Students’ voices at a Portuguese University: academic motivation and its relationship with academic success

In this paper the authors will try to point out some evidences that emerged from the data collected in the year of 2000 by the Permanent Observatory for Teaching and Learning Quality of the University of Algarve. Data presented here will report exclusively to students’ representations concerning the institution, themselves, their teachers and the curriculum, since we consider that students are the privileged informants about their own academic experience. The main topic explored refers to students’ evaluation of the influence of academic motivation on the abandonment of studies in higher education. Theoretical framework will also be presented. We will present some behavioral symptoms that students evaluated as relevant indicators of lack of academic motivation. Also, the analysis will concern the meanings students attribute to academic failure as well as students’ points of view about their own failure, according to their academic experience