Page 217 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 8
ere is plenty of evidence that corroborates that this is the case: Students who had completed a science track obtained more credits in the rst year studying economics at university (Arnold & Straten, 2012); students who took ‘a substantial math programme’ obtained more credits, had a higher GPA, and were more likely to persist in both humanities and social sciences programmes in university and in biomedical and science programmes (De Wit, Heerwegh, & Verhoeven, 2012); students who had more hours of mathematics in secondary school were more likely to pass the rst year of psychology and educational sciences (Fonteyne et al., 2015) as well as more likely to pass the rst year in many other elds (Pinxten et al., 2014); and for students who had taken more humanities and social sciences coursework in secondary education the odds of passing the rst year were substantially lower in almost all elds than for students who had taken more science classes (Declercq & Verboven, 2010; Rombaut, 2006). Particularly striking about these ndings is that science coursework seems to prepare students better for studying a humanities or social sciences university degree than humanities/ social sciences coursework. For example, a science track o ers more chances of success in an economics degree than the track called ‘economics and society’ which is intended as preparation for degree programmes in economics (Arnold & Straten, 2012).
Why does science coursework make students more university-ready? One plausible explanation is related to the level and type of mathematics that students take. A science track o ers more hours of mathematics and more rigorous mathematics than a humanities/social sciences track, and hours of mathematics instruction and mathematics skills are related to success in postsecondary education, regardless of the eld (e.g., De Wit et al., 2012; Fonteyne et al., 2015; Kamphorst et al., 2015).
A second possible explanation is self-selection: Students who perform less well academically may be more inclined to choose a humanities/social sciences track in secondary education, because these tracks are perceived as easier. is perception is quite widespread across society and its existence is also reported by research. For example, Zimmerman et al. (2007) showed that students were overcon dent in their ability to understand psychology texts and undercon dent when texts concerned chemistry and physics. is di erence in perceived di culty already exists at a young age: Keil et al. (2010) reported that children believed psychological phenomena were easier to understand than natural science phenomena. ere seems to be an order in perceived di culty that goes from hard
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