From senior student to novice worker: learning trajectories in political science, psychology and mechanical engineering

Abstract

This longitudinal study focuses on the transition from higher education to working life. Research has hitherto described the transition in rather general terms, and there is still only limited knowledge about how graduates construe themselves as professionals, or how they experience the transition to the sociocultural contexts of working life. In this study, the transition is viewed as a trajectory between different communities of practice. Three different Master’s programmes at Linköping University are focused on and compared: political science, psychology and mechanical engineering. The specific aims are to: (i) identify aspects of identity and knowledge formation as reported by informants, both as senior students and later as novice workers with 18 months of work experience; (ii) identify features of discourses of knowledge and competence operating in the programmes and working life; and (iii) to relate the results to differences in the way the programmes are designed. The results indicate that the psychology programme prepares for working life in a rational way, that is, the generic skills and substantive knowledge acquired seem to correspond to the demands of professional work. The other programmes stand out as preparing for working life either by providing generic skills that need to be transformed in professional work, or by containing elements that mainly play a ritual role rather than corresponding to the demands of working life.

Introduction

In recent decades, the idea and role of universities as educational institutions has been debated intensely in relation to societal change and changing demands of working life (Barnett, 1994). The percentage of students enrolled in higher education has multiplied several times during this period. The working forms in universities have also been debated and at times critiqued internally. The increasing interest in student‐centred pedagogics in higher education over the last three decades could be seen as an expression of the universities’ ways of responding to these demands.

Research in the area has shown that not only the content of educational programmes or working forms in the university may contribute to students’ learning. The sociocultural contexts, in terms of the academic disciplines and their differences in ontological and epistemological standpoints, also impact on the design and delivery of university courses, which in turn influence students’ learning processes (Snow, 1964; Becher, 1989, 1994; Abrandt Dahlgren, 2000, 2003; Neumann 2001; Abrandt Dahlgren & Dahlgren, 2002; Neumann et al., 2002). Becher (1989) distinguishes between hard pure, soft pure, hard applied and soft applied fields of study. Neumann et al. (2002) build on this framework in their literature review on teaching and learning in their disciplinary contexts. They show that there are considerable differences in curriculum, assessment and cognitive purpose, as well as in characteristics of teachers, types of teaching methods and student learning requirements. The outcome of university programmes in terms of how graduates construe themselves as professionals, or how they experience the transition to the sociocultural contexts of working life is an area that has been paid less attention in previous research.

The aim of this article is to further examine and compare the transition from higher education to working life in three different study programmes at Linköping University: Political Science, Psychology and Mechanical Engineering. The specific aims are: (i) to identify features of discourses of knowledge and competence operating in the programmes and working life, and aspects of identity as reported by informants as senior students and later as novice workers with 18 months of work experience; and (ii) to relate the results of this comparison to differences in the way the programmes are designed. The results reported here constitute a part of a comprehensive joint research project between four research teams from Sweden, Norway, Germany and Poland. The project focuses on the transition between higher education and working life (project Students as Journeymen between Communities of Higher Education and Work, within the EU 5th Framework Programme, contract no. HPSE CT‐2000–00068).

Research on transition between higher education and working life

The relationship between higher education and working life is an area of research that has attracted increasing interest among researchers in recent years. In Brennan et al.’s (1996) review of research on the transition from higher education to working life they found that research has predominantly concerned either the systems level, with focus on the match between the output of higher education and the societal demands for academically trained manpower, or studies on the expediency of higher education as assessed retroactively by professional novices. They argue that the transition is often described in rather general categories, and there is little concern with the experienced impact of education or specific work task requirements.

A more recent review of the field by Johnston (2003) points out that there is still little information in the research literature on graduate employment from the graduates’ perspective. There is a need for research focusing on experiences of graduates in their early employment years, she argues, particularly as regards their working conditions and culture. Other areas where she argues more research is needed are on relationships between higher education and work, fulfilment issues such as the nature and extent of the graduates’ job expectations, satisfaction and commitment, and relationships between employers’ explicit expectations and graduates’ experienced expectations.

