Page 175 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 6
curriculum and from teacher education programmes. us, teacher preparation practices vary with their own idiosyncratic experiences. Teachers who su ered through a di cult transition themselves devoted more attention to university readiness than teachers who did not remember having had any issues. Teachers’ own experiences are subjective, and among older teachers, they also may be outdated, which implies the possibility that teachers give their students biased images. For example, many teachers referred to large lecture halls and professors who did not know their students, but the current university climate is increasingly shi ing towards small-group teaching and methods that increase student participation and engagement (Brouwer, 2017). Inaccurate or outdated descriptions of the university environment might not contribute to students’ development of realistic expectations. In essence, this issue relates to teachers’ lack of knowledge about what universities expect from students and insu cient information about current degree programmes, leaving them with no other option than to draw on their own experiences. Hence, teachers may be ‘experience experts’ because they have attended university themselves, but this does not necessarily provide them with su cient knowledge and skills to prepare students for university.
e overall picture of this study makes clear that there are notable di erences among teachers in their university preparation practices, and that most practices are not explicit or conscious. Moreover, the link between the aspects that each teacher found important for university readiness on the one hand and the aspects that were part of his or her university preparation practices on the other hand was not always direct or one-to-one. Teachers’ university preparation practices are thus not clearly guided by beliefs about which aspects make students ready for university. However, a connection between role perception and university preparation was evident. Teachers who strongly believed university preparation was part of their job more o en consciously and explicitly paid attention to it in their classrooms. ese teachers o en had more up-to-date knowledge about the university environment and degree programmes in their eld. Moreover, they were more likely to circumvent barriers, such as by devoting time to it, despite the pressure of having to prepare students for the nal examinations.
6.5.2 Limitations and recommendations for further research
We interviewed teachers about their practices, which represents a limitation in two main ways. First, what teachers say they do may not match with what they actually do in the classroom. A more reliable view of teacher practices would
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