This paper is based on an ethnographic study carried out on a group of mature aged women undergraduate students who have recently transited to tertiary education. Previous studies (Edwards 1993, Kelly 1987, Martin 1998) have expressed concern about the academic progress and the impact of returning to study on mature aged women. My study has endeavored to interpret what happens to such students and to account for their perceived high levels of academic discomfit and personal anxiety as indicated in other research, particularly in relation to the level of technological expertise expected of them in some courses. Of necessity, the study has sought the students' own experiences and their own self-interpretation.

' ...it may well be worth looking at it (higher education) as a process: a process which plays a crucial role in the creation and reproduction of gender differences. To understand this process, we have to look at the experiences of students themselves and the meanings they give to their education' ( Thomas, K 1990: 7)

Students who enter tertiary education are confronted with a subcultural world that has taken on specific characteristics during the 1990s.

'During the last decade in Australia, one of the purposes of government-driven reforms in sectors such as education has been to install or enhance relations of competition....

....the creation of a culture of market competition becomes a fundamental objective of micro-economic reform in higher education '.(Marginson, 1997:5)

Drastic changes in funding and other government policies has meant that the discourse of university life has changed from one of collegiality, where there was an attempt at transparency in decision making, to the introduction of bureaucracy and corporate managerialism with its emphasis on standard operating procedures. Managerial discourse speaks of financial efficiency, accountability and the primacy of the technological mode.

Society now requires a more skilled and educated workforce and it is for this reason alone that governments continue to fund undergraduate education at universities, albeit within the managerial discourse mentioned above. But what happens to mature aged women students in this process? How do they accommodate themselves to this discourse, particularly the technological discourse expected of all students? Listening to their own narratives I have set out to chart their path and to see if there are commonalities the reconstruction of which might explain their situation and assist in obviating some of their problems.

My interviews with the mature aged women students convinced me that they were shocked by what they found in their tertiary education.

Once you get to university you realise its very different; it's not just the language they use, it's the fact that you are supposed to know what it means and then apply it.

It was obvious that the cohort had undergone a crisis, a drastic change in their thinking process. The ethnographic statements document the bewilderment that these students felt. What they had discovered was that, beyond a natural anxiety about going to University as mature aged students, there was a hurdle they had to overcome and that was learning technological skills or a technological discourse with which they were expected to become familiar. This requirement to attain 'new knowledge skills', this challenge to become familiar with a new discourse, I have termed a paradigm shift. In order to conceptualise the change I had resort to the theory of sociologists of science on paradigmatic shift. Sociology of science is a subdivision of sociology of knowledge 'dealing.... with the social environment of that particular kind of knowledge which springs from and returns to controlled experiment or controlled observation' (Marshall, 1994: 264), or as Berger and Luckman, would say 'the social construction of knowledge' (1971). Since T.S. Kuhn's work (1962; sec ed 1969), sociologists of science have elaborated on the notion of 'paradigm,' models to explain the twin aspects of stability and change in scientific communities.

Kuhn maintained that the scientific process is not unilinear, not a steady and continuous accumulation of data with consequent modification of theory. Instead, he described a typical scientific community as being dominated by a cluster of very broad, conceptual and methodological presuppositions which are embodied in the standard exemplars through which students learn the prevailing theories of the field. To this amorphous cluster Kuhn gave the name of 'paradigm'.

Paradigms, according to Kuhn, are concrete problem solutions which students encounter in many ways during their scientific apprenticeship. Paradigms show how the job is to be done. They are puzzles-cum-solutions which serve as models for any ongoing research. From such ideal problem solutions the science student learns to see situations as like each other. A paradigm is a common body of received belief, a set of shared assumptions and expectations relating both to a scientific discipline and, beyond that, to the world itself. Reality is seen only via a paradigm. Reality cannot be simplistically equated with what is perceived via the paradigm, yet, Kuhn would maintain, there is no access to reality except via a paradigm.

Kuhn further suggests that a paradigm defines for a given scientific community the types of question that may be legitimately asked, the types of explanation that are reasonably sought, the types of solution that are acceptable. The scientist applies a particular principle of interpretation to the vast amounts of raw data that has been collected and thereby imposes some order on the data. Without this principle of interpretation, the scientist would be overwhelmed by the sheer mass of collected data. What might be termed 'facts' or 'scientific data' are the products of observations interpreted within a specific framework of ideas and expectations. The 'facts' of science are social. Progress in this scientific enterprise is achieved not by accumulating new data nor by inspired insight but by a series of paradigm shifts or scientific revolutions, which disrupt 'normal science'.

