Fernando Ribeiro Gonçalves, Sandra Valadas, Carla Vilhena & Luís FaíscaPermanent Observatory for Teaching and Learning Quality (OPQE)University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal

IntroductionIntroduction

What meanings students attribute to academic failure in a higher education context? Is this meanings dependent on students´ academic experience? This poster displays the data we have collected among University of Algarve students. No theories, no hypothesis or discussion will be presented! We are just

looking for a «grounded theory» emerging from your comments to data.

The meanings of academic failure in higher educationThe meanings of academic failure in higher education

MethodMethod

Participants

During the last registration period at the University of Algarve, we have

collected the beliefs of more than 6000 graduation students about

academic achievement and motivation. A self-filling questionnaire was

used to gather data.

Figure 2 – Multidimensional scaling for co-occurence of meaning attribution to academic failure. The mst is represented.

Meaning 01 – Reason for not keeping on studying

Meaning 02 – Reason for familiar worries

Meaning 03 – Source of financial problems

Meaning 04 – Reason for the weakness of self confidence

Meaning 05 – Reason for academic desertion

Meaning 06 – Just a question of bad luck

Meaning 07 – Reason for lack of academic motivation

Variables measured

In order to understand what students think about the occurrence of an

academic failure, we asked them to attribute one or more possible

meanings to that failure. A closed question was used and the

categories available for response were:

ResultsResultsFigure 1 –Percentage of students choosing possible different meanings for

academic failure (percentage + upper confidence limit 95%)

DiscussionDiscussion

We invite you to present some comments to our results, using the form attached to this poster. If you are interested in this subject, please provide us with your coordinates. We are looking for contacts for joint research in higher education field.

A multidimensional scaling representation is used to illustrate the co-occurrence of the meanings chosen by each student.

A minimum spanning tree (mst) connecting meanings shows a radial structure that emerges from Meaning 4 (academic failure as reason for the weakness of self-confidence).

Figure 3 – Responses profiles for each academic year (percentage + upper confidence limit 95%)

In order to illustrate the effect of student experience in the process of

meaning attribution to academic failure, Figure 3 shows the comparison

among academic years for each type of meaning considered.

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Meaning 1 Meaning 2 Meaning 3 Meaning 4 Meaning 5 Meaning 6 Meaning 7

%

Students may choose more than one category.

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Meaning 4

Meaning 2

Meaning 5Meaning 6

Meaning 7

Meaning 3

Meaning 1

Stress = 0.005

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1st Year 2nd Year 3rd Year 4th Year 5th Year

Meaning 1 Meaning 3 Meaning 5 Meaning 7

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1st Year 2nd Year 3rd Year 4th Year 5th Year

Meaning 2 Meaning 4 Meaning 6