Does our theory-based learning context, which is supportive of autonomy, academic competence, and relatedness through an honours community, actually correspond with the preferences of our honours students?
Most of the research on honours programmes has taken place in the U.
We designed an exploratory study to investigate differences that might exist between honours and non-honours.
Since the pilot study, modified versions of the original questionnaire were administered to honours and non-honours students from different fields and universities on several occasions (see Table 1).
we can divide honours in the Netherlands into roughly three organizational categories: disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary honours programmes.
From the interdisciplinary honours programme at the University of Amsterdam, the whole population filled in a questionnaire (45 out of 48 participants).
Additionally, honours students were asked to rank the three most important reasons (from a list) that they had decided to take part in the honours programme.
We compared all honours students versus all non-honours students and--with regard to the pilot--did the statistics for the two programmes separately (in other words, interdisciplinary honours versus non-honours students of the University of Amsterdam and disciplinary honours versus non-honours students in Human Geography and Planning at the University of Utrecht).
RESULTS OF THE PILOT STUDY: HONOURS STUDENTS VERSUS NON-HONOURS STUDENTS
The honours students, being asked to rate qualities of faculty and courses on a scale of 1 (very important) to 5 (totally unimportant), answered as follows: most important is that the teachers be inspiring (1.
