Storying students’ becomings into and through higher education

Abstract

This article employs a new approach to understanding student transition. This area of theory and practice has developed a huge global significance. However, transition as a concept is under-theorised, and a discourse that reiterates stereotypic narratives of students’ normative and linear trajectories can be seen to permeate the field. Drawing on data collected using story completion methods, together with semi-structured interviews, we examine this stereotypic discourse that surrounds stories of transition. Our data suggest that this narrative exists in tension with a more nuanced picture: one that depicts the diversity, fluidity and complexity of students’ lived experiences. In order to better understand these experiences, we employ a theoretical approach that conceptualises transitions as troublesome, as rhizomatic, and as becoming. We argue that this approach offers the potential to look beyond normative narratives that surround student transition, and to celebrate students’ becomings in a more rich and generative way.