Conference Agenda

In the last fifty years, transitions from university to work have become more difficult for young people, as reflected by longer periods of unemployment, job mismatches, and diversified pathways (Allen & vanDer Velden, 2007). The content of the learning objectives connected to the education and training systems, is changing, thus reflecting specific global priorities. A conclusive example is indicator 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals – according to which, by 2030, all graduates will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to promote sustainable development. These strongly suggest that education and training systems should equip learners with skills such as problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking and communication. The focus on these "21st century goals" is visible in education, in general, and curriculum reforms, in particular, and has been promoted by global discussions about the changing needs of work and society as a whole.

These tendencies imposed a consistent debate, with philosophical nuances, related to the identity, roles and missions of the contemporary university. In this context, the controversies generated between utilitarian approaches and those with a more critical orientation were numerous and sometimes intense, generating resistance or producing transformations of principles. The central point of the debates was, explicitly or implicitly, the influence that the labor market should have on the mission of higher education and, of course, on its development agenda for a certain social and economic context (Rego et al, 2022). Such a controversy, in a post-industrial era and a growing knowledge economy, imposes answers to the question regarding the association between higher education and graduate employability (OECD, World Economic Forum, etc.). It should come as no surprise that the European Union, through the Bologna process, has prioritized both the competence-centered approach and employability in its higher education policies, supporting a line of research whose basic premise is to provide the theoretical basis and, wherever possible, to empirically validate the employability skills of university graduates (Rego & al, 2022).

The main concept is the term "21st century skills", that denotes a combination of skills that are important in a modern society and workforce, (Ercikan & Oliveri, 2016). The terms "transferable" (UNESCO, 2012) or "transversal" skills encompass some of the same skills that can be applied in multiple situations, as opposed to technical professional skills that are specific to certain occupations. In a world facing rapid technological and social change, this transversality/transferability is seen as increasingly important, as facilitating transition towards work (Kearns, 2001).

In our research project, we aim at doing a mapping exercise and understand the way transversal competencies are conceptualized in the curricular documents of three bachelor study programs, in the University of Bucharest, a public, large university from Eastern Europe: educational sciences / pedagogy, teacher training education and physics. In this sense, we identify the transversal skills already present in the study programs, but also those that are omitted, by referring to a competence framework developed by the research team based on a rigorous analysis of the literature. Our main research questions were: what sets of transversal competencies are in use in the curricular documents analyzed; what transversal competencies are present in different study programs and disciplines; what issues can we identify by analyzing transversal competencies, that are relevant to higher education and could be explored in next phases of our research. The finality of our study is curricular and practice change through the integration of transversal skills in the programs in the field of education and sciences, but also contribution to the international debate regarding transversal skills, as Hart et al (2021) emphasized that the concept is still understood in different and contradictory ways.

The transition into higher education has been the focus of both government policy and practice with a goal of a smooth transition in the context of increasing the diversity and population of students in higher education. For example, Hulme & De Wide (2015), who organised the transition into higher education in the STEM education department, found that there is now existing practice that attempts to smooth the transition, and that sharing good existing educational practice is a top priority for education stakeholders.

However, in recent years, researchers in the UK and in other countries have begun to criticize the traditional focus on a smooth transition into higher education. For instance, according to Ecclestone, Biesta, & Hughes (2010), 'while certain transitions are unsettling and difficult for some people, risk, challenge and even difficulty might also be important factors in successful transitions for others' (p.2). Moreover, an alternative concept called 'becoming' has been proposed to replace the traditional transition concept (Gale & Parker, 2014 & Gravett, 2021). It has been suggested that transition as becoming should be seen as 'perpetual series of fragmented movements involving whole-of-life fluctuations in lived reality or subjective experience, from birth to death' (Gale & Parker, 2014, p. 737). Besides, Gravett (2021) described the chrematistic of 'becoming' as (1) troublesome transitions, (2) transition as rhizomatic, and (3) transition as becoming. Thus, Gravett (2021) suggested a shift from a traditional paradigm of transition into framing of transition as becoming.

Given both the concept of transition and becoming, then, how can the concept of transition into higher education in Japan be reconstructed? Considering the oppositional structure between the traditional concept of transition and its alternative becoming, the following research questions are set out in this study.

RQ: How do Japanese students experience “transition into higher education”?

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct existing concepts of transition into higher education. In general, in recent years, Japanese high school curriculum has established an interdisciplinary curriculum called 'inquiry-based learning' in addition to the regular curriculum of academic subjects. And Japanese universities offer liberal arts courses in the first and second year of university, and specialized courses in the third and fourth year of university. In Japanese universities, which differ from the structure of the European education system, this paper will clarify how Japanese students experience the transition into higher education compared with the transition into higher education in European countries in previous literature.

In interpreting students' transition and becoming, Gravett's (2021) three components of becoming (transition as troublesome, rhizomatic transition, transition as becoming) are used as an analytical framework. Specifically, this analytical framework includes “threshold concepts” proposed by Meyer and Land (2005) and concepts of the ‘rhizome’ and ‘becoming’ in "A Thousand Plateaus written by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Meyer & Land (2005) state that struggling with threshold states to overcome the discomfort and difficulty felt when passing through transitional spaces is important in transforming students' understanding. Deleuze & Guattari (1987) stated that rhizomes mean that there are no uniform pathways, that transition is divergent, fluid, and multiple, and that becoming refers to the permanence of ongoing change.

