Teaching for transition

Teaching has resumed, and the first day of term is always so frantic that it is easy to forget what an enormous transition the new group of students facing me in my first year lecture are going through. Some of them may have moved out of their home—although not as common in Ireland as it can be elsewhere—while others will be mature students returning to education. All of them are going to have to adapt to a new way of doing things; new timetable system, classmates, acronyms, regulations… the list is almost endless.

There is a consensus that students need to become independent learners and problem solvers at university, and move away from the alleged rigid structures of second level. But how true is this?