The transition to first year chemistry: student, secondary and tertiary educator's perceptions of student preparedness
Elizabeth
Leong
,
Agnes
Mercer
,
Stephen M.
Danczak
,
Sara H.
Kyne
and
Christopher D.
Thompson
*
School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia. E-mail: chris.thompson@monash.edu
First published on 1st July 2021
Abstract
Student preparedness is an essential component of transition to university influenced by a broad suite of attributes including academic aptitude, prior knowledge, self-efficacy, self-confidence and a complex assortment of study and life skills. In the case of chemistry education, students' self-perceptions of preparedness are intrinsically linked to prior learning of both theory and hands on laboratory experiences, and interwoven with intricacies such as science identity, gender, and secondary school background. Accordingly, this study sought to establish a deeper understanding of learners' and educators' perceptions of student preparedness upon commencing tertiary studies in chemistry. The research used a mixed methods approach including questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews to capture the breadth and depth of these perceptions. 924 students from the first year chemistry cohort completed either one or two surveys designed to capture their prospective and retrospective self-perceptions of how well prepared they were for the course. Nine of these students also participated in focus groups. Secondary educator's views were captured via a qualitative online survey to conveniently enable a broad cohort to be sampled, while tertiary educators from the institution where this study was conducted were interviewed in person. Key findings from students include: a strong correlation between self-perception of preparedness and academic performance, those with negative perceptions of preparedness are genuinely an at-risk category, an overall positive shift for perceptions of preparedness for students as they get to the end of the semester (which is more pronounced for students who attended private secondary schools), and a significant disparity between genders at the start of the semester that was no longer present by the end. Additional key findings include the disparity between secondary and tertiary educator's perspectives of how well prepared students are for the transition to tertiary level chemistry studies. While the former have a favourable view, the latter consider many students to be quite poorly prepared, with each cohort ultimately focusing on different attributes. We suggest the implications for these findings include the importance of emphasising expectations of students as they commence their courses, and that work still needs to be done to align the perspectives of educators at all levels when it comes to preparing and supporting students as they transition to higher education.
Introduction
The first year of university presents some of the greatest challenges students face in their educational journey, encountering new and different aspects of life and compressed into a short period of time. They have to navigate and create a balance between learning new academic skills and developing their social and independent living abilities including getting to know the campus culture; settling into the course; familiarising themselves with student expectations; discovering activities and social opportunities; and making new friends (Richardson et al., 2012; Hughes, 2017). It has also been identified that in the first year of university the greatest proportion of academic failure, deterioration of motivation and engagement, and attrition rates occur (Tinto, 1988; McInnis et al., 2000; McInnis, 2010). Owing to this, researchers have described the completion of the first year of tertiary education as winning more than half the battle of navigating through a university degree (Tinto, 1988).A key contributor to the completion of the first year of university is a successful student transition, where ‘transition’ can be defined as a period of adjustment before settling into a more stable phase (Jansen and van der Meer, 2012). Transition can also be defined as the “capability to navigate change,” where capability refers to the ability to access resources necessary to engage with change, without having knowledge or control over what the change involves (Gale and Parker, 2014, p. 737). Students who lack these capabilities may become disengaged and underperform in the first year of their tertiary studies, and for some, drop out of their course (McInnis and James, 2004). Within the context of this study, we define ‘transition’ to be the period in which an individual undergoes the process of leaving secondary school and entering their first year of tertiary education.
The concept of a successful transition to university is viewed differently by various stakeholders. Traditionally, it was measured in terms of academic performance and the persistence of students (Harackiewicz et al., 2002; Wood and Breyer, 2017), however more recent definitions encompass factors such as intellectual and social engagement, and the development of graduate attributes and skills (Naylor, 2017). Students themselves view success through affective factors such as happiness, personal growth, positive relationships with peers and family, and achievement for qualification (Brinkworth et al., 2008; Wood and Breyer, 2017).
Issues regarding the transition from secondary to tertiary education have been reported across the globe. The increase in and diversification of the student population, while inherently more inclusive, has provided tertiary education institutions with new challenges as students enter tertiary education with a range of different backgrounds, levels of preparedness, and perceptions of tertiary study (Kift, 2015). Whilst many students are able to adjust quickly into their new learning and social environment, others struggle for reasons such as age, linguistic and cultural background, gender, student entry category, socio-economic and socio-educational status, and the locality of the student (Winefield et al., 1992; Evans, 1999; Shah and Burke, 1999; Yau et al., 2013). Transitioning to university often involves students leaving their social support networks of home, family and friends (Burnett and Larmar, 2011). University life involves an array of intellectual, social and personal challenges for students to deal with, at various points during the student's time attending university (Evans, 1999; Hillman, 2005; Brinkworth et al., 2008; Wintre et al., 2008; Busseri et al., 2011; Fisher et al., 2011; Postareff et al., 2016). Studies have shown that unsatisfactory experiences, inability to cope with academic demands, choosing the wrong course, and personal reasons are the main factors that result in students discontinuing their course (McInnis and James, 2004).
In an Irish study at the University College Dublin, it was found that first year students’ difficulties in the transition to tertiary education were particularly related to motivation, student expectations, and time management (Gibney et al., 2011). Similar findings have also been reported in other studies; Brooker et al. (2017) found that first year university students perceive that time management, study load, and managing others’ expectations were some of the biggest difficulties they faced. In addition to these factors, Baik et al. (2015) report that first year students struggled to engage in academic behaviours such as asking questions or attending class, in addition to studying or interacting academically with students outside of class. These studies demonstrate the complexity that the transition to tertiary education presents, and the range of different non-cognitive and cognitive skills that are required for a successful transition.
First year students are also likely to have a less successful academic and social experience compared to their final year of secondary school (Pargetter, 2000; Fisher, 2002; Holles, 2016). Students who start their university degree with low self-efficacy and high fear of failure are more likely to fail during their first year (Wagner and Brahm, 2017). Failure and drop out from university can have severe effects on student emotional and mental well-being long term, as it can lead to constructing a negative self perception and sense of failure that impacts on their motivations to study (Tinto, 1988). There are also significant financial implications for individuals, families and society caused by the wasted time and resources when students commence, but do not complete a degree (Pargetter, 2000).
Determining student readiness for tertiary level education is important for supporting their transition to university. For example, Conley's College Readiness Model conceptualises factors that contribute to students’ readiness to attend tertiary education and the level of preparation they require, describing four facets: cognitive strategies, academic knowledge and skills, academic behaviours, and contextual skills and awareness (Conley, 2008, 2011).
Furthermore, student perceptions of their own readiness or preparedness to achieve success consistently emerges as a key factor for navigating transition to university. An investigation by Jansen and Meer (2007) found that 40% of 1391 students stated they felt ill-prepared or unsure about their preparedness for university having come straight from secondary school, owing to a lack of skills to achieve academic success such as note-taking, IT skills, verbal skills and effective time management. These findings are corroborated by a study which found 30% of 1602 students felt they were ill-prepared to choose a university course upon leaving their secondary education (Krause, 2005). Academic performance has also been closely associated with preparedness for tertiary study; student grade-point average (GPA) or other measures of student academic achievement in secondary schooling have been shown to be correlated with student achievement in tertiary education and has been thought to be a measurement of academic preparedness (Coley, 1973; Duff, 2004; Dobson and Skuja, 2005). Preparedness or readiness for tertiary education however has been proposed to be a multifaceted mixture of academic, social, and non-cognitive knowledge and skills that are required to succeed (Conley, 2008; Holles, 2016).
According to Gonyea et al. (2003), the strongest impacts on students’ positive perception of preparedness were cognitive and psychological factors. Students who were optimistic about their transition to university and were confident in their skill-sets and knowledge were found to have a better experience coping with stress, socialising with peers and balancing study, work, family and personal commitments.
As most university transition research within the last 15 years has focused on students’ perceptions of affective factors in transition success (Fisher, 2002; Brinkworth et al., 2008; Burnett and Larmar, 2011; Richardson et al., 2012; Hughes, 2017; Naylor, 2017; Kahu et al., 2017), this study will focus on the perceptions of students and educators in determining the preparedness of first year students for academic transition success in first semester chemistry at Monash University. This study also draws from research by Rayner and Papakonstantinou (Rayner and Papakonstantinou, 2018) which suggests that students’ confidence and prior learning has an impact on their academic success at university.
