Negotiating Learning and Identity in Higher Education Access, Persistence and Retention

While access to higher education has increased globally, student retention has become a major challenge. This book analyses various aspects of the learning pathways of black students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds at a relatively elite, English-medium, historically white South African university. The students are part of a generation of young black people who have grown up in the new South Africa and are gaining access to higher education in unprecedented numbers. Based on two longitudinal case studies, Negotiating Learning and Identity in Higher Education makes a contribution to the debates about how to facilitate access and graduation of working-class students. The longitudinal perspective enabled the students participating in the research to reflect on their transition to university and the stumbling blocks they encountered in their senior years. The contributors show that the school-to-university transition is not linear or universal. Students had to negotiate multiple transitions at various times and both resist and absorb institutional, disciplinary and home discourses.

The book describes and analyses the students' ambivalence as they straddle often conflicting discourses within their disciplines; within the institution; between home and the institution, and as they occupy multiple subject positions that are related to the boundaries of place and time. Each chapter also describes the ways in which the institution supports and/or hinders students' progress, explores the implications of its findings for models of support and addresses the issue of what constitutes meaningful access to institutional and disciplinary discourses.

Bongi Bangeni is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is a Mandela Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University, USA. She has published in the areas of writing and identity, the development of discipline-specific literacies, and students' transitions from undergraduate to postgraduate spaces of engagement.

Rochelle Kapp is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has extensive teaching and development experience in the fields of language and literacy education and has led a number of academic development projects. She has published in the areas of language and literacy practices, student experience, and the politics of English.

Introduction: Conceptualising Access and Retention (Rochelle Kapp and Bongi Bangeni, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
1. Students' Negotiation of Learning and Identity in Working Class Schooling (Rochelle Kapp, Elmi Badenhorst, Bongi Bangeni, Tracy S. Craig, Viki Janse van Rensburg, Kate Le Roux, Robert Prince, June Pym and Ermien van Pletzen, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
2. Three Mathematics Students Talk about their Transitions to and through their Undergraduate Degrees in the Sciences (Kate le Roux, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
3. A Longitudinal Perspective on a First Generation Female Student's Decision to Leave University (Judy Sacks and Rochelle Kapp, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
4. Humanities' Students' Negotiation of Language, Literacy and Identity (Rochelle Kapp and Bongi Bangeni, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
5. The Role of Religion in Mediating the Transition to Higher Education (Bongi Bangeni and June Pym, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
6. A Longitudinal Account of the Factors Shaping the Degree Paths of Black Students (Bongi Bangeni, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
7. Enabling Capabilities in an Engineering Extended Curriculum Programme (Tracy Craig, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
8. The Impact of Previous Experiences and Social Connectedness on Students' Transition to Higher Education (June Pym and Judy Sacks, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Conclusion: Learning from Students' Journeys (Bongi Bangeni and Rochelle Kapp, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
References
Index

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