Research skills in upper secondary education and in first year of university

ABSTRACT

The acquisition of research skills is an important goal of secondary education. Still, insights on what learner characteristics stimulate and hamper research skills are lacking. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between students’ research skills (assessed by means of the Leuven Research Skills Test (LRST) and students’ gender, educational track, grade, autonomous and controlled motivation. The LRST was administered to 405 11^th and 12^th grade students, and to 156 first-year university students in Flanders. Multiple regression analyses reveal a significant relationship of grade and track with students’ research skills in upper secondary education. Also in higher education, a significant relationship was found between students’ former educational track and their research skills. In both groups, no significant differences were found in research skills based on gender and on students’ controlled and autonomous motivation. This study contributes to future research by stressing the importance of curricular characteristics for fostering students' research skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Research skills
• secondary education
• learner characteristics
• gender
• controlled motivation
• autonomous motivation
• tracks
• grade

Acknowledgments

This study was carried out within imec’s Smart Education research programme, with support from the Flemish government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In Flanders, four different types of education are offered from the second stage of secondary education onwards (EACEA 2018) (general secondary education, technical secondary education, secondary education in the arts and vocational secondary education).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louise Maddens

Louise Maddens is currently pursuing her PhD in Instructional Psychology and Technology at KU Leuven. Her research interests include instructional design, complex learning and research skills education.

Fien Depaepe

Fien Depaepe is associate professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Leuven. Her research focuses on the instructional design of technology-enhanced learning environments and the impact of learner characteristics on the actual use and learning outcomes of these learning environments.

Rianne Janssen

Rianne Janssen is professor in educational measurement at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the KU Leuven (Belgium). Her current research interests are large-scale assessments and IRT-modeling.

Annelies Raes

Annelies Raes is postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Instructional Psychology and Technology (CIP&T) and is also affiliated with ITEC, imec research group at KU Leuven, as co-Principal Investigator within imec’s Smart Education Program. Her main fields of interests are innovative learnings models as active learning and problem-based collaborative learning and how this can be supported by emergent technologies.

Jan Elen

Jan Elen is full professor at the Centre of Instructional Psychology and Technology of the KU Leuven. He does research in the domain of instructional design and focuses on the design of learning environments for complex learning. He teaches graduate courses on instructional design and the didactics of behavioral sciences.