Identifying students’ and educators’ views regarding the level of preparedness for first year chemistry by considering academic, affective, and social factors can provide a basis for strategies designed to optimise student transition. This study aims to understand the perception of student readiness prior to and after completion of first year introductory chemistry and identify difficulties that arise during the transition. This will be explored via the following research questions:
1. What are students’ perceptions of their readiness for tertiary study upon commencing university, and how do these shift over their first semester of study and correlate with their academic achievements?
2. How do students’ perceptions of preparedness align with those of their secondary and tertiary educators?
Theoretical framework
Nicholson's Transition Cycle provides a theoretical foundation for this study to describe and model students’ transition to tertiary education (Nicholson, 1990). The model describes four stages of transition: preparation, encounter, adjustment, and stabilisation; the processes of transition are dynamic and cyclic in nature, and individuals may encounter new challenges and situations throughout their life (Nicholson, 1990; De Clercq et al., 2018). Nicholson's Transition Cycle was first used in the context of employment transitions (Nicholson, 1990), and was subsequently applied to the transition of commencing tertiary education (Torenbeek et al., 2010; Foster et al., 2011; Jansen et al., 2017; De Clercq et al., 2018; van der Zanden et al., 2018). The preparation stage of student transition describes the phase before the commencement of university and is when readiness, expectations, and motivation are developed. This stage provides the foundation for how the transition will proceed (Nicholson, 1990; De Clercq et al., 2018). Preparation stage is followed by the encounter stage, where students make sense of their new environment, evaluate their ability to cope, and create new social networks, typically during the first few weeks of their university experience (Nicholson, 1990; De Clercq et al., 2018). Following their initial experience of university, students undergo a stage of adjustment, where they adapt to their new environment and adopt the necessary behaviours to fit into the environment; this phase is thought to last for the remainder of the first year (De Clercq et al., 2018). Stabilisation is the final stage of the transition cycle, and is “conceived as the equilibrium reached by the student when [they] fully adjust to the academic context” (De Clercq et al., 2018, p. 71). The length of time taken for students to reach stabilisation varies greatly in length, and academic success is used to determine whether stabilisation has been reached.This model emphasises the cognitive and non-cognitive factors that are involved in student readiness for the transition to university. The model also provides a foundation for our proposed definition of the term “preparedness” for university which; we define as the ability for students to achieve academic and skill-based success in their first year of university by assimilating both cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge and experiences in the new tertiary education environment.
Methodology
Context for study
A concurrent mixed method approach was utilised for the data collection in this study (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2017). Quantitative data was obtained from student participants. The quantitative data provided a general picture of student perceptions including statistical results and trends. In addition the use of qualitative data provided us with the opportunity to explore important ideas and themes arising from the quantitative data in more depth (Weller et al., 2018), and gather results from secondary and tertiary educators. The choice of approach stems from the need to gain a better understanding of student preparedness by triangulating complementary data obtained from students, secondary school teachers and university instructors.As this research focused on the academic transition into university, the context for this study are the first year, first semester chemistry units at a large, research-intensive Australian university. These units have very large student cohorts (>1500), with approximately 20% going on to complete a full major in chemistry and the remainder continuing on to other aligned fields of science. The two units are General Chemistry and Advanced Chemistry. All students enrolled in these units in 2019 (n = 1504) and the tertiary educators (n = 14) teaching in these units were given the opportunity to participate in the study.
A description of the course design is summarised in Table 1. General Chemistry does not require any previous chemistry study, whereas there are prerequisite entry requirements for Advanced Chemistry (either threshold senior secondary school chemistry grade or overall grade attainment). There is approximately 20% difference in content between the two units. In each week, both courses ran active learning workshops in an appropriate modern teaching and learning space (comprising one academic for approximately 150 students). The General Chemistry laboratory sessions ran for 3 hours while the Advanced Chemistry laboratory sessions were 4 hours. Advanced Chemistry students did not have tutorials but were allowed to opt-in into a weekly tutorial session run for General Chemistry. Tutorial sessions involved students completing problem sets in small groups (comprising one academic and approximately 30 students).
| Course components | General chemistry | Advanced chemistry |
|---|---|---|
| Prerequisite entry requirement | ✗ | ✓ |
| 2 × 1 hour workshops | ✓ | ✓ |
| Laboratory | 3 hour | 4 hour |
| 1 hour tutorial | ✓ | ✗ |
| Pre-workshop quiz | ✓ | ✓ |
| Post-workshop quiz | ✓ | ✓ |
| Learning management system (Moodle) weekly online content | ✓ | ✓ |
Prior to enrolling into university units, all students had access to the university handbook which provides details for each unit including: overview, learning outcomes, learning resources, workload requirements etc. Students were able to access the virtual learning environment for their units a minimum of one week prior to the start of semester, from which they could familiarise themselves with more detail about the expectations of the unit.
Ethics
All study participants were recruited on a voluntary basis opting into the study through informed consent, and their data remained de-identified throughout the research. Participants were informed that they were free to withdraw from the study at any time. Students were informed that participation would not affect their academic or professional records. The project's explanatory statement was made available to all participants describing these terms. A low-risk Human Ethics application was submitted and approved by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) (Project ID 18427).Questionnaire instrument design
The questionnaires used in the research were designed using the questionnaire design method described by Burgess (2001). Specifically, each questionnaire used a variety of question types to maximise the quality of data collected and only questions that related directly to our overarching research questions were included. The pre-questionnaire was designed to capture the demographic data of the first year chemistry cohort, and to obtain an initial perception of preparedness for academic success in chemistry. This would allow us to explore the preparation stage described by Nicholson's Transition Model (Nicholson, 1990). The pre-questionnaire comprised ten questions using three different question formats. Demographic data was collected from closed-ended questions (six), while open-ended questions (three) collected other demographic and past experience data. A 5-point Likert scale response was used for the question (one) relating to prospective perception of preparedness for tertiary level chemistry.The post-questionnaire was designed to capture a reflection on the students’ first semester at university. The questionnaire was based on a similar research project completed with a first year biology student cohort from the same university (Rayner and Papakonstantinou, 2018) and would also allow us to explore the four stages of the Nicholson Transition Model (Nicholson, 1990). The post-questionnaire comprised fourteen questions. A 5-point Likert scale response was used for the question (one) relating to retrospective perception of preparedness for tertiary level chemistry (equivalent to the pre-questionnaire). Closed-ended questions (three) sought participants to identify particular skills or topics they found challenging/helpful during the semester, while open-ended questions (ten) were posed to gain more depth of insight from participants.
The face validity of each questionnaire was established by distributing a pilot of each questionnaire to five fourth year students and five chemistry education researchers. Upon collecting the pilot data, responses were reviewed and the instruments were then amended to maximise the ease of readability and interpretation, and consistency of responses by the participants (Burgess, 2001; Schwarz, 2007).
Data collection
Interviews, focus groups and questionnaire responses were utilised in the data collection process (see Appendices B–E for full questions). Online questionnaires were distributed to the 2019 first-year chemistry cohort (n = 1504) via a link or QR code in an announcement on their learning management system. Students were invited to complete two questionnaires – one prior to starting their first-year chemistry units (pre-questionnaire) and one towards the end of the first academic semester (post-questionnaire). The pre-questionnaire was distributed in the first week of the semester, and closed after two weeks. The post-questionnaire was distributed to students in the final week of semester, and closed after 8 weeks to allow maximum number of responses as well as to allow students time to reflect on their performance upon getting their results. Students completing the post-questionnaire were invited to register their interest for participating in a follow up focus group discussion at the end of the questionnaire. These students further participated in audio-recorded focus group discussions to gain additional insight and depth from their responses. The semi-structured focus group discussions ran for approximately 60 minutes each (two groups with four and five students each).A different questionnaire was distributed to local secondary educator (school teacher) participants to elicit their perceptions of their students’ preparedness for university level chemistry. The questionnaire comprised ten questions, demographic data was collected from closed-ended questions (four). A 5-point Likert scale response was used for a question (one) relating to perception of preparedness for tertiary level chemistry (similar to the questionnaire for student participants) and open-ended questions (five) collected more in-depth responses from participants. Fourteen tertiary educators were recruited by individual emails. Responses were obtained from tertiary educators through individual, audio-recorded semi-structured interviews comprising six open-ended questions lasting approximately 30 minutes, to obtain their perceptions of student preparedness for higher chemistry studies.
