Student transition from school to higher education in Ukraine: The focus on ethnic minority youth at the border with the EU

Author(s):

Olena Fimyar(presenting / submitting)Paola Contreras R. Mariya Vitrukh Nataliya Horuk Tetyana Medina Nataliya Varga

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 10 C,

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

15:30-17:00

Room:

K5.09

Chair:

Serap Emil

Contribution

The mixed-method study explores academic, social and emotional aspects of transition from school to higher education in Ukraine. The key question the study addressed is: What issues ethnic minority students from rural communities are facing in terms of their access to Ukrainian universities? At the centre of the enquiry are Polish, Hungarian and Romanian ethnic minority students attending rural schools in Ukraine on the border with the EU. The perceptions and aspirations of the ethnic minority students were compared to those of the Ukrainian students attending rural schools in Kharkov region, Ukraine.

In its theoretical framing the study draws upon Bourdieu’s conceptual tools (i.e. habitus–capital–field) detailed in Reay (2004) and the special issues of the Cambridge Journal of Education (e.g. Gale and Lingard, 2015; Gale and Parker, 2015; Reay, 2015). Another important theoretical concept the study is building upon is the phenomenon of mismatch between habitus and field. Bourdieu describes the phenomenon of mismatch between habitus and field as ‘critical moments when [habitus] misfires or is out of phase’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 162).

As McDonough and Polzer (2012, p. 326) explain, the mismatch happens when a field undergoes major changes as a result of which new rules and regularities emerge or when an individual enters a new field. To operate effectively in the new field requires new dispositions, a new sense of what actions are possible, appropriate, and so on. At the same time, because of the inertia of habitus, which has a tendency to reproduce itself (or in the case of student transition reproduce habitus nurtured in school instead of developing new dispositions required in higher education), the time delay between the changes in the field and the ability of individuals to generate practices, attitudes, and dispositions required by the ‘new’ order, is inevitable. At the same time, the time needed to transform the habitus depends on the individual’s ability to access the resources and support structures needed to achieve this task.

Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and the mismatch between the habitus and the field explain the difficulties that rural students are facing with in adjusting to university and city life. In the Ukrainian context, where the differences between rural and urban lifestyles and income levels are significant, students from rural areas need to develop an ability and resilience to live through these changes. In Reay’s words they need to ‘stretch[] [their habitus] to the limit’ (Reay, 2015, p.13) – a process that can negatively affect students’ well-being, trigger psychological stress, dissatisfaction, withdrawal, questioning, and a search for a new sense of ‘self’. In situations like these, students are particularly vulnerable, as they need to find resources in themselves and their environment that will assist them in the process of transition. Rural students with less economic, social, and symbolic capital have fewer resources to turn to so as to maximise their chances of successful transition to HE.

Method

The study was conducted in 13 ethnic minority schools located in three Ukrainian regions at the border with the EU and 5 rural schools with Ukrainian language of instruction located in Kharkiv region at the border with Russia. The study used a mixed method design. The primary method of data collection was 39 focus groups, which were supplemented by 346 surveys. The survey respondents were mostly females (n = 194, 56.1%). Most of the participants (n = 219, 63.3%) attended minority schools. The most common nationalities among the 165 non-Ukrainian students were Romanian (n = 65, 39.4%), Hungarian (n = 63, 38.2%) and Polish (n = 33, 20%). Almost half of the mothers of the participants had a HE degree (n = 178, 51.4%), while most fathers (n = 195, 56.4%) did not have a HE degree. Thus, most students in the sample had parents with academic background (n = 210, 60.7%). In designing focus groups and survey questions, the study drew upon Webster and Yang’s survey of student transition in Hong Kong (Webster and Yang, 2012). The questions were adapted to ask ethnic minority school students Ukraine about anticipated and experienced difficulties at the point of transition from school to university. This presentation reports primarily on the survey findings.

