ABSTRACT
This chapter first discusses key concepts associated with transitions and then critically reviews important research studies about transitions in Australia. This review aims to unpack how first-year students’ transitions appeared and changed during the last two decades. Importantly, the chapter discusses the concepts of personal capitals especially those captured in Tomlinson’s capital model (2017) because the model serves as one of the main conceptual frameworks guiding the discussion of various chapters in the book. The chapter then argues that, recently, in the context of neoliberalism and testing regimes, governments and policy-makers have paid increasing attention to and interest in students’ academic performance. Research has, however, evidenced that transitions are determined by characteristics of various stakeholders and how these characteristics match and mismatch each other. The chapter, therefore, discusses Biggs’ (1993) 3 Ps model – Presage, Process, Product – as an exemplar model that guides what should be examined and addressed to enhance students’ transitions.
