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Self‐efficacy, motivation and
approaches to studying
A longitudinal study of Y and how
engineering students perceive their studies
and transition to work
Tomas Jungert
Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 485
Linköping Studies in Behavioural Science, No. 143
Linköping University, Department of Behavioural Sciences and
Learning
Linköping 2009
Linköping Studies in Arts and Science x No. 485

At the Faculty of Arts and Science at Linköping University, research and
doctoral studies are carried out in broad problem areas. Research is
organized in interdisciplinary research environments and doctoral studies
mainly in graduate schools. Jointly, they publish the series Linköping
Studies in Arts and Science. This thesis comes from the unit for Clinical and
Social Psychology at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning.

Distributed by:
Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning
Linköping University
S‐581 83 Linköping
Sweden

Tomas Jungert
Self‐efficacy, Motivation and Approaches to Studying:
A longitudinal study of Y and how engineering students perceive their studies and
transition to work

Upplaga 1:1
ISBN 978-91-7393-590-6
ISSN 0282‐9800
ISSN 1654-2029

©Tomas Jungert
Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning 2009

Cover: Student med kunskapens äpple hängande över sig © Lars Nyberg

Printed by LiU-Tryck, Linköping, 2009
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................III
LIST OF ORIGINAL PAPERS ..............................................................................V
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 1
ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN SWEDEN .................................................................... 1
THE AIMS OF THE THESIS ......................................................................................... 5
CONTEXT OF THE THESIS.................................................................................. 7
CURRICULUM .......................................................................................................... 8
PREVIOUS RESEARCH......................................................................................... 9
APPROACHES TO LEARNING AND STUDYING .......................................................... 10
MOTIVATION ......................................................................................................... 12
SELF-EFFICACY ..................................................................................................... 14
TRANSITION .......................................................................................................... 17
METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................. 18
DATA CORPUS ....................................................................................................... 19
DATA SETS ............................................................................................................ 21
Data set I ......................................................................................................... 22
Data set II ........................................................................................................ 23
Data set III....................................................................................................... 24
Data set IV....................................................................................................... 26
METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS ................................................................... 26
ETHICAL STANDPOINTS ......................................................................................... 28
RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY ................................................................................. 30
RESULTS ................................................................................................................ 31
PAPER I ................................................................................................................. 31
PAPER II ................................................................................................................ 33
PAPER III............................................................................................................... 34
PAPER IV .............................................................................................................. 36
DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................... 37
CREDIBILITY ......................................................................................................... 47
REFERENCES........................................................................................................ 49
I
II
Acknowledgements
At last, it is time for me to open the bottle of Chateau Cheval-Blanc 1995 that
I put in the wine cellar about six years ago when I decided to enter academia.
I will share the wine with my nearest and dearest and tell them how much I
appreciate them having been by my side through these years. Here, I would
like to acknowledge them as well as others who have assisted, supported and
encouraged me when I was writing my thesis.
I am particularly grateful to my supervisors Associate Professor Elinor
Edvardsson Stiwne and Professor Lars Owe Dahlgren for the care with which
they reviewed my thesis manuscript; and for conversations that clarified my
thinking on this and other matters. Thank you Elinor for believing in me and
recruiting me to the highly interesting ‘Y-project’, and thank you Lars Owe,
your comments have always encouraged me to revise and improve my
manuscripts. I would also like to thank Dan Stiwne for reading and
commenting on my earlier drafts and Michael Rosander who helped me with
the questionnaires and statistical analyses when I was new in the project.
I would furthermore like to thank the members of the research group
FOG who have supported me and given helpful comments on my papers and
for the fun we have together. I would also like to thank the members of the
Higher Education Research seminar for constructive comments on my
papers. Special thanks to Håkan Hult who inspired me to focus on student
influence. I also owe thanks to colleagues at Linköping University, the unit
for Clinical and Social Psychology (CS), the unit for Cognition, Development
and Disability (CDD) and the unit for Behavioural Sciences Related to
Education and School (PiUS). ‘Kohorten’, Stefan Gustafson, my ‘coach’
Erika Viklund, Chato Rasoal and many other colleagues were inspirational.
I am grateful to Philip Abrami who invited me to Concordia University
and for the warm hospitality that Helena Dedic and Steve Rosenfield showed
me in Montréal. Our conversations were always stimulating. I would also like
to thank Alexander de Courcy who edited the language in my thesis, Max
Scheja for valuable comments on my final seminar, Charlotta Alm for
reviewing parts of my thesis, and my great friend Marcus Hjorth for our
interesting discussions.
I wish my late grand uncle Mons Lomblad was here today because he
inspired me to study psychology (I still bet on the seventh horse in the
seventh race for you and grandpa Kalle). I would also like to thank the
students who participated in the data collection, the Y board and the Knut and
Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
III
Last but not least, I thank my family for their spiritual support: my Dad
for his encouragement and fruitful comments on my manuscripts; my Mom
for being such a kind person and at times a significant baby sitter; my
beautiful wife Angelica who has been with me all these years, and my
wonderful children, Lukas who came at the beginning, Mons who came in
the midst of and Felicia who came by the end of my writing this thesis. You
all give me so much joy!
Pleasant reading. Santé à vous toutes et à vous tous!
Tomas Jungert
Ekängen, June 2009
IV
List of original papers
This thesis is based on the following papers, which will be referred to as
papers I, II, III, & IV in the text.
I Jungert, T. (2008). Opportunities of student influence as a context for the

development of engineering students’ study motivation. Social Psychology of
Education 11, 79-94.
II Jungert, T. (2008). A longitudinal study of engineering students’

approaches to their studies. Higher Education Research and Development,
27, 201-214.
III Jungert, T. (2006). Effects of the CDIO curriculum on engineering

students’ experiences of their study environment. World Transactions on
Engineering and Technology Education 5, 357-360
IV Edvardsson Stiwne, E. & Jungert, T. (submitted to Education and Work).

Engineering students experiences of becoming employable.
V
VI
Self-efficacy, Motivation and Approaches to Studying
Introduction
The overall aim of this thesis is to longitudinally explore the experiences of
four cohorts of students in a Master of Science (MSc) programme in
engineering from their first semester until one year after graduation focusing
on how they perceive their study environment and transition to work, with a
focus on self-efficacy, motivation and approaches to studying. This thesis has
a social psychological basic perspective, but aims to unite two theoretical
perspectives: a social cognitive perspective and a perspective on approaches
to studying. It aims to integrate psychological, social and individual ways of
interpreting the student experience. The first aim is to explore how students’
perceptions of their opportunities for influencing and taking control over their
study conditions are related to their strategic approaches to studying, their
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and their self-efficacy beliefs (papers I and
II). A second aim is to explore how students are affected by reforms that
were introduced in their programme, which resulted in a partly new
curriculum and new ways of treating freshmen (paper III). A third aim is to
explore how students experience becoming employable in their transition
process from the programme to the world of work (paper IV). An overall
theme is the longitudinal design. Following, on an annual basis, cohorts of
students from their first encounter with higher education until a year after
their graduation, allows an exploration of changes over time regarding a
substantial number of variables.
Engineering education in Sweden

About 6,000 students annually enrol in a programme in MSc in Engineering
in Sweden (National Agency for Higher Education [NAHE], 2007a). Until
2007, all Swedish MSc programmes in Engineering comprised nine
semesters at all universities. The programmes are comprehensive and lead to
a second degree, which means that the students commence studying
Engineering without previously possessing a degree in Engineering, but
curricula and pedagogical profiles differ. In 2007, 4,674 students graduated
with an MSc in Engineering, which corresponds fairly well with the
anticipated demand for an MSc in Engineering in the labour market (NAHE,
2007b). Of the graduates, 32 percent were women and 68 percent were men.
Amongst the men who enrolled in these programmes in 2000/01, 52 percent
and 59 percent of the women graduated within seven years. About 20 percent
of the female students in MSc programmes in Engineering in Sweden have
had problems with a lack of basic knowledge before enrolling in the
1
programmes (NAHE, 2007c). Students in such programmes have also

reported that they to a large extent perceive their studies as being full-time; as
many as 90 percent of the women perceive their studies as being full-time,
while only 65 percent of the men have such a perception. Furthermore,
amongst programmes in Swedish higher education, the programmes leading
to an MSc in Engineering have the largest percentage of students who feel
that their study rate is too high. Thirty-seven percent of the students in these
programmes (nearly 60 percent of the female students and 29 percent of the
male students) often or very often have this feeling (NAHE, 2007c).
However, the perception of the effects of workload is not always the same as
the number of hours worked (Kember, 2004). A number of factors shape the
perceptions of workload, such as perceived pressure in terms of demands of
the curriculum and assessment tasks (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983).
At present, there are 33 versions of MSc programmes in Engineering at
14 universities in Sweden and of these, nine include specialisation in Applied
Physics. Until 2007, Linköping was the only university to have a programme
with the combination of Applied Physics and Electronics1. This is the
programme focused on in this thesis, and will be referred to as the Y
programme. At Linköping University, the Y programme has been marketed
as a prestigious programme with the aim of providing students with an MSc
in Engineering who are capable of working at the international forefront of
technical developments. The programme is as focused on research as other
MSc programmes at the university.
The expansion of higher education was partly intended to increase the
enrolment of students in science and engineering programmes (Bauer,
Askling, Marton, & Marton, 1999). In particular, studies in science and
engineering are considered important for a strategic development of
industrial growth and for the continued development of certain sectors of
commerce. As a consequence of the expansion of higher education, students
have a more heterogeneous background today than has been the case before
(NAHE, 2009). Most socioeconomic groups benefited from the expansion of
higher education and students vary to a great extent in terms of their previous
experience and educational background. Thus, a major challenge facing
institutions of higher education is to adapt to a heterogeneous group of
students in engineering. Institutions in higher education may therefore need
to elaborate the context of higher education to improve the throughput of
students.
1
This programme is called Y at Linköping University and whenever people talk
about this MSc programme in engineering, they refer to it as Y.
2
The context of higher education is a fairly complex term. In higher