Another complicating factor when assessing the feasibility of study programmes with regard to requirements in working life is the lack of stable forecasts about the nature of future tasks in working life and qualifications (Barnett 1994, 2000a). In a recent Swedish state survey on the new conditions for learning in higher education (SOU 2001:13), it is argued that work in qualified positions in contemporary working life requires a perspective on competence that, in addition to specific knowledge and skills, also includes abilities of independent learning. Furthermore, the ability to formulate, analyse and solve problems is emphasised. This includes an emphasis on accessibility, transferable skills, competency formation, modularisation, student profiling and the development of reflective practitioners (Symes & MacIntyre, 2000). Becoming professional has been argued to include engagement in a wider set of discourses, which comprises a responsibility for the professional that moves beyond the limits of a local professional–client transaction (Barnett, 1997).

An example of research where the graduates’ experiences of the transition to work life have been particularly attended to is a recent study by Kaufman and Feldman (2004) where a symbolic interactionist perspective is applied when researching senior students’ experiences as regards the development of identity formation in their college years. The results show that the experience of college plays an important constitutive role in forming the self‐perceived identities of students. This was particularly evident in three domains, i.e. intelligence and knowledgeability, occupation, and cosmopolitanism. Within the domain of occupation, interaction with peers stood out as an important feature in forming self‐perceived occupational identities. Kaufman and Feldman argue that college provides students with the ‘situational contexts within which a variety of identities may be negotiated, experienced, and ultimately constructed’ (p. 481). An interesting finding is that the experience of college for some students constituted a symbolic entitlement for certain occupations and careers, and that they perceived themselves as deserving the better jobs because they were highly educated.

The study by Kaufmann and Feldman does not, however, address particular circumstances within certain disciplines or professional fields that may have different knowledge traditions and cultures of learning. The present study makes an attempt at detailing the transition to work life from three different academic contexts—Political Science, Psychology, and Mechanical Engineering—taking into account these particular aspects from a sociocultural perspective. The three programmes could be viewed as representing a broad variety of knowledge traditions and cultures, from the classical liberal arts programme with a loose structure, to more professional programmes in which a particular profession is more or less clearly defined as the intended outcome.

Theoretical and methodological frame of reference

Communities of practice

In this study, the transition from higher education to working life is viewed as a trajectory from one community within academia, with a particular set of boundaries and traditions, to another community of practice within work life, with a different location and different boundaries, activities and traditions (Wenger, 1998). Trajectories are seen as motions over time, not necessarily following a predestined course, but open to interaction with and influence by a multitude of sources. A central source of identity formation in the community of practice is participation; the identity is constituted through the recognition of mutuality in relations of participation. Newcomers become part of a community of practice through the process of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), in which the sense of belonging is developed through the relationships between newcomers and old‐timers. Another source complementary to participation in this process is reification. Reification refers to the abstractions such as tools, symbols, terms and concepts produced by the community to reify something in this practice in a congealed form.

Identity formation

Bauman (1991) claims that, in the change to the modern, functionally differentiated society, individual persons are no longer firmly rooted in one single location or subsystem of society, but, rather, must be regarded as socially displaced. The individual needs to establish a stable and defensible identity to differentiate between the self and the outer world, but at the same time needs the affirmation of social approval.

Wenger (1998) describes identity formation in a community of practice as a nexus of multimembership. As such a nexus, an identity is not a coherent unity, nor is it simply fragmented. Wenger claims that identities are at the same time one and multiple. We reason along the same lines as Wenger, and are aware that identities described in this study are only partial and contextually situated in the realm of studies and work.

Discourses

The concept of discourse could be defined as the use of language as a social practice or action that is both constituted and constituting (Winter J⊘rgensen & Phillips, 2000). The constituted aspect of the discourse is the different discursive practices, in higher education and work life, which are socially and historically situated, and in which participation and reification influence the informants’ ways of talking about their experiences. The constituting aspect of discourse is the use of language as an action that can influence these communities.

In this study, we have chosen three different study programmes, building on the assumption that their characteristics as communities of practice in the university vary. More specifically, we are assuming that educational design, expectations of knowledge formation and identity building in students will vary among the programmes. Similarly, it is our assumption that the graduates will enter different sectors of work life, with different demands on them as novices in working life that do not necessarily match the presupposed outcome of the study programme.

Methods

Design and data collection

Twelve students from each programme were interviewed on two occasions, the first time during their last year of studies (early 2002) and the second time after approximately 15–18 months of professional work (mid‐2003). The sample is approximately a representative proportion in terms of gender of the population in each programme.

