Page 187 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 7
analysis of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) even showed that of all learning strategies included in the MSLQ, e ort regulation and time and study environment management had the highest observed validities for predicting GPA (Credé & Phillips, 2011). In addition, Wintre et al. (2011) reported that rst-year students who maintained their secondary school GPA in the rst year of higher education had better time management skills than those whose GPA would drop and Hurtado et al. (2007) found that students’ time management skills were a signi cant predictor of academic adjustment. In contrast with university lecturers’ expectations, rst-year students o en do not possess the self-regulated skills that the university environment demands, because they are accustomed to the structured and supervised situation in secondary education (Cook and Leckey 1999). is lack of regulatory skill could cause adjustment problems in university; Abott-Chapman et al. (1992) showed that students with insu cient study skills were at risk of academic adjustment problems. We therefore expected self-regulated study behaviour to in uence adjustment and achievement.
Previous achievement as a predictor of success and adjustment
Much research indicated that past achievement is a predictor of university achievement (Bowles et al., 2014; McKenzie & Schweitzer, 2001; Richardson et al., 2012; Robbins et al., 2004; Suhre et al., 2007). However, it is equivocal whether past achievement (i.e., secondary school GPA) also in uences academic adjustment at university. It seems reasonable to expect that students with higher grades in secondary education will be better equipped to cope with academic demands and thus adjust to university more easily (Baker & Siryk, 1989; Kaczmarek et al., 1990). However, Wouters et al. (2011) found no relationship between achievement in secondary education and academic adjustment in higher education, so we questioned whether to expect a pathway from secondary school GPA to adjustment in university.
7.2.3 The conceptual model
Figure 7.1 presents a schematic representation of the conceptual model of motivational and behavioural factors in uencing academic adjustment and the three measures of student success. We expected academic motivation, academic self-e cacy, self-regulated study behaviour, and satisfaction with degree programme choice to relate to academic adjustment, as well as to the measures of student success – GPA, credits, and intention to persist.
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