Student's final academic chemistry grades were accessed from their official academic student record. Final numerical grade consisted of in-semester assessments, laboratory assessments and end-of-semester examination. The numerical grade ranges used in the analysis were defined as: 0–49, 50–59, 60–69, 70–79, 80+.
Study sample
924 individual students participated by completing at least one of the questionnaires (61.1% response rate) (Appendix A). These students all came from the same institution and were enrolled in either the General or Advanced Chemistry units. 804 students completed the pre-questionnaire and 277 completed the post-questionnaire. There were 178 students who completed both the pre- and the post-questionnaire. Data analysis that involved comparison of pre- and post-questionnaire findings utilises the data from these 178 students. All other analysis was conducted using responses from either the pre- (n = 804 response) or post-questionnaires (n = 277 responses). Nine students who completed both questionnaires also participated in the focus group discussions which served to increase the depth of student responses to the questionnaires (Appendix A Tables 12 and 13).Secondary and tertiary educators were contacted to canvas their perspectives of student preparedness for first year chemistry. Fourteen tertiary educators who taught first year chemistry units were interviewed to obtain their perception of student preparedness for tertiary chemistry studies. These educators comprised of academic lecturers, tutors, teaching associates and laboratory staff. Twenty secondary educators participated in an online questionnaire. These educators were from both public (government owned and run) and private (privately owned and run) schools and ranged from those who had more than ten years of experience (40%, n = 8) to teachers with less than five years of experience (40%, n = 8). While the data collection methods were not equivalent, all educators were presented with the same questions, and therefore their responses were expected to be complementary (Harris and Brown, 2010).
Quantitative data analysis
Quantitative data was obtained from the participant questionnaires, including demographic data and responses to closed-type questions, and questions with Likert scales. Statistical analysis was carried out to determine whether there were statistically significant differences between a variety of factors. Data were compiled and statistical tests were carried out using R/R studio (“RStudio,” 2020). All quantitative data analysis was carried out in response to research question one.Non-parametric statistical analysis was used for all categorical data. A Pearson's chi-squared test was selected for conducting statistical hypothesis testing between student demographic categories and level of preparedness variables. Two groups were said to be statistically significantly different when p-value < 0.05, with p < 0.001 being the lowest reporting value. For effect size tests, the Cramer's V value, φC, was utilised as it is a measure of strength of the association and is routinely used with the chi-squared test (Sheskin, 2003a). The Kruskal–Wallis test was used to compare level of preparedness and final numerical grade. This test is a type of one-way ANOVA that compares more than two groups with an independent variable.
Kendall's Tau-b test of association was performed to investigate the relationship between the level of preparedness and final grade. The non-parametric test was chosen because both final grades and perception of preparedness are ordinal variables.
Dunn's test of multiple comparisons was a post hoc pairwise test used to determine the effect of level of perceived preparedness on final grade (Appendix F).
Qualitative data analysis
Qualitative data was obtained from secondary educator questionnaires, and tertiary educator interviews. The qualitative data was analysed through the following process: First, the audio-recordings of the interviews were transcribed using transcription software (“Otter,” 2020) and checked for accuracy. The interviews and questionnaires were then divided by question for coding analysis. Emerging themes were identified by open coding the raw data of each transcript using NVivo 12.4 (“NVivo,” 2020). The responses for the tertiary and secondary educators were examined separately owing to the difference in data collection method. As both the secondary educator questionnaire and the tertiary educator interviews consisted of the same questions, the themes, codes and definitions for the qualitative analysis was kept the same and the relevant information provided to the inter-rater reliability participants on both occasions. To check the inter-rater reliability of the coding, the transcripts were coded independently by two researchers (chemistry education researchers) then all were compared. Discrepancies were discussed and refined over multiple cycles to determine the final coding themes and sub-themes. Following a subsequent round of coding, a consensus of greater than 80% was obtained between the researchers (McHugh, 2012). Krippendorff's alpha was also calculated for each round of coding, where an alpha value of greater than 0.677 was deemed acceptable (Krippendorff, 2004, Chapter 11). Refer to Tables 15 and 16 in Appendix G for these calculations. The final themes were then used to code all of the transcriptions, and NVivo gave the number of responses to each theme/sub-theme. Descriptions of the themes are available in Table 17.Qualitative data were also obtained from the student open-ended questions of the questionnaires and focus group meetings. The open-ended questionnaire questions were analysed using the same procedure described above. The focus group meetings were transcribed using transcription software and checked for accuracy. The data was subsequently used to support quantitative and qualitative findings from the questionnaires and provide additional insight, also comparing with the themes obtained from the educator questionnaires and interviews.
Results and discussion
Students’ initial perceptions of preparedness
 | ||
| Fig. 1 Initial perception of student preparedness for academic and skill-based success (n = 804). | ||
 | ||
| Fig. 2 Initial perception of student preparedness by gender (n = 803; Female: n = 484, Male; n = 319) Note: respondents selecting “Prefer not to disclose” removed given the small sample size. | ||
First year chemistry at Monash University is separated into a mainstream cohort, General Chemistry, and a smaller advanced cohort, Advanced Chemistry. The comparative breakdowns are represented in Fig. 3.
 | ||
| Fig. 3 Initial perception of student preparedness by chemistry stream (n = 799; general chemistry: n = 592; advanced chemistry: n = 207). | ||
It can be seen that while 40.1% (n = 83) of students from Advanced Chemistry had a positive perception (Prepared and Very Prepared) of their preparedness, just 29.1% (n = 169) of General Chemistry reported a similar level of preparedness (Fig. 4). The difference in perception between the two cohorts was found to be significantly different and with a small effect size (p < 0.001, φC = 0.200). This difference has not been documented before, and emphasises the assumed difference in perception between the two cohorts that we had anticipated to be present.
 | ||
| Fig. 4 Initial perception of student preparedness based on prior chemistry studies (n = 804; secondary school chemistry: n = 704; no secondary school chemistry: n = 100). | ||
The difference in preparedness between the two groups of students may be attributed to the fact that students who undertake the Advanced Chemistry unit all have prior chemistry experience at secondary school during their final year, while students who undertake General Chemistry come from various schooling backgrounds that included (84.3%, n = 499) or did not include (15.7%, n = 93) the study of secondary level chemistry. In addition, the Advanced Chemistry students are required to have performed well in their previous chemistry studies due to prerequisite requirements.
Further analysis found that the proportion of participants who identified as female enrolled in Advanced Chemistry (49.3%, n = 101) was significantly lower (p < 0.01) than the proportion of those who identified as female enrolled in General Chemistry (63.7%, n = 371) with a small effect size (φC = 0.132). For Advanced Chemistry, the proportion of participants who identified as female was representative of the cohort (51.7%, n = 200), whilst for General Chemistry, a significant difference between the questionnaire participants who identified as female and the cohort (57.9%, n = 645) was observed (p < 0.05, φC = 0.055). We also found that there were significant differences between male and female participants’ perception of preparedness in both the General and Advanced Chemistry cohorts (p < 0.001, φC = 0.196; p < 0.05, φC = 0.253 respectively). For both units, students identifying as male report their perception of preparedness more positively than students identifying as female (as discussed earlier). These results indicate that while there is a significant difference in the perception of preparedness of participants identifying as male and female in both cohorts, the impact of that difference is greater in the Advanced Chemistry cohort given the larger effect size. More research would need to be conducted in order to investigate the nuances of why this might be, but could again be related to gendered self-efficacy (Fisher et al., 2020).
Not surprisingly, prior chemistry knowledge has historically been one of the most important factors in learning and achievement (Dochy et al., 2002). With prior knowledge, a student's confidence and self-efficacy at a task is also shown to increase (Cordova et al., 2014). Within this analysis, a significant difference in perception of preparedness was observed between students who reported they had prior chemistry study compared with students who did not (with a large effect size p < 0.001, φC = 0.469). Comparison between the two groups showed that 36.1% (n = 254) of students who have had previous chemistry experience state that they were positively prepared for academic success in the units whilst the same was said by only 3.0% (n = 3) of participants with no chemistry background. In fact, 68.0% (n = 68) of students who have not done chemistry before felt unprepared for their tertiary chemistry studies (Fig. 4).
