Page 111 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 4
Humanities/social sciences versus science coursework
Little research has described the potential in uence of a student’s coursework – such as whether it is focused mainly on humanities and social sciences or science subjects – on the variables in our model. Students in Dutch secondary education must choose between subjects that focus on humanities and social sciences or natural sciences, which provided us with an opportunity to explore whether these students would di er in their need for cognition, out-of-school academic activities, academic interest, engagement, or self-e cacy.
4.2.6 Aims and research question
Figure 4.1 depicts our proposed model, with all the constructs and variables that we expected to relate to self-e cacy in university studies. We do not o er speci c hypotheses regarding the background variables, because past research has not provided conclusive guidelines regarding whether to expect certain pathways. Consequently, we investigated the roles played by background variables in an
exploratory fashion.
As our main research questions, we asked: What is the relative importance
of need for cognition, academic interest, behavioural engagement, and out-of- school academic activities in terms of in uencing students’ self-e cacy for being a successful university student? How much in uence is exerted by background variables, including gender, level of parental education, and taking science or humanities/social sciences coursework in secondary school?
Gender
Coursework (humanities and social sciences vs. science)
Level of
parental education
Need for cognition
Out-of-school academic activities
Academic interest
Behavioural engagement
Self-e cacy
Figure 4.1 eoretical model: Factors in uencing self-e cacy
Note: ere are no pathways hypothesised from the background variables. Based on exploratory analyses, pathways from these variables will be added and tested.
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