ABSTRACT
The learner's experience of the transition from schooling to university is structured primarily by the racialized divisions of apartheid education. During the apartheid regime, the provision of state schooling was divided according to South Africa's various "race" groups, and these divisions were differently resourced. In the academic context, disciplines can be thought of as discourse communities. The discipline of history, for example, is constituted of all the practices in which scholars of history partake. Discourse provides a "social script" for "the way things are normally done," such as how to read, how to write, or how to behave in the staff room. In view of desire to hold social context and agency together in explanatory framework, felt that students' transitional experiences as learners/writers had to be explored within specific institutional contexts. These contexts are themselves often in transition as a result of pressures for change.
