Page 131 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 5
relate the engagement pro les as formed in the last grade of secondary education to academic adjustment and achievement in university.
5.2 Pro le indicators in secondary education: three dimensions of student engagement
What causes students to do well in education? Von Stumm, Hell, and Chamorro- Premuzic (2011) identi ed three pillars of academic performance: intelligence, e ort, and intellectual curiosity. us, there is a di erence between a student’s maximum and typical performance, such that the former is indicated by the student’s ability, but the latter re ects non-cognitive factors, such as curiosity and e ort. If we restrict the range of intelligence, e ort and curiosity become more important for explaining academic performance (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003). Students in a di erentiated school system – such as pre-university students in Dutch secondary education, to which students are admitted on the basis of their abilities – likely do not di er much in maximum performance, but their typical performance varies greatly, which can be explained by di erences in their e ort and curiosity. In this study, we used engagement as an overarching concept that encompasses both e ort and curiosity aspects. Following the dimensions of engagement as discussed above, e ort can be categorised as behavioural engagement when it is conceptualised as ‘simple’ behavioural e ort, such as attending class and completing assignments. E ort in the sense of mental e ort, like the use of learning strategies, can be considered cognitive engagement. Last, curiosity can be viewed a form of intellectual engagement. Below we will discuss these three dimensions in more detail and elaborate on the constructs that were used in this study.
5.2.1 Behavioural engagement
Behavioural engagement consists of several indicators, including e ort, attendance, time on task, and persistence (Fredricks et al., 2004). Research con rmed that this type of engagement predicts academic achievement (Chase, Hilliard, Geldhof, Warren, & Lerner, 2014; Dotterer & Lowe, 2011).
5.2.2 Cognitive engagement
Whereas behavioural engagement refers more or less to the quantity of students’ engagement in school work, cognitive engagement focuses on the quality (Davis,
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