The age of the informants from the Political Science programme varies between 24 and 37 years of age. The majority of students/novices are in the age span of 24–26. The age of the informants from the Psychology programme varies between 24 and 46 years; more than half of them are between 24 and 26 years of age. The age of the informants from the Mechanical Engineering programmes varies between 24 and 31 years, with an average age of 27.

The interviews were taped and subsequently transcribed verbatim. The duration of each interview varied between 45 and 90 minutes.

Data analyses

The methodology and analytical procedure applied in the project is multilayered. We are interested not only in the variation in individual constructions of various aspects of education expressed by the students, but also in what constitute the most common features of the constructions in each group studied, and could be understood as discourses operating in the programmes and in work life.

The primary analysis of interview data is inspired by the rigorous procedure of phenomenography, as a first step on the way towards understanding socially (institutionally) and culturally situated and constructed meanings. The initial phase can be described as familiarisation, and means that the transcriptions are carefully read with the aim of getting acquainted with the texts in detail. This is also necessary in order to make any corrections or editing. The analysis continues with a phase of condensation, in which the most significant statements are selected to give a short version of the entire dialogue concerning the phenomenon under study. The selected significant dialogue excerpts were then compared in order to find sources of variation or agreement. Taking into account the result of the previous steps, the next feature of the analysis was to group answers that appeared to have similarities. Based on this grouping, the categories that form the result were developed in the next step; articulating. Finally, the categories obtained were contrasted with regard to similarities and differences at a meta‐level. The aim of a phenomenographic analysis is to arrive at a set of descriptive categories, portraying similarities and differences concerning how a certain phenomenon in question is conceived of by people (Marton, 1981; Dahlgren & Fallsberg, 1991). In our study, we are transcending the scope of phenomenography by viewing the categories obtained through the analysis as provisional, and as representing only the first stage of a process of analysis and interpretation.

In the second part of the analysis we have linked the individual and social constructions in data interpretation by a procedure designed on the basis of the methodologies of discourse analysis (cf. Gee, 1999; Talja, 1999). This means that we have searched for inconsistencies and contradictions in particular interviews, as they may reflect subject positions related to power structures and discourses operating. Secondly, we have also read the transcripts with a particular searchlight on recurrent tropes, i.e. descriptions, explanations, arguments, etc. that the informants use, and tried to articulate the assumptions that such tropes are built on. A third way of identifying discourses has been to look for utterances that attribute certain ideas to other locations than the personal, e.g. when an informant refers explicitly to ideas being transferred from peers, family, or a particular formal regulation.

The context of the study

Linköping University has four faculties, Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Educational Sciences and Health Sciences. About 20% of the students at Linköping University are enrolled in PBL (problem‐based learning) programmes. The programmes chosen for this study are Master’s programmes in psychology, political science and mechanical engineering. Undergraduates in Sweden follow either a ‘Kandidatexamen’ or a Bachelor’s degree, lasting three years, or a ‘Magisterexamen’, or Master’s degree, lasting four to five years. The informants in the study are senior students, and later novices in working life.

Political Sciences

Political Sciences belongs to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The programme Political Science and Economics is claimed to provide the students with a broad knowledge of the social sciences. Students can choose to study political science as a separate subject for two years, or as a Master’s programme over four years. The development of a critical approach to various political and economic theories is emphasised as an important intended outcome of the programme. The most common working forms during the first years of study are lectures, exercises and seminars covering a range of different areas in political science and economics (Table 1). During the later parts of the studies, the students specialise in either political science or economics as their major field of study.

Table 1. Master’s programme in Political Science. Sequence of courses

Year 1	40 weeks	Political Science (20 weeks), Economics (20 weeks)
Year 2	40 weeks	Statistics (10 weeks), Law (10 weeks), Economics (20 weeks) or Economics (20 weeks)
Year 3	40 weeks	Optional courses in Economics or Political Science (40 weeks).
Year 4	40 weeks	Optional courses in Economics or Political Science (20 weeks), BA thesis (10 weeks), MA thesis (10 weeks)

