Page 233 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 8
in uence on each other. In Chapter 4 we saw that secondary school students’ self-e cacy in being successful in university partly depended on their need for cognition, academic interest, and involvement in out-of-school academic activities, such as reading research news articles in popular journals or on the internet. Need for cognition can be promoted by teachers by making learning content and assignments enjoyable (Elias & Loomis, 2002). Academic interest can be aroused by discussing interesting academic theories and research ndings that in some way are connected to students’ lives, thereby creating situational interest (Krapp & Prenzel, 2011). In order to encourage this situational interest to develop into the longer lasting form of interest, individual interest, teachers could create situations in which students can generate their own research questions and conduct their own research in a less restrictive learning environment, such that there is much room for autonomy (Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Köller, Baumert, & Schnabel, 2001). is corresponds to bringing authentic inquiry to the classroom. Although this can and preferably should be done throughout secondary education, a perfect opportunity for authentic inquiry related to students’ own interests is the research project (‘pro elwerkstuk’) that students have to carry out in the last year of secondary education. is project is part of the examination requirements and has a study load of 80 hours. Students can work individually, with a classmate, or in small groups and can choose their own research topic, although many schools require that the topic is related to one or two school subjects within the student’s coursework. e student’s teacher of the related school subject acts as the supervisor of the project. Schools have much freedom in how they design this project. Within some schools, teams of teachers of related subjects or even individual teachers di er greatly in how they design, supervise, and evaluate the research project. Although the goals of this research project are that students practice their research skills, higher order skills such as critical thinking, organisational skills, and skills related to independent working, it is not clear to what extent these goals are reached. Data from the teacher interviews in Chapter 6 suggest that some doubt would be justi ed: e general notion is that teachers see potential in the research project as a means to practice these skills, but that in practice the project is seen by students as well as by many teachers as just another assignment that has to be completed in order to graduate (see also Huijgen, 2014). Moreover, teachers mention a lack of consensus on the content criteria (e.g., level of rigor, type of sources to be used) and evaluation criteria of the project. is is unfortunate, because the research project has great potential to promote students’
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