Fernando Ribeiro Gonçalves, Sandra Valadas, Carla Vilhena & Luís Faísca

1. 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 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. 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: 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 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. Figure 3 – Responses profiles for each academic year (percentage + upper confidence limit 95%) Students may choose more than one category. Results Figure 1 – Percentage of students choosing possible different meanings for academic failure (percentage + upper confidence limit 95%) 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). 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.