Page 61 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 3
academic norms and values), social integration (e.g., having good relationships with peers), institutional integration (e.g., feeling at home at the institution), and goal commitment (i.e., commitment to obtaining a degree) as predictors of retention (Richardson et al., 2012). Although Tinto’s original model as a whole has been criticised (e.g., Brunsden, Davies, Shevlin, & Bracken, 2000), many studies in higher education still draw on his theory (e.g., Terenzini & Pascarella, 2005). Comparable to the constructs of academic and social integration are academic and social adjustment, which refer to the ability to cope with the academic respectively social demands of the postsecondary environment (Baker & Siryk, 1989). In addition to academic and social adjustment, personal-emotional adjustment and institutional attachment are o en used, as these four types together form the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1989), a widely used scale to measure adjustment. Other psychosocial constructs that have been the topic of investigation are social support and satisfaction with the degree programme.
Learning strategies
In higher education, where more independent learning is demanded from students than they were used to in secondary education, learning strategy use represents an important factor that can in uence student success. Here, we focus on metacognitive and cognitive strategies. Metacognitive strategies refer to the processes regarding one’s understanding of thinking, learning and performance. Examples of metacognitive strategies are planning, monitoring, and evaluation (Pintrich & de Groot, 1990). Cognitive strategies can be classi ed as either deep or surface learning strategies. Deep learning strategies are for example critical reading and elaboration, where the focus is to understand the study material and to make connections between the material and other knowledge or previous experiences. Surface learning strategies are concerned with reproducing the learning material. Besides deep and surface strategies, a third type of cognitive strategy is o en investigated: concrete processing. Concrete processing is a strategy directed to studying in an application-oriented way, and to making connections between learning content and speci c situations (Vermunt, 2005).
Behavioural engagement
It is o en proposed that student characteristics, such as personality traits and motivation, and learning environment characteristics, such as the student- centeredness of the teaching approach, a ect academic achievement through their
60