Page 25 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 1
education: According to international review studies, it is related to both achievement and retention (e.g., Honicke & Broadbent, 2016; Richardson et al., 2012; Robbins et al., 2004). In this thesis we take a narrower view of academic self-e cacy by focusing speci cally on academic self-e cacy in the university setting. is is de ned as the student’s belief that he or she can perform well in university-speci c tasks, such as mastering the content of academic textbooks for a test and writing an essay that answers a research question. Following research on academic self-e cacy, we believe self-e cacy could be an important part of university readiness, as it is likely that students who are con dent that they can handle the learning tasks they have to perform in university will perform better in university than those who lack this con dence. Moreover, besides the established e ect of academic self-e cacy on achievement, research has found additional favourable outcomes of high self-e cacy, such as being able to cope more e ectively with challenges; showing more perseverance; having higher motivation; experiencing less stress in di cult situations; and being better at self- regulated learning (Bassi, Steca, & Delle Fave, 2010; Bong, 1997; Caraway, Tucker, Reinke, & Hall, 2003; Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001; Geitz, Joosten-Ten Brinke, & Kirschner, 2016). ese are all outcomes that could also be bene cial during the transition from secondary education to university. Last but not least, Chemers, Hu, and Garcia (2001) reported that self-e cacy was related to adjustment in the rst year of postsecondary education. Hence, self-e cacy may play a crucial role in the transition and may be perceived as a pivotal aspect of university readiness.
Learning strategies: surface, deep, metacognitive, and self-regulated learning (Chapters 3, 5, and 7)
Cognitive strategies, such as surface and deep learning, describe how students learn. Metacognitive strategies and self-regulated learning describe how students manage their learning. Particularly the need for appropriate metacognitive strategies and self-regulated learning skills becomes apparent when we consider the di erence between how learning is regulated in secondary school and in university. Whereas in the former setting students can still rely on their teachers for external regulation, they have to depend on themselves and regulate their own learning in the latter. One might say that being ready for university in this sense equals being able to e ectively use self-regulated and metacognitive learning strategies. International reviews showed that these strategies are related to success in postsecondary education (Credé & Phillips, 2011; Richardson et al., 2012;
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