Psychology

The educational programme for training psychologists belongs to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and is a five‐year, problem‐based programme. The overall characteristics are claimed to stimulate critical reflection through an emphasis on learning through problem‐solving, experiential and self‐directed learning. Theories, methods and problems in the field of psychology are dealt with from a research perspective. It is also claimed that since the scientific basis of the profession is rapidly developing and changing, it is important to develop the ability for lifelong and independent learning within the programme. Such a competence is defined as the students’ ability to identify their own learning needs, choose, make use of and critically assess different sources of knowledge, and evaluate learning processes and their outcome. The students are also required to actively seek knowledge with the aim of developing into independent problem solvers, capable of investigation and intervention. The programme is organised in larger learning modules (Table 2), where subdisciplinary perspectives of psychology are moulded into themes. The dominant working form is small group tutorials, where emphasis also is put on communicative and evaluative fields. The students also have periods of clinical placement as a part of every module.

Table 2. Master’s programme in Psychology. Thematic learning modules

	7 weeks	Introduction to psychology
Module I	23	Cognitive psychology and the biological bases of behaviour
Module II	40	Human development and educational psychology
Module III	56	Sociology, organisational psychology and group psychology
Module IV	47	Personality theory, psychopathology and psychotherapy
Module V	27	Research methodology and Master’s thesis

Mechanical Engineering

The mechanical engineering programme belongs to the Faculty of Engineering and comprises four and a half years. ‘Rapid advances in technology require an engineer to be capable in computation, design, production, economics and management’ according to the University website (http://www.liu.se/en/education/study/ing/progsw?id=20). The first two and a half years of the mechanical engineering programme is designed to lay a basic foundation for the forthcoming studies (Table 3). After completing their basic studies, the mechanical engineering students can choose one of six branches of specialisation. This means that the content of the first part of the mechanical engineering programme is organised in a large number of both sequential and parallel courses. The working forms are typically lectures, exercises and laboratory work.

Table 3. Master’s programme in Mechanical Engineering

Year 1–2	60 weeks	Predefined curriculum for all students. Basic foundation studies. Introduction of various technologies.
Year 2	20 weeks	Choice of optional branch. Five general mandatory courses plus several electives for each branch.
Year 3	40 weeks	Continued studies within a chosen branch. Three general mandatory courses plus several electives for each branch.
Year 4	40 weeks	Selection of specialisation project work, 13 electives available (20 weeks). Elective courses (20 weeks).
Year 5	20 weeks	Master’s thesis.

During the final two years, there are 10 optional profiles of engineering that students can choose from. The studies are conducted in project form, where theoretical learning is integrated with laboratory work, computer practice and field trips to industrial sites. A profile represents 20 weeks of study in the fourth year, including an 8–10 week project course. The concluding Master’s thesis is written in the specific area of specialisation chosen. The project work is predominantly conducted at companies in the industrial sector.

Results

The rationale for how the results are presented is that the informants’ individual constructions, and the reifications in terms of educational design, are also considered to reflect features of discourses of knowledge and competence operating within the different programmes. Through the individual perspectives of the informants as students, and later as novices, we will also uncover some of the relationships of the educational programmes to the broader constellation of practices constituted by working life. We will also attempt to describe typical characteristics of the trajectories between the different communities of higher education and work.

First, we account for the different areas of employment of the graduates from the three programmes. This is followed by an analysis and interpretation of two dimensions of the trajectory from education to working life, i.e. aspects of identity formation and knowledge formation. The three programmes are then compared with respect to the characteristics of the educational design, and on a meta‐level with respect to the respective relationships between education and work.

Political Science

Areas of employment

Eight of the 12 novices are found in a variety of different work contexts within the public sector. Municipal administration, social welfare administration and the national migration authority are examples of such areas of operation. Two novices are working in private companies, one of the informants is still studying and one is unemployed.

Trajectory in terms of identity formation

The political science programme could be claimed to prepare not for a specific professional activity, but for an academic way of being, developing a homo academicus as the outcome of the educational programme. The trajectory into working life for some of the political scientists could be described as being positioned as responsible interpreters of legislative texts. This responsibility is also linked to certain moral dilemmas, as one of the novice’s expression illustrates:

How much influence you should have as a civil servant. What do I have the right to do and how much should I do. The higher up in the hierarchy you are or on different levels I think there are even more of these moral dilemmas. How much should ignorant politicians decide and how much should knowledgeable civil servants decide. So I guess that’s a moral dilemma in political science. (POL 13, Novice)

This is a typical trait of the political scientists in local, regional and state authorities. The situated identity as a mediator could also be interpreted as positioning political scientists so that they are squeezed between conflicting interests in the community of working life. The following quotation illustrates how such conflicting interests operate.