Expected Outcomes

The survey results demonstrate significant gender, language and ethnic differences in terms of the intention to apply to HE . Most participants state the intention to apply to university after finishing school (n = 276, 79.8%). Their intentions varied significantly by gender, χ2 (1) = 10.91, p = .001. Based on the odds ratio, female students (n = 167, 86.1%) were 2.44 times more likely than male students (n = 109, 71.7%) to have plans to apply to university. There was a statistically significant association between the students' nationality and the educational level of their parents, χ2 (1) = 5.00, p = .03. The parents of Ukrainian students were 1.64 times more likely to have a university degree than the parents of non-Ukrainian students. Parental educational level was statistically associated to the students’ intention to apply to HE. There was a significant association between the language the students spoke at home and their intention to apply to HE, χ2 (1) = 23.89, p < .001. The students who spoke Ukrainian at home were 4.75 times more likely to plan to apply to university than the students who did not speak Ukrainian at home. Students who were bilingual at home (n = 71, 89.9%) were 2.64 times more likely than those not bilingual at home (n = 205, 77.1%) to have plans to apply to university. The language of instruction at primary and secondary school was not statistically associated to the students’ intentions to apply to HE (all p > .05). The type of school attended was significantly associated to the intention to apply to university, χ2 (1) = 24.13, p < .001. Students attending non-minority schools (n = 119, 93.7%) were 5.87 times more likely to plan to apply to university than students at minority schools (n = 157, 71.7%).

References

Ball, S. J., Reay, D.and David, M. (2002) ‘Ethnic Choosing’: Minority ethnic students, social class and higher education choice, Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 333-357. Gale, T. and Lingard, B. (2015) ‘Evoking and provoking Bourdieu in educational research’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 45 (1), 1–8. Gale, T. and Parker, S. (2015) ‘Calculating student aspiration: Bourdieu, spatiality and the politics of recognition’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 45 (1), 81–96. Kulyk, V. (2013). Combining identity and integration: comparative analysis of schools for two minority groups in Ukraine. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 43(5), 622-645. McDonough, P. and Polzer, J. (2012) ‘Habitus, hysteresis, and organizational change in the public sector’, Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 37 (4), 357–379. Oksamytna, S., Vynohradov, O., Malysh, L., Martseniuk, T. (2010). Molod Ukrainy: Vid osvity do pratsi [Youth of Ukraine: from education to employment]. [in Ukrainian]. http://www.ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/handle/123456789/1431 Reay, D. (2004) ‘“It's all becoming a habitus”: Beyond the habitual use of habitus in educational research’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 431–444. Reay, D. (2015) ‘Habitus and the psychosocial: Bourdieu with feelings’, Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 9–23. Reay, D., David, M. E., and Ball, S. J. (2005) Degrees of Choice: Class, Race, Gender and Higher Education, Stoke‐on‐Trent, Trentham Books. Reay, D., Davies, J., David, M. and Ball, S. J. (2001) ‘Choices of degree or degrees of choice? Class, “race” and the higher education choice process’, Sociology, 35 (4), 855–874. Shevchenko, S., М. (2016, November). Rozvytok shkil natsionalnyh menshyn u konteksti dyferentsiasii zahalnoi serednioi osvity (1991-2010). [Development of national minorities schools in the context of differentiation of the secondary education]. [in Ukrainian] International Scientific and Practical Conference “WORLD SCIENCE” ,Issue Number 11(15), 42-46. http://lib.iitta.gov.ua/705088/1/%D0%A8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%BE%20%D0%A1.%D0%9C.%202016.pdf Stadnyy, E., and Slovodian, O. (2016). Ukrainski studenty za kordonom: Skilky i chomu [Ukrainian students abroad: how many and why?]. [In Ukrainian] https://www.cedos.org.ua/uk/osvita/ukrainski-studenty-za-kordonom-skilky-ta-chomu Webster, B. J. and Yang, M. (2012) ‘Transition, induction and goal achievement: First-year experiences of Hong Kong undergraduates’, Asia Pacific Education Review, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 359–368.

Author Information

Olena Fimyar (presenting / submitting)

Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK

Paola Contreras R.

University of Cambridge

Faculty of Education

Cambridge

Mariya Vitrukh

Ukrainian Educational Research Association

Lviv

Nataliya Horuk

Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

Lviv

Tetyana Medina

Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine

Nataliya Varga

faculty of social sciences, Uzhgorod National University, Ukraine

Depatment of Sociology and Social Work

Uzhgorod

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.