Supporting first-year students to adjust to their new academic environment is a crucial task in higher education. Investigating students' perceptions of fit between secondary and higher education could give higher education institutions valuable information for student feedback and support, when captured in a reliable and valid way. This study…

Universities of applied sciences in Europe face the challenge of preparing students in health and social care for working with older people and contributing to the innovations needed in light of the ageing of society, along with changes in the health and social care systems in many countries. Dealing with the special needs of older people and the…

This study examines whether the influence of track position on study involvement is gendered and whether gender differences in study involvement according to track position are associated with school misconduct and rather poor future perspectives. Three-level analyses (HLM 6) of data gathered in 2004-2005 from 11,872 third- and fifth-grade…

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience various functioning and participation problems in higher education, which may cause difficulties such as drop out or low grade point averages. However, it remains unclear how often and during which teaching and evaluation methods the functioning and participation problems occur and which…

In present-day societies, the extent to which young people still participate in civic life is an important matter of concern. The claim of a generational "decline" in civic engagement has been contested, and interchanged with the notion of a "replacement" of traditional engagement by new types of participation, and the…

Blended learning as an instructional approach is getting more attention in the educational landscape and has been researched thoroughly. Yet, this study reports the results of an innovation project aiming to gain insight into three different scenarios of applying web-based lectures: as preparation for face-to-face practical exercises, as a…

Background: Interest in the role of metacognition has been steadily rising in most forms of education. This study focuses on the construction of a questionnaire for measuring metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive regulation and metacognitive responsiveness among students in higher education and the subsequent process of testing to determine its…

The motivation to teach is a powerful, yet neglected, force in teaching at institutes of higher education. A better understanding of academics' motivations for teaching is necessary. The aim of this mixed-method study was to identify groups with distinctively different motivations for teaching. Six clusters were identified: expertise, duty,…

This paper presents the results of an exploratory cross-classified multilevel analysis on students' evaluation of teaching (SET) in a medium-sized Flemish university. The revalidation of the evaluation questionnaire and the existence of a Global factor, the "teacher professionalism" factor, which accounts for 52% of the variance in 7…

The relationships between achievement at university and self-reported characteristics of students and their social environment were explored. College freshmen were interviewed twice, first for their social and study experiences, and second regarding preparation for final examinations. (Author/MLW)

Examines how male and female students perceive their gender identity in 25 mixed and 43 single-sex secondary schools in Belgium. Finds that girls in coeducational schools more than girls in single-sex schools identified with both feminine and masculine traits, while their classroom behavior was more inhibited. (CMK)

Examined whether the Teacher Concerns Questionnaire-Physical Education (TCQ-PE) was representative of concerns of British and Belgian preservice and inservice physical educators. Preservice and inservice secondary-level physical educators completed the TCQ-PE before and after student teaching. Neither Belgian nor British data predicted the TCQ-PE…

An interest questionnaire with 72 university course descriptions based on a facet design was used to determine whether computer anxiety or computer disinterest was related to interest in or willingness to take selected courses of 200 Belgian and German students. Analysis of variance supports conclusions from the multidimensional scalings. (SLD)