education, we may refer to the social, academic, educational, classroom,
learning, and teaching contexts amongst other things. In this thesis, the terms
context of higher education and academic context will be used in the
discussion of some theoretical concepts. When results from the thesis are
discussed, the term study conditions will be used because it is not as broad
and complex a term as context. Study conditions refer to departmental
characteristics such as workload, freedom of choice, feedback to students and
course design.
Even if this thesis contributes to the research field with new findings and
conclusions about student experience, some of the most influential
contributions in the field are considered. The first one is a model developed
by Entwistle and Smith (2002). The second is Bandura’s social cognition
model (Bandura, 1986; 1997). In both models, one assumption is that
students’ level of motivation, affective state and actions are based more on
what they believe than on what is intended by the institutions. This is why
students’ perceptions of their study conditions and their opportunities to
influence them, their motivation, and their study strategies are focused on in
the data collection. The model by Entwistle and Smith (2002) describes three
groups of factors influencing student learning: students’ characteristics,
teaching characteristics, and departmental characteristics. Bandura’s model
assumes that people strive to exercise control over events that affect their
lives. In this thesis, the focus is on the parts of the Entwistle and Smith model
that students strive to control and some of the means they use to take control
over their lives as students. For example, how students control characteristics
such as how they motivate themselves when studying, how they develop
certain work habits and strategic approaches to studying and how they
perceive their opportunities to influence their study conditions, i.e.
departmental characteristics, such as course objectives, assessment
procedures, workload and freedom of choice. When students set out to take
control over their lives as students by influencing these characteristics, their
beliefs in their causative capabilities are of great importance because efficacy
beliefs influence how they act, think, feel, and motivate themselves (Bandura,
1995). Different forms of student motivation are part of the conceptual
models such as the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In
this thesis, Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory (SDT) (Deci & Ryan,
1985; Ryan, Connell & Deci, 1985; Reeve, Ryan, Deci, & Jang, 2007) is
used to cover the motivational aspects of the two models. Finally, students’
transition from higher education to the world of work is considered.
The context of engineering students’ experiences of their study
conditions has been described as highly demanding in several studies (Case
3
& Gunstone 2003; McCune & Hounsell 2005; Scheja 2006). Students feel
that they are under considerable pressure and have heavy workloads.
Depending on the study conditions and on how it is perceived, students
develop a disposition to studying on three levels. On the first level, students
adopt different approaches to learning, e.g. deep and surface (Biggs 1987;
Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Marton & Säljö, 1976). On the second level,
students adopt what Entwistle and Ramsden (1983) refer to as a strategic
approach to studying. This level deals with students’ intention to do well in
their courses and results in a number of strategies that students use to adjust
themselves to the study conditions. For example, they may be cue seekers
(Miller & Parlett, 1974), taking ‘shortcuts’ (Eizenberg, 1988), adopt an
achieving motive (Biggs, 1987), which is characterized by competition and
ego enhancement (Wilding & Andrews, 2006). Students may also focus on
managing time rather than focusing on understanding (Case & Gunstone,
2003), and “setting aside work within certain courses to concentrate on
imminent tasks” (Scheja 2006, p. 430). The strategic approach to studying
has a number of sub features such as how students organize their studying,
manage their time, concentrate on work, and monitor effectiveness.
Consequently, the strategic approach to studying has recently been sub-
divided into monitoring studying, study organization and time management
and effort and concentration (Entwistle, Nisbet, & Bromage, 2004).
On the third level, students attempt to influence their study conditions by
various means. On this level, students adopt strategies for influencing their
study conditions with the goal of changing their departments or the design or
content of courses, and they interact with teachers and peer students in order
to take control over their studies (Jungert & Rosander, 2009). Thus, strategies
for influencing study conditions involve an additional kind of strategy, with
the goal of changing department policies, the design or content of courses, or
how students interact with teachers and peer students in order to take control
over their studies. The main difference between the second and third level is
that students on the second level adjust themselves to their study conditions,
whereas on the third level, students either try to change or influence their
study conditions in various ways. It is the third level that is explored in this
thesis.
Students with differing abilities, strategies and motives may perceive
their teaching-learning environment in terms of workload, freedom of choice,
and feedback in quite different ways (Entwistle & Smith, 2002). Self-
determination theory is a motivational theory that is heavily focused on the
interaction between the internal and external environment. For students to be
intrinsically motivated, they need to find innate satisfaction rather than
satisfaction for some separate consequence (Ryan & Deci, 2000). In self-
4
determination theory, all humans are believed to have a psychological need to

feel autonomous, competent and related to other human beings. The need to
perceive oneself as competent also plays an important role in the social
cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1997; Pajares, 1996; Pajares, 2005). When
students’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness are
met, their self-efficacy beliefs are enhanced and, as a result, their innate
motivation to learn is triggered (Pintrich, 2003).
Students’ experiences, study motivation and belief in their own
capabilities can affect how they perceive and interpret their opportunities to
influence their study conditions and how this may be manifested in a
complex and interacting process. A presupposition in this thesis is that the
interacting process of the study conditions and students’ perceptions of them
can enhance or hinder their opportunities to influence their study conditions.
The aims of the thesis

Ability is nothing without opportunity. Napoleon Bonaparte
In this thesis, the overall purpose is, through a longitudinal design, to explore
and describe self-reported perceptions of the students’ study conditions
throughout their studies in an MSc programme in Applied Physics and
Electrical Engineering.
The questions addressed in this thesis are:
1. How do students perceive their opportunities to influence and control their

study conditions (i.e. student influence) and does this change during the
course of their studies? (papers I, II and III)
2. Do students’ perceptions and how they make use of their opportunities to
exert an influence have consequences for their study motivation, their beliefs
in their capabilities and does this change during the course of their studies?
(paper I)
3. How are students’ perceptions of their opportunities to achieve student
influence enacted in approaches to studying and does this change during the
course of their studies? (paper II)
4. Do students’ experiences of satisfaction with their studies, average
working hours and perceived workload, social isolation, opportunities to
influence their studies, having contact with teachers, and cooperating with
peer students differ between the cohorts and change during the course of their
studies? (paper III)
5. What aspects of the programme do students rate as most valuable as
regards their prospects on the labour market and are there differences
between the cohorts? (paper IV)
5
6. What strategies do students develop to become employable and how do

they experience becoming employable? (paper IV)
As is clear from most of the research questions, the focus in this thesis is
on how students perceive their opportunities to influence their study
conditions and how this may be related to other important variables.
Influence may be manifested by influencing study conditions in the
classroom (e.g. Tinto, 1997; Fritschner, 2000) and in out-of-class interactions
such as informal relationships between students and faculty (e.g. Jungert &
Rosander, 2009; Terenzini, Pascarella, & Blimling, 1999). This can be
accomplished by means of various strategies. Strategies are not necessarily
pragmatically rational. They may be a result of students’ opportunities,
values and emotions (cf. Ball, Davies, David, & Reay, 2002). Students’
perceptions of their study conditions in terms of class size, faculty authority
(Weaver & Qi, 2005), workload, freedom of choice, and feedback (Entwistle
& Smith, 2002) can enhance or hinder students’ opportunities to influence
their study conditions. For example, research has shown that heavy workload
has an effect on approaches to studying (e.g. Ramsden & Entwistle, 1981;
Dahlgren, 1984; Kreber, 2003), but it has also been argued that the effect
could be the reverse (Kember & Leung, 1998). In paper I and paper II, the
results indicate that perceived workload, feedback and perceived
opportunities to influence their studies had a large impact on the students’
strategies and approaches to their studies.
In this thesis, student influence is defined as choices students make, in
which they exert power in controlling and influencing their study conditions,
as shown in their choices. In paper I, student influence was elaborated and it
was found that it can be both direct and indirect. There can furthermore be (a)
formal opportunities to influence study conditions, (b) informal activities,
and (c) statutory activities that students rely on in order to improve their
study conditions. A summary of these various forms of influencing study
conditions, which was developed in paper I, is provided in Table 1.
Table 1
Forms of student influence perceived by students
Influence Direct Indirect
Formal Attendance/ Class representatives

Non-attendance
Informal Relationships with faculty Relationships with peers
Statutory Course evaluations Student representatives
6
Two examples of direct formal influencing are when a student, to

facilitate his/her study conditions, chooses to skip some courses to reduce the
workload, or when a student attends a lecture and tries to influence the
teacher about what should be the main focus in a course. Indirect formal
influencing may be when a student has opinions about teaching, and asks a
class representative to hold a debate about this in formal meetings with the
faculty. Informal influencing refers to how students try to influence teachers
and peers in order to receive more feedback or obtain help with problems
concerning a course. Finally, statutory influencing is when students
personally fill in course evaluations (direct) or have a student representative
present personal opinions about teaching or course design (indirect).
Context of the thesis

A distinguishing characteristic of Swedish higher education is the students’
formal rights to influence their study conditions. The students have the
opportunity to influence their courses and programmes by being represented
in the universities’ decision-making bodies and by taking part in the course
evaluations that all Swedish higher educational institutions are required to
carry out at the end of every course (Svensk Författningssamling [SFS],
1998). The purpose of course evaluations is that the students who have
participated in a course shall have the opportunity to present their
experiences and opinions regarding the course, e.g. the content and the
structure of the course and the pedagogical skills of the teachers involved in
the course. The university is also responsible for the compilation of course
evaluations and for informing the students about the results and possible
measures to be taken on the basis of the course evaluation. The results of
course evaluations must be accessible to the students (SFS, 1998).
Furthermore, Swedish students have the right to be represented on the
board of the university, on the faculty board and in the specific educational
and research bodies as well as in all bodies at the university whose activities
are of importance for the students’ education and situation. Consultations
must be held with student representatives before major decisions that concern
students are taken (SFS, 1998).
At Linköping University, a programme for the development of the
quality of the teaching-learning environment has been drawn up in which
central fields are the role of the students in their education and renewal of
curricula and examinations (Linköping University, 2009). This indicates that
the university is focusing on strengthening the position of the students. A
policy for course evaluations that defines the purpose of course evaluations,
7
which is to give feedback on courses by reflecting over them and critically

scrutinizing and questioning them, has also been developed (Linköping
University, 2006). The evaluation should be carried out in conjunction with
the course, should be carried out continuously and teachers of the course
should meet with the students. Furthermore, it is emphasised that the results
of the evaluations should be followed up, that a written evaluation be made
and that students are informed about previous results of course evaluations.
At the faculty of technology, there is a uniform system for how course
evaluations should be carried out (Linköping University, 2007). A specific
section in the student union organises the evaluations, which are performed in
the form of discussions in a meeting between student representatives from the
section and the examiners from the course. Minutes are written on the basis
of the meeting, which is communicated to student counsellors, the concerned
boards of the faculty and the teachers (Linköping University, 2007). There
are continuous discussions concerning how to improve the system of the
course evaluations and the feedback of their results. Currently, there is a web-
based system for course evaluations in order to increase the response rate of
the students (Linköping University, 2006).
In an inquiry by the Swedish National Agency of Higher Education
(NAHE, 2003), Linköping University was judged to have been most
successful in giving students more opportunities to influence their study
conditions. The Agency reported that students’ had considerable
opportunities to influence their study conditions since students to a high
degree participate in the quality work in decision-making and in bodies at
various levels, and the structure for cooperation between teachers,
administrators and students was highly developed (NAHE, 2003).
Furthermore, the course evaluations seemed to function well, but the
feedback of the evaluations’ results must be improved. The Agency’s
assessments were based on policy documents, rules, student representation in
bodies, the number of trained student representatives, and follow-ups of
course evaluations (NAHE, 2003).
Curriculum
I would live to study, and not study to live. Francis Bacon
The Y programme has a large proportion of scheduled lectures, laboratory

work and lessons. The lessons are classroom sessions for less formal
instruction, such as working through problems. Course assistants, who are
not principally faculty members responsible for the course, e.g. a PhD student
or a senior student, lead both lessons and laboratory work. The content is
8
organized into a large number of both sequential and parallel courses. The
students take part in the same curriculum for the first two years, designed to
lay a basic foundation for their subsequent studies. After completing their
basic studies, they can choose to specialise in one of twelve engineering
fields to prepare themselves for a professional qualification, see Table 2.
Table 2
Curriculum of the Y programme
Year 1 40 weeks Predefined curriculum for all students. Basic
studies in e.g. Mathematics, Algebra, and
Programming.
Year 2-3 80 weeks Predefined curriculum for all students. Basic
and advanced studies in e.g. Computer Science,
Electronics, Mechanics.
Year 4 40 weeks Selection of specialisation engineering field, 12
electives available. Elective courses.
Year 5 20 weeks Masters thesis.
The majority of specialisation courses are conducted in traditional format

(c.f. Novak, 1998) but one is designed according to the ideas of problem-
based learning (PBL), a student-centred method, and some have features of
projects. The work on the Masters thesis, which has a topic within the
specific area of specialisation, is mainly carried out at companies. The
students are expected to focus completely in their studies, but may devote
most of their time, except for assigned laboratory work, to self-instruction if
they so wish.
Previous research
In this section, the main concepts and theories of this thesis will be described.
The main concepts are approaches to studying, motivation, self-efficacy and
transition, but other, closely related constructs will also be discussed.
9
Approaches to learning and studying