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| Fig. 5 Initial perception of student preparedness and corresponding final academic numerical grade range (n = 752). | ||
There was a large cohort of students who claimed ill-preparedness for university, but obtained a numerical grade in the range of 70–79 (very unprepared: 21.2%, n = 7; unprepared: 26.4%, n = 29) or more than 80 (very unprepared: 15.2%, (n = 5); unprepared: 20.9%, (n = 23)) in the subject. While this does not pose an issue compared to underachieving students claiming well-preparedness, underestimating their preparedness may impact students’ adjustment during their transition to university. De Clercq et al. (2018) found that students who identified as having low levels of confidence in their abilities when they commenced university struggled to enter the adjustment phase of their transition, which in some cases resulted in students disengaging from learning.
Another notable finding was the proportion of students who claimed they were ‘Average’ or ‘Prepared’ for academic success, yet failed (numerical grade range >50, average: 3.6%, (n = 13); prepared: 2.6%, (n = 6)). This phenomenon may indicate that these students were not aware of their own readiness to achieve success at university and may have overestimated their abilities. Research has found that this phenomenon may be present within undergraduate and even postgraduate chemistry studies, reporting that underachieving students at all levels were likely to overestimate their academic scores (Webb and Karatjas, 2018). Furthermore, student metacognition has been identified as an essential component of education correlating to a number of factors including student performance. For example, research found that overconfident, under-prepared students were slow to develop accurate metacognitive monitoring skills, whilst students that improved their metacognitive monitoring showed increased mean learning gains (Mathabathe and Potgieter, 2014). Given the variety of factors that our observation may be attributed to (also including personal reasons, non-completion of in-semester assessment tasks etc.), we would need to conduct further research with individual students to draw conclusions about this finding.
Changes in students’ perceptions of preparedness
Despite only a minority of students completing both surveys, this subset of students was verified to be statistically representative of the larger cohort that completed the pre-questionnaire only (Appendix A, Table 8).
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| Fig. 6 Perception of student preparedness: prospective (pre-questionnaire) and retrospective (post-questionnaire) (n = 178). | ||
While there is a general trend toward a more positive shift in perception of preparedness, a more granular inspection of individual's responses revealed that whilst 37.6% (n = 67) of participants cited a positive shift, while 20.2% (n = 36) of participants reported a negative shift and 42.1% (n = 75) of participants reported no shift in perception of preparedness. This is displayed in Fig. 7 with positive shifts corresponding to participants selecting +1 or +2 levels of preparedness higher on the Likert Scale in the post-questionnaire compared to the pre-questionnaire, negative shifts corresponding to participants selecting −1, −2 or −3 levels of preparedness lower on the Likert scale in the post-questionnaire compared to the pre-questionnaire, and zero corresponding to participants that reported no change. This suggests that although the overall trend of preparedness was a significant positive shift, there was a subset of students who undergo a decrease in perception of preparedness as the semester progresses. This decrease in perception of preparedness suggests that these students may have struggled to adapt to their chemistry studies or their university studies more generally. A more detailed analysis is given in Appendix H for the interested reader. Further research could be completed to investigate the nuances of this finding.
 | ||
| Fig. 7 Shift in perception of student preparedness between prospective (pre-questionnaire) and retrospective (post-questionnaire) (n = 178). +1 or +2 levels on Likert scale refer to participants selecting one or two levels of preparedness higher in the post-questionnaire compared to the pre-questionnaire. −1, −2 or −3 levels on Likert scale refer to participants selecting one or two levels of preparedness lower in the post-questionnaire compared to the pre-questionnaire. | ||
When considering the difference between pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire perceptions of preparedness, chi-squared tests show that there is a significant difference in the shift of preparedness between those who had reported prior chemistry study and those who did not with a moderate effect size (p < 0.01, φC = 0.306). Fig. 8 indicates that students who had no reported chemistry background were more likely to cite a negative shift in perception of preparedness. Previous studies have shown that students having basic chemistry knowledge from their previous studies feel more confident and thus would have been more successful at assimilating the new content with their existing knowledge (Cordova et al., 2014). With reference to Conley's College Readiness model, students who do not possess the academic knowledge or skills associated with the study of chemistry will not be as prepared for university level chemistry (Conley, 2008), which explains the negative shift in perception of preparedness reported by this subset of students. These results however do not take into consideration other factors associated with readiness such as cognitive strategies, academic behaviours, and contextual knowledge which may also have impacted the students reported perception of their own preparedness.
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| Fig. 8 Shift in perception of student preparedness based on previous chemistry studies (n = 178; secondary school chemistry: n = 157; no secondary school chemistry: n = 21). | ||
While both the pre- and the post-questionnaire comparison between type of previous secondary school feature non-significant p-values (pre: p = 0.081; post: p = 0.875), further analysis found that participants who attended private school had a statistically significant difference between pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire perceptions of preparedness with a small to medium effect size (p < 0.01, φC = 0.263). This significant difference coupled with Fig. 9 suggests that the private school students’ perception of their preparedness increases as the semester progresses. Private schools are inherently known for their competitive environment and high scoring students that they produce (Dobson and Skuja, 2005; Heller-Sahlgren, 2018) and as such, one may expect students from this background to have a higher sense of self-efficacy and perception of preparedness. These results show that this is not the case for students in first year chemistry surveyed and align with previously reported findings that preparation for life and learning beyond school in private schools settings may be poor, resulting in the lack of confidence that students have reported at a university level (Preston, 2014; West, 1985). Conversely, this positive shift in perception of preparedness may be due to the assimilation of other factors associated with preparedness for tertiary study; further exploration into these findings may be of interest for future research.
 | ||
| Fig. 9 Shift in perception of student preparedness of students who attended a private secondary school (n = 104). | ||
Changes in perception of preparedness were also observed in relation to gender. As noted previously, initially participants who identified as female reported lower perceptions of preparedness compared to those who identified as male. By the end of the semester there was found to be no statistical difference in post-questionnaire perception of preparedness between genders. Further analysis comparing the pre- and post-questionnaires suggests that those who identify as males’ perception of preparedness does not change over the course of the semester. However, there is a statistically significant difference between pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire perceptions of preparedness for those who identified as female with a small to medium effect size (p < 0.05, φC = 0.215) suggesting that over the course of the semester, females’ self-efficacy and perception of their own preparedness increased. This finding contrasts markedly with many literature reports on gender differences observed in self-efficacy (Williams and George-Jackson, 2014), and more research would need to be completed in order to explore this finding.
Educators’ perceptions of students’ preparedness
To determine both tertiary and secondary educators’ perception of students’ preparedness for first year chemistry, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used to collect data from each group respectively. The tertiary educators interviewed were asked several questions including: ‘What do you think student preparedness for [General/Advanced Chemistry] looks like?’ and ‘How prepared do you think students are for the teaching and learning styles of [General/Advanced Chemistry]?’. Secondary educators were asked ‘How prepared do you think students are for chemistry studies at university upon completion of their final year chemistry studies?’ and were given a 5-point Likert scale ranging from Very Unprepared to Very Prepared. They were then asked to elaborate on their choice in an open-ended response, and further asked ‘What are some issues that you think students may face when pursuing chemistry studies at a university level?’. The questions were posed generally about tertiary level chemistry study, and therefore we did not expect the secondary educators to be aware of the specific chemistry curriculum and/or teaching strategies used at the university.In analysing the qualitative data from both secondary and tertiary educator participants, definitions and examples were assigned to each theme identified (Table 14). Previous research has found that there are many predictors to the domains of student success (van der Zanden et al., 2018). In this research, a recurring theme when asked about student predictors for success were the themes of self-management and independent learning, which can be seen as similar or overlapping in definition. However, the theme of self-management was described as the ability to identify areas of weaknesses, plan and manage tasks (Wurf and Croft-Piggin, 2015). In contrast, independent learning was defined as the students’ effort to undertake additional learning tasks (Zhou et al., 2015). For example, for General Chemistry this would include attending non-compulsory tutorials.
