Page 164 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

4 7 24 2 20 26
Male 13
Female 4
Total 17 6 27 50
Teachers’ beliefs and practices
6.3.2 Participants
e study participants were 50 teachers who taught, among other grades, grades 11 and 12 in pre-university schools. is selection criterion is pertinent because university preparation is most relevant in the years immediately before graduation. e teachers were employed by 14 di erent pre-university schools in the Netherlands. As Table 6.1 shows, most teachers were teaching humanities subjects. Female teachers were overrepresented in humanities subjects, and male teachers in science subjects, re ective of the Dutch teacher population (Microso , 2017).
Table 6.1 Overview of participants by their secondary school discipline
Science
Social science Humanities Total
6.3.3 Instrument and procedure
A qualitative methodology is an appropriate way to capture people’s cognitions
(King & Horrocks, 2010), so we conducted semi-structured interviews. e
interview protocol consisted of an introduction and 13 questions that addressed the 6 research questions, such as “What are, according to you, important characteristics
a student needs in order to be successful in the rst year of university?” (university
readiness aspects) and “In your lessons, do you pay attention to preparing students
for university? If so, how?” (university preparation practices). We purposefully
formulated the questions broadly, so that the interviews would not steer
participants in any certain direction. Moreover, participants were free to express
what ‘university preparation’ meant, which also re ected their beliefs about it.
When needed, interviewers used prompts and probes.
e interviews were held from September 2015 to May 2016 by one of the authors and graduate students trained to conduct such interviews. In most cases, the interviews took place at the school where the participant was employed, in an o ce or empty classroom. In all interviews, the same interview protocol was used. Before the interview started, participants were asked (and agreed) to permit the interview to be recorded and to acknowledge that everything they said could be used for research purposes. Anonymity was guaranteed. On average, the interviews lasted 35 minutes and 45 seconds; the longest interview lasted more than 56 minutes, and the shortest was about 21 minutes.
163