Assessing students’ perceptions of fit between secondary and higher education: a validation study of the SPFQ

Entering Higher Professional Education: Unveiling First-Year Students’ Key Academic Experiences and Their Occurrence Over Time

“…A second main finding of this study is that reports on the nine uncovered main themes are not evenly distributed over the three discerned periods in the reflective logs although every theme is mentioned in every period. More precisely, three overall trends were discerned in the data: (1) a declining trend in reporting toward the end of the semester for “following class and taking notes,” “feeling prepared,” and “feeling supported”; (2) an upward trend in reporting toward the end of the semester for “processing learning content outside class,” “feelings of competence,” and “feelings of stress”; and (3) a constant trend in reporting across the three discerned periods for “dealing with the organization of the study program,” “organizing study work,” and “committing to the study.” These results highlight the importance of considering the dynamic character of academic transition (e.g., Roland et al, 2016 ; Coertjens et al, 2017 ; De Clercq et al, 2018 ). We would like to emphasize that our qualitative data do not allow for inference to a larger population, as the sample is too limited.…”

“…Firstly, we unveiled nine main themes of academic experiences that university college students perceived to be critical and which can be regarded as central constructs that are at play in the multifaceted academic transition process in professional HE contexts: (1) dealing with the organization of the study program, (2) organizing study work, (3) committing to the study, (4) following class and taking notes, (5) processing learning content outside class, (6) feeling competent, (7) feeling stressed, (8) feeling prepared, and (9) feeling supported. Although for the formulation of the main and subthemes we inductively adhered to the contents respondents focused on in their logs, several of these themes resonate with existing concepts in the transition literature, such as self-regulation (e.g., Schunk and Zimmerman, 2012;Schunk and Greene, 2017), behavioral and motivational engagement (Pekrun and Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012), cognitive processing (Asikainen and Gijbels, 2017;Vermunt et al, 2017), self-beliefs (self-concept and self-efficacy; e.g., Schunk, 1991;Bong and Skaalvik, 2003), stress (Robotham and Julian, 2006;Friedlander et al, 2007), feeling prepared by secondary education (Torenbeek et al, 2010;Noyens et al, 2020), or feeling supported (Tao et al, 2000). Our study thus corroborates the importance of this specific set of constructs in the first-year academic experience in professional HE contexts and provides rich descriptions of how university college students perceive these concepts.…”

“…Another observation is that the strong quantitative (cross-sectional) focus in the SAC research tradition has generally led to a neglection of the temporal and dynamic nature of adjustment ( Roland et al, 2016 ; De Clercq et al, 2018 ). Indeed, although it was not explicitly described as such in the original works of Baker and Siryk (1984 , 1986) , several scholars point out that adjustment should be regarded as a process in which students attempt to cope with the demands of the new environment (e.g., Anderson et al, 2016 ; Coertjens et al, 2017 ; De Clercq et al, 2018 ; Larose et al, 2019 ).…”

Transitions Through Education

“…Firstly, we unveiled nine main themes of academic experiences that university college students perceived to be critical and which can be regarded as central constructs that are at play in the multifaceted academic transition process in professional HE contexts: (1) dealing with the organization of the study program, (2) organizing study work, (3) committing to the study, (4) following class and taking notes, (5) processing learning content outside class, (6) feeling competent, (7) feeling stressed, (8) feeling prepared, and (9) feeling supported. Although for the formulation of the main and subthemes we inductively adhered to the contents respondents focused on in their logs, several of these themes resonate with existing concepts in the transition literature, such as self-regulation (e.g., Schunk and Zimmerman, 2012;Schunk and Greene, 2017), behavioral and motivational engagement (Pekrun and Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012), cognitive processing (Asikainen and Gijbels, 2017;Vermunt et al, 2017), self-beliefs (self-concept and self-efficacy; e.g., Schunk, 1991;Bong and Skaalvik, 2003), stress (Robotham and Julian, 2006;Friedlander et al, 2007), feeling prepared by secondary education (Torenbeek et al, 2010;Noyens et al, 2020), or feeling supported (Tao et al, 2000). Our study thus corroborates the importance of this specific set of constructs in the first-year academic experience in professional HE contexts and provides rich descriptions of how university college students perceive these concepts.…”

Creating the Desire for Change in Higher Education

“…Fullana, Pallisera, Colomer, Fernández Peña, & Pérez-Burriel, 2016), on specific formative experiences, such as perceptions on the transition from secondary to higher education (e.g. Noyens, Van Daal, Coertjens, Van Petegem, & Donche, 2020), to studies taking a broader perspective, for instance on the perceived workload of students in higher education (e.g. Kyndt, Dochy, Struyven, & Cascallar, 2011).…”