve nationalorientation practice are proposed in this article.
Purpose – In this study, the writing needs of postgraduate research students are explored, so that support structures that enable successful completion rates and student satisfaction can be identified. Postgraduate education is expanding in Malaysian public and private higher education institutions; yet research tends to focus on public institutions, because private institutions have traditionally been oriented towards teaching instead of research. Therefore, this study explores the needs of students in a branch campus of a private overseas university in Malaysia.
Methodology - Semi-structured exploratory interviews were carried out with six postgraduate students, so that a deeper understanding of their research writing needs could be obtained. Interviews were then analysed using a general inductive approach.
Findings – It was found that students required support in three main areas: writing, supervision and ICT. Students sought English language support and more workshops and programmes which specifically dealt with thesis writing. They also believed that peer support groups would be beneficial. Secondly, more guidance was needed from supervisors to enable greater clarity on writing and institutional processes and procedures. Finally, students wanted greater access to ICT writing tools to facilitate writing and language learning.
Significance – The findings of this study are beneficial to institutions seeking to provide greater support for postgraduate students to ensure timely completion rates and greater student satisfaction. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that postgraduate support incorporate 3Ps, i.e., be pedagogically driven; peer oriented; and programmatically implemented.
‘Epistemicide’ and epistemic emancipation are commonly regarded as intimately linked. The deliberate, systematic destruction of knowledge involves epistemic, cognitive marginalisation and negation, while epistemic emancipation serves as a countervailing measure to the killing of knowledge (systems). Taking into account the inhuman processes and extensive, brutal history of colonization of the African continent, it is rather unsurprising that the ideas of epistemicide and epistemic emancipation should resonate particularly with African scholars and concerned laypersons. An examination of the notion of epistemicide aims to determine the conditions under which it makes sense to refer to the ‘murder of knowledge (systems)’. Drawing on the ideas of epistemic injustice and cognitive justice, this essay further lays the groundwork for a coherent and consistent understanding of ‘epistemic emancipation’, in discourses around knowledge production on the African continent and beyond. Epistemic emancipation suggests cognitive and intellectual autonomy. Like moral autonomy, this involves rational self-determination, and is (I will argue) best safeguarded by an appeal to individual rights. Apart from providing a basic framework for grounding the need for education and cognitive emancipation, as well as in terms of intellectual property rights, rights language has both a richness in application and a political effectiveness that are generally lacking in advocacy of ‘indigenous knowledge’ and ‘epistemological diversity’ projects.
In this study, we examined the role of self-esteem, hope, optimism, coping, acculturative stress, and social support on international students’ depressive symptoms and sociocultural adjustment. Seventy international students completed a self-report online survey. The most notable finding was that the international students used adaptive and maladaptive coping techniques at similar rates. Greater use of coping techniques, higher acculturative stress and less social support were associated with more depressive symptoms and more difficulty with sociocultural adjustment. Lower self-esteem, less hope, and less optimism were associated with more depressive symptoms, but not sociocultural difficulty. Clinical implications and future directions are also discussed.
How is the relation between duration of lockdown and numbers of infected people and deaths of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and growth level of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in countries? Results here suggest that countries with a shorter period of lockdown (about 15 days) have confirmed cases divided by population higher than countries with a longer period of lockdown (about 60 days, i.e., 2 months); moreover, countries with a shorter period of lockdown have average fatality rate (5.45%) lower than countries with a longer length of lockdown (12.70%), whereas variation of fatality rate from March to August 2020 (first pandemic wave of COVID-19) suggests a higher reduction in countries with a longer period of lockdown than countries with a shorter duration (−1.9% vs. -0.72%). Independent Samples Test reveals that the fatality rate of countries with a shorter period of lockdown was significantly lower than countries with a longer period of lockdown (5.4% vs. 12.7%, p-value<.05). The Mann-Whitney Test confirms that fatality rate of countries with a shorter period of lockdown is significantly lower than countries having a longer period of lockdown (U = 0, p-value = .005). In addition, lockdowns of longer duration have generated negative effects on GDP growth: contraction of GDP (index 2010 = 100) from second quarter 2019 to second quarter of 2020 in countries applying a longer period of lockdown (i.e., about two months) is about −21%, whereas it is −13% in countries applying a shorter period of lockdown of about 15 days (significant difference with Independent Samples Test: t4 = −2.274, p-value < .085). This finding shows a systematic deterioration of economic system because of containment policies based on a longer duration of lockdown in society. Another novel finding here reveals that countries with higher investments in healthcare (as percentage of GDP) have alleviated fatality rate of COVID-19 and simultaneously applied a shorter period of lockdown, reducing negative effects on economic system in terms of contraction of economic growth. Overall, then, using lessons learned of COVID-19 pandemic crisis, this study must conclude that a strategy to reduce the negative impact of future epidemics similar to COVID-19 has to be based on a reinforcement of healthcare sector to have an efficient organization to cope with pandemics of new viral agents and to be able to minimize fatality rates, reducing at the same time restriction policies based on longer duration of lockdowns that generates negative effects on socioeconomic systems.