Listening for signals in the noise and acting on them

This chapter explains the complexity inherent in transition from first-year to second-year study and in the development of students’ learning in the second year. Qualifications frameworks are not explicit about standards; nor are subject benchmarks published by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education in UK. Given the pressures on students and the ‘messages’ they hear about achievement, this is not particularly surprising. There is probably a need for more research, both quantitative and qualitative and across the spectrum of subject disciplines, about the impact of teaching that emphasises the significance of learning goals and the importance of self-efficacy and metacognition in developing personal autonomy and self-regulation. Students can be supported in many ways, both through formal institutional arrangements and informally through academic and other staff, and friends and family. The Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ) in UK and cognate frameworks elsewhere point to shifts of emphasis as student’s progress through the levels or years of their programmes.