Page 121 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 4
con dent that they can thrive in a university environment. Engagement did not signi cantly in uence self-e cacy. e absence of this link was surprising; much research points to the importance of engagement for academic outcomes. By actively engaging in learning activities, students develop knowledge and skills, which enhances their self-e cacy beliefs (Klem & Connell, 2004; Marks, 2000). We also did not nd gender di erences in self-e cacy, so the absence of a link between engagement and self-e cacy cannot be explained by girls’ higher engagement scores.
In this study, students undertaking science coursework exhibited more academic interest than students taking humanities/social sciences subjects, which might be because science classes in secondary school have greater potential to arouse academic interest (i.e., wanting to do research and pursuing knowledge) than humanities and social sciences classes. In biology, physics, and chemistry courses, teachers o en use enquiry-based methods, engaging and student- centered instruction, and data analyses of actual research questions, re ecting ‘real’ academic enquiry (Anderson, 2002; Schroeder, Scott, Tolson, Huang, & Lee, 2007). Science students thus become more familiar with conducting research; humanities and social sciences students might feel le behind or less familiar with the academic opportunities in their eld of interest. An alternative (or complementary) explanation may involve self-selection: Students who choose to take on science coursework may, at that moment of choosing (in grade 9), already have more academic interest and therefore choose science subjects because they believe these better match their interests in doing research and gaining academic knowledge. A related point pertains to a widespread stereotype among Dutch students (and parents and teachers) that science subjects are more prestigious, so students choose humanities/social sciences coursework only if they have low grades or are less ambitious (Groot, 2016).
We expected that the level of parental education would in uence all variables, but we only found evidence that university-educated parents passed on a need for cognition and a habit of being involved in academic activities outside of school hours to their children. ese in uences by parental education were rather small. e connections of parental educational level with need for cognition and out-of- school academic activities might have arisen because parents with less education lack the means to foster their children’s curiosity and learning (Spera, 2005).
Finally, we found an interesting connection between gender and out-of- school academic activities. Boys, though less engaged in school, were more engaged
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