Based on the responses from the 20 secondary educator participants, we found that 50.0% (n = 10) believe their students are prepared for tertiary chemistry studies, whilst 40.0% (n = 8) and 10.0% (n = 2) believe that students are averagely prepared and unprepared respectively. Despite being provided a 5-point Likert scale, no participants chose the options of Very Prepared or Very Unprepared, which suggested that even secondary teachers held a conservative view of their students’ abilities. The thematic analysis (Table 2) on the qualitative responses to the question ‘How prepared do you think students are for chemistry studies at university upon completion of their final year chemistry studies?’ suggested that the secondary educators surveyed believed that students were well prepared for first year chemistry. For example, a secondary teacher identified reasons such as that students “should have developed [a] good basis of knowledge in the following topics – stoichiometry, bonding, kinetics, equilibrium, redox, organic chemistry”. Another participant stated that “the required foundational knowledge that students need to complete first year chemistry studies is laid during students’ final year studies at high school”. These responses indicate that these secondary teachers view student preparedness for university level chemistry as being positively related to prior chemistry knowledge, which coincides with our findings.
| Theme | Description (count) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Student attributes | Self-management (2) | “Do not know how to prepare for exams” |
| Previous education experience | Chemistry background (8) | “VCE covers a broad range of chemistry – good depth” |
| University | Mode of delivery (3) | “Unprepared for the pace the content is delivered” |
The secondary educators in this study believed that it is not the role of the teacher or school to prepare students for the transition to university. Instead, universities need to have “more appreciation of the nature of the students entering from Year 12 and tailor their courses appropriately” as stated by one secondary teacher participant. Interestingly, research has found that it is important to avoid assumptions about the transferability of learning skills from one setting to another (i.e. from secondary school to university). This is claimed to be because moving to a different learning environment brings new sets of risks as students must negotiate the meaning and significance of the everyday practices embodied in the new learning setting (Christie et al., 2008).
The tertiary educators’ views of student preparedness showed that only 21.4% (n = 7) believed students to be prepared for tertiary chemistry studies. This is in contrast with the 50.0% (n = 10) of tertiary educators who believe students are unprepared and 28.6% (n = 4) who think that students are only averagely prepared. It should be noted that because tertiary educators were interviewed, they were not given a 5-point Likert scale (like the secondary educators in the questionnaire). Their responses were all confined to the words “prepared”, “not prepared” or “average”.
The thematic analysis of the tertiary educator interviews revealed a number of themes and sub-themes as shown in Tables 3 and 4. Tertiary educators perceive student preparedness depends on the overarching themes of student attributes, previous academic educational experience and their university education. Student attributes included activities such as writing study plans, undertaking revision and attending classes. Tertiary educators also suggested: “doing the extra bit of reading”, “trying their best to be engaged with the unit”, “attending the extra things” and “knowing how they learn”. Interestingly, some tertiary educators' perception of student preparedness were more negative towards students with prior chemistry knowledge. Of the eight educators who discussed prior chemistry knowledge as a requirement for student preparedness for first year chemistry, three of them believed that owing to prior chemistry experiences, the students “feel like they already know everything before they come in. So, they probably don’t prepare as much”. One educator stated that “some of the students who do best in the unit [General Chemistry] are those who haven’t done it [chemistry] before because it forced them to go back and actually revisit concepts that they maybe haven’t seen since Year 10. And they start early with revising… Whereas some other students tend to rely on their previous knowledge a bit too much”.
| Theme | Description (count) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Student attributes | Self-management (10) | “getting into good study habits early” |
| Study attitude (2) | “have to have some kind of massive determination to self-learn” | |
| Previous education experience | Chemistry background (8) | “if they've done some year 12 or VCE chemistry” |
| University | Completion of assigned preparation work (10) | “doing things like pre-reading” |
| Active learning (7) | “not just about passive acceptance of the information, but actually applying that knowledge” |
| Theme | Description (count) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Transition to university | Self-management (9) | “Students are not expecting to do independent learning, or being independent” |
| Students’ expectations of teachers are different (4) | “Their teacher goes “Yea it's fine you know, hand it in later”” | |
| Class size difference (3) | “Could be a small class of five to 25 students” | |
| Workload expectations (2) | “The requirement for them to do pre-lectorial, pre-workshop questions and all that reading” | |
| University | Active learning (11) | “Flipped-learning style for the workshops can be a bit challenging” |
| Mode and speed of content delivery (7) | “Difference between the material delivery rate” | |
| Socioeconomic factor | Socioeconomic factor of schools (3) | “Some high schools can afford better equipment” |
Based on the educator responses and the student focus group data, our research correlates with previous research that has found that whilst prior knowledge (in this case of chemistry) has been shown to have a positive impact on a student's perception of preparedness and self-efficacy, there is a possibility of it creating a sense of overconfidence and the use of inappropriate inference rules at encoding or retrieval (Wood and Lynch, 2002; Cordova et al., 2014).
The difference in results between the educator cohorts highlighted the disconnect between the perceived preparedness of students by educators in the secondary and tertiary sectors. This disconnect was referred to as the ‘perception gap’ by Sanoff (2006), when he found that up to twice as many high school teachers than college faculty members perceive students to be very or extremely well prepared for tertiary level education. Our findings echo a New Zealand study for transition within mathematics education where 65.9% of secondary school teachers strongly agreed that their students were well prepared for further calculus studies with only 26% of university lecturers agreeing (Hong et al., 2009). Without a doubt, a perception gap exists between secondary and tertiary educators when considering student preparedness for tertiary studies. Various research has shown that students are increasingly underprepared for tertiary education and this has been attributed to secondary school inadequately preparing learners who meet the university eligibility requirements (Nel et al., 2009; Santelises, 2016).
Issues that hinder academic success
In addition to the disparity in perception of preparedness, this research found that a disparity also exists between educator and student perceptions regarding issues that hinder academic success in first year chemistry.278 student responses were collected for the question in the post-questionnaire regarding what aspect(s) of the chemistry unit they struggled with. From these responses, students identified that the lecture topics (or content) covered were the main challenges that they faced in these units (47.8%, n = 133) followed by study techniques (36.7%, n = 102) and laboratory skills and practices (33.8%, n = 94) (Fig. 10). 3.6% (n = 10) of participants did not indicate an aspect of chemistry that they struggled with.
 | ||
| Fig. 10 Student perception of issues that hinder academic success in chemistry (n = 278). | ||
From the 278 student respondents, 22.7% (n = 63) fully agree that the challenging aspects of the chemistry unit negatively impacted their academic success while 42.4% (n = 118) agree somewhat that the challenge of topics negatively affected their studies. In analysing the subsequent free text responses provided by student participants (n = 30), students claim that they struggle specifically with the topics of atomic orbitals (40.0%, n = 12), thermodynamics (40.0%, n = 12), equilibria (33.3%, n = 10) and kinetics (30.0%, n = 9).
The topics that students in this research found challenging are not surprising as these were topics in which students’ struggles are well-known and documented in the literature (Lawrie et al., 2019). For example, atomic orbitals have long been a concept that students struggle with conceptually, mainly owing to the simplified models that they have been exposed to in their early chemistry schooling (Tsaparlis, 1997; Taber, 2002; Tsaparlis and Papaphotis, 2002). Additionally, in accordance to the learning objectives of the units, the topic of atomic orbitals is the first topic of the semester in which a majority of students will have to confront an understanding which is new and different to their previous understanding.
Thermodynamics, equilibria and kinetics are all topics which required a good grasp of mathematical concepts (Yates, 2007). For example, if students are unable to perform simple algebraic questions or rearrange equations to solve for a variable they will likely struggle with these topics (Yates, 2007). The mathematical background of chemistry students is an area of interest that we are further pursuing, and will report on in due course.
Furthermore, these topics were taught over six weeks in the semester. Due to the length of time, this may have given rise to greater student dissatisfaction and/or frustration, as prolonged confusion among students have been shown to have negative effects compared to brief periods of student confusion followed by extended periods of non-confusion (Lee et al., 2011).
