Page 120 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Self-e cacy in being successful at university
4.5 Discussion
4.5.1 Discussion of the main ndings
Academic self-e cacy is an important predictor of study success in university
(Robbins et al., 2004), and it has the potential to help students experience a
smooth transition from secondary education to university, in that highly self-
e cacious people cope better with di cult situations (Bandura, 1997). By
expanding understanding of variables that relate to secondary students’ self-
e cacy in studying at university, our ndings provide relevant insights for Dutch
education, as well as for educators in other countries that have an educational
track that prepares students speci cally for university, such as Germany and Italy.
In comprehensive school systems, these results also have value, because they 4 suggest a means for identifying the brightest students, who have the attitudes and corresponding behaviours needed to pursue a university education.
Being self-e cacious provides an important foundation for university success, so it is useful to determine which variables relate to this intended outcome of pre-university education. In this study, we have sought to identify which personality, motivational, behavioural, and background variables relate to secondary school students’ self-e cacy with regard to being a successful student in university, so that secondary school educators know where to focus as they work to prepare their students for the transition to university. We found that need for cognition, out-of-school academic activities, and academic interest all a ect academic self-e cacy. Background variables also played a role, such that boys performed more out-of-school academic activities than girls, students with science coursework had a higher need for cognition and more academic interest than students with mainly humanities and social sciences coursework, and students whose parents have attended university had a higher need for cognition and performed more out-of-school academic activities. In addition, the results revealed a powerful role of the personality construct need for cognition, which a ects self-e cacy directly but also indirectly, by in uencing out-of-school academic activities and academic interest. Our ndings are in line with previous research that cites a connection between need for cognition and self-e cacy (Elias & Loomis, 2002) and between interest and self-e cacy (Chen et al., 2016).
Out-of-school academic activities also contributed to self-e cacy, likely because students who perform self-initiated, informal academic activities at home become more familiar with the world of academia and therefore feel more
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