Page 173 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 6
6.5 Conclusion and discussion
6.5.1 Discussion of main ndings
Many students have di culties coping with the transition from secondary to postsecondary education, so to address this concern, the current study investigated teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding university readiness and preparation. First, we considered what teachers perceived as important aspects of university readiness, using Conley’s (2014) four categories to classify these aspects. Teachers referred mostly to learning skills and strategies as necessary attributes to be successful in university, speci cally study skills, independence and perseverance.
Second, we sought to know whether teachers paid attention to university preparation and how. Many teachers admitted during the interviews that university preparation was not something they thought about consciously, even though all of them could – when asked – identify speci c practices that might be seen as university preparation. e preparation practices most o en described by teachers involved the category of transition knowledge and skills: Teachers answered students’ questions about studying at university and about speci c degree programmes, and they asked students about their future plans. Furthermore, teaching research skills and instilling an attitude of inquiry were mentioned by half of the teachers. e sense that teachers did not consciously pay attention to university preparation is in line with our nding that the most frequently mentioned practice resulted from the initiative of the students (i.e., answering their questions). us, it appears that university preparation is not high on the agenda in secondary schools or consciously in the minds of teachers.
Furthermore, the combined results regarding the rst two research questions revealed that the aspects that teachers mentioned most o en as important aspects of readiness were not necessarily the same as the preparation practices they mentioned most frequently. In contrast to research about teacher beliefs (Borg, 2001; Nespor, 1987), teachers’ beliefs about aspects of university readiness did not act as guides to their university preparation practices in the classroom. e biggest discrepancy emerged for perseverance: 44 per cent of teachers mentioned it as an important aspect of readiness, but only two per cent tried to encourage its development. We also uncovered notable discrepancies for curiosity, which 40 per cent found necessary but only ve per cent addressed it in the classroom. A reason for this might be that these teachers regard perseverance and curiosity as stable student characteristics that they cannot in uence, as
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