Page 240 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

out of touch with universities and provide them with an updated overview of degree programmes. Money and time at secondary schools will have to be made available for this kind of initiatives, though.
Alignment
Torenbeek (2011) investigated the t between the teaching approach at secondary
school and the one at university and found that students obtained more credits in
the rst year when they had a positive perception of the t. An alignment of teaching
practices with the goal of creating a t thus seems bene cial, which is corroborated
by studies that reported that the large di erence in learning environments is
one of the biggest transition challenges for students (e.g., Goree, 2013; Marland,
2003). By increasing mutual expectation management, teachers and lecturers
would already have a clearer view of what happens at the other side, and can align
their teaching practices accordingly to decrease the gap. Schoolteachers could
provide students with less external regulation, give a lecture instead of a regular
lesson, and give students university-level content or assignments once in a while.
For example, they could have their students read adapted primary literature, as
already mentioned in paragraph 8.5.2. A key feature of adapted primary literature
is that it maintains the structure and line of reasoning of the academic papers that
are adapted (Norris et al., 2009; Phillips & Norris, 2009), which will familiarise
students with the kind of reading they will have to do in university, the language
of academia. Using adapted primary literature in the classroom, however, does
demand a high level of pedagogical content knowledge from teachers and hence
may be a challenging endeavour (Yarden et al., 2009). Initiatives in secondary
education that contribute to alignment would bring the two levels of education
closer together and create more continuity, which is especially important for those 8 students who are low in behavioural and cognitive engagement (speci cally in self-regulation) and therefore at risk of a di cult transition.
Integrative practices
Integrative practices are initiatives that integrate a university environment into the last year(s) of secondary school in a more or less intensive way. An example of an intensive integrative practice is dual enrollment, a common programme in the United States that allows students to take college courses while still in high school. e credits earned at college can be added to a student’s high school diploma or displayed on a separate certi cate. In some cases, this gives them exemptions at
Conclusion and discussion
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