Page 137 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Factors for the indicator variables
Factor
Behavioural engagement
Behavioural engagement Self-e cacy: e ort
Cognitive engagement
Surface learning strategy Deep learning strategy
Metacognitive learning strategy
Self-regulated learning
Intellectual engagement
Need for cognition Academic interest
Self-e cacy: understanding
Sample item
I actively participate in class.
Always attending lectures, even if you think they are boring.
I make lists of important items and memorise the lists.
Whenever I read or hear an assertion in class, I think about possible alternatives.
If I get confused taking notes in class, I make sure I sort it out a erwards.
I usually study in a place where I can concentrate on my course work.
I would prefer simple to complex problems. (reverse coded)
I like the idea of gaining academic knowledge in the eld of my interest.
Understanding a lecture on a di cult topic.
Number of items
8 4
4 15
12 12
18 17
8
Scale Cronbach’s range alpha
1-5 .86 1-5 .73
1-7 .60 1-7 .80
1-7 .71 1-7 .76
1-5 .86 1-5 .92
1-5 .85
Behavioural engagement. e items that were used to measure behavioural engagement were based on existing instruments that measured engagement, such as the Student Engagement Instrument (Appleton, Christenson, Kim, & Reschly, 2006) and the Student Engagement in Schools Questionnaire (Hart, Stewart, & Jimerson, 2011). To develop a reliable measure, we proceeded through three steps. First, we chose useful items referring to attendance (e.g., “I skip classes” (reverse-coded)) and ‘basic’ e ort (e.g., “I pay attention in class”) and translated them into Dutch with a back-translation procedure, resulting in an initial version of the scale. Second, we tested this initial version with a small number of students in upper-grade pre-university classes. ird, we conducted analyses to eliminate any redundant items and establish the psychometric qualities of the instrument. Students responded on a ve-point Likert-scale (1 = ‘does not describe me at all’; 5 = ‘describes me very well’). e nal version of the scale consisted of eight items and had a reliability of α =0.86.
Cognitive engagement. e four learning strategies were measured with Part B of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich, Smith,
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