Education and career pathways are extensively studied in the sociology of education and labor economics. Sociologists explore transitions between study and work within the framework of the life course perspective (Monaghan, 2020), paying special attention to the patterns of trajectories (Lorentzen et al, 2019) and transition regimes (Walther, 2006). Extensive literature in the sociology of education is devoted to the relationship between education and labor market outcomes and individual socioeconomic backgrounds. The latter is manifested by parental education, professional status, and income, as well as cultural capital. Also, socioeconomic status (SES) impacts educational and career aspirations–low SES students have lower aspirations than their counterparts from a more advantaged background (Kim, Klager, Schneider, 2019). In various countries, there is empirical evidence that low SES is a strong predictor for lower levels of educational attainment and labor market outcomes (Walpole, 2003). In due turn, labor economists focus on the labor market outcomes of the trajectory, returns on investments in human capital, and its determinants. Drawing from the human capital theory, the accumulation of more human capital–a higher level of educational attainment, stronger cognitive abilities, and noncognitive skills, combining studies and work– positively impact labor market outcomes (Nilsson, 2019) and could make school-to-work transition smoother.

Typically, event history and regression analysis methods are used to examine educational pathways. However, such methods commonly examine only unique transitions rather than full sequences of steps in education and employment. With the growing popularity of longitudinal data, sequence analysis accompanied by logistic regression analysis has become the option to overcome this limitation and explore trajectories in their complexity. A number of international, especially European, empirical studies have incorporated sequence analysis in the investigations of youth transitions (see e.g., Brzinsky-Fay, 2007; Quintini & Manfredi, 2009; Lorentzen et al. 2019). However, only a few studies employing sequence analysis on representative samples specifically examine the trajectories of university graduates (Duta, Wielgoszewska, Iannelli, 2021).

Using data from the Russian national cohort longitudinal study "Trajectories in Education and Career, this study aims to untangle the nine-year education-career pathways of 9th-grade students who have received higher education by the age of 25. In Russia, bachelor's and master's degrees were introduced in 2009, though master's programs have anchored and proliferated across universities only recently, in the mid-2010-s. Thus, the cohort participating in this longitudinal study is the one experiencing the newly established educational options. Our study aims to identify the different types of pathways followed by Russian graduates in their journey from school to higher education and to work and explore the factors contributing to different pathways. We investigate pathways following the sociological approach and methodology of sequence analysis but considering the key findings of labor economists, thus embracing the framework of the socioeconomic background and educational inequalities and the human capital theory. We investigate how socioeconomic status and aspirations, as well as academic abilities and personal characteristics, and an extended set of socio-demographic factors, shape students’ paths through postsecondary education and the world of work. By considering how different factors shape not just specific transitions but long-term sequences of educational-employment states, we broaden our understanding of who follows certain paths and why.

Traumatic experiences differ from highly stressful events due to their characteristics such as threatening bodily integrity and personal exposure to death. Therefore, these events can impact human psychology and well-being. For years, the adverse effects of trauma have been studied in the field of psychology and psychiatry (Tedeschi et al., 1998). However, a growing body of literature has shown that some people may be more resilient than the pre-traumatic period (Groleau et al., 2013; Lindstrom et al., 2013, Park et al., 2012).

Tedeschi and Calhoun (2004) constructed a holistic model that includes personal, social, and trauma-related factors to explain the phenomenon, termed “post-traumatic growth (PTG)”. According to this model people have core beliefs about themselves, others, and life that guide people and help them make sense of life. A traumatic event can shake the structure of these assumptions, thus creating the need for restructuring. PTG emerges from the restructuring process. According to the model, growth is a highly personal process rather than a direct outcome that can start with the disruption of core beliefs rather than the event itself (Calhoun et al., 2010). Lindstrom et al. (2013), found a strong significant positive relationship between PTG and disruption of core beliefs. Similar results have been found in cross-sectional studies (Calhoun et al., 2010; Eze et al., 2020; Taku et al., 2015), and longitudinal ones (Danhauer et al.,2013; Ramos et al., 2018).

The theoretical model emphasizes that personal variables such as coping mechanisms are also important factors affecting PTG (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Coping with stress can be defined as the process of managing emotional requisitions arising from events perceived as stressful in person-environment interaction (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Fisher et al. (2020) found that active and supportive strategies were positively associated with PTG, while avoidant strategies were negatively related to it. On the other hand, some research emphasizes that active, supportive, and avoidant strategies like denial were positively related to PTG (Lelorain et al., 2010; Park et al., 2012). These findings show that coping mechanisms are important predictors of PTG.

Contemporary PTG literature focuses on another important variable named “event centrality”. Event centrality refers to the extent to which the memory of an event becomes a central part of people's identity, a fulcrum for understanding everyday life, and a turning point in life (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006). Groleau et al. (2013) found that event centrality was a significant predictor of PTG even after controlling for rumination and disruption of core beliefs. Similarly, Bernard et al. (2015) indicated that event centrality was a significant predictor of PTG. All of these findings show that coping mechanisms, event centrality, and disruption of core beliefs have crucial roles in the creation of PTG and therefore were used as variables in this study.

This study aimed to determine the predictors of PTG levels of university students with trauma experience in light of the current literature. Traumatic experiences are quite common around the world (Kessler et al., 2017) and can influence the academic experience and even university graduation in the long run (Lecy & Osteen, 2022). Therefore, understanding the predictors of PTG can shape psychological help, facilitate growth and well-being, and thus ensure the success and continuation of the higher education process. Event centrality is a relatively contemporary variable that has not been sufficiently studied in Turkish culture, therefore another aim is to understand its relationship with PTG in Turkish culture. According to these aims, a research question has been created; Do the disruption of core beliefs, stress coping mechanisms, and event centrality predict PTG?