Negotiating Professional and Academic Identities: Transition to undergraduate study and teacher training

The poster outlines the aims of a research study which aimed to explore students’ experiences of transition to both university and in their first school based placement through gathering their stories of transition, using a narrative research methodology. It describes the theoretical perspective which underpins the research which is socio- cultural and uses Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice as a tool to help analyse the data. The transition literature argues that students moving to HE undergo huge social and academic change. Successful students experience identity shifts which enable them to succeed in the new environment (Cassidy & True, 2001, Haggis & Puget 2002, Walker et al 2004). Given this, understanding transition demands a focus on the nature of those social and academic factors. Clearly, the more complex those factors are, the greater the ‘work’ of transition will be. Students in this research were not only facing the academic challenges of the HE environment but also the demands of the primary school environment. There is a paucity of literature which explores this particular and demanding transition. It describes the analysis of the data and key findings which include the ways the student in the study were able to move from peripheral participation into full participation and where they found this more problematic both in the university and in their school placements. In light of these findings it briefly considers the implications for future practice for the undergraduate degree with QTS.