From the thematic analysis of the interview question “What do you think are some of the issues that hinders academic success…”, tertiary educators cited that the greatest hindrance to academic success for first-year students was lack of self-management as they did not have the ability to identify areas of weakness. For example, they were not able to organise themselves (work/study) effectively, and in particular, there was a perceived lack of motivation to succeed (Table 5). For example, educators claimed that students “don’t proactively try to get help” and some students struggle to realise that they “actually need to do [the work] themselves”. Tertiary educators also reported that student time management was an important factor, followed by independence and study skills. These factors are linked to the College Readiness model, specifically the academic behaviours facet of the model and are associated with “self-awareness, self-monitoring, and self-control of processes and actions necessary for academic success” (Conley, 2008; Lombardi et al., 2011). In addition, tertiary educators cited that both the chemistry and mathematics background of students, and the university content were factors that may hinder academic success; these factors are also referenced to be an integral part of readiness for tertiary study, specifically in the academic knowledge domain of the College Readiness model (Conley, 2008).
| Theme | Description (count)a | Example | |
|---|---|---|---|
| a Given: tertiary educator, secondary educator. | |||
| Student | Attributes | Motivation (9, 8) | “You can see some of the students who definitely don't want to be there. And they make it clear, they don't want to be there”, |
| Time management (6, 2) | “keeping track of their own tasks” | ||
| Independence and responsibilities (4, 1) | “having to live by themselves; fend for themselves; look out for themselves; self-manage all of their time” | ||
| Study skills (4, 3) | “Some students have not been taught how to study well. And so then they end up wasting hours with doing things like rote learning”, | ||
| Health and wellbeing (2, 2) | “they're so overstressed. [leading to] anxiety and other mental health issues” | ||
| Previous education | Chemistry background (4, 4) | “so that the students who didn't do… particularly did high school chem[istry] but didn't do well in high school chem[istry]” | |
| Mathematics background (4, 3) | “Lack of math skills”, “the ones who are faster do have a better math background” | ||
| Lecturer/teacher | Content (5, 5) | “ideal gas law, then the non-ideal gas law” | |
| Course structure and delivery (4, 2) | “you can't have every group doing the same lab all the time. So there are those limitations” | ||
| Influence of teaching staff (4, 0) | “different tutors and they have different [teaching] styles” | ||
| Speed of content delivery (3, 4) | “amount of content that they cover in a relatively small time period” | ||
| Workload (3, 0) | “Workload of all the units, because it's not just our unit”, | ||
| Challenge of the advanced unit (2, 2) | “make it a bit more challenging for them” | ||
Secondary school educators also discussed that there was a strong correlation between a lack of motivation and hindered academic success (Table 5). Respondents mentioned students had a “lack of resilience” and that they did not cope with the “increased level of responsibility” required of university students. Secondary school educators also thought that the content covered at university poses an issue for students, in addition they may struggle to “learn at the pace needed in university” and with “independent learning” when concepts are not “explained as thoroughly as they are used to in [secondary] school” which could lead to “misconceptions”. These results suggest that secondary school educators are aware of the increased academic rigour and independence that is expected of students at university. In the focus group interviews, student participants mentioned that they were made aware of these differences by their teachers at school, however the students did not “dread it that much until [they] start doing it”.
When considered together, our results show that the three participant groups (students, secondary and tertiary educators) perceive that different issues hinder academic success at university. Students largely perceive the content covered in the unit and the lack of good and effective study skills as problematic; tertiary educators point to the students’ self-management and motivation; while secondary school teachers claim independent learning and content covered at university to be the issues which hinder academic success.
The issues identified by both tertiary and secondary educators could both be considered under the overarching theme of student metacognition, encompassing both cognitive knowledge (awareness of thinking about what, when and how to use one's knowledge) and cognitive regulation (evaluating and monitoring one's thinking to facilitate learning) (Flavell, 1979). In this regard, research has shown that students benefit from explicit cognitive regulation, leading to improved student performance (Lavi et al., 2019; Mutambuki et al., 2020). Studies have also shown that while both secondary and tertiary educators had some idea of what the other does in their own sector and field, better communication between them would be beneficial in order to address perception gaps (Hong et al., 2009). Secondary educator participants suggested that universities could run more “networking sessions” and “outreach programs” to allow students, teachers and university academics the opportunity to work collaboratively. Increasing communication between secondary and tertiary educators was also found to be important by Briggs, Clark and Hall (Briggs et al., 2012) who suggested that a closer coordination between secondary school and university personnel systems (including academics, administrators etc.) was needed to support student transition to university. They also propose that potential students benefit from access to: timely, up-to-date information regarding universities; one-to-one support and guidance with the university entry and the application process; activities to learn about tertiary education and institutions. This allows students to quickly develop their learner identity within their institution of choice and will aid them in their academic and social transition into university.
Limitations
Some limitations of the research should be noted.Our research used a single item to gauge students' perceptions of preparedness. This has established a baseline for research that can look in more depth at the complexity surrounding the concept “perception of preparedness”. In the future, we hope to build on this study to extend our research into the complex factors encompassed by Conley's College Readiness Model (2008).
Secondly, we found that the gender distribution of the pre-questionnaire participants was not representative of the General Chemistry cohort, although the small effect size suggests this may only have a minimal effect. Participants that identified as female that completed the pre-questionnaire was 63.7% (n = 371), whilst the cohort was lower at 57.9% (n = 645) with p < 0.05, φC = 0.055 (Appendix A, Table 9). The male participants in our study reported being more prepared, and this result is consistent with previously reported studies, including those in which males showed greater overestimation of their abilities (Visser et al., 2008; Yau et al., 2013). In contrast, females identified as being less prepared, which in turn infers that the cohort may have the perception that they were more prepared than was presented by our data.
| % (n) | ||
|---|---|---|
| a Students that did not provide a student ID. Therefore they could not be matched with a specific course enrolment. | ||
| Gender | Female | 60.2% (484) |
| Male | 39.7% (319) | |
| Prefer not to disclose | <1% (<5) | |
| Age | 16–19 | 87.7% (705) |
| 20–25 | 11.6% (93) | |
| 26–30 | <1% (6) | |
| Student enrolment | Domestic | 80.0% (643) |
| International | 20.0% (161) | |
| Secondary education | Government | 43.2% (347) |
| Private | 56.2% (452) | |
| NA | <0.6% (5) | |
| Chemistry unit | General Chemistry | 73.6% (592) |
| Advanced Chemistry | 25.7% (207) | |
| Unknowna | <1% (5) | |
| University years attended | 1 year | 73.8% (593) |
| 2+ years | 25.9% (208) | |
| Unknown | <1% (<5) | |
| % (n) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Gender | Female | 66.3% (118) |
| Male | 33.7% (60) | |
| Prefer not to disclose | 0.0% (0) | |
| Age | 16–19 | 90.4% (161) |
| 20–25 | 9.0% (16) | |
| 26–30 | <1% (<5) | |
| Student enrolment | Domestic | 80.3% (143) |
| International | 19.7% (35) | |
| Secondary education | Government | 41.0% (73) |
| Private | 58.4% (104) | |
| NA | <1% (<5) | |
| Chemistry unit | General Chemistry | 67.4% (120) |
| Advanced Chemistry | 32.6% (58) | |
| University years attended | 1 year | 77.0% (137) |
| 2+ years | 23.0% (41) |
| Perception of preparedness | Pre-questionnaire % (n) | Both pre- and post-questionnaires % (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Very unprepared | 4.5% (36) | 4.5% (8) |
| Unprepared | 15.4% (124) | 14.6% (26) |
| Average | 48.1% (387) | 46.1% (82) |
| Prepared | 29.9% (240) | 30.9% (55) |
| Very prepared | 2.1% (17) | 3.9% (7) |
| Gender | Cohort % (n) | General Chemistryb | Advanced Chemistry | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cohort % (n) | Pre-questionnaire % (n) | Cohort % (n) | Pre-questionnaire % (n) | ||
| a n = 5 students that did not provide a student ID. Therefore they could not be matched with a specific course enrolment. b Indicates a significant difference of p < 0.05. | |||||
| Female | 56.2% (845) | 57.8% (645) | 64.0% (379) | 51.7% (200) | 49.3% (102) |
| Male | 43.6% (656) | 42.0% (469) | 35.8% (212) | 48.3% (187) | 50.7% (105) |
| Prefer not to disclose | <1% (<5) | <1% (<5) | <1% (<5) | 0.0% (0) | 0.0% (0) |
In addition, there was the potential issue of self-selection by questionnaire participants. The research aims to combat this by comparing the average grades of those who completed both questionnaires to the pre-questionnaire participant average and the whole-cohort average, showing that our participant samples (pre- and post-questionnaire) are representative of the whole cohort (Appendix A, Table 10). However, based on the chi-squared tests shown in Appendix A (Table 11), the students who participated in the post-questionnaire are students who on average achieved higher final grades than the entire cohort, which may confound the results.
