Page 205 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 8
8.1.2 Chapter 4: Factors that contribute to secondary school students’ self- e cacy in being a successful university student
Self-e cacy is widely known as one of the most important predictors of achievement and persistence in university and is also related to the ability to cope e ectively with di cult situations such as educational transitions. erefore, students that are already highly self-e cacious in secondary school are likely to experience a smooth transition from secondary school to university. In this study, we focused on factors that a ect students’ self-e cacy related to university success whilst still at secondary school, i.e., factors a ecting the level of con dence in their ability to successfully perform skills needed for university studies.
e research questions that guided this study were:
1. What is the relative importance of need for cognition, academic
interest, behavioural engagement, and out-of-school academic activities in terms of in uencing students’ self-e cacy in being a successful university student?
2. How much in uence is exerted by the background variables gender, level of parental education, and taking science or humanities/social sciences coursework in secondary school?
Structural equation modelling on data gathered from grade 10 and 11 students showed that need for cognition, academic interest, and out-of-school academic activities related directly to self-e cacy. Need for cognition and academic interest exerted the greatest in uence. In addition, need for cognition was indirectly related to self-e cacy by its in uence on academic interest and out-of-school academic activities. Behavioural engagement was not related to self-e cacy. Background variables in uenced some of the factors in the model. Gender played a role regarding out-of-school academic activities, which boys did more frequently, and behavioural engagement, on which girls scored higher. Students from parents who had attended university scored higher on need for cognition and out-of- school academic activities. A student’s coursework in uenced need for cognition and academic interest, in favour of students who pursued science coursework as opposed to students undertaking humanities/social sciences coursework.
is study made clear that need for cognition is a pivotal construct in determining a secondary school student’s self-e cacy as to university success. Looking at the complete model in this study, personality (need for cognition) and motivation (in the form of academic interest) seemed to be more important contributors to a student’s belief about whether he or she can ‘make it’ at university
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