Page 152 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

university. As a consequence, it is probable that the achievement and adjustment
di erences between university students in di erent pro les would have been
more pronounced if our university sample had been more representative. Future
longitudinal research should therefore include a larger sample and a better balance
of response across the ve pro les. A last limitation is that this study took place
in the Netherlands, where the secondary education system is highly di erentiated
and there is a speci c secondary school track that aims to prepare students for
university. Our ndings can, nonetheless, also be relevant for countries with less di erentiated systems, because regardless whether a student makes the transition
to university from a comprehensive school or from a more selective type of
secondary education (such as in the Netherlands), the issue of having to adjust academically to the new learning environment is present, as well as the fact that
students likely di er in their levels of behavioural, cognitive, and intellectual
engagement in secondary school. Moreover, a worldwide meta-analysis by Credé
and Niehorster (2012) of studies that investigated academic adjustment showed
that GPA in higher education was strongly related to academic adjustment. is 5 emphasises the global importance of academic adjustment, and the need to further
investigate this construct across countries and education systems. For example, it would be interesting to replicate the ndings of our study in a country with a comprehensive secondary education system; to investigate whether the same engagement pro les would be found in secondary education and whether these pro les would also be related to the number of attained credits and academic adjustment in higher education.
5.7.3 Implications for secondary education
If teachers could get a rough view of students’ engagement characteristics during secondary education, appropriate measures can be taken. With the goal of preparing students for a smooth transition to university, it is useful to pay attention speci cally to behavioural and cognitive engagement, since the two groups with relatively lower scores on these factors had the lowest GPA and adjustment scores in university. Considering the pro les with relatively low cognitive engagement, these students clearly need to develop and use learning strategies more e ectively to be su ciently prepared for university. Unlike the relatively high level of external regulation in secondary education, university studies require students to be independent learners and regulate their own learning processes (Jansen & Suhre, 2010). is demand in turn requires metacognitive learning strategies and
Pro les of student engagement
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