The transition into higher education has been the focus of both government policy and practice with a goal of a smooth transition in the context of increasing the diversity and population of students in higher education. For example, Hulme & De Wide (2015), who organised the transition into higher education in the STEM education department, found that there is now existing practice that attempts to smooth the transition, and that sharing good existing educational practice is a top priority for education stakeholders.

However, in recent years, researchers in the UK and in other countries have begun to criticize the traditional focus on a smooth transition into higher education. For instance, according to Ecclestone, Biesta, & Hughes (2010), 'while certain transitions are unsettling and difficult for some people, risk, challenge and even difficulty might also be important factors in successful transitions for others' (p.2). Moreover, an alternative concept called 'becoming'  has been proposed to replace the traditional transition concept (Gale & Parker, 2014 & Gravett, 2021). It has been suggested that transition as becoming should be seen as 'perpetual series of fragmented movements involving whole-of-life fluctuations in lived reality or subjective experience, from birth to death' (Gale & Parker, 2014, p. 737). Besides, Gravett (2021) described the chrematistic of 'becoming' as (1) troublesome transitions, (2) transition as rhizomatic, and (3) transition as becoming. Thus, Gravett (2021) suggested a shift from a traditional paradigm of transition into framing of transition as becoming.

Given both the concept of transition and becoming, then, how can the concept of transition into higher education in Japan be reconstructed? Considering the oppositional structure between the traditional concept of transition and its alternative becoming, the following research questions are set out in this study.

RQ: How do Japanese students experience “transition into higher education”?

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct existing concepts of transition into higher education. In general, in recent years, Japanese high school curriculum has established an interdisciplinary curriculum called 'inquiry-based learning' in addition to the regular curriculum of academic subjects. And Japanese universities offer liberal arts courses in the first and second year of university, and specialized courses in the third and fourth year of university. In Japanese universities, which differ from the structure of the European education system, this paper will clarify how Japanese students experience the transition into higher education compared with the transition into higher education in European countries in previous literature.

In interpreting students' transition and becoming, Gravett's (2021) three components of becoming (transition as troublesome, rhizomatic transition, transition as becoming) are used as an analytical framework. Specifically, this analytical framework includes “threshold concepts” proposed by Meyer and Land (2005) and concepts of the ‘rhizome’ and ‘becoming’ in "A Thousand Plateaus written by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Meyer & Land (2005) state that struggling with threshold states to overcome the discomfort and difficulty felt when passing through transitional spaces is important in transforming students' understanding. Deleuze & Guattari (1987) stated that rhizomes mean that there are no uniform pathways, that transition is divergent, fluid, and multiple, and that becoming refers to the permanence of ongoing change.

As a research method, this research conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with students who had experienced inquiry-based learning in high school, and who were considered to have made a smooth transition from high school to university. During the analysis, both concepts of transition and becoming were set as the analytical framework, and various aspects of these two concepts were interpreted based on the interview data. It would be most appropriate to use students who have experienced inquiry-based learning as a case study in reconstructing the concept of transition into higher education, which is the goal of this paper. In addition, students who have already experienced inquiry-based learning in high school, which has similarities to university learning, are more likely to be able to compare their learning experiences in high school with their experiences in university. In selecting the research participants for this study, students were selected with the intention of drawing from both Humanities and Social Science faculties and Natural Science faculties. In many cases, two or more interviews were conducted across academic years. In Japanese university education, liberal arts education is mainly conducted in the first and second grade and specialised education in the third and fourth grade, so that as students move up through the years, they have a variety of learning experiences in the regular curriculum Therefore, it was thought that conducting multiple interviews would provide a more multi-layered and comprehensive view of students' transitions. The first interview elicited aspects of the transition from high school to university by inquiring in-depth about the learners' experiences of inquiry-based learning in high school and how they believed such experiences applied to their studies in university. The second and third interviews were conducted more than a year after the previous interviews, so that the data from the previous interviews could be reviewed again to reiterate points that had not been clarified in the interviews and to follow up on how the perceptions of participants of the survey had changed. Interviews lasted approximately 50-60 minutes for each interview. After the interviews were completed, all the audio data was textualised and a transcript was prepared. In addition, the products of inquiry-based learning (e.g., reports and posters) provided by the research subjects were also referred to as appropriate in the analysis.

Firstly, the results revealed that the students who participated in the study selected liberal arts courses in line with what they had explored in high school, secondly, that they were actively engaged in extracurricular activities that further developed the content they had explored in high school, and thirdly, that they were anticipating learning for their graduation thesis. Thus, many students were able to clarify the content and methods they wanted to pursue in university through their inquiry-based learning experiences in high school, and they were able to make sense of them through both in-class and out-of-class learning in university. In this respect, the transition into university can be summarized as a smooth one. On the other hand, when attention was paid to the transition experiences of individual students, they were diverse. This study showed especially that even during a smooth transition, there were cases in which students transitioned with minor worries and anxieties. In other words, the study showed that in some cases, students experience both smooth transition and becoming at the same time, pointing out the problematic way in which the two concepts are dichotomously described as mutually exclusive in the previous literature. In addition, the study also confirmed that students were seeking ways to solve problems on their own, , utilizing the human and material resources available within the university, without direct transition support from the university. Based on these findings, it is suggested that it is important to consider taking indirect measures to help students to deal with difficulties and challenges such as providing them with a wide range of interactive resources, expanding extra-curricular services, and designing an elective curriculum.

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