For Kuhn, 'normal science' is work done within the framework of a paradigm. Scientists who do normal science operate with a set of general principles, ideas and expectations about which they generally agree. Because of sharing a paradigm and being involved within the 'normal science' of its tradition they form a scientific community.

Normal science undergoes change, according to Kuhn, because of a mechanism associated with anomalies. Anomalies tend to be set aside or accommodated by modifications. When the list of anomalies grows inordinately, however, a sense of crisis develops within the community of scientists and this leads the community to examine its assumptions, which are usually left unquestioned, and to search for alternatives.

A new paradigm may then be proposed, even though no absolute logic dictates that this new paradigm rather than another should be selected. Such a paradigm shift is a scientific revolution and the successive transition from one paradigm to another by means of a revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science, as a community of scientists 'advances' in its research and scientific knowledge.

There have been refinements on Kuhn's theory by more recent sociologists of science but for the moment we need only the general outline.

The analogy of the group of women in my study with Kuhn's scientific community is obvious. What the mature aged women students revealed was that they had been formed, in the secondary schooling of some years ago and in subsequent updating, within a particular paradigm. This was a pattern of thinking that had its typical questions, its typical types of explanation and its typical solutions. For convenience I have named this the tertiary preparation paradigm. It has two important aspects. One is associated with their previous study/schooling experience and the other is concerned with their orientation towards the job market.

The first aspect is primarily competitive, with person pitted against person. It was made clear, in their former schooling context that not everyone would gain entrance to the tertiary sphere, not everyone would gain entrance to their desired course, not everyone would be accepted into their preferred university. Each of them knew that she had to do better than others. Each of them knew that she had to acquire those skills, learn those facts that would convince anonymous examiners that she was better than other candidates. It was not demanded that what they studied be useful; they simply had to do it better than others.

Progressive assessment was included as part of the paradigm. They had to go through a succession of hoops. Each one was linked to the previous. It was exhausting, but once the procedure was begun there was little opportunity to turn back. There was a forward motivating impetus in the educational dynamic. A characteristic of this part of the paradigm was a distinctive vocabulary. They learned the vocabulary and managed to transfer everyday speech and logic into its terminology. The vocabulary was a closed linguistic system that increased in size as time went by.

The other distinctive element of this tertiary preparation paradigm was the importance placed upon the need to get a job. Many of the mature-aged women students talked of this orientation to the labour market.

I needed to get back into the workforce

Retirement is not for me yet so I went back to school so that I could come here. In the past I was not able to do it. I was part of a big family and it was out of the question, especially in the mind of my father. So now I want to get through uni and get a real job.

However my interviews with first year mature women students found them bemused by a paradigm conflict. Their tertiary preparation paradigm, which they had successfully acquired and which enabled them to gain tertiary entry, was of little advantage in their tertiary career. Their interviews demonstrated the problem.

What they were grappling with was the expectation, often expressed during their first year of higher education, that a particular style of information literacy was expected.

What is the source of this expectation? It is obvious that society generally is becoming technological and this is reflected in higher education. Technological innovation has fueled social change and the social change has called for yet more innovation. As Castells notes

The social landscape of human life has been transformed.... towards the end of the second millennium. A technological revolution, centred around information technologies, is reshaping, at accelerated pace, the material base of our society. (1991: 1)

The tertiary area has been deeply influenced by this change and reflects its outlook and values. I would now call this outlook, with its questions, presuppositions and solutions a technological paradigm. In form it is similar to what is taking place in society more generally, but it takes on its own peculiar format in the tertiary sphere. This technological paradigm is characterised by a stress on the attainment of information literacy through information technology ('this is the one subject area in which you must excel'), technical know-how and a new vocabulary of technical jargon.

As Bruce (1994) notes

Higher education curricula can no longer afford to focus on content at the expense of processes that enhance students' ability to engage in independent learning. Today's students must successfully locate, manage and use information to succeed in their tertiary courses.....Clearly information literacy is an important characteristic of lifelong learning.(9)

Expecting students to travel 'the information superhighway' and to become information literate in a rapidly expanding 'information society' is indicative of drastic educational change, which not only has implications for policy in educational institutions, but specifically changes institutional expectations for students within the higher education sector.

