International concern relating to access and opportunity in Higher Education (Council of Europe, 1996; OECD, 2008) has generated global interest in ‘transition’ strategies to support the experience and retention of traditionally marginalised groups. The number and scope of initiatives and projects even in this network, network 22 (see recent correspondence and publications from network members, for example, BEVC 2002, 2003; Holmegaard, Madsen, & Ulriksen, 2013; Johannsen, Rump & Linder, 2013; Ulriksen, 2012; Ulriksen, Madsen & Holmegaard, 2010) bear testament to the attention currently being paid to transition and retention in Higher Education across Europe. However, the wicked problems of widening participation and how and why tertiary institutions tend to reproduce privilege (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Teese, 2011) have proven intractable despite concerted policy efforts (Kift, 2009;Kift, Nelson & Clarke, 2012; Tinto, 2006-7).

Transition and retention have become focal points of ‘intervention’ and pedagogies in Higher Education institutions globally as increasing student diversity  raises issues about how universities, traditionally designed for an elite (Trow, 1974) can be more accommodating and responsive. In their review and analysis of international literature and practice of transition, Gale and Parker (2012) propose that conceptualisations of transition fall into three main categories: T¹ approaches which frame transition as induction; T² approaches which view transition as development and; an emergent T³ literature which conceptualises transition as “becoming”. They suggest that T¹ and T² approaches are primarily system serving responses to the challenge of widening participation whereas a T³ view offers the most promise effecting social equity and inclusion as it requires higher education institutions to fundamentally transform themselves.

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