Abordagens ao estudo, rendimento académico e atribuições causais do desempenho em estudantes do ensino superior

Abstract

In order to contribute to the study of academic achievement in higher education, and adopting Entwistle’s (1997) theoretical framework as well as that of McAuley, Duncan and Russell (1992), we sought to clarify the relationship between studying approaches, causal attributions, academic achievement and the subjective perception of academic achievement. The 558 sampled participants were students of six institutions of higher education and the instruments used were the Causal Dimension Scale II (McAuley, Duncan & Russel, 1992), the inventory Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (Entwistle, 1997), and also constructed an indicator of the scores obtained to quantify the academic performance. Structural equation modeling procedures show that studying approaches constitute the most important variable accounting for academic performance, and, equally, there is a strong relationship between studying approaches and causal attributions.