A socio-critical model for understanding and predicting postgraduate student success in ODL: A tentative exploration & glimpses of a critique

By Paul PrinslooResearch Professor, Department of Business Management,

University of South Africa (Unisa)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I do not own the copyright of any of the images in this presentation. Ihereby acknowledge the original copyright and licensing regime of every image and reference used. All the images used in this presentation have been sourced from Google labeled for non-commercial reuse

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Disclaimer and context (1)I share these tentative exploratory thoughts and glimpses of a critique from the specific context of the University of South Africa (Unisa), a mega open university with close to 400,000 students with about 2,000Masters (1883) and 282 doctoral students in 2013. Some of the current trends include (but are not limited to)…

• Although the dropout rate has decreased slightly in recent times, it has not resulted in a higher graduation rate

• About 20% of Masters’ students complete their qualifications within 5 years and about 14% of PhD students complete their degrees in 4 years *

• One out of three students drop out after their first year of registration for Masters/doctorate degrees

* Varies according to college/discipline

Disclaimer 2: A socio-critical model in context

1. Geopolitical models: International (North-Atlantic) versus national, developed versus developing

2. Philosophical: eg sociological (Spady 1970, Berger 2000), psychological (Bean and Eaton 2000), comprehensive/ecological (Baird 2000), cultural (Kuh & Love 2000); social-critical (Tierney 2000), anthropological (Bernal 2001; Hurtado 1997), critical-cultural (Bernstein 1977), etc.

3. Higher education type: Residential (face-to-face), distance education and open and distance learning (ODL), traditional versus non-traditional (eg Kember 1989; Kember, Lee & Li 2001; Metzner & Bean 1987)

4. Methodological basis: quantitative (eg regression analysis)/qualitative research

5. Subject specific: eg student success in Microeconomics, Accounting, etc.6. Intervention specific: eg the impact of raising the awareness of risk, the

impact of tutoring, etc.7. Factor specific: eg finances, motivation, etc.

My personal definition of ‘socio-critical’…

It is an approach to consider the inter-relationships and inter-dependencies of social, economic, political, cultural, gender, technological, racial, and environmental factors in a specific context. If these relationships and inter-dependencies are not foregrounded, and confronted/disrupted – they are maintained and perpetuated.

Presentation overview

Introducing student success as wicked problem

What we know or don’t know about postgraduate student success

What we know or don’t know about undergraduate student success: a socio-critical lens

Postgraduate student success through a Boudieuan lens

“A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems”

Kolko, 2012 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/wicked_problems_problems_wort

h_solving

Also see the Cynefin framework by Dave Snowden

Understanding and predicting (postgraduate) student success

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm

You are here

Student success and retention “is one of the most widely studied issues in higher education over the past twenty-five years”

(Tinto, 2002, p. 2)

“Leaving is not the mirror image of staying. Knowing why students leave does not tell us, at least not directly, why students persist”

(Tinto, 2006, pp 5-6)

Not only are we (possibly) not closer to understanding student retention and success (particularly in open distance learning, [ODL]) contexts, many (most?) of our institutional efforts to stem the bleeding or to stop the door from revolving does not seem to work…

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Revolving_door-base.jpg

Although this research resulted in “an ever more sophisticated understanding of the complex web of events that shape student leaving and persistence”, … “most institutions have not yet been able to translate what we know about student retention into forms of action that have led to substantial gains in student persistence and graduation”

(Tinto 2006, p.1, p. 5)

Are we looking at the wrong things, in the wrong places?

Are our assumptions about student success and retention, and particularly

the role of the supervisor in this process, wrong or misleading?

Why do postgraduate students fail or fail to complete?

There is no lack of studies focusing on different variables such as, but not limited to• The quality of supervision• The competence ecology of supervisors• (Research) preparedness of students• Different expectations regarding roles and

responsibilities• The isolation experienced by postgraduate students• The cultural & cognitive style of disciplinary tribes

In the South African context …

• Relative lack of research and conceptual modeling

• Koen (2007), [in the context of the University of the Western Cape (UWC)] observes that most institutional strategies to enhance success are not based on research, but on anecdotal evidence

Koen (2007) proposes the following spheres of influence/impact:

• institutional context (social climate, physical setting, social and academic

spheres)

• household spheres (socio-economic group, educational past, domestic

obligations, work responsibility, and financial circumstances)

• personal factors (academic ability, motivation, commitment, desire to finish, and

other attributes)

• organisational factors (appointment policies, financial allocations,

departmental structures, intellectual environment, and institutional resources)

• socio-political influences (allocation of state resources and scholarships,

higher education legislation and regulation)

• academic performance factors (progress with a thesis, full-time vs. part-time

study, faculty affiliation)

• research factors (teaching and supervision, problems inherent in research,

language, and student attributes)

