Page 214 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

the most important predictor of academic adjustment. Much literature points to
this mediating role of self-regulation or related constructs. For example, Bou ard-
Bouchard et al. (1991) stated that individuals high in self-e cacy perform better
due to their better self-regulatory activities and that their self-e cacy beliefs have
an even greater e ect on self-regulation than their cognitive ability. Chemers,
Hu, and Garcia (2001) also attribute the contribution of self-e cacy beliefs to
educational achievement to the increased use of cognitive activities (e.g., a more
calm and thoughtful approach) and metacognitive skills (e.g., more e ective time
and environment management and better e ort regulation). e meta-analysis and
systematic review of Honicke and Broadbent (2016) is particularly interesting in
this regard: ey reviewed 59 papers (twelve years of research) on the relationship
between academic self-e cacy and university students’ performance. ey
speci cally focused on the mediating and moderating roles of other cognitive and
motivational variables that would shed further light on this relationship and would
explain the heterogeneity in the results of individual studies. eir meta-analysis
found a moderate correlation between academic self-e cacy and GPA (r = .33,
in line with the r = .34 we found in Chapter 7 between academic self-e cacy and
GPA). ey identi ed many factors within the self-regulated learning framework
that mediated this relationship, such as conscious and deliberate goal setting,
e ort regulation, and metacognition. In addition, factors related to behavioural
or cognitive engagement such as deep processing and academic procrastination
played a mediating role. Honicke and Broadbent (2016) concluded that students
high in self-e cacy achieve better results in postsecondary education because
they use more cognitive and metacognitive strategies and are more engaged in
their learning. In a similar way, the moderate bivariate correlations we found in
Chapter 7 between academic self-e cacy and GPA and academic adjustment may 8 have disappeared in the model due to the inclusion of self-regulation.
Academic self-e cacy thus acts as a driving force for students to use more e ective (self-regulated) learning strategies, which makes it a crucial factor in the postsecondary learning environment where students have to rely on themselves, and it is thus an important aspect of university readiness. Moreover, our model in Chapter 7 showed that academic self-e cacy was linked to academic interest and degree programme satisfaction, which also both a ected academic adjustment. ese connections are also in line with previous research (e.g., Caraway et al., 2003; Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001; Komarraju & Nadler, 2013). e second reason that it is important that students’ self-e cacy is already on a high level when they
Conclusion and discussion
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