Try to learn something about everything and everything about
something. Thomas Huxley
One approach to learning is how intention and process is combined in

learning. Abundant research has shown that students in higher education
adopt several approaches to learning and that each approach depends on the
context, the content and the demands of the learning task (e.g. Marton,
Hounsell, & Entwistle, 1984). In what is called the Gothenburg studies,
Marton and Säljö (1976) describe two approaches to learning, deep and
surface. In the deep approach, the student recognizes the more abstract forms
of learning that are required (Svensson, 1977). In the surface approach, on
the other hand, the focus is on the superficial parts of the material that are to
be learned (Dahlgren & Marton, 1978). Entwistle and Ramsden (1983) made
an important development of the Gothenburg studies by including the
strategic approach of the students. This involves the maximisation of grades
and the student’s beliefs about the characteristics of assessment. In other
words, the strategic approach to studying is related to study behaviour rather
than to learning processes and concerns the intention to do well in a course
and to achieve personal goals. The strategic approach to studying focuses on
study processes involving organized studying and time management
(Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Biggs, 1987). In a conceptual model of the
teaching-learning process in higher education, Entwistle and Smith (2002)
seek to explain different learning strategies and outcomes (Figure 1).
This model describes the main influences on approaches to learning,
approaches to studying and aspects of the teaching-learning environment.
The model includes both students’ and teachers’ earlier experiences and
expectations and covers the interactions that exist between e.g. students’
approaches to studying, approaches to learning, outcomes and their differing
perceptions of various aspects of their teaching-learning environment (e.g.
feedback and workload) (Entwistle & Smith, 2002). According to the model,
approaches to learning are mental orientations and approaches to learning and
studying seem to be influenced by aspects such as student work habits,
workload, and feedback (Entwistle & Smith, 2002).
The primary focus of the model is on student learning, but a strategic
approach to studying helps to explain how students adjust their ways of
studying to perform well in assessments.
10
Figure 1. Conceptual model of the teaching-learning process in higher

education (Entwistle & Smith, 2002).
The focus in this thesis is delimited to the parts that are related to a
strategic approach to studying, i.e. student characteristics such as attitudes
towards courses and motivation, and departmental characteristics such as
workload, freedom of choice, feedback to students and course design.
In paper II, it was found that, in addition to adopting strategic approaches
to their studies, students developed three approaches to studying – adaptive,
critical and cooperative. Students could develop any of these three
approaches to studying depending on how they perceived the workload,
feedback from teachers and their opportunities to influence their studies. This
shows that how students perceive their opportunities to influence their study
conditions also influences their strategic approaches to studying. In much of
the research on approaches to studying, students’ learning and outcomes have
been examined, whereas their strategies for influencing and controlling their
study conditions have in part been overlooked. For example, there is nothing
in the Entwistle and Smith model that deals with students’ opportunities to
influence their study conditions.
11
Parallel with this field, there is research focusing on metacognition and

study strategies, i.e. ways in which students regulate their motivation and
enhance their learning. This research has focused on cognitive processes such
as volition (Corno, 1994), self-regulation (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2008;
Wolters, 1998; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001) and motivation (Pintrich,
2003). Volition concerns how students strengthen their will to achieve a goal
until its accomplishment (Corno, 1993) and self-regulation relates to personal
strategies intended to acquire skills and knowledge (Pintrich & Zusho, 2002).
When it comes to motivation, there is a lack of clear definition of
motivational constructs (Murphy & Alexander, 2000; Schunk, 2000). In
educational psychology, there is a focus on achievement goals as a key
precursor of motivation (Ames, 1987; Pintrich, 2000a). In the next section,
the term motivation will be discussed in more detail.
Motivation
To be motivated is to be moved into action. Arthur Schopenhauer
Theories of motivation usually include the notion of intention as a central

concept (e.g., Lewin, 1951/1997). This notion involves a distinction between
motivated and amotivated behaviour, i.e. between intentional and non-
intentional actions. Three examples are personal versus impersonal causality
(Heider, 1958), voluntary responding versus helplessness (Seligman, 1975),
and internal versus external locus of control (Rotter, 1966). Self-
determination theory (SDT) (Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991;
Vallerand, Pelletier, & Koestner, 2008), which focuses on the extent to which
the behaviours of people are volitional or self-determined, has an important
additional distinction within the class of behaviours that are intentional or
motivated. In SDT, there is a distinction between self-determined and
controlled types of intentional regulation. Motivated actions are self-
determined and carried out because of enjoyment in exploring, mastering and
learning, i.e. an individual’s intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1991).
Controlled actions are, on the other hand, compelled by some interpersonal
force, and carried out because of extrinsic motivation. SDT postulates three
types of motivation along an axis: (1) amotivation, which results from
students’ attaching a low value to learning tasks and not feeling competent to
perform them; (2) extrinsic motivation, which results from students’ needing
rewards to engage in learning; (3) intrinsic motivation, which results from
students’ enjoyment of learning. Extrinsic motivation is a complex construct
ranging from external regulation (students needing external rewards or
fearing punishments), to introjected regulation (students needing to preserve
12
their self-image), to identified regulation (students recognizing the value of

learning for their own goals) (Deci & Ryan, 2000).
Self-determination theory integrates human needs and social-cognitive
constructs (Pintrich, 2003). According to SDT, all human beings have an
innate propensity for assimilating new information and integrating it into
their own knowledge structure but they also have a psychological need to feel
autonomous, competent and related to other human beings. Students feel
autonomous in learning environments that provide some control over what is
being taught and the pace of instruction, and in which their thoughts and
feelings are acknowledged (Filak & Sheldon, 2003). The greater the
perception of autonomy in the learning environment, the higher the student’s
self-determined motivation to learn the subject (Sheldon, Elliot, Kim &
Kasser, 2001). In some cases, a student may not be intrinsically interested in
a subject, but may recognize the value of knowledge of the subject for a
chosen career. This extrinsic motivation (identified regulation) to learn such
subjects rises with higher perceptions of an autonomy-supportive learning
environment. In paper I, students accepted course assignments with doubtful
learning opportunities because such assignments were important for the
status and good reputation of the programme and could increase their
opportunities to get jobs as qualified engineers, which could result in both
introjected and identified regulation.
As in the Entwistle and Smith model (2002), social and cultural aspects
of the teaching-learning environment are of significance for the motivation
and performance of the students within the context of SDT. For example,
researchers have shown that students’ classroom performance and persistence
are positively influenced in learning environments where teachers employ
autonomy-supportive practices (Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, &
Deci, 2004) and negatively influenced when teachers employ controlling
practices, e.g. rewards and punishments (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999).
Even subtle cues of control undermine student motivation. Ratelle, Guay,
Larose and Senécal (2004) found that, as teacher control in terms of class
management and attendance decreased in the transition to higher education,
the intrinsic motivation of the students increased over time. However, their
study showed that motivation did not develop homogeneously amongst the
students, which shows how complex motivational processes are.
Relatedness refers to the need to interact with others in order to promote
enjoyment of a task (Deci & Ryan, 2000). The perception of relatedness in an
academic context functions as a motivational resource needed to activate
effort and to motivate persistence when students are faced with challenging
academic tasks (Furrer & Skinner, 2003). Relatedness to the teachers has
13
been shown to impact positively at the post-secondary level (Black & Deci,
2000).
Students’ need for competence has rarely been studied in isolation in an
academic context (Levesque, Zuehlke, Stanek, & Ryan, 2004) because
numerous studies, beginning with Ryan (1982), have shown that increased
perceptions of competence must be accompanied by perceptions of autonomy
if they are to have a positive effect on performance. Students perceive
themselves to be competent when they are effective in learning. To be
effective, students must be given tasks with an optimal challenge. A large
body of literature shows that challenging tasks raise motivation and
performance attainment (Latham & Lee, 1986; Mento, Steel, & Karren,
1987).
In general, giving students opportunities to choose, which enhances
perceived autonomy and control over learning, appears to enhance their
intrinsic motivation (Ryan, Connell, & Deci, 1985)2. Furthermore, perceived
control represents a key determinant of self-regulation efforts (Ames, 1992;
Pintrich, 2000b). Self-efficacy is another important influence on self-
regulation (Fiske & Taylor, 2008). Self-efficacy will be explored in the next
section.
Self-efficacy
They are able who think they are able. Virgil
In social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), people are seen as self-

organizing, proactive and self-regulating, rather than reactive and governed
by external events. Self-regulation concerns how students regulate aspects of
their thinking, motivation and behaviour during learning (Pintrich & Zusho,
2002). Self-regulated learners set goals for their learning and regulate and
control their cognition and motivation and adopt strategies to achieve their
learning goals. The best conditions for promoting internal motivation and
perception of self-efficacy, and for encouraging students to employ self-
regulatory strategies, are created when individuals’ perceived controllability
is enhanced (Bandura & Wood, 1989) and when they are granted large
opportunities to participate in decision-making in class (Ames, 1992;
Zimmerman, 1995).
2
There are cultural differences in cognition (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). Compared
with European Americans, who showed more intrinsic motivation and learning when
they could make personal choices, Asian Americans performed better and enjoyed
tasks more when they were told that someone close to them had chosen the task for
them (Iyengar & Lepper, 1999).
14
In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy functions as an

essential factor in self-regulatory mechanisms (Bandura & Wood, 1989).
Self-efficacy is defined as “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and
execute courses of action required to produce desired attainments” (Bandura,
1986, p. 391). It is the judgements people make regarding their capabilities to
organize and execute courses of action that are needed to achieve the selected
performance. Beliefs about the contingency between behaviour and expected
outcome and these expectations affect the individual’s choices of activities,
effort and maintenance of behaviour. According to Bandura (1995, 1997),
perceived efficacy plays a key role in how humans perform because it
directly affects factors such as goals and aspirations, affective tendencies,
outcome expectations, and perceptions of opportunities in the social
environment. It is what people believe they can do with whatever skills and
abilities they may possess that is considered important, not the actual skills
and abilities that they possess (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003). Self-efficacy beliefs
affect the individual’s aspirations and strength of commitment in a very wide
variety of settings. Such beliefs influence analytical and strategic thinking,
motivation, and perseverance in the face of difficulties and obstacles.
Perceived capability in a course may be both varied and complex. In the
academic context, students’ beliefs about their abilities to achieve academic
tasks successfully, i.e. their academic self-efficacy beliefs are strong
predictors of their ability to successfully carry out those tasks (e.g. Bandura,
1997; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2008). Students’ perceptions of their efficacy to
regulate their own learning and to master academic activities determine their
level of motivation and academic accomplishments (Bandura, 1993).
Students are believed to act if their acts boost feelings of competence, control
and effectiveness (Bandura, 1997).
Bandura (1995; 1997) mentions four sources that may develop and alter
self-efficacy beliefs: (1) Interpreted result of one’s performance (mastery
experience) (2) vivid experience one undergoes when observing others
performing tasks (vicarious experiences), (3) verbal messages and social
persuasions received from others (social persuasion) and (4) physiological
and emotional states such as anxiety and stress. The information acquired
from these different sources is then cognitively appraised (Bandura, 1997).
How students perceive their study conditions directly influences their self-
efficacy. For example, student perceptions of classrooms as supporting
mastery evaluation and autonomy positively impact self-efficacy (Greene,
Miller, Crowson, Duke, & Akey, 2004). The initial self-efficacy fluctuates as
a function of ability and earlier experience, and is confirmed when students
observe goal progress or are given feedback that communicates skilfulness
(Elliot & Dweck, 1988). Difficult goals are believed to develop skills more
15
effectively than easy goals, as difficult goals offer more information about
ability. Models such as teacher and peer students are important sources of
explicit efficacy information (vicarious experience), and observing models
can be very beneficial in supporting efficacy and motivation (Bandura, 1997).
Academic self-efficacy is, according to Zimmerman (1995), profoundly
affected by students’ earlier encounters with identical or similar tasks.
Academic self-efficacy is influenced by cognitive interpretations of success
and failure in tasks, but also influences effort, persistence and the cognitive
resources that are used in seeking to interact with the academic context.
Motivation and efficacy are enhanced when learning progress and
comprehension are perceived. Strategies may influence self-efficacy and
motivation, and students who believe that a new strategy can improve their
performance may keep their initial motivation even if they perceive little
progress if the new strategy gives a sense of control over achievement
outcomes. In paper I, students who participated in relationships with faculty
and student activities increased their perceptions of informal opportunities to
influence their study conditions and sense of control, which enhanced their
self-efficacy. High self-efficacy perceptions are also believed to make
individuals engage in tasks that develop their skills and capabilities, while
low-efficacy perceptions make students choose tasks that will not need
development of new skills (Schunk, 1991).
Pajares (1996) found that the self-efficacy of gifted students was based
on their perceptions of their cognitive ability. In another study, Zimmerman
and Kitsantas (2005) suggest that high self-efficacy students attribute more
responsibility to learners than to teachers and that perceived responsibility
was an important motive for academic achievement. In line with these
findings, students who, in paper I, based their self-efficacy on positive self-
perceptions as excellent students received their efficacy information from
their general cognitive ability. They emphasized their own responsibility and
their strategy was to study alone without asking for help from peers or
teachers.
The motive for mastering academic material in many situations is that the
knowledge will be needed in the future. If students see that current learning is
instrumental for future success, they will be encouraged to master the
material (Greene et al., 2004). Self-efficacy differs from other similar
constructs as it is more predisposed to the contextual factors and concerns a
specific goal. How the academic context is perceived directly influences self-
efficacy.
Research in self-efficacy confirms that efficacy beliefs have a strong
influence on individual’s occupational developments and pursuits, career
interests, career aspirations, career-related activities and career performance
16
(Lent, Hackett, & Brown, 1999; O’Brien, Friedman, Tipton, & Linn, 2000).
Individuals with high perceived efficacy as regards satisfying educational
requirements and attaining professional positions have been found to have a
greater interest in them, prepare themselves better educationally and show
greater staying power in their quest for challenging careers (Bandura, 1997;
Hackett, 1995; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). In other words, students'
academic self-efficacy and perceptions of their capabilities and skills
influence their career aspirations and motivation for developing these
capabilities and skills. Previous research has found positive links between
perceptions of the relevance of skills and motivation for further learning
(Lizzio & Wilson, 2004) between job satisfaction and occupational self-
efficacy (Erwins, 2001) and between high academic self-efficacy beliefs and
school-to-work transition (Pinquart, Juang, & Silbereisen, 2003). The next
section will focus more on transition from education to work.
Transition
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not
enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Leonardo da Vinci.
Transition in this thesis is defined as the process from being a student in

