Managing the expectations: reality mismatch through aspirations, access and achievement: engineering a first year undergraduate student's habitus

Abstract

Despite some criticisms, Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of the habitus remains a powerful conceptual tool for analysing how individuals perceive and engage with different worlds. It certainly constitutes a generative explanatory framework for examining how first year undergraduate students navigate their ways through the often competing pressures of university study, paid work and home life. In particular, the habitus is helpful to students and university personnel alike in managing the common mismatch between the expectations and reality of the first year experience. This paper explores selected aspects of the first named author’s habitus as a first year mechanical engineering student in an Australian regional university. An audiotaped semi-structured interview clustered around the themes of aspirations, access and achievement is used to identify how the student engineers his habitus and also to posit implications for future practice by the student, his family, his friends and the relevant university personnel.