Page 170 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Table 6.4 Role perception themes
Role perception
University preparation is a teacher’s job.
Preparation for the examinations equals university preparation. Teacher does not play a role in programme choice.
Teacher should do more than examination preparation.
Percentage of teachers mentioning it
66 26 26 22
Teachers’ beliefs and practices
more than preparing students for the nal examinations, which would not give them resources for studying at university, as T19 (physics and mathematics teacher) explained: “Look, as a teacher you could say you don’t really care about the subject, I am only going to practice making the examinations for three years. en maybe they’ll do fantastic on the examinations, but if they’ve actually learned physics, that’s the question. And I think we should be there for all those students who will study aerospace engineering or mathematics or physics or chemistry, or whatever degree.” Finally, role perceptions related to students’ study choice too: 26 per cent of teachers explicitly mentioned that the process of choosing a degree was not part of their responsibility. Geography teacher T25 put it like this: “I think it \[providing guidance for the choice of a degree programme\] is really a counsellor’s task. I am not su ciently equipped for that as a teacher.”
6.4.4 Barriers to university preparation 6 Table 6.5 presents themes related to barriers that teachers experienced that hindered
them from paying more explicit attention to university preparation, as well as
their preferences for improving students’ university readiness. In particular, 40
per cent of teachers mentioned that the nal examinations undermined university preparation e orts. A main line of reasoning stated that passing the examinations was required to even be eligible for higher education, so preparing students to pass them is the priority. According to German teacher T2, “When they’re in the nal grade of secondary school, I think as a teacher you should prepare them for the examinations, because these are the entrance ticket to further education. And in this last phase rst and foremost we work towards that, because if they don’t graduate, they won’t make it to university anyway.” An analysis of their words and the emotions expressed made it clear that some teachers found this limitation frustrating: “ ose examinations are sacred, everything’s about them and nobody thinks any further. I see them as a means; they see them as the goal. e goal is: What do you want in your life? But secondary school is disabled in the sense that everything is focused on the examinations, and a er that there’s nothing. Nobody
169