Becoming a Chemist - First Year at University
Specialerapport. IND's studenterserie Nr. 54. Kemi.
Jonas Niemann, september 2016.
"Becoming a Chemist - First Year at University" - [1,4Mb]
Abstract
This thesis examines how it is to go from being a upper secondary school student to a student in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, in the cohort that started in 2015. It examines the expectations of the students to the education of life as universty students as a whole. It examines the expectations of teachers at the first years for their students. And it investigated how the students handle the transition from upper secondary school to university. This is done with a focus on how the students' attitudes toward initiatives at the university; academic, social and cultural, how students change goals for the program over time and how their identity as chemists changed. The thesis is based theoretical on Vincent Tinto's work with academic and social integration as tools to explain retetion, and with Benson Snyder's theory of the hidden curriculum in mind. The thesis’ data material consists of three questionnaires given to the students, one questionnaire for three first-year teacher and interview with the same 3 first-year teacher. The paper finds that chemistry students have very clear professional and academic goals, a strong professional identity, but lacks understanding of institutional identity and lacking skills in the hidden curriculum.