Not belonging' is becoming a prevalent theme within accounts of the first-year student experience at university. In this study the notion of not belonging is extended by assuming a more active role for the idea of liminality in a student's transition into the university environments of academic and student life. In doing so, the article suggests that the transition between one place (home) and another (university) can result in an 'in-between-ness' -a betwixt space. Through an interpretative methodology, the study explores how students begin to move from this betwixt space into feeling like fully-fledged members of university life. It is concluded that there is a wide range of turning points associated with the students' betwixt transition, which shapes, alters or indeed accentuates the ways in which they make meaningful connections with university life. Moreover, transitional turning point experiences reveal a cast of characters and symbolic objects; capture contrasting motivations and evolving relationships; display multiple trajectories of interpersonal tensions and conflicts; highlight discontinuities as well as continuities; and together, simultaneously liberate and constrain the students' transition into university life.
IntroductionThe first-year experience is now seen as one of the high-priority research areas, not least because of the significant consequences of student attrition and failure upon university reputations and finances (Wilcox, Winn, and Fyvie-Gauld 2005). Indeed most, if not all, universities adopt some deliberate form or method of intervention to help embed students, and enhance the learning and retention during the transitional period (Gardner, Siegel, and Cutright 2001;Schnell, Louis, and Doetkott 2003;Lovitts 2005;Auburn 2007;Skyrme 2007). It is clear that there exists, among those studying pedagogy, a demand for research into the first-year transition process. Developments within the field have resulted in both an international conference and US journals devoted exclusively to the first-year experience. In the UK, this was reflected in the commissioning of several government-funded projects designed to highlight the special academic programmes required to help first-year students adjust to the social and academic demands of university life (see Wilcox, Winn, and Fyvie-Gauld [2005] for an overview). Furthermore, a recent study by Harvey, Drew, and Smith (2006), funded by the UK Higher Education Academy, undertook a comprehensive review of more than 750 publications on the topic of the first-year experience over the previous 40 years. While, therefore, this is not a new subject, it is an ever-evolving field, in