higher education, through the search of a job as a graduate, to the first months
in the new job. Transition as the shift from university life to full-time career
employment involves much more than the job search (Perrone & Vickers,
2003). Candy and Crebert (1991) refer to transition as “the interface between
higher education and the job market” (p. 570).
Among areas that have been explored in the research on the transition
from higher education to the world of work, I have identified three main
areas: (a) a system level of transition (e.g. Garcia-Aracil, Gabaldon, Mora, &
Vila, 2007; Smetherham, 2006), (b) a meso level with a focus on what
students must learn in higher education to be prepared for an unknown future
(e.g. Barnett, 2004; Davies, 2000; Mora, Garcia-Aracil, & Vila, 2007;
Perrone & Vickers, 2003; Teichler, 1999). Some of these studies focus on a
gap that separates the university and the workplace contexts and give
examples of what could be done to minimize this gap to better match
students’ knowledge and skills to employers’ needs (Candy & Crebert, 1991;
Graham & McKenzie, 1995). Others focus on forms of cooperation between
higher education and the world of work (Boud & Symes, 2000; Reeve &
Gallacher, 2005; Smith & Betts, 2000; Teichler, 1999). Related to this is over
education, which is explored in many studies (e.g. Groot & Massen van den
17
Brink, 2000; Sicherman, 1991; Schomburg & Teichler, 1993; Teichler,

2000). Graduates’ dissatisfaction with being overeducated has been reported
by e.g. Kaufman and Feldman (2004) and Mora et al. (2007). Finally, (c) the
micro level, focuses on how individuals construct their identities in the
transition process from being students in a programme to becoming graduates
who look for jobs and start working (e.g. Ng & Feldman, 2007; Tomlinson,
2007). In this thesis, the focus is predominantly on this latter area.
In a large European longitudinal study, the focus has been on how
graduates construe themselves as professionals, or how they experience the
transition to the sociocultural contexts of working life (e.g. Abrandt
Dahlgren, Hult, Dahlgren, Hård af Segerstad, & Johansson, 2006; Johansson,
Kopciwicz & Dahlgren, 2008). In this project, transition is viewed as a
trajectory between different communities of practice. Abrandt Dahlgren et
al. (2006) found that in some programmes, such as engineering, graduates
achieve formal legitimacy by successfully graduating from the programme,
which is a door opener to the labour market. There was an emphasis on ritual
aspects of knowledge and the development of generic problem-solving skills.
In a comparison between graduates from Poland and Sweden, Johansson et
al. (2008) found that the Swedish graduates expressed more positive views of
their future, but that they were concerned about their skills and knowledge in
their new jobs.
Dahlgren, Handal, Szkudlarek and Bayer (2007) claim that students in
professional programmes in higher education seem to be provided with a
discipline-based identity, and that only during the later years in more applied
elements of programmes are professional roles developed. Barnett (2004)
stresses the importance of self-reliance, flexibility and adaptability, and most
studies of transition from higher education to work lend support to Barnett’s
reasoning that generic skills are an important outcome of the studies.
Methodology
Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are. Oscar Wilde
In 1998, the board of the Y programme, which is the focus of this thesis,
asked researchers at the department of behavioural sciences to investigate the
experiences and expectations of first year students in the Y programme. The
following year, the board of the programme received extensive grant funding
to reform the programme, and decided to develop the investigation of the
students’ experiences. The purpose of this project was originally to
longitudinally explore and describe study-related expectations and
18
experiences of several cohorts of students during the course of their studies.

Respondents in the project were students from cohort 1998, cohort 1999,
cohort 2000, and cohort 2002 (Edvardsson Stiwne, 2005). A multi-method
design including questionnaires sent to all registered students and interviews
with ten selected students from each cohort as well as ten dropouts from
cohort 1998 was chosen as the most appropriate data collection technique for
the project. By 2004, when students from cohort 1998 started to graduate
from the programme, the project was extended to include a final
questionnaire and final interviews with the students one year after their
graduation, with the purpose of exploring the transition to work of the
students and graduates.
Data corpus
All data collected for the entire research project, that is, the data corpus,
included seven questionnaires distributed to all students in the four cohorts,
interviews with forty students from the four cohorts and interviews with ten
dropouts from the programme. The design of the project is shown in Figure
2. It should be noted that there are cases where some students have been
interviewed a year later than appears in the Figure, because they took a year
of study leave.
All items in the first six questionnaires were developed in order to
explore study-related expectations and experiences of students, which was
the original purpose of the project. None of these items was taken from any
existing inventory. The first questionnaire was distributed to the students in
their first semester in the programme and concerned the students’
backgrounds and expectations of their studies. The second questionnaire was
distributed at the end of their first year in the programme and concerned their
experiences of their first semester in the programme. These first two
questionnaires were followed up by four questionnaires sent to all registered
students in the four cohorts at the beginning of their second, third and fourth
year. These questionnaires included mostly the same questions as the second
questionnaire (Edvardsson Stiwne, 2005). The items in the seventh
questionnaire were developed by the authors of paper IV and Michael
Rosander at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning. The
purpose of this questionnaire was to explore the experiences of the students
and graduates’ job search process, of becoming employable and the skills and
competences that they needed and used in their jobs as graduated engineers
(Edvardsson Stiwne & Jungert, 2007). This final questionnaire was
distributed to all students in the four cohorts who had graduated from the
programme.
19
Year Semester Cohort 98 Cohort 99 Cohort 00 Cohort 02

1998
autumn Q1 I1
1999 spring Q2 I2
autumn Q3 Q1 I1
2000 spring I3 Q2 I2
autumn Q4 Q3 Q1 I1
2001 spring I4 I3 Q2 I2
autumn Q5 Q4 Q3
2002 spring I5 I4 I3
autumn Q6 Q5 Q4 Q1 I1
2003 spring I6 I5 I4 Q2 I2
autumn Q6 Q5 Q3
2004 spring I7 I6 I5 I3
autumn Q7 Q6 Q4
2005 spring I7 I6 I4
autumn Q7 Q5
2006 spring I7 I5
autumn Q7 Q6
2007 spring I6
autumn
2008 spring I7
autumn Q7
Figure 2. Design of the project: Data collection by means of questionnaires
(Q) and interviews (I).
At the beginning of the project, many students expressed a worry that

their personal responses in the questionnaires would be traced and made
public. Accordingly, it was very important for many of the students to be
anonymous when filling in the questionnaire. The researchers accepted this
request so that students filling in the questionnaires did so anonymously and
no questionnaires were coded. Thus, a weakness of the research project is
that it is not possible to link a student’s responses in one questionnaire to his
or her responses in the other questionnaires. Furthermore, questionnaire data
cannot be linked to study achievement. In this respect, the questionnaire
studies are cross-sectional and not longitudinal.
20
Individual interviews were carried out with ten students from each
cohort. The first interview with each student in each cohort was carried out
during their first semester. After this first interview, interviews were carried
out in May and June in each semester. In addition to these interviews, there
were interviews with four men and four women who dropped out of the
programme in February, 1999 (Edvardsson Stiwne, Stiwne, Rosander,
Bierberg, & Hagman, 2002).
All interviews were conducted by researchers in the project and graduate
students in psychology. In 2004, I had become a PhD student and started to
carry out interviews. The interviews were conducted at the department of
behavioural sciences and learning except for a few, which were carried out
over the phone.
In sampling students to be interviewed, lists of all students who were
registered for their first semester were used. The students were listed by
class, name, birth registration number and address. From this list, a strategic
sample was drawn up in order to have students from all classes and a
variation in age and gender. The study board requested that 50 percent of the
interviewees be females, in spite of the fact that they made up only between
13 and 20 percent of the entire cohorts. Only the researchers knew who the
interviewed students were. The students selected were contacted and
informed about the design of the study and asked if they would accept being
interviewed. They were also informed that the interviewing would be on a
regular basis once a year throughout their entire time as students. Very few
students refused to participate and for those who did, there were reserves.
The first interviews with cohort 1998 were not recorded or transcribed
verbatim. However, when the research project was extended, the subsequent
interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim with permission from the
students.
Data sets
The data used in this thesis, that is, the four data sets for the four
papers, included the questionnaires and interviews considered to best
answer the research questions. The predetermined research questions
guided the reading and analysis of the interviews. The focus of the
analysis was on the research areas for this thesis. The approaches to
qualitative analysis in this thesis were all highly rigorous and time
consuming. The positive side of this was that they all helped to
produce an insightful analysis that answered the specific research
questions. It is imperative to choose a method that is appropriate to the
research question, rather than falling victim to ‘methodolatry’, which is
21
when a researcher is committed to method rather than content or

