Page 220 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

A second reason in favour of leaving the transition be a substantial change is the phenomenon of senioritis, which refers to students’ decreasing motivation in the last year of secondary education (Kirst & Venezia, 2004). is phenomenon is particularly common in the United States, where it is said to occur frequently once students have already earned most of their high school credits and have been accepted into college (Kelly, 2012). Even though the situation in the Netherlands is di erent, since the nal examinations are at the end of grade 12, so students feel pressure to prepare for these exams, you could argue for some form of senioritis at Dutch secondary schools, too. A rst indication for senioritis is provided by research on motivation and engagement that consistently shows that both deteriorate during secondary school (Gottfried et al., 2016; Lam et al., 2016; Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2017). A second indication is anecdotal: Many 12th grade students that we interviewed (data not used in this thesis) talked about being ‘tired’ of secondary school and needing a change, as they had already spent more than ve years at the same school. ird, the preoccupation for the examinations may in fact contribute to senioritis, as this o en entails a lot of repetition of content that students have already encountered before. Consequently, students may get bored with school and welcome the idea of an exciting new start at university that will di er substantially from secondary school.
A third argument in favour of leaving the transition what it is – a big leap – is that it can be seen as a form of natural selection: ose who cannot cope with the transition may just not be suitable for university at all. Although this notion of survival of the ttest may sound somewhat cruel, it is in the bene t of both students and institutes that students nd out in an early stage, i.e., during the transition, that university is not the best path for them.
ere are, however, also arguments in favour of making the transition 8 easier for students. e main one is provided by the bulk of literature that shows
that the transition is very challenging and stressful for many students (e.g., Lowe
& Cook, 2003), especially because the learning environment di ers substantially
from the secondary school learning environment and a large number of students
have to deal with a great variety of changes simultaneously, e.g., moving out of
the parental home and into a new city and meeting many new people. Some good
students may drop out or underachieve due to adjustment issues, whereas they
would have survived if they had been better prepared for the transition. is
would imply an unnecessary loss of talent.
Conclusion and discussion
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