Higher education students’ paths with unsuccessful trajectories

Abstract

This study analyzes unsuccessful trajectories, identifies reasons, strategies and expectations perceived by 38 students (19 Portuguese and 19 Brazilians), who elaborated a self-training narrative and answered two scales to evaluate self-regulation strategies according to their effectiveness and use. Students showed similar response patterns and reflected beliefs and strategies that are poorly adaptive to learning. Demotivation, anxiety, lack of persistence and the characteristics of the university and family contexts were perceived as the main reasons for failure. Students reported that the most used strategy was regulation based on the result-avoidance goals and the most effective was attention management. They also revealed a positive view of the course’s value for the future, but identified a great discrepancy between the content taught and the requirements of the professional world