research questions (Holloway & Todres, 2003).
Data set I
Data
The respondents in paper I were five female and five male students from
cohort 2000. The students were aged between 19 and 24 years at the time of
the first interview in 2000. At the time of the last interview in 2006, four
respondents had recently graduated from the programme, three students were
still studying in the programme and had two to three semesters left, and three
students had dropped out. In all, 42 interviews were conducted and 410 pages
of transcribed material were produced.
Analysis
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was chosen as the research
method for paper I because it is especially appropriate when the aim is to
understand something about process and change, which was very important
for this paper. IPA is furthermore suitable for analyzing semi-structured
interviews when the aim is to explore the insider views of the respondents.
IPA has to date been used mainly in health and psychology disciplines
(Reid, Flowers & Larkin, 2005). It relies on an open approach to the
interview, and on the assumption that the interviewees are experts on their
own experiences. It does not seek to test assumptions, but depends on the
emergence of themes as the interview progresses, which was in line with the
research questions in paper I.
IPA is influenced by phenomenology. Phenomenology focuses on the
exposure of the exclusively subjective aspects of consciousness, entirely free
of preconceptions. It has a focus on understanding the meaning and the
essences of the experiences of the respondents rather than measurements and
explanations (Moustakas, 1994). Without any interpretation, the research
tradition of phenomenology seeks to disclose the core nature of conscious
experience (Kendler, 2005). Even if IPA is influenced by phenomenology,
there is an essential difference between the two methods in the interpretive
aspect of IPA. An assumption is that the researcher cannot escape from being
intentionally related to the research object. The interpretative nature occurs as
the interviewees seek to describe and make sense of their lived experience to
themselves and the interviewer. The interviewer must encourage reflection.
Hence, the themes described will be the researcher's interpretation of the
data, which is obtained from the respondents and concerns their perceptions
of reality. Interpretative work by the researcher was necessary in paper I as
22
the aim was to understand the students’ study conditions from their own
perspectives.
A step-by-step approach to performing the analysis was carried out in
order to find superordinate themes (Smith & Osborn, 2003). When the data
had been read in detail several times, it was broken down into meaningful
segments in order to decode key words and phrases. This was done on the
basis of the theoretical interest guiding the research questions. For example,
when students talked about their beliefs in their capabilities, I looked for the
word can, as in ‘I can influence for the next year or the year after that’, which
indicates a judgment of capability, rather than the word will, which is a
statement of intention, and no indication of self-efficacy. This is in line with
Bandura’s (1995, 1997) guidelines. The next step involved the search for
patterns between themes discovered in order to establish master themes for
all respondents. The master themes combine the interpretations of the
researcher’s and the respondents’ descriptions of their experiences and are
described in detail and supported with verbatim extracts.
With IPA, the interviewer can more easily uncover what respondents
think and feel, and understand the meanings of their accounts. It also
facilitates the discovery of rare themes within the area of investigation (Smith
& Osborn, 2003). The interpretative part attempts to fit the relationship
between the respondents and their contexts into a psychological framework
(Larkin, Watts, & Clifton, 2006).
Data set II
Data
In paper II, students from cohort 1999 provide the data. Five female and five
male students aged between 19 and 32 years in year 1 were interviewed
between 1999 and 2005. In all, 55 interviews were conducted and 485 pages
of transcribed material were produced.
Analysis
Thematic analysis of the data was chosen as a methodological approach in
paper II. Whereas the purpose of paper I was more theoretically bounded,
with the aim of exploring whether students’ opportunities to influence their
studies had consequences for their study motivation and their self-efficacy,
the purpose of paper II was less theoretically bounded. In paper II, the
research questions were more open, with the aim of exploring students’
perceptions of features of their study conditions that had an impact on their
opportunities to influence and control them. Thematic analysis, which is not
wedded to any pre-existing theoretical framework (Braun & Clarke, 2006), is
23
thus more suitable than IPA as an approach for analysing the data in paper II.
According to Braun and Clarke (2006), thematic analysis may be considered
a foundational method for qualitative analysis. In addition, Boyatzis (1998)
describes thematic analysis as a tool to use across different methods rather
than a specific method. Being theoretically independent, thematic analysis
offers flexibility that may provide rich, detailed as well as complex data
accounts.
Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analysing and reporting
patterns (themes) within data. The first step of the thematic analysis was,
besides the obvious part of reading the interviews, to establish a set of coding
categories to allocate units of meaning of the data (Miles & Huberman,
1994). By means of the coding categories, important characteristics of
students’ perceptions of their study conditions could be identified. The next
two steps were designed to arrange the codes into three inclusive areas:
setting, influence, and strategy and to create a systematic filing system for
them (Berg, 2001). The final step was to create themes through a thematic
analysis of the filing system (Boyatzis, 1998). In this analysis, a theoretical or
deductive procedure was employed (e.g., Boyatzis, 1998). I was interested in
how students’ perceptions of their opportunities to influence their studies
played out across the data, and focused on that particular feature when coding
the data. The analysis continued until three main themes around perceptions
of student influence had been discerned. The themes were analysed in order
to detect patterns and changes over time and comparisons between them were
made in order to delineate the “deep-structure” and to integrate data into an
explanatory framework (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The open-ended
approach and the longitudinal design of the study are suitable for a thematic
analysis because this method is sensitive to differences in students’
perceptions of their study conditions.
Data set III

Data
All cohorts from the data corpus are represented in paper III. The data that
were used in this paper were from the third to the fifth questionnaire. The
first of the questionnaires was collected by researchers who visited a popular
lecture. Students answered the questionnaires during the lecture, and the
questionnaires were immediately collected by the researchers. The following
two questionnaires were in the form of postal questionnaires with stamped
and addressed envelopes, since there were no compulsory lectures including
all students of the cohorts after the third year in the programme. One
reminder was sent by mail to all registered students. Due to ethical
considerations, the questionnaires were not coded and thus the survey data
24
could only be interpreted on a group/cohort level and comparisons could only

be made within and/or between cohorts. No individual trajectories could be
traced throughout these data.
The quantitative results of paper III are based on a total of 664
questionnaire answers (see Table 3). Because of incorrect information from
the Y programme administrator in 2006 about the actual number of registered
students in cohorts 2000 and 2002 at the time of the distribution of the
questionnaires, there are differences in Table 3 in the thesis and the
corresponding Table in paper III. The correct number of registered students is
shown in Table 3 below. The actual response frequency was never below 40
percent.
In the questionnaires, we asked the students about their experiences and
perceptions of their studies, their study results, satisfaction with study results,
average working hours and perceived workload, study-related health, social
isolation, and opportunities to influence their studies, having contact with
teachers, and cooperating with other students. All questionnaires are to a
large extent identical and contain the same question areas. The only main
difference is that the questionnaires concern different years in the
programme. Questionnaires 3 to 5 concerned student’s experiences and
perceptions during years 1 through year 3.
Table 3
Response rates for questionnaires relating to years 2 to 4. Percentages of
total number of first registered students is noted in brackets
Cohort Year 2 (Q3) Year 3 (Q4) Year 4 (Q5)
1998 77 (135, 57%) 76 (95, 80%) 62 (83, 75%)
1999 75 (150, 50%) 65 (77, 84%) 43 (72, 60%)
2000 82 (129, 64%) 47 (100, 47%) 39 (89, 44%)
2002 56 (123, 46%) 42 (98, 43%) -
Total 290 (537, 54%) 230 (479, 48%) 144 (365, 40%)
The response frequency is based on all answered questionnaires in

relation to registered students. For the whole material, there is a selection
already after the first year in the programme, when many students drop out.
In an earlier report (Edvardsson Stiwne, 2005), the reduction was calculated
at 20 percent after the first year in the programme.
As the questionnaires were filled in anonymously and not coded, it is
only possible to analyse changes over the years on a cohort level. Most of the
questions have a Likert-scale design.
25
Analysis
A large variety of statistical methods were used. The parametric methods
used were Factor analysis, ANOVA, and χ²-tests. Statistical analysis of
questionnaire data has been performed using the SPSS 15.0.
Data set IV
Data
In paper IV, students from all four cohorts participated. However, only
interview data from students who were interviewed more than four times, and
who did not leave the programme, were used because the purpose was to
focus on how students related their studies and study conditions to their
future as graduated engineers and employees.
In all, the data for paper IV consisted of 112 interviews with 20 students.
The interviews were conducted between 1998 and 2007 and resulted in 975
transcribed pages.
Analysis
In paper IV, the goal was not to find patterns or themes, but to explore how
students talked about their studies and how they related this to their futures as
graduated engineers and employees. A number of questions guided the data
analysis. These questions concerned the elements of the programme that
students perceived as most relevant and instructive and the skills and
competences that students believed would enhance their employability and
career opportunities. Interview accounts relevant to these research questions
were put together in an order to make it possible to follow how each
interviewed student constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed his/her
experiences of being a student, of becoming employable and becoming an
engineer.
Methodological considerations
For paper II, all interviews with cohort 1999 were chosen because this data
set was the most complete in the interview material at the time when I started
to analyse interviews with cohort 1999 (the summer of 2005). All interviews
of cohort 1998 had not been recorded and transcribed verbatim and I had not
personally carried out many of those interviews. Concerning cohort 1999, I
had carried out most of the interviews in the spring of 2004 and the spring of
2005. The interviews with cohorts 2000 and 2002 were not complete at that
time because more interviews were either still to be transcribed or still to take
place with those cohorts the following years.
26
When I started to analyse the interviews for paper I (the summer of

2006), the data set was complete for the purpose of that paper. Cohort 2000
was chosen for three main reasons. First, cohort 1999 had already been
analysed and there was an interest in exploring cohort 2000, who had more
experiences of working according to a partly new curriculum. Second, I had
personally carried out most of the interviews with students from this cohort
(between the spring, 2004, and the spring, 2006). Furthermore, I transcribed
all the interviews I had conducted, and this process was, as Bird (2005) notes,
a key phase of the data analysis, in which the interpretation started and
meanings were created.
Regarding paper III, several reports and conference papers had already
explored the first three questionnaires. Thus, I was more concerned with
comparing the experiences of all cohorts during their latter participation in
the programme. In addition, I had personally distributed many of those
questionnaires (beginning as early as in November, 2003) and entered the
data in SPSS.
The purpose of paper IV, to explore how students become employable
and their transition process from university to work, also guided our choice
of data set for this paper. We were only interested in analysing interviews
with students who either were about to graduate from the programme or,
preferably, had graduated and were working as engineers. Thus, all
interviews with students who had dropped out or who were still struggling in
the programme with no foreseeable graduation in the immediate future were
excluded from this data set. To be able to compare the different cohorts, we
decided to interview students from all cohorts.
Several methods of qualitative analysis were considered when the
purposes of the papers had been established. Three such methods, which are
quite common in the research fields of this thesis, were discarded because
they did not fit in with the purpose of the study or because they did not suit
the design of the project. For example, the longitudinal design of this thesis
makes it possible to explore the development of students’ perceptions of their
opportunities to influence their studies, their motivation and approaches to
their studies as a journey that they experience over time. This journey over
time involves a large variety of elements, which makes it too complex to
employ a pure phenomenological analysis, where the aim is to uncover an
underlying essence. In this thesis, students’ perceptions of their opportunities
to influence their studies and the development of their motivation is
conceptualised more as a process than a phenomenon. A phenomenon is a
concept or state-of-being, such as feeling ethnocultural empathy or being gay.
In this thesis, the aim was to explore the perceptions of the students’
27
opportunities to influence their studies. Thus, a phenomenological analysis

