Page 158 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

6.1 Introduction
High dropout rates in the rst year of university education are a global problem.
Moreover, in the Netherlands, most students need at least four years to complete
a three-year bachelor programme and one out of four students make a wrong
choice of degree programme and consequently switch during or a er the rst year
(Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2017). is is costly for both individual students and
the government, which makes improving the success rates in higher education an
important point on the political agenda (Onderwijsraad, 2015). As a consequence,
plenty of e ort goes out to improving student success in universities and it is a well-researched area. International reviews provide overviews of a plethora of
factors – e.g., demographic, cognitive, psychological, and institutional – that are
related to achievement and retention in higher education (Richardson, Abraham,
& Bond, 2012; Robbins et al., 2004) and a substantial number of studies have
been published in the research area of postsecondary student success, especially
on rst-year success, since research showed that how well a student performs
in the rst year is indicative of success in the continuing years (Hurtado, Han,
Sáenz, Espinosa, & Cabrera, 2007; Jansen & Bruinsma, 2005). In contrast, not
much attention has been given to the phase before the transition, even though 6 a key reason for dropout and delay is that students are not bridging the gap
between secondary and university education e ectively (Lowe & Cook, 2003). To increase the likelihood that students will experience a successful transition, e orts to contribute to students’ university readiness, i.e., university preparation, must be an explicit focus of secondary education, especially in countries with di erentiated secondary education systems that direct students early into tracks that guarantee access to certain levels of postsecondary education. We focus on the Netherlands for this study, where students in the highest track of secondary education, literally called preparatory university education (short: pre-university education), need to be ready for university when they graduate. Teachers in pre- university education are usually university-educated themselves and can thus be seen as ‘experience experts’. Moreover, they o en know their students well, having taught them for several years, which means they potentially play a crucial role in students’ university preparation. We investigate whether and to what extent they pay attention to making their students ready for university. We also consider teachers’ beliefs about the most important aspects of university readiness and their role perception. ese beliefs matter, because they act as guides to thought and
Teachers’ beliefs and practices
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