Page 148 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

5.7 Discussion
5.7.1 Discussion of the main ndings
For this study, we were interested in knowing whether students’ characteristics
in secondary school would a ect their success in university. We used LPA to
identify ve groups of grade 12 pre-university students who shared the same characteristics on three dimensions of engagement: behavioural, cognitive, and
intellectual engagement. One year later, we investigated how group membership
related to academic adjustment and achievement in the rst semester of
university. One group, the overall highly engaged learners (21%), scored high on
all measures of engagement in secondary school and had the highest achievement
and academic adjustment in university. Being engaged behaviourally, cognitively,
and intellectually during high school thus in general seemed to lead to a successful
transition to university education. e largest group, the overall average engaged
students (36%), scored average on behavioural and cognitive engagement,
but below average on intellectual engagement. In other words, although these 5 students worked hard (behavioural engagement) and were able to use learning
strategies (cognitive engagement), their attractiveness to intellectual activities was somewhat low (intellectual engagement). ese students’ achievement and academic adjustment in university was average. e intellectually highly disengaged students (7%) were the second group that showed lower intellectual engagement than behavioural and cognitive engagement. eir behavioural and cognitive engagement was below average and their intellectual engagement was very much below average. ese students had the lowest GPA and EC in university. eir adjustment, most notably regarding application (i.e., applying themselves to their academic work) and performance (i.e., exerting academic e orts that are su cient and e cient), was below average. Interestingly, this group had the highest percentage of secondary school students who indicated in grade 12 that they did not intend to go to university, so maybe they had a good level of self-knowledge that made them realise university would be an environment that required a certain level of intellectual engagement as well as behavioural and cognitive commitment which did not match their characteristics.
e behaviourally and cognitively disengaged students (14%) and the intellectually engaged students (22%) were perhaps the most interesting. ese students earned average respectively high scores on need for cognition and academic interest but this did not translate into a same level of behavioural and
Pro les of student engagement
147