was discarded.
Grounded theory was not an option either, because such an approach
does not allow extensive literature reviews in the early stages of the research
to increase the likelihood that the theory will be grounded in data (Cutcliffe,
2000). Creswell (1998) furthermore indicated that theoretical ideas or notions
should be set aside in grounded theory. Since I had already undertaken a
literature review and setting all theoretical ideas and notions aside was not
compatible with my purposes, grounded theory was discarded as an analysis
method.
A third method of analysis that could have been considered was
phenomenography (Marton, 1981). Phenomenography has been widely used
as a research approach in studying learning and teaching in higher education
(Entwistle, 1997). The central idea of the phenomenographic approach is to
identify and describe students’ conceptions of a phenomenon as faithfully as
possible. The underlying principle is that such an approach would help the
researcher to better understand the outcomes of learning and teaching.
However, the purpose of this study is not to study outcomes of but, rather, the
conditions of learning. Phenomenography was thus discarded.
Ethical standpoints
Ethical issues permeate the whole research process. There are several ways to
look at ethics in research. Gustafsson, Hermerén and Petersson (2006) make
a distinction between research ethics and researching ethics. Research ethics
concerns how the researcher behaves in relation to the various parties that are
affected by the research. Researching ethics concerns honesty in the research.
The parties who are most affected in this thesis are the participating
students. Teachers in the programme and even students and teachers in
general may indirectly be affected by the results of the thesis. Regarding the
relationship between the researcher and the participating students, certain
research ethical principals must be raised. There are four general principles:
(a) information requirements, (b) consent requirements, (c) confidentiality
requirements and (d) usage requirements (cf. Vetenskapsrådet, 1999). The
first requirement concerns how detailed the information about the research
project given to the students must be so that they will have sufficient
information to make a reasonable judgement as to whether they want to
participate without risking weakening the research. In this thesis, there are
no elements that would have involved deceiving the respondents. During the
very first encounter, all students were informed about the purpose of the
study and how the research results would be used. During each data
28
collection, all the students were informed about the purpose of the study in
general terms so that the opportunity to explore a wide range of areas would
not be prevented. By giving the respondents sufficient information, they
could make a judgement to decide to participate in the study. All students
were fully aware that their participation was voluntary. The drop in the
number of respondents in the interviews was marginal, although it was fair
high at the later stage of the questionnaire study. There is a risk that the drop
in the number of responses was systematic and could result in a bias in the
results. The question then is whether the results of those questionnaires will
give a fair picture of the students and if those results are representative of the
students in the programme. The confidentiality requirements were met as all
information concerning the interviewed students was treated confidentially
and only members of the research project knew who they were. When the last
interviews in each cohort were carried out, there were some cases where
some respondents were the only female students with a specific
specialisation. In those cases, interpretations and presentations of the results
required a certain degree of care. Even teachers were sometimes indirectly
affected by the results of interviews as well as questionnaires. All students
and teachers in the questionnaire study were totally anonymous. The usage
requirement primarily concerns how the programme board may use the
results of the thesis to reform the programme.
Concerning researching ethics, good and honest research means that (a)
the method will reliably answer the research questions, and (b) that the
questions are worth answering (Gustafsson et al., 2006). Both criteria are met
in this thesis.
Regarding the first criterion, multiple methods are used longitudinally to
explore the perceptions and experiences of the students. Unfortunately, there
is a shortcoming as to the method in the questionnaire study. The
participating students wanted to be fully anonymous in that study and as a
result, no answer in the first questionnaire can be followed up in later
questionnaires and no conclusions can be drawn if students change on an
individual level; only on a group level.
Regarding the second criteria, the thesis has a value and is relevant.
Results from the study may increase our knowledge of consequences that
students’ views of their perceptions of their opportunities to influence their
study conditions have for their study motivation and study approaches. The
board of the programme could use the results in order to facilitate the study
motivation and study approaches of the students and increase the knowledge
of what students perceive as relevant and valuable courses in the programme.
Finally, the research project that this thesis is part of can be regarded as
action research. It was the board of the Y programme that asked researchers
29
at the Department of Behavioural Sciences to investigate the experiences and

expectations of first-year students in the programme. The aim of the board
was initially to obtain information about the students, which in the long run
could help the board increase the number of graduated students from the
programme. The board was also the principal financier of the project. This
arrangement could have resulted in ethical problems. However, the board of
the programme receives information about experiences of the students in
reports, while I as a PhD student could freely choose what I wanted to focus
on in my thesis. Throughout the writing of my thesis, I focused on doing
research of high quality that I was interested in. Of course, I had to be careful
that the results from the reports and the results from my papers were not
contradictory. Both reports on the project and papers in this thesis have been
reviewed by me and by the project leader Dr. Edvardsson Stiwne.
Consequently, I am confident that there are no significant contradictions.
Reliability and Validity

The reason for using qualitative methods in articles I, II, and IV was to derive
rich and deep data that contribute to the research on student motivation and
self-efficacy, their strategic approach to studying, and transition. However,
there is a critical issue regarding the generalisability of qualitative research.
In this thesis, it is assumed that the most important criterion for assessing the
study is its relevance to the theoretical framework (see e.g. Guba & Lincoln,
1994). Generalisability involves much more than proving causality of random
samples. The generalisability of the qualitative results of this study is
increased because of what Schofield (2002) refers to as contextual similarity
of the respondents in the study and of engineering students in similar settings.
Implications of the general findings can be generalized to all high-demand
programmes in engineering with a similar context. There is reason to believe
that the MSc programmes in engineering in Sweden are all very similar.
Special interest organisations, such as the Swedish Association of Graduate
Engineers, have been bodies to which proposed measures are referred for
consideration when these programmes have been developed and reformed
(e.g. Industrikommittén, 2006; Sveriges Civilingenjörsförbund, 2006;
Sveriges Ingenjörer, 2007). The impact of their views on the programmes is
visible in the characteristics of all Swedish MSc programmes in engineering,
e.g. they require the same knowledge entrance requirements, they have
similar introduction courses in mathematics distinguished by high demands
and heavy workloads and, until 2007, they were all 4.5 years long. Finally,
generalisability can be attained through recognition of a common gestalt
(Larsson, 2005). Generalization by recognizing a gestalt or, as in two of the
examples in this thesis, students’ perceptions of their opportunities to
30
influence their study conditions and how this is related to their motivation
and study strategies, can occur although the context of other programmes is
in many ways different from the original study. The results of this study show
that qualitative analyses of longitudinal, semi-structured interviews
contribute to the empirical research in this field.
The response frequencies of the questionnaires fell in the later
questionnaires. One reason for the lower response rate could be that students
who had the questionnaires distributed to their homes were not as inclined to
return completed questionnaires as students in the lecture hall. Accordingly,
there is a risk that the drop in the number of responses is systematic and may
result in a bias in the results. One hypothesis is that students who answered
the questionnaires differ from students who chose not to do so. The
heterogeneity amongst the cohorts therefore decreases over time and students
who answered the questionnaires are more homogenous over time, and the
results to a great extent refer to ’the successful’ students. When missing data
are random and the percentage of missing data per variable is rather low
while distribution is normal, missing values may be imputed by the use of the
EM algorithm (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). However, it was difficult to
decide how much of the data were systematic and how much were random in
this case, and, therefore, no imputation was made. It was furthermore not
possible to know if a certain category of students did not fill in the
questionnaires since they were all answered anonymously, which of course is
a limitation of the questionnaire study.
Results
L'ennui est entré dans le monde par la paresse. Jean de La Bruyère.
Paper I
Three comprehensive areas, which students described as significant for their
studies - setting, influence, and strategy – were obtained.
Setting comprises students’ broad perceptions of their study conditions.
The programme was a challenge and students expected tough conditions and
were prepared to work hard. As freshmen, students adapted to a new life,
which was more demanding and involved a heavier workload than they were
used to. Students did not feel that they got much encouragement from
lecturers. In the third year, there was a peak of hard work. High academic
self-efficacy convinced the students that they could manage both highly
demanding courses and time-consuming activities during the semesters of the
first three years. During the last year, the pace was more moderate. Students
31
chose specialisation courses and studied in smaller groups. They appreciated

the freedom to think and reflect on problems, especially in their Masters
thesis.
Influence concerns how students perceived the opportunity of influencing
their study conditions. This could be (a) directly through course evaluations,
(b) indirectly by making choices such as when, where and with whom to
study, and when to retake failed exams, and (c) by creating a dialogue with
faculty, for example, by asking for and receiving help from teachers. Students
seldom individually tried to influence teachers, but were confident that it
could help and that the programme could be improved by means of class
evaluations and class representatives. In the first year, the perceptions ranged
from acceptance of the heavy workload, changing the curriculum, asking
teachers to adapt their approaches to student demands, to how to cooperate
with peers. In the second and third year, students found it more difficult to
get help from teachers than they had anticipated, and felt that course
evaluations only led to changes that affected later cohorts. Thus, more
indirect ways of influencing were emphasized, such as choosing course
assistants and peers to study with. During the final two years, in the smaller
groups in the specialisation courses, students felt that they had more dialogue
and cooperation with peers and teachers and a greater ability to influence by
interaction. Students felt that they had many opportunities to influence their
Masters thesis.
Students’ opportunities to influence their study conditions were enacted
in various strategies, such as routinely using class representatives and course
evaluations in the first year. By the second and third year, they doubted that it
could help them. The students were self-regulated learners and good at
planning, prioritizing and staying focused, which helped them get time for
exercise or relaxation. Students had different strategies for getting feedback
on their work. Students who based their self-efficacy on positive self-
perceptions as excellent students received their efficacy information from
their general cognitive ability and tried to figure out problems on their own.
Students who wanted to increase their perception of informal opportunities to
influence their studies often asked teachers or peers for feedback. The
programme was considered flexible since courses could be taken in an order
that suited individual needs. Students could thus be involved in
extracurricular activities, which gave some of them a sense of autonomy, thus
facilitating their intrinsic motivation. From the spring semester of the third
year, students could attend all lectures and lessons and more often interacted
with teachers and took control of their studies. Students with both social and
academic commitments were the most persistent and motivated, which
supports findings by Tinto (1997).
32
Paper II
Three approaches to studying – adaptive, critical and cooperative – emerged
when each area was thematically analysed. Each approach involves different
ways of perceiving the study conditions, and the opportunities to influence
them, and different strategies for gaining control over study conditions. These
approaches are not categories of students.
The adaptive approach was based on the perception that the programme
was supposed to be demanding and that students should accept and adapt to
the conditions of the programme. Students’ main interests were to acquire
new knowledge and that precious time should be devoted to studying rather
than trying to influence the programme. Students accepted receiving only
exam results as feedback. Students, who perceived the programme as an ideal
one and faculty as “expert” authorities, adopted an adaptive approach as well
as having great respect for the programme. They thought it was wrong to
change a concept that had worked well for several years. This respect reduced
their desire to influence or change the programme and made them work
harder to prove that they were worthy of the programme. Personal
responsibility was central to their learning,
They identified themselves with a difficult elite education, which they
were proud to take part in. They looked for challenges allowing them to
“push the limits”. In the final years, this approach resulted in students being
more disappointed with the lack of feedback and encouragement. It was also
believed that the quality of the programme could be improved if students
tried to exert an influence in certain ways. There was also a regret at having
missed opportunities to learn how to cooperate with other people and to build
networks.
The critical approach was based on a critical approach towards the study
conditions and the perception that difficult conditions were negative because
they made it hard to reflect on what was studied. In this approach, students
tried to improve the programme through course evaluations, trying to
influence teachers, choosing course assistants, and creating individual
curricula that allowed more time for self-instruction. Feedback and
committed and encouraging teachers were important for students’ learning.
The importance of finding peers at the same level to work with was also
emphasized. Cooperation with a friend gave a sense of control.
Having to study several courses in parallel was perceived as negative, so
students created individual curricula to take control of their workload, which
facilitated studying at a more moderate rate. In an individual curriculum,
courses were taken in an order that suited individual needs, e.g. only studying
some courses or the easier courses, and deciding how much time to spend on
33
lessons, lectures and self-study. Over time, this strategy became more
common. A related strategy was the option to take study breaks. Choosing
course assistants could improve students’ perceptions of their capacity to
influence and control their study conditions, creating a positive cycle; more
response from the course assistant increased deep-level learning, and
increasing the potential to help peers resulted in more self-esteem, so that
they dared to ask the “basic” questions, and this then increased their learning
even more.
The cooperative approach was based on the perception that cooperation
with peers is the most important way of influencing their conditions and that
the programme was a challenge. Cooperating with peers was a strategy used
to exert influence and gain control over the study conditions, and to increase
their learning. In the second year, it was mentioned that teachers’ feedback
was often on too high and abstract a level; students preferred discussing
problems with peer students and by helping them. In the first two years, this
approach resulted in students structuring their lives according to the courses.
They spent most of their time on campus, attended most lectures and lessons,
and studied with any classmate who wanted to cooperate. Peers were
necessary for social support and for creating a balance between academic and
social goals. In the long run, cooperative strategies seemed to facilitate a
sense of control in the students.
One emerging theme was that, over time, when external demands
changed, strategies changed too. The adaptive approach led to more
interaction with peers and faculty. The critical approach led to more
participation in lessons and investments in studying in specialisation courses.
The cooperative approach led to more prioritizing.
Paper III
In paper III, questionnaires were used to explore student experiences in
several study-related areas. Results show that over time, more students were
satisfied with their studies. One explanation could be that students choose
study profiles, which they study to a large extent in their fourth year. It is
possible that these courses were perceived as more relevant and interesting,
which increased their satisfaction. The hypothesis that there has been self-
selection among students who have replied the questionnaires is also a
possible explanation. If you are successful, you are usually satisfied.
The third year in the programme involved the highest demands in terms
of working hours per week and perceived workload for cohorts 1998 to 2000.
The results indicate that the percentage of students who worked more than 40
hours per week and who perceived the workload as very heavy or
34
overwhelming was the largest in these cohorts in year three. For cohort 2002,
a different pattern developed. They spent the least time on their studies
during the second and third year and had a higher percentage of students who
studied less than 40 hours per week than the other cohorts. Significantly
fewer students from cohort 2002 than expected perceived the workload as
very high or overwhelming. In cohort 2000, 47 percent of students
experienced a very high or overwhelming workload, but only 18 percent of
students in cohort 2002 did the same.
In the questionnaires, there are general questions about health and ill-
health as well as more specific questions about complaints that may be
related to the context of higher education in a more general sense than solely
their study conditions. For the general questions about health, a factor
analysis resulted in a bipolar scale, which covers the following poles: (a) ‘My
health is good’, (b) ‘I enjoy the place of study’, and (c) ‘The studies have
affected my health in a negative way’, (d) ‘I have felt that I do not really fit in
the programme’, (e) ‘I have experienced feelings of social isolation’. The
factor can be called Health and ill health. On average, all cohorts of students
experienced more health than ill health. No significant differences between
the cohorts were found.
Feelings of social isolation may be related both to the situation and
relationships. A student may, for example, have many relationships outside
the university and have problems feeling at home in the academic world and
as regards relationships, e.g. a student may find it difficult to establish
contact with other students. In both cases, there may be a dominant feeling of
not really fitting in. The percentage of students in cohort 2002 who had such
feelings decreased slightly from 37 percent (see Edvardsson Stiwne, 2005) to
33 percent, and then remained on that level. For the other cohorts, the
percentage increased from similar or higher levels to a level much higher in
their third year. Cohort 1998 experienced social isolation to a greater extent
than all other cohorts during the third and fourth year. A χ²-test indicated that
cohort 1998 experienced significantly more social isolation and cohort 2002
experienced less social isolation than could be expected in the third year3.
Applying a factor analysis, the questionnaire statements of influence and
cooperation were reduced to two factors that can be called Influence and
contacts with teachers and Cooperation with other students. These two
factors explain 30 and 54 percent, respectively, of the variance. Regarding
students’ experienced opportunities to influence and cooperate with teachers,
these opportunities were relatively high, ranging between 2.9 and 3.3. The
results indicate that students in cohorts 2000 and 2002 had better cooperation
3
χ² (3, N = 227) = 9.0, p < .05
35
opportunities with peers than students in the other cohorts. An analysis of

