Transition and adaptation to art higher education

The main purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the phenomena of adaptation to Art Higher Education, as experienced by the students and perceived by the teachers, and to reflect on the mechanisms supporting this adaptation that the institution can adopt.The data collection tools used were two questionnaires for first-year students (a characterisation questionnaire and the Adaptation to Higher Education Questionnaire as drawn up by Lencastre et al., 2000) and semi-directive interviews with four teachers from the Lisbon Polytechnic Dance College.The results showed that in general, the difficulties in adapting to Higher Education found in other studies carried out in Portugal, as regards the academic, bio-psychological and socio-relational aspects, are also felt by the students of the Dance College. Some particularities were however found as regards the specific knowledge, such as the heterogeneity of the previous training of the students, the poor physical preparation for a course of this kind and the low level of artistic and expressive maturity.The large number of students (57.5%) who had moved away from their homes to study and were subject to a heavy hourly workload also led to the socio-relational aspects taking on added importance, and it was confirmed that both the Dance College and its Students’ Association can play an important role to lessen the social and relational adaptation difficulties shown.