‘Situated’ in a separated campus – Students’ sense of belonging and academic performance: A case study of the experiences of students during a higher education merger

Abstract

Fourteen years into post-apartheid South Africa, learning institutions are still facing the challenge of ensuring access to and success in education for all. Institutions for higher learning have experienced a number of mergers, and this article reflects on the surprising patterns of student performance in a case where one of the campuses of a historically black university (HBU) was incorporated into a historically white university (HWU). This mixed method research was done on two groups of foundation year students; one group placed at a suburban campus (the HWU), and the other group within a township (the HBU). Despite the fact that the academic programmes and support structures of the two campuses were comparable, and the student profiles regarding M-scores, socio-economic and cultural background, language proficiency, etc were similar, the academic performance of the students at the HBU campus was poor in comparison with that of the students at the HWU. From a Cartesian perspective the researchers were tempted to look at student performance on these two campuses through a cognitive science lens, locating cognitive functioning within the rational individual. However, we soon realised that students’ academic progress can be better explained by viewing it through the lens of relational ontology, which acknowledges that learning occurs in the realm between individuals and their world, and also activity theory. This article focuses on the interesting group dynamics on the two campuses, and the theory of “goodness of fit”, as well as students’ sense of belonging, in an attempt to shed light on the differences in their academic performance on the two campuses.

Keywords:

• Situated learning
• tertiary academic performance
• students' sense of belonging
• situated cognition
• campus locality