Page 34 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Introduction
in a view of which keys to university readiness teachers found most important 1 and if these were also the ones that teachers dealt with in the classroom. We also
obtained insight into teachers’ points of view regarding their role in university
preparation, into commonly experienced barriers, and into wishes they had in
order to improve students’ university readiness. e ndings are discussed, with a focus on the barriers and how these could be li ed in order to better prepare students for university.
1.7.5 Chapter 7: Academic adjustment as a pivotal process in the transition from secondary education to university
is thesis revolves around the transition, but how important is this transition for explaining students’ success in the rst year of university? In this last study we investigated how great the impact of the experience of the transition was on students’ rst year GPA, EC, and intention to persist into the second year. As a measure of how well the transition went we used academic adjustment, i.e., the extent to which the student is able to cope with the academic demands of the new learning environment. Previous research has already shown that academic adjustment is related to success, but we speci cally wanted to know how great its impact was on the three di erent measures of success. Moreover, we wanted to gain insight into the factors that a ect academic adjustment. Factors of interest were secondary school GPA, academic motivation, academic self-e cacy, self- regulated learning, and satisfaction with the chosen degree programme, all of which were relevant in previous research. e hypothesised model consisted of links between these factors and the success outcomes, as well as links between these factors and academic adjustment, and between academic adjustment and the outcomes. Structural equation modelling in Mplus revealed a well- tted model that showed which factors mattered and which did not, and how great the impact of academic adjustment was on GPA, EC, and intention to persist. e unexpected absence of a certain link is discussed, as well as the importance of several other factors. is study provides us with some useful directions for future research and ideas on how to improve the transition from secondary education to university.
1.7.6 Reading guide
Before these ve studies are presented in Chapters 3 to 7, Chapter 2 will give an overview of the methods used in these studies, with speci c focus on how the
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