| Numerical grade range | Cohort % (n) | Pre-questionnaire % (n) | Post-questionnaire % (n) | Both pre- and post-questionnaires % (n) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a Students that discontinued the unit or did not provide a student ID. Therefore they could not be matched with their numerical grade. b Students that did not provide a student ID. Therefore they could not be matched with their numerical grade. | ||||
| 0–49 | 7.6% (115) | 5.1% (41) | <1% (<5) | 1.1% (<5) |
| 50–59 | 9.4% (143) | 7.6% (61) | 4.7% (13) | 4.5% (8) |
| 60–69 | 17.8% (270) | 15.8% (127) | 15.2% (42) | 16.9% (30) |
| 70–79 | 26.7% (406) | 25.0% (201) | 27.1% (75) | 29.2% (52) |
| 80+ | 38.3% (582) | 40.0% (322) | 44.4% (123) | 48.3% (86) |
| N/A | 0% (0) | 6.5% (52)a | 8.0% (22)b | 0% (0) |
| Comparison | Chi-squared value (χ2) | Degrees of freedom (df) | p value | Effect size (φC) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cohort (n = 1516) vs. pre-questionnaire (n = 752) | 7.020 | 4 | 0.135 | 0.056 |
| Cohort (n = 1516) vs. post-questionnaire (n = 255) | 26.034 | 4 | <0.001 | 0.121 |
| Cohort (n = 1516) vs. pre- and post-questionnaire (n = 178) | 18.399 | 4 | 0.001 | 0.104 |
| Pre-questionnaire only (n = 574) vs. pre- and post-questionnaire (n = 178) | 13.959 | 4 | 0.007 | 0.136 |
| Student | Pre-preparedness | Post-preparedness | Numerical grade range | Prior chemistry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NA | Average | >80% | Yes |
| 2 | Prepared | Prepared | >80% | Yes |
| 3 | NA | Prepared | >80% | Yes |
| 4 | Average | Unprepared | 70–79% | Yes |
| 5 | Very unprepared | NA | 70–79% | No |
| Student | Pre-preparedness | Post-preparedness | Numerical grade range | Prior chemistry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prepared | Prepared | >80% | Yes |
| 2 | Very prepared | Very prepared | >80% | Yes |
| 3 | Not prepared | Unprepared | >80% | Yes |
| 4 | Not prepared | Average | >80% | Yes |
| Group 1 | Group 2 | n 1 | n 2 | Statistic | p value | Adjusted p value (Bonferroni) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very unprepared | Unprepared | 33 | 110 | 0.969 | 0.332 | 1.000 |
| Very unprepared | Average | 33 | 363 | 3.954 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
| Very unprepared | Prepared | 33 | 231 | 6.232 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
| Very unprepared | Very prepared | 33 | 15 | 5.031 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
| Unprepared | Average | 110 | 363 | 4.837 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
| Unprepared | Prepared | 110 | 231 | 8.350 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
| Unprepared | Very prepared | 110 | 15 | 4.993 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
| Average | Prepared | 363 | 231 | 5.238 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
| Average | Very prepared | 363 | 15 | 3.218 | <0.05 | <0.05 |
| Prepared | Very prepared | 231 | 15 | 1.527 | 0.126 | 1.000 |
| Question | Number of raters | Krippendorff's alpha | Percentage agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| a One rater was excluded due to incomplete coding. | |||
| Q1: What do you think student preparedness for CHM1011/51 looks like? | 3 | 0.758 | 83.9% |
| Q2: How prepared do you think students are for the teaching and learning styles of CHM1011/51? | 3 | 0.707 | 79.6% |
| Q3: What do you think are some of the issues that hinder academic success in CHM1011/1051? | 2a | 0.894 | 95.9% |
| Average | 0.786 | 86.5% | |
| Question | Number of raters | Krippendorff's alpha | Percentage agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q6: Please elaborate on your choice of student preparedness. | 2 | 0.930 | 98.6% |
| Q7: What are some issues that you think students may face when pursuing chemistry studies at a university level? | 2 | 0.942 | 98.6% |
| Average | 0.936 | 98.6% |
| Theme | Descriptor | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Student | Self-management at university | The ability to identify areas of weakness and organise themselves |
| Student feelings | Mental state of students upon entry into university. Feeling of satisfaction or feeling overwhelmed | |
| Previous education experience | Chemistry background | Presence of previous senior secondary chemistry (or equivalent) background |
| Secondary school experience | What experience they had learning in school | |
| Mathematics background | Presence of VCE mathematics (or equivalent) background | |
| University | Pre-learning | Completion and engagement with pre-lab/workshop work and learning |
| Active learning | Student engagement with the School of Chemistry's approach to learning whereby students need to have engaged with the material before class or risk falling behind | |
| Exam grades | Final grade that student obtained |
Finally, different instruments were used to collect the tertiary and secondary educator perceptions of student preparedness. The researchers went to lengths to ensure that tightly aligned and structured instruments were used and that the results presented in a simple, concrete, and highly contextualised manner. We also ensured that the two types of data were collected with a minimal time gap; and the estimated agreement between methods using inter-rater reliability were completed as recommended by Harris and Brown (2010).
Conclusions, implications for practice and future research
The perceptions of student preparedness for first year chemistry studies were obtained from three stakeholder groups to gain a better understanding on the perception of student readiness prior to, and after completing first year introductory chemistry. Our research identified a number of difficulties that arise during the transition from secondary school to university.Research question: What are students’ perceptions of their readiness for coursework challenges, practical requirements and study skills upon commencing university, and how do these shift over the course of their first semester of study?
Our research revealed a correlation between students’ initial perception of preparedness and their performance, where the more prepared a student initially perceives themselves to be for first year chemistry, the better they perform academically.
As the semester progressed, a positive shift in student perception of preparedness was observed. Interestingly, a more detailed look at the results revealed a subset of students who undergo a decrease in perception of preparedness as the semester progresses.
Our research also found that at the start of the semester there is a statistically significant difference in perception of preparedness between students who identify as female or male, where females reported feeling less prepared for first year chemistry. At the end of the semester, this difference in perceived preparedness was not observed, and a positive shift in reported preparedness was observed among female participants while there was no change in preparedness among male participants.
We interpret the shift in perceptions, whether it be an increase or decrease, as highlighting a need to improve how the expectations and rigours of transitioning to university chemistry are signposted to students as they are commencing tertiary studies. If students are equipped with this knowledge they can have more confidence in what their potential needs are for a successful transition to university.
Specifically, we propose the implications of this research informs how first year chemistry students might be better supported in their transition to university through the provision of:
• A realistic overview of what university studies entail at the start of the semester or even earlier, including explicit expectations and what is required of them (e.g., the importance of independent and self-directed learning, types and formats of assessment, etc.);
• Explicit metacognitive regulation instruction for students designed to improve student's learning strategies, including increasing their awareness of what strategies exist, and when and how they are most effectively used;
• Guides to help students identify factors that may contribute to making them feel underprepared, and methods for how these might be addressed;
• Additional academic and metacognitive support for the subset of the student cohort that indicated a decrease in their perception of preparedness over the first semester.
Research question: How do students’ perceptions of preparedness align with those of their secondary and tertiary educators?
In comparing the educators’ perception of student preparedness, a large mismatch was found to exist between the two educator cohorts, with secondary educators believing students were well-prepared for university, whilst tertiary educators did not. The difference between the two educator groups was attributed to the lack of understanding of requirements and expectations from both parties.
Our results found that students, secondary and tertiary educators all perceive that different issues hinder academic success at university. Students largely perceive the content and their lack of effective study skills to be the main difficulties; tertiary educators cite students’ self-management and motivation; while secondary educators claim independent learning and content to be the issues which hinder academic success.
Accordingly, we propose more open dialogue between secondary and tertiary educators to bridge these divides in perceptions which would benefit the preparation of students for tertiary studies. Partnerships between secondary schools and tertiary institutions could be established to further support and encourage students intending to pursue studies in chemistry from a secondary school level in the form of short courses, immersive study programs or even day trips to the universities to help all stakeholders to be more cognisant of the differences in secondary and tertiary learning environments and assist student transition.
Further research into student perception of preparedness were identified to be:
• Research into the most appropriate support for students identifying as female during their initial transition to university.
• Research into why students completing Advanced Chemistry have a more positive perception of their preparedness compared with students completing General Chemistry. Can this be attributed to better content knowledge or do these students and/or have affective skills that contribute to their more positive perceptions?
• Research into how factors such as mathematics background, efficacy, and other aspects influence both perception of preparedness and actual preparedness. How are these developed in both secondary and tertiary study?
