Page 124 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Self-e cacy in being successful at university
also are important; Köller, Baumert, and Schnabel (2001) emphasised that a mismatch between the curriculum and students’ interests prevents interest from enhancing academic learning. Better matched assignments can increase students’ academic interest, as well as provide them with a more representative view of the world of academia and the academic way of thinking, which should enable them to clarify their own academic interests. Furthermore, attractive assignments that trigger students’ interest will make them more engaged in their schoolwork, which has positive e ects on their academic attitudes and behaviour, as well as their subsequent self-e cacy in being a successful university student.
e extent to which a student engages in self-initiated out-of-
school academic activities also in uences self-e cacy. To enhance students’ extracurricular engagement, especially of girls and students whose parents do not 4 have higher education backgrounds, teachers should make them familiar with the
common presence of academic issues, across all subjects and domains of study.
Finally, prior research also o ers suggestions for directly enhancing self-e cacy,
such as providing students with challenging academic tasks that are attainable
with e ort and fostering the belief that competence can be changed (i.e., a growth
mindset) (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003).
4.5.3 Limitations
is study is context-speci c; the research was carried out in a pre-university education setting, re ecting a speci c track of secondary education in the Netherlands that prepares students for university. In addition, the relationships in this study are correlational. We cannot infer that one variable causes another, and many of the relationships might be turned around. However, our goal was to measure pathways toward academic self-e cacy, instead of using self-e cacy as a predictor, because the measure focused on expected e cacy in university studies, but study participants had not yet entered their university studies. Other variables that were not included in this study may also a ect self-e cacy, so further research should include and investigate more variables. Finally, this study mainly focused on student variables, not contextual variables, such as the school environment or teacher practices. e only school variable that we included, coursework, in uenced students’ academic self-e cacy through its impact on academic interest. Although the knowledge that students doing science coursework have more academic interest provides teachers (especially humanities and social sciences teachers) with important information, more practicable guidelines would require the inclusion of additional school variables.
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