Page 203 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 8
is thesis focused on Dutch students’ transition from secondary education to university, as high dropout rates in the rst year and research into the rst- year experience show that this transition is not optimal. We were interested in (1) what student characteristics contribute to successfully bridging the gap between secondary school and university and, as a result, to achieving success in their rst year; and (2) what role(s) secondary school teachers play in students’ preparation for university. In this nal chapter, we will summarise and discuss the main ndings, answer the research questions, elaborate on the most important limitations of this research, provide directions for future research, and present implications for educational practice, in particular for secondary schools. We will end with some concluding thoughts that sum up the main messages of this thesis.
8.1 Summary of the main ndings
First, the results of the ve studies will be summarised. en, we will give an integrative overview of the main ndings.
8.1.1 Chapter 3: A systematic review of factors related to rst-year students’ success in higher education
A useful starting point for research into the transition from secondary education to university is an overview of factors that a ect rst-year university students’ persistence and achievement, so that we know what attributes rst-year students need to be successful. For the Netherlands and Flanders, both Dutch-speaking countries with a higher education system that is comparable in many regards, such an overview did not exist. erefore, we conducted a systematic review that asked the following questions:
1. Which factors are important correlates of rst-year student success in higher education in the Netherlands and Flanders?
2. Are there any notable di erences between the Netherlands and Flanders; between professional education and university education; and based on the outcome variable (GPA, EC, or persistence)?
We looked at the relationships between several independent variables and rst- year GPA, number of obtained credits in the rst year (EC), and persistence. We found a total of 38 Dutch and Flemish peer-reviewed academic studies – published between 2000 and 2015 – that investigated factors related to one or more of the
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