What we (currently) know of student success

on undergraduatelevel…

We know that the following impact on student success…

• Socioeconomic circumstances• Primary and secondary school

background• Educational background of parents and

immediate family• Geographical distance between family

home and institution• Subjects and subject marks on school

level• Proficiency in the language of tuition• Support networks or lack of• Peer pressure• Family and community pressure

• Access to resources• Mathematics on school level• Role models or lack of • Locus of control• Attribution• Self awareness • Self-discipline• Habits and behaviours• Parental status• Health status• Employment status • Probability of employment or

career progress

We know the following institutional factors impact on student success and retention…

• Institutional efficiencies or inefficiencies• Complexity of curricula• Curriculum coherence• Epistemologies and ways of seeing the world• Assessment strategies• Tuition periods• Examination schedules• Server reliability• Faculty understanding of ODL • Faculty expertise• Institutional culture• Whether the institution is the choice of last resort for students• Integration of student support, curriculum, pedagogy and technology

We also know that the follwing macro contextual factors impact on student success and retention do know…

StudentsUnisa

What we don’t know (yet), and possibly

never will…

What is the impact when these different sets of impact combine?

Student success is therefore the result of mostly non-linear, multidimensional, interdependent interactions at different phases

in the nexus between student, institution and broader societal factors

There is no ‘grand’ theory (Merton, 1957)…

• An abundance of different models explaining residential, undergraduate student success

• International models are only partially applicable to the specific African, developing-country, post-apartheid, and ODL context of Unisa

• In distance education contexts non-academic factors may impact more than academic factors

• The combined effects of different combinations of variables at a specific moment in the learning journey are not known

(Subotzky & Prinsloo, 2011)

If we accept thatstudent success is the result of mostly non-linear, multidimensional, interdependent

interactions at different phases in the nexus between student, institution and broader

societal factors…, where does this leave us?

On undergraduate level, it may look as follows…

ProcessesInter & intra-

personaldomains

Modalities:• Attribution• Locus of control• Self-efficacy

ProcessesModalities:

• Attribution• Locus of control• Self-efficacy

DomainsAcademic OperationalSocial

TRANSFORMED INSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY & ATTRIBUTES

THE STUDENT AS AGENTIDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, HABITUS

Success

THE INSTITUTION AS AGENTIDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, HABITUS

SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)

SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)

Choice, Admission

Learning activities

Coursesuccess

Gradua-tion

THE STUDENT WALK Multiple, mutually constitutive interactions between student,

institution & networks

FIT

FIT

FIT

FIT

Employ-ment/

citizenship

TRANSFORMED STUDENT IDENTITY & ATTRIBUTES

FIT

FIT

FIT

FIT

FIT

FIT

FIT

FIT

Retention/Progression/Positive experience

(Subotzky & Prinsloo, 2011)

And on postgraduate level?

Understanding supervision through

a Bourdieuan lens…

Image retrieved from http://www.allstaractivities.com/images/soccer-

positions.gif

• Boundaried site• Players have set/

predetermined positions• Rules are predetermined

and taken for granted (doxa)• Players have different skills• What players can do is inter

alia determined by their position on the field/rules

• The physical condition of the field impacts play

The “field” is not a benign, pastoral space, but rather le

champ – a battle field, where players have set positions,

predetermined paces, specific rules which novice players

must learn together with basic skills (Thompson, 2012)

“What players can do, and where they can go during the

game, depends on their field position. The actual physical

condition of the field (whether it is wet, dry, well grassed

or full of potholes), also has an effect on what players can

do and this how the game is played” (Thompson, 2012, p.

66)

The ‘field’ of supervision

Mapping the field of supervision

1. What is the state of the field?

2. Who are the players on the field? Where do

they come from?

3. What are the rules (written and unwritten)?

4. What is the reward?

5. What does one need in order to play this field

successfully?

6. Who are the referees?

7. Who is the audience? What role do they play?

[(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice/agency

(Maton, 2012, p. 50)

[(habitus)(capital)] + field =

practice/agency

Students’ habitus - how their past and present (and their understanding thereof) shaped and still shape them

The capital that they have acquired in the process (or not)

The field – the context in which they find themself in. This is not a neutral space, but is, itself, shaped by various structures, and agencies of individuals and collectives

Their practice/agency and their understanding thereof…

Supervisor [(habitus)(capital)] + field = agency

Student [(habitus)(capital)] + field = agency

Image retrieved from http://www.allstaractivities.com/images/soccer-positions.gif

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SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)

SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)

We asked…

Are we looking at the wrong things, in the wrong places?

Are our assumptions about student success and retention, and particularly the role of the

supervisor in this process, wrong or misleading?

Paul Prinsloo

Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)

Department of Business Management

College of Economic and Management Sciences

Office number 3-15, Club 1, Hazelwood

P O Box 392

Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa

+27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)

+27 (0) 82 3954 113 (mobile)

Skype: paul.prinsloo59

Personal blog: http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com

Twitter profile: @14prinsp

THANK YOU