Page 178 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

noted deep concerns that state-level and national learning standards do not align with college curricula or professor expectations (Smith & Wertlieb, 2005).
ird, many teachers were not consciously aware of their role in university preparation; much of what they did was unconscious and implicit. It can be seen as positive that teachers could easily mention classroom practices that in their eyes would contribute to university readiness, although they did not consciously plan these practices in the light of university preparation. A er all, this means that things are happening in secondary school classrooms that contribute to students’ readiness for the transition. However, a more conscious approach, i.e., planning and designing activities with the explicit goal of university preparation, would likely improve these practices and thus students’ readiness. Moreover, many teachers believed that completing secondary school courses implied a student’s readiness for further education, a conception that is also common in the United States (Kirst & Bracco, 2004). Hence, the topic of university preparation needs to become more explicit and prominent, so that all teachers are clearly aware that it takes more than completing secondary school courses to be successful in university and that they could play an important role in preparing their students for the transition.
Acknowledgements 6 We thank the master students of the Teacher Education programme for their
assistance in data collection and transcription during the spring of 2016 and all
teachers who participated in the interviews.
Teachers’ beliefs and practices
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