Page 236 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

achieve well in science, and seriously consider pursuing a science degree in higher education. Likewise, students who tend towards humanities/social sciences regarding their interests, talents, and future plans should be encouraged to choose a humanities/social sciences track. Guidance counsellors and teachers who aid students in the choice process should then (1) make sure all grade 8 students receive objective information about the tracks, their value, and their future possibilities and (2) verify that students base their track choice on interests, talents, and future plans, and not on public stereotypes or pressure by science campaigns, teachers, and/or parents. Regarding the rst, not undermining the value of science, students should explicitly be pointed to the value of humanities/social sciences, for example by discussing the work of humanities advocates such as Nussbaum (2010) who provide many reasons for the value of the humanities; by coming up with examples of important professions for which one needs to be educated in these elds; or by making mention of well-known people in high functions who graduated in these elds (e.g., the current prime minister who specialised in arts in secondary school and completed a university degree in history).
Another explanation for secondary school science track students’ better
performance in university may be the di erence between coursework and learning
environment in the science tracks and those in the humanities/social sciences
tracks. It is worthwhile to explore possibilities of increasing the academic rigor
of humanities and social sciences subjects, not only to reduce the image of these
subjects as being easy, but also to have students get used to the di culty level
they will encounter in university, to stimulate the development of persistence and
endurance, and to show students that these subjects are academic elds with a
rich history of research, just like the natural sciences. By increasing and explicitly
showing the academic rigor, the gap between the secondary school subject and 8 the university counterpart will decrease. A clear example are the languages: Many
students associate learning French or German in secondary school with cramming
vocabulary, learning how to apply grammar rules, and reading books they o en
nd boring. ey perceive the end result of the entire subject as being able to
make yourself understandable when going on holiday to these countries, o en
not acknowledging the fact that studying a language in university consists of so
much more, e.g., linguistics, semantics, culture, and history. e academic rigor
can for example be increased by having students read adapted primary literature,
i.e., research papers rewritten in a more accessible form so they are adjusted to a
secondary school audience (Falk, Brill, & Yarden, 2008). Research on the use of
Conclusion and discussion
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