It works that way that we write a proposal [about the application for permission to serve alcohol], and then the person who has applied comes here. If it’s a negative proposal the person who has applied comes here with a lawyer and talks in front of the politicians … So I realised very soon that if you can’t be more explicit than the lawyer, the decision that you have proposed will not be approved by the social welfare office. That’s one thing that I learned very fast, you were run over by the politicians in the beginning. (POL 1, Novice)

Few of the novices see themselves as being in a position of power in relation to the political decision‐making arena. This could reflect either an unawareness of the political dimension of the role of the political scientist, or indicate differences in exercising power in different organisations.

As a result of work experience, a new role and situated identity of the political scientist as a negotiator and a mediator crystallises as the awareness of the responsibility involved in being the advocate of the individual citizen increases. When describing this new role and identity, the novices’ answers generally point out generic skills, both when asked what kind of knowledge they acquired through their education and what is required in their present work. This also constitutes the answer to the more general question about the knowledge required to be recognised as a good political scientist.

We had a lot of independent studies in political science, so [the most important] is probably to learn to become independent, sit at home and read … (POL 18, Novice)

The trajectory in terms of knowledge formation

The transition can be described as a process of detailing in a transformation from generic academic skills, i.e. the capacity to read and write academic texts, to skills in analysing and describing problems in combination with substantive skills, i.e. being knowledgeable about political systems and the institutions of democracy.

I think the studies give you a good basis but you must be aware that it is only a start. In my view it is a lifelong learning process and you can’t say that now I am a political scientist when you have got your exam, but you always have to learn new things. (POL 15, Senior student)

This particular combination of skills leads to the experience of a vague exit from the programme; there are signs of fragments of an identity as an independent investigator or civil servant developing at the end of the programme. Analytical and communicative skills are the most frequently mentioned abilities. A thorough understanding of the structure and functions of Swedish society is, furthermore, mentioned as a significant element of professional competence. A critical attitude is mentioned as desirable, not least when assessing data gathered for investigative or evaluative purposes. It is important to be able to work independently and search for information, as one of the novices expresses it (POL 20).

Psychology

Areas of employment

All 12 novice psychologists work as clinical consultants. Fields of operation are hospitals, particularly the psychiatric area involving children, teenagers and adults, and schools.

Trajectory in terms of identity formation

The psychology programme could be claimed to prepare for the requirements of clinical work. During the trajectory of the programme, the psychology students compose a kind of professional fellow‐being character, comprising elements both from their private personality as well as their professional role. The concept comprises the meaning of the helper and the social engineer capable of moderating people’s behaviour. Periods of clinical internship have made it necessary to separate the private and the professional sphere. A quotation from one of the informants illustrates this:

It is important to be involved and empathic, without losing your critical attitude, to be able to keep a certain distance, even if you are very close … It’s in a way a basic condition for being able to do the job, to feel and to analyse, but also to be able to come home and not be a psychologist after work. (PSY8, Senior student)

The typical characteristic of the discourses in working life about the professional role of a psychologist is the ability to reflect, both on the individual and the collective level. On the individual level, reflection constitutes both a way of synthesising and understanding the client’s problems and a way of scrutinising their own thoughts and feelings.

It is important that I dare to be a human being in the encounter with other people, it is not only about techniques, technical knowledge, facts and methods, but that I as a human being allow myself to be moved by the meeting with the clients, but also that I use my humanity to feel and reflect, to draw conclusions from the meeting. To develop in my professional role, it is clear to me that I also need to develop my personal identity. (PSY10, Novice)

Reflection also stands out as a hallmark of a good psychologist at the collective level. Some statements in the interviews indicate that the ability to contribute valuable reflections to a discussion between the team or between colleagues gives a feeling of being professional.