• Extending our research to explore how student's perceptions of preparedness correlate with the four domains of Conley's College Readiness Model.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts to declare.Appendix A
Chi-squared analysis found that there was no statistically significant difference between the perception of preparedness of participants who completed the pre-questionnaire and those that completed both the pre- and post-questionnaires (χ2 = 2.219, df = 4, p = 0.700, φC = 0.048). It can therefore be inferred that the participants who completed both questionnaires are representative of all participants, and therefore can be concluded to be representative of the cohort with regard to perception of preparedness.Table 11 details the analysis conducted to compare the numerical grade ranges of different participant groups with the numerical grade ranges of the entire first year chemistry cohort from 2019. It can be seen that there is no statistically significant difference in the distribution of numerical grade ranges between the participant group that completed the pre-questionnaire compared to the entire first year chemistry cohort. This suggests that conclusions drawn from the quantitative analysis conducted in comparing participants' prospective perception of preparedness and their numerical grade range can be generalised to the entire first year chemistry cohort.
There were significant differences in the distribution of numerical grade ranges between: participants that completed the post-questionnaire compared to the entire first year chemistry cohort; participants that completed both the pre- and post-questionnaires compared to the entire first year chemistry cohort; and participants who completed the pre-questionnaire (only) compared to participants who completed both the pre- and post-questionnaires. Due to these results, comparisons or generalisations of perception of preparedness and numerical grade range between these groups were not made.
Appendix B
Student questionnairesProspective (Pre-questionnaire)
1. Student ID
2. Which age category do you fall into?
3. With which gender do you most identify?
4. Are you a domestic or international student?
If you are an international student, you are encouraged to provide your country of origin.
5. What type of school/college did you attend prior to attending university?
6. Did you undertake a Chemistry unit in high school/pre-university?
7. What high school/pre-university Chemistry program did you undertake?
Eg. VCE 3/4, Cambridge A-Levels, Queensland HSC etc.
8. Where did you complete this program?
9. What grade did you obtain in the high school/pre-university Chemistry program described above?
Provide your final study score. For example, VCE = 45; A-Levels = A* etc.
10. How well prepared do you think you are for First Year Chemistry at Monash University?
Retrospective (Post-questionnaire)
1. Student ID
2. What unit are you currently enrolled in?
3. In hindsight, how prepared were you for First Year Chemistry?
4. What aspect(s) of CHM1011/51 did you struggle most with?
5. Did the struggle(s) you described above negatively impact your ability to succeed in CHM1011/1051?
6. Why do you think the aspect(s) described impacted your success at CHM1011/51?
7. What could your secondary school/pre-university program have offered to assist your academic progression to First Year Chemistry?
8. What could the School of Chemistry have offered in February 2019 to assist your academic progression to First Year Chemistry?
9. What could the School of Chemistry have offered in February 2019 to assist your general adjustment into university?
10. Which of the following did you find most helpful to your learning?
11. Why did you find the above the most helpful?
12. How often did you engage with those sessions throughout the semester?
13. Would you be willing to be contacted for a focus group discussion so that we can hear more about your thoughts on this topic? If yes, please leave your email below.
14. If you would like to be in the running for 1 of 5 Monash lunch vouchers, leave your student email address below
Appendix C
Secondary educator questionnaire1. Which of the following best describes the school you are in?
2. Are you teaching in a final year secondary school chemistry syllabus?
3. For how many years have you taught the final year chemistry syllabus?
4. How many students do you have per final year chemistry class this year?
5. How prepared do you think students are for chemistry studies at university upon completion of their final year chemistry studies?
6. Please elaborate on your choice of student preparedness.
7. What are some issues that you think students may face when pursuing chemistry studies at a university level?
8. What are some things that secondary schools can offer to assist student academic progression into university chemistry studies?
9. What are some things that universities can offer to assist student academic progression into university chemistry studies?
10. Would you be willing to be contacted for a focus group discussion so that we can hear more about your thoughts on this topic? If yes, please leave your name and best mode of contact below.
Appendix D
Student Focus group questions1. Now having gotten your grades, do you think your [change in] perception of preparedness was accurate? Why or why not?
2. These are some of the things that your educators list as potential cause for concern for your current learning. Do you agree? Why or why not?
a. Work-study-life balance
b. Mathematics background
c. High school experience
d. Self-confidence
e. Pace of content delivery
f. Responsibility for own learning
3. What do you think helped you best in your academic transition into university and why do you think this is so?
4. What do you think helped you best in your general transition into university and why do you think this is so?
5. Who's responsibility do you think it is to better prepare you for university (high school, university, self) and what aspects are each of these responsible for?
6. Based on your response to the question “What could the School of Chemistry offered in February 2019 to assist you transition to First Year Chemistry?”, could you elaborate on the kind of assistance that you would like to see being provided for transitioning students.
7. What topic/practice do you think you found to be most challenging in CHM1011/51? Why?
8. Which part of the course do you think more emphasis should be placed on to enhance the learning experience of students?
Appendix E
Tertiary educator interview questions1. What do you think student preparedness for CHM1011/51 looks like?
2. How prepared do you think students are for the teaching and learning styles of CHM1011/51?
3. What do you think are some of the issues that hinders academic success in CHM1011/51?
4. Are you aware of some of the things that the SoC does to help combat these issues? If yes, what are they?
5. What topic/practice do you think you students find challenging in CHM1011/51? Why?
6. Which section of the course is most beneficial to student learning and why do you think that is so?
Appendix F
When the initial perception of preparedness was compared to the final numerical grade of the participants, we found that the perception was reflective of student achievement as shown in Fig. 11. Kruskal–Wallis test found that there were significant differences (χ2 = 101.78, df = 4, p < 0.001) between student's initial perception of preparedness and final numerical unit grade range with a moderate effect size (H = 0.122), indicating that at least one level of perception of preparedness had a statistically significant median numerical grade range compared to another level of preparedness. | ||
| Fig. 11 Student initial perception of preparedness compared to the final numerical grades (n = 752). | ||
Post hoc analysis using Dunn's Test of Multiple Comparisons found that there were no significant differences in the median numerical grade between students who felt Very Unprepared and Unprepared, as well as students who felt Prepared and Very Prepared. This implies that students who feel unprepared, regardless of how unprepared they feel, performed similarly and at a lower level compared to students who reported feeling average or prepared. Furthermore, students who reported feeling prepared or very prepared, performed at a similar level to each other and at a higher level compared to students who reported feeling average or unprepared. There were significant differences between all other pairwise comparisons of students as outlined in Table 14, indicating that as students’ initial perception of preparedness increases, their final unit grade increases also. For example, students who reported feeling very prepared for first year chemistry had a statistically significant higher median end of semester grade compared to students who reported feeling averagely prepared.
Appendix G
Appendix H
A shift in perception of preparedness
A detailed analysis of the shift in perception of student preparedness between prospective (pre-questionnaire) and retrospective (post-questionnaire) is shown in Fig. 12. | ||
| Fig. 12 Bubble plot of the shift in perception of student preparedness between prospective (pre-questionnaire) and retrospective (post-questionnaire) (n = 178). | ||
Students’ perception of preparedness in hindsight
From the 277 participants of the post-questionnaire, the perception of student preparedness for academic and skill-based success revealed a skewed distribution across all five levels of preparedness as seen in Fig. 13. This indicates that students’ perception of preparedness in hindsight is mostly positive, suggesting that at the end of the semester students considered themselves prepared for studying chemistry. | ||
| Fig. 13 Retrospective (post-questionnaire) perception of student preparedness for academic and skill-based success (n = 277). | ||
Perception of preparedness by demographics
For the participants who had completed the post-questionnaire, there was a statistically significant difference with a large effect size (p < 0.001, φC = 0.641) in retrospective perception of preparedness between students who reported that they had or had not studied chemistry prior to studying tertiary level chemistry. This result was corroborated by the student's responses from focus groups. For example, one student that had previously studied chemistry said “I felt pretty prepared, like, the whole time. And then, like the results, I got what I was kind of expecting to get”, whilst another student that had not studied chemistry said “I don't think I was prepared at all.” From the student questionnaire, one student that had previously studied chemistry said “I did chemistry in [secondary school] so many of the topics and laboratory skills were familiar…”, whilst another student that had not studied chemistry said “Having never studied chemistry prior… I found myself having to do more basic learning before I could do the weekly work.”Students’ age, gender, student type (i.e. domestic or international), and the type of secondary school (public or private) were also tested and no statistically significant differences in post-questionnaire perception of preparedness were found.
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