Experiences of causality of attrition: a perspective from former physics undergraduate students
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: In the natural sciences, particularly in physics, attrition phenomena have a strong international similarity: it is not unusual to find that 40-50% of the students terminate their studies prematurely. Drawing on a discourse analysis perspective developed by James Gee new insights into why students decide to terminate their undergraduate physics study were reached. The data was obtained from interviewing a purposeful sample of seven former Swedish physics students, probing into the experience of learning as rooted in social-identity formation. The 'introspective' discourse model presented here illustrates how decisions to terminate studying can be reflectively considered, across a broad range of student profiles, through the use of a logic of causality that is much less about the experience of the education environment, and much more about personal agency, than previously anticipated or described in the literature. The discourse models are discussed in terms of implications for the informing of evaluation praxis.
Institution: University of Copenhagen
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2183421269