I feel like a good psychologist sometimes when I meet clients and I feel I can help them in some way … or if I can contribute good reflections in treatment conferences where we are discussing various cases. I sometimes feel that I can contribute to someone else’s case. (PSY3, Novice)

The trajectory in terms of knowledge formation

Two ways of relating to the theoretical body of knowledge are discernible from the primary phenomenographic analysis. The eclectic mode means that fragments of knowledge from different theoretical schools are moulded ad hoc in the application to be applied in a specific case. The pluralistic mode means there is a repertoire of perspectives from which the professional selects a specific theoretical perspective for a specific case. The awareness of pluralism, i.e. the existence of competing theoretical schools of psychology and the application of these in clinical practice, stands out as the most important feature of the novices’ answers to the questions about what kind of knowledge is acquired in the educational programme. The trajectory from the educational programme to working life is characterised by continuity and confirmation of the knowledge base acquired during the educational process. Some of the interviews are also very convincing as regards students’ feeling of being prepared, of putting into practice the knowledge they have developed during their studies.

I was surprised by, partly how easily I was entering the professional role and felt confident, and partly by that I could convey my knowledge to the people I met, I was a school psychologist, and there was no doubt about it. (PSY 6, Novice)

The feeling of being put to the test, rather than socialised into the professional work, leads to a legitimate participation in the professional community shortly after entering working life, indicating a close power/knowledge relationship.

Mechanical Engineering

Employment areas

Ten of the novice engineers were at the time of the interview working in medium‐sized and large private enterprises. Two of them were enrolled in trainee progammes. The novice engineers describe their work using the words calculating and constructing. Examples of areas of application are developing products and/or computer programs, certifying and evaluating processes and products.

Trajectory in terms of identity formation

The discourse operating in the educational programme of what constitutes a mechanical engineer is typically that of being representatives of an intellectual elite, mastering complex theoretical problems with the task of building society. This is illustrated by the following quotations:

Sometimes you get the feeling that they would like to have many top students, to kind of show off to other technical schools in Sweden and the rest of the world. It is not my point of view, but it seems to be important to them to get some kind of elite in certain ways … It is important with the career thing, it is mentioned already in the information brochures, it is very focused on careerists and that kind of person. (ENG 21, Senior student)

The engineers solve problems for the ordinary people. Engineers solve problems in their own ways, but it is for the benefit of all society. All products that we have, cars, telephones, are developed by engineers. So engineers make things easier for all society. That is what develops engineering itself too. (ENG24, Senior student)

As novices, the typical interpretations of the discourses operating in working life concerning what constitutes a mechanical engineer have been replaced by that of an employable trainee with generic problem‐solving capabilities. The mechanical engineer is also typically flexible and interchangeable. The flexibility refers to the capabilities of entering a multitude of different projects, and the interchangeability that professional responsibility concerns only a delimited part of the project in question. The ability to be flexible is considered important, and in a way creates a dilemma in the novices’ choices between specialisation, which would mean the acquisition of expertise within a certain area, but at the same time be to the detriment of generic flexibility.

The particularity of the discourses operating in working life about the professional role characteristics is that of being an exclusive thinker. The informants claim that there is a typical ‘engineering‐thinking’ that seeks the optimal and most pragmatic solution to any problem. Two informants give their notions of what this could mean:

But what you are good at is above all to think like a mechanical engineer. Think about something, you see something and you not only look at the external, you also think about it in an engineering way, like, this can be changed. The most important thing is to learn a certain way of thinking about things. (ENG 28, Novice)

Critical thinking, the way engineers are thinking maybe … if one has a problem, to be able to sort it out, and divide it into different sub problems, which are actually possible to solve, because if one has a new problem, then one has to divide it to be able to find a solution and solve the problem. (ENG 31, Novice)

However, the characteristics of the work task for most of the novices are typically that the novices get well‐defined and limited tasks as parts of bigger projects, which they do not have a full understanding of or responsibility for. Only gradually do they get working tasks of a more complex nature.

The trajectory in terms of knowledge formation

The trajectory from education to working life appears to the mechanical engineers as a discontinuity in scope and responsibility of the professional role. This could be interpreted to mean that passing the programme leads to a formal legitimacy that in itself is a merit and, thereby, leads to a peripheral legitimate participation in the professional community of engineering. It also indicates that parts of the trajectory in terms of knowledge formation are ritual. The ritual feature of the programme is strongest at the beginning, where students are put to the hardest test by taking the massive initial courses.

Engineers have a similar training, you have been through courses of similar difficulty, I think that is why you feel like an engineer, you have made it, there are several who don’t think they will make it when they start on the programme, because it is really hard work. Very few really make it, and that is perhaps why you feel that you kind of are of the same kind. (ENG29, Novice)

The experience of intensity in the programme decreases in the latter part as the students learn how to cope with the demands, and the ritual courses are less prevalent.

