Measuring students’ transition into university and its association with learning outcomes Maria Pampaka*, Julian Williams and Graeme Hutcheson The University of Manchester, UK Previously we showed how we measured pedagogy and revealed its association with learning out- comes of sixth-form college mathematics students. In this project we followed a similar approach to the study of university transition. We particularly sought to identify the students’ perceptions of the transitional experience, and measure the association with learning outcomes. We drew on longitudinal surveys of students entering different programmes in five universities. Following them into their first year or so, allowed us to track their ‘disposition to complete the course’ and their ‘disposition to study more mathematics’, inter alia. We developed and validated two ‘fit- for-purpose’ measures of students’ perception of their transition, one we call ‘perception of the transitional gap/jump’ and one we call ‘degree of positive feeling about the transition’. We report some statistically and educationally significant associations between these and the students’ developing dispositions, and discuss the prospects for this approach to studying transition. 1. Introduction This paper deals with the quality of students’ transition into university, its ‘quanti- fication’ into useful measures and the association of these measures with students’ developing dispositions and other learning outcomes. In particular, we report on the development, validation and educational significance of a new instrument designed to measure students’ perceptions of the gap between their pre-university and university experience and their strength of feeling about this gap. Previously, we showed how it is possible to measure pedagogy and associated this measure with students’ learning outcomes in sixth form college mathematics educa- tion (Pampaka, Williams et al., 2011). In order to take account of these learning outcomes, we constructed and validated measures of students’: (1) dispositions to *Corresponding author. School of Education, Room B4.10 Ellen Wilkinson Building, The Uni- versity of Manchester, Manchester, UK. Email: maria.pampaka@manchester.ac.uk British Educational Research Journal Vol. 38, No. 6, December 2012, pp. 1041–1071 ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/12/061041-31 Ó 2012 British Educational Research Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2011.613453