The distinctive feature of the technological society is that technology and technocracy increasingly determine the nature of institutions and of change. However, it is a society where women are not at ease.

Feminists have suggested that women feel uneasy about their involvement in this technological paradigm, not because they cannot be good at it but because it has been an area within which, in the past, women have not been allowed to feel comfortable. Faulkner and Arnold (1987) wrote:

Faulkner and Arnold were specifically relating their remarks to women and work: as does Cockburn (1985), Henwood (1993) and Wacjman (1991, 1994), but their comments were substantiated by the interviews I conducted. When this technological paradigm enters the university, women likewise feel alienated. Their comments bear witness to the shock felt by them as vulnerable women, who after having worked hard at acquiring a tertiary preparation paradigm, were then confronted with this new paradigm. It was little wonder that they felt lost and frightened, that they felt that their academic results would deteriorate and they suffered psychologically

The mature aged women students felt 'alienated' and 'excluded' in their initial interactions with information technology/information literacy. Their hesitancy about their ability to become familiar with the technological/technological skills paradigm was expressed quite openly.

It is not a matter that these students are simply being presented with new material to learn. If it were so, then they could accommodate the new material into their prevailing paradigm, the tertiary preparation paradigm, from either of its perspectives They would extend their vocabulary, compete with others once the new data had been assimilated and continue to develop their previous learning mode. The need to find an occupation would motivate them. But this is different. They are being confronted with a fully fledged and autonomous paradigm which requires complete allegiance and one that excludes their former paradigm. It was as if the tertiary preparation paradigm propelled them into university and then they were abandoned. Motivation towards employment, inbred in them by the earlier paradigm, often assists them to struggle through the paradigmatic conflict, but at a cost.

Returning to the 'new' university, especially with its technological expectations of students, there is no possibility that these women would take up a deviant stance. They need to become professionals, that is what university is about. If they are to be credentialled, then they must learn the new paradigm. There is no way out. The need for professional achievement impels students, in the cohort in which I am interested, to adopt the new technological paradigm and this leads to several possibilities.

Some simply drop out. They face the prospect of returning to menial labour without proper credentials. They experience a sense of failure.

For a second group there is a complete and successful paradigm shift. They overcome the alienation. They move into the subcultural 'male' technological world, (Game and Pringle, 1983; Cockburn 1985; Turkle 1988; Wacjman 1991). It is a world that has resulted from processes, both technical and social, designed in the interests of males and against the interests of females. Technological language reflects male language. Technological practice reflects a particular male way of 'knowing' and 'learning'.

The successful integration of these women into the technology/ technological skills paradigm means that they have every hope of moving yet further to what I have called the professional paradigm. This is the culmination of all their hopes; that they will graduate as professionals. Although they were quite clear about the need to acquire a job it was obvious to me that they were uncertain of the reality of a professional paradigm.

The whole idea of 'being a professional' and 'profesionalisation' is one that only becomes a reality as an individual becomes familiar with a particular field of work. It has become the role of universities to introduce students to this world and, increasingly, universities acknowledge this. (University of South Australia has as part of its mission statement: educating professionals).

Sociological literature acknowledges the sociology of the professions as a subsection and it is against this background that I wish to eventually frame the responses of the students who are part of my cohort. It includes a link to more general questions of economic, political and social organisation and the study of the professions and professional knowledge within this. 'Professionals exist in the form in which society, market or state, finds use for their knowledge base'(Torstendahl and Burrage 1990:10). The student cohort I am studying is not yet able to see its tertiary education within the 'knowledge base' of a professional context although it voices an awareness that tertiary education leads to 'professionalism'. It will be interesting to see, over the next three years ( the tenure of their degrees and my time with them) if they develop this.

For a third identifiable group, there is only partial adaptation of their tertiary preparation paradigm. This is painful and it requires almost a split personality. Some of the student pain I have documented has been caused by this.

In conclusion, it is clear, through the ethnographic data I have collected, that this cohort of mature undergraduate women are involved in several phases of a paradigmatic shift. 'Hearing like it is' (ethnographic research) provides an avenue for interpretative analysis of the educational processes of their subjective meanings related to this process. Neither the expectations of the technological /technological skills paradigm nor the professional paradigm will change so change will have to occur within the mindsets of the students as well as within the tertiary preparation paradigm. University education must provide a comfortable learning environment for students, such as those in my cohort, to make the change and one wonders, in a competitively structured higher education climate, if this can be achieved.

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