Educational design and process

In the following, we will relate the findings regarding students’ views of the transitions to the structural and functional properties of the three programmes as displayed in course documents and the interviews.

Political Science

It seems as if the discourse about educational design in the early parts of the political science programme concerns conveying basic descriptive knowledge about political systems and theories. The students describe a cycle consisting of lectures, independent studies and seminars. As the programme progresses, the important aim becomes instead to develop the students’ abilities to investigate, analyse and compare different political systems. This is reflected in the teaching forms used in the programme, with lectures and seminars dominating the early stages. The seminars follow a distinct structure, where the teacher plays a directive role and the interactions between students are regulated. The latter stages of the programme are dominated by independent thesis work under supervision. Contact with the teachers is less prominent in the initial phase of the programme, and the students feel more anonymous as freshmen than they do as senior students. Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of contextualisation and meta‐reflection throughout the educational programme since the programme concerns the study of politics rather than in politics, emphasising academic features of politics rather than encouraging students to acquire a particular political standpoint. In the terminology used by Neumann et al. (2002), political science would be viewed as a field of soft, pure knowledge, being reiterative, holistic, concerned with the particulars and having a qualitative bias.

Psychologists

The discourses concerning educational design operating in the psychology programme have a professional and clinical focus already from the outset of the programme. The use of real‐life scenarios as the point of departure for learning contributes to this focus. There is also a focus on the individual; students are selected after individual interviews. The interaction between fellow students, which is emphasised from the outset of the programme in the small group tutorials, seems to have an impact as regards the ability to prioritise, look for causal relationships as well as relationships between parts and wholes. The feedback between students is considered very important, and students emphasise the importance of being well prepared and contributing to discussions. It is obvious that discourse about an engaged, talkative and capable student has a strong presence in the programme. There are two discourses about learning psychology operating in the programme, to learn and discern differences between the relevant theories, and to integrate them into themselves (the students) as persons. Clinical placements seem to have played a role in integrating the content learned with learning about one’s own person. Applying the scheme cited in Neumann et al. (2002), the psychology programme could be categorised as a mix between a hard and soft applied field of knowledge, on the one hand concerned with the enhancement of professional practice, on the other hand outgoing, with multiple influences on both research and teaching.

Mechanical Engineering

Using the terminology of Neumann et al. (2002), the mechanical engineering programme could be categorised as a field of hard applied knowledge; indeed engineering is the very example used by the authors to typify this field, concerned with mastery of the physical environment and directed towards products and techniques.

Nevertheless, the discourse about educational design operating within the engineering programme resembles that in political science, in that the notion is to provide students with basic knowledge from the outset of the programme. The large number of specific and parallel courses, the large classes and the lecture format, contribute to forming a very competitive learning climate. Students have to prioritise their commitment and discern their individual focus and understanding of the field of engineering in the trajectory throughout the programme. The discourse about the knowledge base in engineering thus appears to be fragmented and multiple to the students.

Discussion

Identity and knowledge formation as a process of continuity, discontinuity or transformation

The psychology programme has the most obvious professional focus. There is a high degree of continuity between being a student and being a professional novice. The socialisation and transition to work is immediate; when the novices show evidence of professional skills in practice, this leads to a full legitimate participation in the professional community (Wenger, 1998). The emphasis on contextualisation to the diverse field of psychology throughout the programme may be a feature of the educational design that contributes to the feeling of preparedness for work, as it is a strong feature of problem‐based learning. Positive impact on graduates’ perceptions of communication, and generally on the feeling of preparedness for professional work, in PBL programmes has previously been shown in the field of medical education (Jones et al., 2002; Antepohl et al., 2003; Willis et al., 2003).

Both the other groups have experienced the transition from higher education to work as a process involving some kind of discontinuity or transformation. In the case of the political scientists, the transformation means recontextualising their general knowledge and generic skills to specific areas of work. Engineering novices achieve a formal legitimacy by passing the programme, which is an indicator of being able to learn fast and work hard, and thus functions as a door opener to the labour market. The character of the working tasks as delimited parts of larger projects could be seen as the novices reaching what in Wenger’s (1998) terminology could be described as peripheral legitimate participation in the professional community.

