Abstracts - Earli

The role of social integration and peer relationships in the persistence of first-year students atuniversity: analysis of determinants and effects.Julia Schmitz, Universite catholique de Louvain, BelgiumMariane Frenay, Universite catholique de Louvain, BelgiumSandrine Neuville, Universite catholique de Louvain, BelgiumGentiane Boudrenghien, Universite catholique de Louvain, BelgiumIn Belgium, drop-out and failure risks are particularly high for the first-year university students.The transition from secondary school to university is a challenging period implying importantchanges in students’ social life (i.e. distance to pre-college friends and family). Tinto’s IntegrationModel (1997) emphasizes the role of social integration in students’ persistence process. This studyaims on one hand, to analyze the impact of social integration and peer relationships (i.e. peeraffiliation, peer support) on first-year students persistence, and on the other hand, the understandto role of teacher practices (i.e. teacher support, opportunities for peer collaboration and lowcompetition behaviour) as predictors of social relations and persistence. A more specific purpose isto examine the additive impact of emotional and academic factors in the persistence process. 405first-year students from two Belgian universities were surveyed twice (September-November2006). First results indicate that social integration and peer relationships play a central role in thefirst-year students’ persistence intention, beyond individual characteristics and teacher practices.Even if academic engagement (i.e. academic efforts and course attendance) and social lonelinesspredict students’ persistence intention, social integration and peer relationships remain strong anddirectly related predictors of the persistence intention. Moreover, teacher practices have positiveand direct impact on both social relations and students’ persistence intention. Some theoretical andpractical implications will be assigned.J 1730 August 2007 17:00 - 18:20Room: 0.83 EötvösPaper SessionProblem solvingChair:Lucia Mason, University of Padova, ItalyInfluence of mathematical and situational rewording on word problem solvingSantiago Vicente, University of Salamanca, SpainJose Orrantia, University of Salamanca, SpainLieven Verschaffel, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BelgiumArithmetical word problem solving has a double nature: mathematical and textual. Because of thisdouble nature there are several cognitive processes underlying the word problem solving processthat are related to the comprehension of the word problem as a text and as a mathematical structureand that have some influence on children’s achievement on this task. Based, first, oncomputational models, coming from the domain of word problem solving but also from textcomprehension, which simulate the cognitive performance of children when solving wordproblems, second, on studies that have used the rewording methodology for empirically testingthese computational models, and finally, on theoretical models and empirical studies that have– 566 –