This article reviews the five contributions to the Forum on ‘Access and transition to higher education’ in Volume 2 of this journal, and considers the needs of all potential undergraduate students–especially those from backgrounds from which students have rarely come, including the most disadvantaged. The article reflects upon secondary school curricula and pastoral care provision, and also on the need for more specific tuition in key skills in the courses offered by universities.

This article considers humanities teaching as a vital space where students might develop their capability as ‘practical reasoners’. The importance of this for self-development, but also for society and democratic life, is considered, while the economic purposes which currently dominate higher education are critiqued. An example is taken from the teaching of history to show how lecturers teach and students learn secular intellectual practices under pedagogical arrangements of communicative reasoning and ontological becoming.

In order to write successfully, students need to understand what it is they are expected to write, why it is written in a particular way and the form that the final text should take. Linguistics research indicates that the ubiquitous essay and report conceal significant disciplinary variation. Educational research reveals variation with regard to assessment and marking of written work within disciplines, between lecturers, across departments, nationally and internationally. We present an interdisciplinary, genre-based model that we have piloted and tested (...) in History at the University of Portsmouth. Our aim is to bring disciplinary, applied linguistic and academic skills expertise to the point where students are taught to write particular assignments. We offer the model for testing in other genres, disciplines and institutions. (shrink)