Conference Agenda

Generic skills can be considered important during higher education studies. Previous studies have indicated that generic skills have impact on students’ learning, study success and retention in higher education (Badcock ym. 2010; Arum & Roksa 2011; Tuononen et al. 2019). Previous studies have also shown that undergraduate students have challenges, for instance, in argumentation, interpreting and evaluating information and drawing conclusions (Badcock, Pattison & Harris 2010; Arum & Roksa 2011; Evens, Verburgh & Elen 2013). Furthermore, there is some evidence that student’s educational and socioeconomic background has impact on how well students master generic skills (Arum & Roksa, 2011; Kleemola et al., 2022) and the way of which generic skills are assessed differentiates students in their mastery of generic skills (Hyytinen et al. 2015).

There are numerous generic skills needed during in higher education and in working life. In higher education, typically, focus is on higher-order cognitive skills such as critical thinking and argumentation, analytic reasoning, decision making and writing (e.g. Zoller & Tsaparlis 1997; Arum & Roksa 2011; Lemons & Lemons 2017). The generic skills assessed in this study are analytic reasoning and evaluation (how students can identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative argumentation and how they can differentiate between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources), problem-solving (how students can recognise a problem and solve it by using argumentation), writing effectiveness (how logically and clearly the answer has been constructed), and writing mechanics (how students use conventions of standard written language and control of language). The aim of the study is to examine

(1) how well Finnish undergraduate students master various generic skills, and

(2) what background factors relate to these skills.

The university is an institution responsible for the comprehensive education of its students. In the European context, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has been developing for more than twenty years to update the university model so that it responds adequately to the needs of contemporary society. In its latest declaration (Rome Conference, 2020), it demands a university capable of: a) providing solutions to the changes facing society; b) adapting knowledge, skills and competencies to meet new challenges; c) making educational offerings more flexible to participate in programs that enable the improvement of specific skills, d) fostering student-centered learning and teaching, and e) supporting the use of digital technologies for learning, teaching and assessment, scholarly communication and research.

To make progress in these terms, Opazo et al. (2016) indicate that it is essential to use, in a well-planned and structured manner, innovative educational methodologies that complement traditional ones. At this point, the use of Service-Learning programs (SL) fits perfectly as a means for such a mission, by placing academic learning in real contexts and covering needs identified in the community.

These practices have a widely recognized potential for the attainment of transversal skills in university students (Santos Rego, Sáez-Gambín, D., González-Geraldo, et al., 2022). Such skills help prepare students for today's world, drawing links between approaches from both the academic and strictly productive spheres (Alvarez et al., 2022).

However, not all SL experiences are likely to have a positive impact on students' futures, as research to date has recognized certain factors or criteria that determine the quality of projects, and that can have an impact on the benefits provided by these experiences (Billig et al., 2005). Briefly, these "good practices" are related to: the duration and intensity of the project; its academic rigor; the creation of solid partnerships; performing a meaningful service; a correct delimitation of roles; providing diversity in the experience; carrying out an efficient evaluation; and developing an adequate reflection (Imperial et al., 2007; National Youth Leadership Council, 2008).

Among these quality criteria, there is a consensus in the literature that reflection is the most important element. Not surprisingly, reflective processes conform the identity of experience-based methodologies, as they give meaning to what has been experienced, and determine future activities and decisions (Ash & Clayton, 2009). Thus, through dialogical activities with oneself or others, or through research and observation, students question, analyze their experiences, and seek solutions to future problems (García-Romero & Lalueza, 2019).

However, there is a lack of research that empirically studies the effects of the design of service-learning projects on students. Those that have been conducted are mostly focused on describing the experience or studying how it affects students' motivation, feelings or other impressions, and not so much on how the different quality variables are related to the effectiveness of the methodology (Lin, 2021). Despite this, we can find some studies that affirm that a more complete reflection has a greater impact on variables considered mediators of academic performance (Lorenzo, et al., 2021), as well as on student satisfaction with their experience (Santos Rego, Sáez-Gambín, & Lorenzo Moledo, 2022).

Specifically, the objective of this research is to analyze how reflection is related to the development of transversal competencies in university students. This paper is framed in the Research Projects: “Service-Learning (SL) and employability of university graduates in spain: competences for employment” (EDU2017-90651-REDT) and “The impact of the university in the community through service-learning projects. A study focused on reciprocity (SL)” (PID2021-122827OB-I00).

The discipline of physics has famously been described as a ‘culture of no culture’ (Traweek 1988), and physics is often perceived as objective, universal, and rational, a way of approaching the world that is untouched by social dynamics. At the same time, physics is also described in terms of aesthetics and beauty. This can concern a strive for mathematical beauty (Hovis and Kragh 1993) or take the form of wonder and awe for the vastness and the purity of nature (Girod 2007). Girod (2007) further discuss how scientists describe being able to understand the world differently and more richly because of their understanding of science. Physics is also entangled with notions of intelligence and cleverness, a discipline inaccessible to many (Archer et al. 2020). The question of the (in)accessibility of the discipline of physics has over the years gained much attention in educational research, particularly in relation to the recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented groups (de Barros Vidor et al. 2020).

In this presentation, we align ourselves with research that has characterized students’ movements through learning ecologies as pathways or trajectories that resist “pipelines” or implied linearity. Recently, researchers (e.g. Avraamidou, 2020; Mendick et al., 2017; Rahm et al., 2021) have taken up notions of landscapes of becoming, pathways through STEM, and wayfaring which resist deficit notions dominant in the pipeline metaphor, and permit an analysis of student agency as they may entail path switching or on/off ramps and intersecting paths. Rahm et al. (2021) offer that to learn about the role of science in learners’ lives, we need to move beyond “connecting the dots” of activities in science, and instead attend to that which cannot be represented in pathways or trajectories. Thus, “becoming somebody” in physics is “tied up in complex ways with a web of meanings and practices that constitute learning lives” (p. 4). In this presentation, our concern is to unpick this web as we trace the meanings three mature university physics students make of their experiences in various physics learning ecologies, across time and space. In their stories, these three mature students do not articulate end goals of “physicist”, nor do they narrate clear pathways into their present undergraduate programs. Rather, they speak of physics in ways that reveal their figuring of physics as part of a web of meaning that entails the tangling of emotions with physics learning that might serve, as Avraamidou (2020) argues “as links between past (e.g., personal histories), present (e.g., social positioning), and future selves (e.g., a science person)” (p. 338).

Our analysis is based on the notion that well-being is connected to whether life can be experienced as meaningful and authentic (Sayer 2011). We draw on Schutz’ phenomenological understanding of people’s experience of the world, which seeks to explain people’s meaning-making and connection in relating to the world and each other (Schutz & Luckmann 1983). The central theoretical notions through which we explore our interviewees' narrative are experiences of connectedness versus experiences of alienation. In particular, we utilize the concept of transcendence to illuminate how the interviewees explain their relationship to physics (e.g. Thurfjell et al 2019). Importantly, we do not investigate how moments can add up to trajectories into physics, but rather how mature students view physics as providing an organizing structure for their life trajectories, to materialize a life that might not have seemed possible outside of the realm of physics.

In the presentation we interweave the analyses of three student narratives, those of Tina (first generation university student, early 40s), Tobias (first generation university student, late 20s), and Kamal (second generation immigrant, late 20s).