The meanings of academic failure in higher education

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

Introduction
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.

Method Figure 2 – Multidimensional scaling for co-occurence of meaning

attribution to academic failure. The mst is represented.
Participants 2
Stress = 0.005
During the last registration period at the University of Algarve, we have collected Meaning 1

the beliefs of more than 6000 graduation students about academic achievement
and motivation. A self-filling questionnaire was used to gather data. 1
Meaning 3

Dimension 2
Variables measured
Meaning 2
In order to understand what students think about the occurrence of an academic 0

failure, we asked them to attribute one or more possible meanings to that failure. Meaning 6 Meaning 5
Meaning 4
A closed question was used and the categories available for response were: Meaning 7
-1
Meaning 01 – Reason for not keeping on studying -2 -1 0 1 2
Meaning 02 – Reason for familiar worries Dimension 1
Meaning 03 – Source of financial problems In order to illustrate the effect of student experience in the process of meaning
Meaning 04 – Reason for the weakness of self confidence attribution to academic failure, Figure 3 shows the comparison among academic
Meaning 05 – Reason for academic desertion years for each type of meaning considered.
Meaning 06 – Just a question of bad luck
Figure 3 – Responses profiles for each academic year (percentage + upper
Meaning 07 – Reason for lack of academic motivation confidence limit 95%)

Students may choose more than one category. 60

55
Results 50

Figure 1 – Percentage of students choosing possible different meanings for 45

%
academic failure (percentage + upper confidence limit 95%) 40
60
35
50 30

40
25
20
30 1st Year 2nd Year 3rd Year 4th Year 5th Year

20
Meaning 2 Meaning 4 Meaning 6
10
30
0
Meaning 1 Meaning 2 Meaning 3 Meaning 4 Meaning 5 Meaning 6 Meaning 7 25

20

A multidimensional scaling representation is used to illustrate the 15

co-occurrence of the meanings chosen by each student. 10

A minimum spanning tree (mst) connecting meanings shows a 5

radial structure that emerges from Meaning 4 (academic failure as
0
reason for the weakness of self-confidence). 1st Year 2nd Year 3rd Year 4th Year 5th Year

Meaning 1 Meaning 3 Meaning 5 Meaning 7

Discussion
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.

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