Abstract:

Acknowledging the critical role of a successful integration of first year students in higher education on their persistence and academic success, the present paper analyses the intentions underlying institutional strategies to welcome new students. Adopting an ethno-methodological qualitative approach, data were collected through participant observation, privileged informants and students’ narratives.

The Iinstitutional strategies strategy presented in this paper may be perceived as a devices to manage the dichotomy between the real students’ heterogeneity and the expected students’ homogeneity, being used to cope with the gap between the institutional expectations toward students and the “strangeness” of the new publics. In an attempt of elitisation of new students, there is an institutional effort towards building an identity framework that aims feelings of belonging, pride and group cohesion. If students are not what the institution expects them to be, then it takes on some strategies in order to turn them into the students it desires them to be.

A successful integration of first year students in higher education is acknowledged by literature as playing a critical role in the subsequent persistence and academic success of these students (Tinto, 1987, 1993; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991, 2005) . Besides the individual and social variables that impact on the process of academic integration, the importance of institutional strategies to promote students’ integration has been increasingly recognised (Bean, 1982, 1983; Weidman, 1984, 1989; Holland, 1985, 1997; Berger and Braxton, 1998; Berger and Milem, 2000; Swail et al., 2003). These institutional strategies can assume diverse configurations, such as the formal welcome ceremony, guided tours to the facilities and ;different kinds of institutional induction (Terenzini and Reason, 2005, 2010; Tinto and Pusser, 2006; Titus, 2004).

The present paper aims at examining, in a comprehensive, but also interpretative way, formulas encountered by higher education institutions to formally welcome their new students, fulfilling specific objectives related to smoothing their integration. This analysis will always have, as the ultimate referent, the institution that hosted (and somewhat promoted) this case study. Thus, analysis will focus on the formulas found by higher education institutions to formally welcome their new students, fulfilling specific objectives goals related to making their integration an easier process. In fact, most of Portuguese higher education institutions adopt these formal welcome strategies, although they may vary from one institution to another (Dias & Sá, 2011, 2012a, 2012b, forthcoming; Amado-Tavares, 2008). As previously envisaged, this analysis effort will always have, as referent, the institution under study: the School of Engineering of a well-known Portuguese university.

Keywords:

Institutional strategies, student integration, organisational development, first year experience.