Page 176 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

require observations. Second, teachers’ university readiness behaviours might not be perceived as such by students, due to the discrepancy between the curriculum delivered and that received. Such a gap is especially likely for implicit practices mentioned by teachers, such as having students engage in their own planning to contribute to the development of study skills they will need in university. If this goal is le implicit, students may not see the connection to their university preparation, in which case it may not contribute to their university readiness. Further research might ask students about their perceptions of teachers’ university preparation practices. If by such triangulation a more reliable picture about university preparation is obtained, the next step should be to investigate whether these practices ease the transition, and, if so, which practices are the most helpful. is requires a longitudinal study design that follows a cohort of students from the upper grades of secondary school to the rst year of university.
e sample in this study also had its limitations. Teacher participation was
voluntary, so any teachers who agreed to participate already may have been more
interested in the topic of university preparation, with clearer conceptions about
what university readiness entails, and more attentiveness to it in their classroom.
is selection bias may have in uenced our results, although we also encountered
many teachers in our sample who said they were not consciously preparing 6 students for university and others who did not believe it was their job to prepare
students for university. Another limitation of this convenience sample was that
the distribution of teachers across disciplines was not representative: ere were
many humanities teachers and few social sciences teachers. We thus cannot draw
rm conclusions about possible di erences across the disciplines, despite some
indications of the presence of such di erences. For example, a relatively high
percentage of science teachers mentioned developing research skills as a university
preparation practice, but language teachers were substantially more likely to
spend time developing students’ language skills (e.g., writing skills). It would
be interesting to pursue a more evenly divided teacher sample, to systematically
investigate the possible discipline di erences in university preparation.
6.5.3 Implications
e implications for practice that we draw from this study re ect the resolutions and wishes mentioned by teachers. First, more coordination and collaboration between secondary schools and universities is needed. Both these parties are involved in the transition, and they need each other. At a minimum level,
Teachers’ beliefs and practices
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