Sequential, parallel or thematic organisation of content

The organisation of the content in the three programmes could be described as sequential, parallel or thematic. The political science programme has a typical academic focus; the sequential organisation is driven by the internal logic of the discipline, which maintains the idea of basic learning before analysis, comparison or application. This also contains the idea of stepwise progression in small parts leading to an eventual and gradual understanding of the field of knowledge, and the development of generic academic skills. The mechanical engineering programme resembles the political science programme in the sense of having an academic focus. This focus is, however, blurred by the parallel organisation of courses. For both groups, the contextualisation of knowledge to working life occurs, if at all, late in the programme, or is left to the novices to handle individually. The thematic organisation of the psychology programme, on the other hand, integrates the academic and professional foci. The potential for contextualisation seems to be enhanced through the use of real‐life scenarios as the point of departure for learning.

Rational or ritual relationship between higher education and work

The relationships between education and work could also be described in a more abstract way. It is reasonable to assume that the great majority of educational programmes include knowledge and skills that are rational in character, with regard to their relation to working life, in that they are preparing for a specific field of knowledge or professional field of work, which emphasises the utility value of knowledge. It is also reasonable to assume that programmes include knowledge and skills that are rather ritual in character, where the connection to a specific context of application is lacking, and the most important feature is instead the exchange value of knowledge. The impact of education could be claimed to encompass substantive skills that are content‐specific and contextually situated. On the other hand, the impact of education may also comprise generic skills, which are transferable between different contexts. Such skills may likewise be acquired in various contexts and developed through different contents.

For political science, the relationship between higher education and working life could be described as rational, emphasising generic skills. The content of the studies appears to be relevant to the presumptive area of professional work for the graduates. Typically, the generic knowledge needs to be transformed and contextualised in order to be applicable in the individual case. Knowledge and skills of a ritual character seem to play a minor role in the educational programme.

In the case of the psychology programme, the relationships between higher education and working life could be described differently. A similarity is that the contents of the programme are mainly rational, but the emphasis is high both on generic skills, such as the ability to communicate and interact with clients, and on substantive knowledge. Here, substantive knowledge refers to the competing schools of knowledge within psychology and the consequences of their application in the individual case.

The mechanical engineering programme, on the other hand, displays yet another emphasis on the different aspects of knowledge. The exchange value of passing the programme is in all likelihood revealed by an emphasis on the ritual aspects of knowledge. At the same time, the content of the programme appears to be rational to enable students to develop the generic problem‐solving skill that is seen as a hallmark of the competence of the professional engineer. The achievement of a formal legitimacy as a ritual door opener to the labour market could be compared with the symbolic entitlement to a certain career or occupation, as found in Kaufman and Feldman’s study (2004).

There are suggestions in the literature that, if higher education were to respond to the demands from the labour market, this would lead to an emphasis on operational competence that would constitute a reductionistic perspective, and be to the detriment of traditions of knowledge and learning at universities (Barnett, 1994). On the other hand, too great an emphasis on the university traditions might lead to an academic competence that might be of less value in the labour market. The challenge for universities is to find ways to bridge these demands and find a way to prepare for a changing and supercomplex society (Barnett, 1994, 2000b) that is based on:

a view of human being located neither in operations and technique nor in intellectual paradigms and disciplinary competence but in the total world experience of human beings. (Barnett, 1994, p. 178)

The rational generic relationship between higher education and work as found in political science could be seen as one example of how academic competence is transformed through experiences of work. This result gives some support to Barnett’s way of reasoning, that what constitutes an ‘academic’ is not a priori given, but a matter of ‘dynamic relationships between social and epistemological interests and structures’ (1994, p. 256). The rational substantive and rational generic relationships between higher education and work, found as an outcome of the PBL design in the psychology programme, could be viewed as one example of how operational and academic competencies are bridged. The differences between the programmes as regards design, i.e. the parallel, sequential and thematic structure, may be seen as reflecting the notions of professional preparedness embedded in the various discourses of higher education. The engineering and political science programmes instead expose different academic notions about what is characteristic of communities of practice encountered by professionals in their respective fields. The psychology programme represents an attempt at depicting the professional community of practice in the academic context, which is illustrated, for example, by the broad themes in the programme, which also correspond to professional specialities.