Page 75 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 3
of the instances, but if they were, they were mostly related to EC. Prior education was a useful category in the sense that it revealed signi cant relationships with all outcomes. In Flemish studies, these were all signi cant; in the Netherlands in nine out of 13 instances. Half of the investigated relationships in the personality category were signi cant – mostly with regard to GPA and EC. e motivation category showed more signi cant results, and there was a clear pattern: Two thirds of the investigated relationships with GPA were signi cant, half of the relationships with EC, and substantially less than half of those with persistence. e category learning environment characteristics also revealed many relationships with GPA and EC. About one third of the investigated relationships with psychosocial variables were signi cant. is was mainly the case for EC and for persistence. e category of learning strategies only revealed signi cant results in 17 of 44 investigated relationships, mostly with GPA. Last, the engagement category showed many positive relationships with all outcomes.
us, motivational factors seemed to be most important in determining how high students’ grades are. Learning strategies were not o en related to student success, but if they were, this was also mostly the case for GPA. Demographic factors were mainly important for explaining the number of credits students obtain. Psychosocial factors mattered mostly when predicting both the number of credits and whether or not students persisted, which matches well with Tinto’s model of attrition (1975) in which psychosocial variables predicted whether or not a student would drop out. Ability and personality were mainly important for achievement (GPA and EC), but not for persistence. Prior education, characteristics of the learning environment, and engagement were equally important for all outcomes.
3.5.3 Di erences based on country and educational level
When we look at the categories and the number of relationships that were found within the categories for the countries, we see that demographic factors and prior education were somewhat more o en related to success in Flanders, which could be attributable to the open access system, but the number of Flemish studies is too low to draw rm conclusions about this.
Furthermore, although more research is needed, some trends can be distinguished between studies in professional and university education. One di erence particularly strikes the eye: Gender was consistently related to credits and persistence in professional education students (nine of nine investigated relationships), whereas for university students it only had impact in some
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