Page 71 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 3
Surface learning was not related to EC and persistence among Dutch professional students and negatively related to Flemish university students’ GPA. Memorising, a subcategory of surface learning, showed no signi cant relationships in either Dutch university students or Flemish professional students.
Concrete processing was not related to Flemish professional students’ EC or persistence, but positively to Dutch university students’ GPA.
Two Dutch university studies looked at conceptions of learning: Students who had a conception of learning as knowledge construction obtained a higher GPA in one study, but the other study found no e ects on persistence. A conception of learning as being a cooperative process was negatively related to GPA in one study, but unrelated to persistence in the other.
Behavioural engagement
Only Dutch studies investigated the e ects of indicators of behavioural engagement on academic results. Attendance, both lecture attendance (two studies) and tutorial attendance (three studies), showed consistent positive relationships with the three outcome measures in university samples. Observed learning activities (two studies) were also positively related to GPA, EC, and persistence in university. Regular study behaviour was positively related to persistence in both university studies that investigated it, but only related to EC in one study. Self-study time (four studies) was positively related to professional students’ EC, to university students’ GPA and persistence, and to university students’ EC in one out of two studies.
3.5 Conclusion and discussion
is review aimed to obtain an overview of important correlates of rst-year achievement (GPA and EC) and persistence in higher education in the Netherlands and Flanders. By doing so, we show the current standings of Dutch and Flemish research into rst-year higher education students’ success and identify limitations and gaps in the current body of research, in order to make recommendations for future research.
3.5.1 Most important ndings
irty-eight peer-reviewed articles were included in this review. Most of them were Dutch (29) and most focused on university education (29). e categories of
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