Towards graduateness:Exploring academic intellectual development in university master’s students

Our research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge ongraduateness by proposing a model that explicates the expectedlevel performance of graduates. In this study, the model iselaborated for 3 graduateness domains: reflective thinking,scholarship, and moral citizenship. We used data on students’perceived abilities in these domains that were collected at boththe beginning and end of 1-year master’s programmes in 3faculties at a research-intensive university. The model appears tobe suitable for investigating students’ academic intellectualdevelopment. Not all students appeared to achieve the expectedlevel of graduateness by the end of the master’s programme.However, the results revealed an increase in the proportion ofstudents meeting the thresholds for graduateness. The students’reports reveal growth in reflective thinking and scholarship duringthe master’s programme