variance for cooperation showed a significant difference. Cohort 2002
experienced their opportunities to cooperate with other students as
significantly better than cohort 19994.
Paper IV
Five areas were highlighted: (a) plans for the future or ad hoc constructions
of job opportunities; (b) course content, curricular design and career plans;
(c) the job search process: an active search or an ambivalent monitoring of
opportunities; (d) becoming an employee, becoming employable, and (e) on
the job: job satisfaction – life satisfaction, plans for the future. There were
differences in the way students talked about these issues during the time they
were studying, when they were looking for jobs and thinking of their future
roles as employees, and when they were employed and were working.
Throughout the interviews, certain turning points were identified, where
the students had to make various decisions, and they thus deconstructed and
reconstructed their experiences of being students and graduates. When
students enrolled in the programme, very few had any idea about what an
engineer was or what engineers did. They had no articulated career plans,
with the exception of mature students who saw further education as a way out
of unqualified work. During the first three years in the programme, the
students’ lack of career plans for the future was enacted in different ways;
some students engaged primarily in activities aimed at confirming their
position as an engineering student and involved themselves in student union
activities and extracurricular activities, others viewed the programme as one
option among others and, finally, some focused on a specific subject of
interest, and on the reputation of the programme.
Choosing a profile was a crucial point. Three different strategies
prevailed: (a) students who had experienced an overwhelming workload
chose the options of exit or taking some time off studies and deciding either
to drop out of the programme or to take study leave to think things over, (b)
to stay on and deepen an interest with no consideration of a future job or
career, or (c) to stay on and make choices that will be considered paths
leading to a job.
Starting to look for a placement for their graduate thesis/project was
another crucial decision point. Many students argued that doing a thesis
project in a company was the best learning experience during all their studies
because generic skills and cultural values are best learned in extra-curricular
4
F = 3.82, p < .05
36
activities and in work contexts. Furthermore, most students were convinced

that a good placement would provide contacts that would result in a job after
graduation. When writing their thesis, students became aware of their
employability skills and that autonomy, opportunities to influence personal
work conditions and time management were quite different than in their
study conditions.
The motivation to take the step from being a student into working life
varied amongst students, within as well as between cohorts, due to their
individual goals as well as the job market situation at the time of graduation.
The skills and competencies that seemed to the students to be of most value
in the job search process were: a good thesis project; a diploma from the
programme proving that they were able to manage a tough programme and to
manage a heavy workload; self-efficacy, knowing that they could solve
complex problems and that they possessed a broad knowledge base. The
reputation of the programme was also mentioned as being a core value of the
programme.
In cohorts 2000/2002, all the students interviewed except one were
eventually employed at the place where they had carried out their graduate
project. Many students experienced the step from being a student at the
university to becoming a graduate project student in a company, as being
bigger than the step from being a graduate student to becoming an employee.
Mathematics and subject-specific knowledge, problem-solving skills, time-
management skills, learning skills, and an ability to manage stress and heavy
workloads were recognized as key acquired skills.
Discussion
The focus of this thesis is on four cohorts of engineering students and their
experiences and perceptions of their studies and transition to work. The
research field of this thesis is complex. The theoretical areas that are explored
are areas in their own right, but are also linked to each other in many ways. In
addition, the development over time, which permeates the whole thesis,
contributes to the complexity. However, it is possible to unite the social
cognitive perspective with the perspective on approaches to studying. Figure
3, the conceptual model of opportunities to influence study conditions and
transition to work, which is inspired by the Entwistle and Smith conceptual
model of the teaching-learning process in higher education (2002), shows
how the different parts of the theoretical models and various parts of this
thesis are integrated.
37
The conceptual model of opportunities to influence study conditions and

transition to work (Figure 3) has a student and graduate perspective. Student
characteristics refer to students’ perceived intrinsic motivation, external
regulation and self-efficacy beliefs. The approaches to studying
predominantly refer to the adaptive, critical and cooperative approaches to
studying of paper II, but may in addition refer to a strategic approach to
studying. The study conditions concern how students perceive, for example,
their workload, teacher feedback and cooperation, but also the opportunities
to influence the study conditions that are available to Swedish MSc students
(e.g. course evaluations and student representatives). However, some of these
parts, such as student representatives, may be characteristic of Swedish
students and could be replaced by more general opportunities to influence the
study conditions for the model to be generalised to a greater population of
students.
Transition in the model is the link between being a student in higher
education, through the job search process as a graduate, to a job. The
transition characteristics have the perspective of the student and graduate,
and concern the students’ and graduates’ career plans, knowledge and skills.
A model with another perspective could have quite different transition
characteristics. The same pertains to the transition environment, which in this
model refers to the environmental opportunities to make decisions and to the
choices that students and graduates make, which are usually important for
them to become employable and make a career. When students make the
various decisions, such as what profile to choose and where to do their
project/thesis, they deconstruct and reconstruct their experiences of being
students and graduates. This is also emphasised in the model. It should be
noted that student characteristics also are important in the transition and play
an essential role in the graduates’ job search process.
The present thesis suggests that students’ perceptions of their
opportunities to influence their studies are related to a number of variables,
and that their perceptions vary over time. In line with the findings of
Entwistle (2001), the approaches to studying and the various strategies of the
students in this thesis are elicited by the content of the tasks and the study
conditions.
There is an attempt to show both variations in each approach to studying
and to consider the nature of the object of study for the individual students.
Although different approaches and strategies were used on different
occasions, it was clear that, just as students have general tendencies to adopt
particular approaches to learning (Ramsden, 1992) they also have general
tendencies to adopt particular approaches to gain influence and control over
their study conditions.
38
Figure 3. Conceptual model of opportunities to influence study conditions

and transition to work.
Each approach to studying can to some extent be stable – as a habitual

response to learning situations, which a student commonly encounters – and
yet also variable in response to the conditions and assessment demands in a
specific course. Most students had general tendencies to adopt a specific
approach. However, a few students adopted the same approach to studying
throughout the course of their studies, and seemed to almost identify
themselves with that approach, whereas other students could manifest a
critical approach, when they described their perceptions and their studying in
one interview, and a cooperative approach in another interview. This
variation clearly shows that the approaches depended on the shifting study
conditions and on how the students perceived them.
One of the most important contributions of this thesis is that students’
opportunities to influence their study conditions should be integrated in the
conceptual model of the teaching–learning process in higher education that
Entwistle and Smith (2002) have developed. How students perceive their
39
opportunities to influence and how they act in order to control their studies
affect all three parts of the model. In this thesis, the focus is on the student
characteristics, the study conditions and the transition to work (Figure 3).
Influencing the studies involves choices students make in which they exert
power in controlling and influencing their study conditions. Students can
choose to use statutory, formal and informal forms of influencing. All these
forms of influencing can have an effect on study conditions, which in
Entwistle and Smith’s model are called departmental characteristics. Study
conditions that students may try to influence can be workload, course design,
teachers’ feedback to students and assessments. For example, students may
try to influence the teachers so that they give thorough explanations
regarding subject matter, give the highest quality feedback on student work
and encourage autonomy. They may also try to influence the design of the
curriculum so that the workload is less heavy. Both the study conditions that
may be influenced and the forms of influencing that students can use to
change the conditions are included in the model.
Within a specific approach to studying, students may give different
priorities to their various features and strategies. For example, a critical
approach to studying may have an emphasis on the importance of
encouraging teachers who give useful feedback. However, in other situations,
the critical approach to studying may involve an emphasis on achieving a
balanced life for the student, e.g. by only doing two out of three courses
during particularly demanding semesters. The approaches that students
employ in order to influence and take control over their study conditions
involve several strategies. These strategies can be either conscious, under the
students’ control or used implicitly without much reflection or control.
There are, furthermore, links between students’ approaches to their
studies and their perceptions of their opportunities to influence their study
conditions. A large number of students in the interviews (paper I and II)
believed in their statutory opportunities to influence their studies. However,
there was variation regarding how much students believed that their
opportunities to influence the studies actually could result in improvements in
the programme. There was a greater variation regarding perceptions of
informal opportunities to influence the studies. In the quantitative study
(paper III), students in all cohorts believed in their opportunities to influence
their studies. The problem with the quantitative results is that it is not
possible to know how students interpreted the survey questions about
influencing. They may have interpreted the meaning of influencing as
statutory, formal or informal, which has been elaborated in a later study
(Jungert & Rosander, 2009). How students relate to their opportunities to
influence their study conditions is linked to the students’ characteristics, e.g.
40
their study motivation, self-efficacy, and approach to studying. Students’

