Educational Transitions and Short-Termism

The start of a new academic year brings reality back for students transitioning from secondary school to university, facing a new academic leap in their lives

License Creative Commons

Antoni Hernández-Fernández

Educational stage transitions are almost always complex. Consider yourself fortunate if, as a student, parent, or teacher, you’ve experienced smooth transitions, whether from primary to secondary education, from secondary to vocational training or high school, or from high school to university.

However, when dissonances, discrepancies, or even an academic “slap in the face” occur, this reveals a systemic issue. Families often perceive these problems as unexpected, while educators might see them as inevitable due to their frequency. For instance, students who performed well in secondary school may suddenly struggle in their first term of high school, or those who excelled in high school and entrance exams may crash in their first year at university. Something is amiss, and that something is short-termism.

One contributing factor is the tendency to overlook what comes next. Standards are lowered due to the anxiety caused by the dreaded failure, a reflection in the assessment that the expected academic objectives have not been met. But it’s not just students who suffer. Teachers, too, are under pressure to promote students, fearing that a student’s failure might reflect poorly on their teaching abilities because, although this is a team effort and the responsibility for learning lies with the student, while teaching is the responsibility of the teacher, society’s reductive view of education often shifts blame in extremes: from “if you fail, you’re a bad student” to “if your students fail, you’re a bad teacher.” And, at the extremes, we’ve all had, or known (or even been), students who didn’t care about anything or failed repeatedly, as well as terrible teachers who failed students left and right when, in reality, it was them who were truly lacking. Both students and teachers had their own issues.

But let us not discuss those extremes of the Gaussian curve, the fortunately atypical cases. Instead, let us focus on the systemic issues stemming from educational legislation.

Failure becomes more likely when students don’t acquire necessary knowledge at one level that is essential for the next. A major concern is the lack of coordination in the curriculum. For instance, in Spain, a student studying physics in high school may find that the topics covered in their second year, which are crucial for university entrance exams, barely appear in the first-year university curriculum. Instead, they are often faced with advanced content in kinematics and dynamics, introduced through differential and integral calculus, which they might have only briefly touched upon two years earlier, and that is assuming one has completed A-levels!!”

A significant number of students entering university, particularly in fields where high entry requirements are inflated due to governmental resistance to expanding public university places, have not completed essential subjects for the programmes they are enrolling in. This is often the case for students from vocational training backgrounds, where such subjects may not have been included in their curricula. Others may have faced timetable clashes at their secondary schools, or the subjects may not have been offered due to a lack of available teaching staff or insufficient demand.

As an example, a colleague teaching a first-year physics course in engineering, with about 75 students found, after conducting a highly recommended brief survey, that 15 of them hadn’t studied physics since secondary school (some came from a science-based baccalaureate, while others from vocational training). Adding further complexity to the classroom were two students who had studied physics but came from other countries and had only a limited knowledge of Spanish.

This leaves a fifth of the class at a disadvantage from the outset. And remember that many others, in their final year, were subjected to intensive training aimed at achieving high scores in university entrance exams, and in short-term thinking, we may have forgotten what came next.

The key question here is: was the goal to pass the exam or to actually learn? To enter university well-prepared, or just to get in and figure it out later, hoping they’ll manage? The obvious point: if they don’t get in… Of course, but let’s not be surprised by the significant dropout rates in certain degree programmes in first-year subjects. They were trained to pass an exam with a score high enough to gain entry, not for what awaited them once they crossed the threshold.

Some might argue that first-year university students should be mature enough to navigate these challenges (though adolescence, according to UNICEF, can extend until age 21). But what about younger students, who face incoherent transitions between primary and secondary school, or from secondary to high school? And what of those deprived of fundamental subjects necessary for their future studies or basic citizenship, such as technology?

For those of you in your final year of high school, take heart and do your best. Put in the effort, but remember that much of what happens next is beyond your control. This message applies equally to students and teachers alike.

References:

UNICEF (2020): Qué es la adolescencia. https://www.unicef.org/uruguay/crianza/adolescencia/que-es-la-adolescencia

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons