A comprehensive approach towards academic failure: the case of Mathematics I in ISEG graduation

Abstract Despite the enormous progress in graduation completion rates along the last decade, academic failure in Portuguese Higher Education is still attracting concern. This is particularly true for some 1st. year critical subjects as Mathematics. Most research and analyses on the issue are focused upon either the “academic” or the “non academic” determinants of failure whilst it becomes more and more obvious that the explanation, or at least an important part of it, resides in the interaction between those two sets of features. Having developed previous research on the basis of the former factors to elucidate failure rate in ISEG graduation, we are now analyzing the joint influence of both kind of determinants. For that purpose we rely upon students’ information retrieved from ISEG Pedagogical Observatory Database and the outputs of a Survey on Attitudes Towards Mathematics 1 (SATM 1) which has been especially redesigned and addressed to 1st. year students.