Currently reading Ajjawi (2019) on “Persisting students’ explanations of and emotional responses to academic failure.”

What makes some students persist until they get a degree, despite experiences of failure, while others drop out? Typically, student persistence is explained with feelings of self-efficacy, experiencing a sense of belonging, and valuing the curriculum. Failure and dropout are often explained with personal (e.g., gender, grades at entry exam, preparedness, study habits), institutional (e.g., size of cohort, specifics of the school), or situational (e.g., employment pressure) factors. But the rhetoric around failure often makes it seem like a deficit in the student themselves, either their traits or their engagement with school in the way they were meant to engage. But what are the emotional experiences of students that fail but still persist? This is investigated by Ajjawi et al. (2019).

First, what are students’ explanation for why they fail? Very common is workload stress, and students who failed once are likely to fail again (which makes sense, given that they have to catch up on something while continuing their studies, plus have the experience of failure influencing how they approach the next situation). Interestingly, a lack of social belonging wasn’t as big an issue as is often assumed (possibly because many of the students in this study had established social lives outside of university already and thus didn’t need university to provide them with a social life), but instead students mentioned a lack of connection with, and support from, teaching staff. Students also mention difficulty in managing time and prioritising their studies over other responsibilities, like being a care-giver or provider. But usually there are several factors contributing to failure.

Students also describe a high emotional toll of failing, and mental health problems related to it. It is not investigated if students who failed and persisted had other coping strategies than those who failed and dropped out, even though that would be super interesting also to know how to support all students in the face of failure. But in any case, it is important to reframe failure away from a student deficit to a more complex problem, and to make sure that any support systems are accessible to everybody and that there isn’t a threshold to accessing them.

Ajjawi et al. (2019) conclude that “Viewing persistence as an interaction between individuals and their sociocultural milieu opens up different avenues for research and considerations for support. Students who fail often do persist and complete their studies and much could be learned from their experiences and the strategies they adopt for supporting other students to do the same. Helping students to recover well from academic failure, and turning failure into a learning opportunity, seems a fundamental responsibility of higher education institutions.”

Ajjawi, R., Dracup, M., Zacharias, N., Bennett, S., & Boud, D. (2019). Persisting students’ explanations of and emotional responses to academic failure. Higher Education Research & Development, 39(2), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1664999

And some wave watching pics from a morning dip… Waves are also cool to look at from below!

But I also like the almost oily look of the water surface on a low-wind morning

And even nicer when you can actually look into the water… It’s fascinating how here it looks so clear and transparent, but then as soon as the camera is underwater everything is just green…