The black box revelation of instructional practices: a mixed study of the transition to HE

ABSTRACT

Instructional practices (IP) could be an important lever for student’s adjustment to the first year at the university. Yet, the role of teaching practices is overlooked in the literature about students’ transition to Higher Education (HE). To overcome this limitation, the current study proposes to analyse the link between teaching practices and student achievement controlling for individual variables. More precisely, multi-level analyses were carried out on 932 students scattered on 18 different courses from five universities. Instructional practices were measured through teachers’ self-reported questionnaires. The main results highlighted the significant link between instructional support or consideration for students’ perspectives and student academic achievement. Moreover, eight focus groups were carried out with students to understand more deeply the role of the teacher in their adjustment to HE. Five major themes emerged from the data: Non-verbal attitudes, Teacher’s flexibility and structure, interactive and entertaining lessons and clear and consistent expectations. These results provided several guidelines to improve IP to ease students’ transition process to HE.

KEYWORDS:

• First year experience
• learning environment
• academic success
• engagement
• teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). This article has been published under the Journal's transparent peer review policy. Anonymised peer review reports of the submitted manuscript can be accessed under supplemental material online at https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2024.2327315

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Justine Jacquemart

Justine Jacquemart is a PhD candidate in educational psychology at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium). She obtained a master degree in educational sciences from UCLouvain in 2021. She is currently working under the supervision of Pr. Benoît Galand and Mikaël De Clercq. Her research interests focus on student achievement process in higher education and the impact of teaching practices on academic achievement. [email protected]

Mikaël De Clercq

Mikaël De Clercq has a PhD in educational psychology. He is an expert of research at the Académie de Recherche et d’Enseignement Supérieur (ARES) and Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences from the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His research interests mainly focus on the transition to higher education from a student and a teacher perspective. He is also working on motivation, engagement and well-being in learning. [email protected]

Benoît Galand

Benoît Galand has a PhD in psychology and is a Professor at the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He is a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Socialization, Education and Training (GIRSEF) and an associated member of the School Environment Research Group (GRES, University of Montreal, Canada). His research interests include motivation and engagement in learning, violence and bullying at school, and the relationships between teaching practices and student achievement. [email protected]