different perceptions of what responsibility they have for their own learning
and how to gain a sense of control seem to lead to different perceptions of the
conditions in terms of workload, teacher feedback and cooperation with
peers. As a consequence, students adopted different strategies throughout the
programme in order to manage the workload, create feedback and solve
problems.
The findings in this thesis indicate that students with different approaches
to studying have different views of conventional teaching and project-based
courses. Depending on their approach to studying, they are motivated in
different ways when studying in a conventional course and when they study
in project-based courses. A student who adopts e.g. an adaptive approach to
studying emphasizes personal responsibility when studying, and would be
more motivated to study in conventional courses dominated by self-studies.
A student who adopts a critical approach to studying would be more
motivated to study in a project-based course because such a course involves
good opportunities to influence the amount of teacher feedback, how to
structure the studies and what parts of a course to focus on. A student who
adopts a cooperative approach would also be more motivated to study in
project-based courses because it would involve more collaboration with peer
students. Thus, students with a preference for adopting an adaptive approach
to studying would be more likely to enrol in a programme with conventional
teaching, whereas students with a preference for adopting a critical or
cooperative approach to studying would be more likely to enrol in
programmes with project-based courses. The programme was marketed as a
highly demanding programme with many conventional courses prior to 2000
and as a programme with project-based courses from 2000 and onwards. One
consequence may be that there were different cultures in the cohorts – more
students with an adaptive approach in cohorts 1998/1999 than in cohorts
2000/2002, while students who adopted a cooperative and a critical approach
were probably more common in cohorts 2000 and 2002.
In many models of student approaches to learning, self-efficacy is
omitted. Self-efficacy is, however, closely tied to performance, learning and
achievement (Bandura, 1997; Pintrich, 2000b; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). In
the model introduced on page 39, self-efficacy of students is an important
student characteristic that is linked to students’ perceptions of opportunities
to influence their study conditions. In addition, study motivation has been
elaborated because it is such a complex term. Thus, the distinction between
self-determined and controlled sorts of intentional regulation is clear in the
model, i.e. intrinsic motivation and external regulation.
41
Bandura and Wood (1989) emphasised the significance of personal

efficacy to effect change. Human behaviour is governed largely by
perceptions of personal efficacy and social environments rather than simply
by their objective properties. Individuals who believe that they are
inefficacious usually only achieve limited change even in environments that
provide many opportunities. On the other hand, individuals who have high
beliefs in their efficacy, discover ways of exercising some measure of control
when conditions offer limited opportunities and many constraints (Bandura &
Wood, 1989). The results of paper I lend support to this notion. Even if all
students in the programme had the same formal opportunities to influence
their studies, there were differences in how they perceived their opportunities
as well as the strategies for influencing their study conditions they developed.
Students who believed in their opportunities to influence their studies
managed to exercise more control and influence by means of strategies that
included a greater variation in forms of influencing (statutory, formal and
informal forms). Students with a lower belief in their opportunities to
influence their studies had more problems both in perceiving and using their
opportunities to influence their study conditions. The results indicate that
students who had a high belief in academic self-efficacy could have both a
high and a low belief in their opportunities to influence their studies. Having
a high academic belief but a low influencing belief resulted in the use of
formal opportunities to influence but not in informal opportunities to
influence, while students who had a high belief in their opportunities to
influence their studies used a greater variety of strategies to influence their
studies.
Stability of self-efficacy beliefs has, according to Bong and Skaalvik
(2003), hardly been examined. However, the longitudinal design of the data
collection in this thesis made it possible to study how the self-efficacy and
study motivation of students changed throughout the programme. The results
lend support to the notion that self-efficacy is a context-specific construct,
but that self-efficacy beliefs of many students were rather stable over time.
Few students expressed decreases in their self-efficacy beliefs as a result of
perceiving themselves as average or below average students in the
programme. Students estimate their confidence in success in comparison with
goals and standards and do not engage in active social comparisons when
assessing their self-efficacy beliefs. Instead, they calculate their chances of
successfully performing at designated levels (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003;
Schunk, 1991). On the other hand, social comparison is a powerful source for
judging self-concept (Marsh, 1993). This may explain why many students
interviewed in this thesis felt both that they were not among the high
achievers in the programme and that they could maintain a high belief in self-
42
efficacy. They gauged their efficacy beliefs against goals and not social
comparisons.
In line with earlier research (e.g. Pintrich, 2004), students flexibly
combine different goals and strategies in various ways depending on their
study conditions. Self-regulated learning models allow students to have
multiple goals and there are differences in the links between goals and
strategies. For example, students could have the goal of achieving well, of
feeling that they are in control, of having a good balance between their
studies and their social lives and their personal interest in the courses.
Furthermore, as shown in paper IV, few students had clear professional goals
when entering the programme, even if there was variation throughout their
years in the programme.
Results from this thesis show that different approaches to studying and
influencing study conditions are linked to different kinds of goals. One of the
goals of students who adopt an adaptive approach to their studies, may have
to do with how to prove to themselves that one can manage highly
demanding studies and heavy workloads, whereas students who adopt a
critical approach to studying may have a goal that includes various
opportunities to influence the study conditions to feel in control. Hence, the
different approaches to studying are related to different forms of motivation.
Many students who adopt an adaptive approach to their studies seem to be
intrinsically motivated to do well in most courses. Students who adopt an
adaptive approach to their studies may also adapt to the demanding
conditions and study very hard in order to enhance or maintain the feeling of
worth and high self-efficacy. In such cases, they are extrinsically motivated
by what is called introjected regulation (the drive to preserve a self-image).
This is a type of regulation that is still quite controlling because the student
feels pressure to attain ego-enhancement or pride. During especially
demanding times, students with a critical approach often chose to take some
courses and drop others. In the courses they prioritised, they were either
intrinsically motivated or driven by identified regulation, because they
recognized the value of learning for their own goals. Regarding courses that
they dropped, they were extrinsically motivated and eventually took them in
order to be able to graduate. It is more difficult to tell what kind of
motivations that drive students who adopt a cooperative approach to study.
The cooperative approach has similarities with the adaptive approach in the
emphasis on the responsibility of the student. However, students who adopt
such an approach deal with the demanding and challenging programme by
cooperating with peers. When they study, they may be driven by intrinsic
motives as well as by introjected regulation where they strive to attain
feelings of worth and pride in front of their peers. When they chose profiles
43
at the end of their studies, they often chose strategically. This indicated that
they were then driven by identified regulation because they had identified
with the value of having a specific profile. In other words, there were shifts
from an intrinsic to an external orientation of the students’ motivation. In
previous research, Deci and Ryan (2000) have found that behaviour could
begin by being externally regulated but later becomes intrinsic if the person
feels that the activity is intrinsically interesting. Thus, both kinds of
orientation shifts may occur for students, which makes it rather complex.
In the model introduced on page 39, there is a link to the transition
process. The model shows elements and characteristics that are important in
the transition process, such as the students’ plans for the future, their acquired
skills and knowledge that are important in the job search process and on the
job and significant choices students make in the course of their studies, such
as choice of profile and choice of placement for their thesis/project.
A theme that is explored in all the papers is the students’ perception of
their workload. When this theme is developed, there are many interesting
links between how students perceive their study conditions and their
opportunities to influence their studies and variables such as approach to
studying, self-efficacy and motivation.
In the third year, most students estimate that they work more than 40
hours per week, and more students feel that they have much heavier
workloads than during their earlier years in the programme. Questionnaire
results show that the percentage of students who work more than 40 hours
per week and who feel that they have very heavy workloads is significantly
larger for cohorts 1998 and 1999 than for cohorts 2000 and 2002. The
interviews showed that the workload peaked in the third year in the
programme, but did not indicate whether students in cohort 1999 experienced
heavier workloads than cohort 2000 or not. On the other hand, the qualitative
studies of cohorts 1999 and 2000 show that the perception of the workload is
associated with the approach to studying, the level of self-efficacy and the
type of study motivation of the students. Students who adopt an adaptive
approach to studying accepted heavy workloads, and would probably not
perceive workloads as overwhelming. Students who adopt a critical approach
to studying would not accept too heavy workloads, and might even be more
sensitive to heavy workloads. Even if students who adopt a cooperative
approach to studying may perceive the workload as heavy, they did not talk
much about overwhelming workloads in the interviews. Normal-achieving
students perceived the workload as heavier than high-achieving students.
There is, furthermore, the possibility that the reformation of the
programme, which included the introduction of several project-based courses,
is also associated with how workload is perceived. Project-based courses
44
allow students to design their own projects, to decide how to plan and
organize a project and to collaborate in project groups. All these elements of
project-based learning offer students more autonomy and responsibility,
which may provide them with more opportunities for control and influence
over their study conditions than in conventional courses. This can reduce the
perception of heavy workloads if students plan and organize their studies in
effective ways. When students feel that they can take more study-related
decisions on their own, their sense of autonomy may increase. A sense of
autonomy often facilitates intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
However, it may take some time for students to adjust to the new features of
studying that project courses involve. This may explain why cohort 2000,
who worked in their first projects in their third year, felt that they had
significantly heavier workloads than cohort 2002. Cohort 2000 was not used
to features such as handling deadlines and documenting. Hence, they
perceived the workload as heavier than cohort 2002 who were used to
studying in projects from their first year, and in their third year knew how to
treat the frames and how to work according to the project model LIPS (i.e.
the Lightly Interactive Project Management Model), which has been
developed at Linköping University. However, the results of paper III indicate
that both cohort 2000 and 2002 felt that they had better opportunities to
cooperate with peers than students in the other cohorts. This indicates that
even if cohort 2000 experienced heavier workloads than cohort 2002, the
project and team-based learning approach had as positive an effect on their
cooperation with peer students as for cohort 2002. An alternative
interpretation of the result that the later cohorts perceived their cooperation
with peer students as better than the earlier cohorts could be that they had
different social climates. Cohorts 2000 and 2002 may have had a social
climate that allowed for better cooperation. It is furthermore possible that the
reforms of the programme promoted a social climate that allowed for more
cooperation than the social climate of cohort 1998 and 1999.
Average students, as well as students who adopt a critical approach to
studying, focused on reducing the workload and demands in order to achieve
a sense of autonomy, increasing study motivation and opportunities to reflect
upon their studies. High-achieving students as well as students who adopt an
adaptive approach to studying did not focus on reducing their workload. It is
possible that the average students and students who adopt a critical approach
to their studies perceive very heavy workloads as a threat. Too heavy
workloads would be a threat to their opportunities to reflect upon their
studying and to learn in depth the study material, even if they had a great
belief in their capability to eventually graduate from the programme. On the
other hand, high achieving students and students who adopt an adaptive or a
45
cooperative approach to their studies perceive heavy workloads as a

challenge. This would be consistent with previous research showing that
persons with high self-efficacy beliefs evaluate demands as a challenge
whereas persons with low self-efficacy beliefs evaluate demands as a threat
(Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 1992; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990).
In paper IV, three different strategies prevailed when students chose their
profiles. Students with the first strategy, who decided either to drop out of the
programme or to take a study leave to think things over, can be compared to
the low achieving students in paper I and to students who adopted a critical
approach in paper III. Students with the second strategy, staying on and
deepening an interest with no consideration for a future job or career, show
similarities with high achievers in paper I and especially with students who
adopted an adaptive approach in paper II. Finally, students with the third
strategy, staying on and making choices considered paths leading to a job,
show similarities with students in paper II who adopted a cooperative
approach.
In paper IV, most graduated students emphasised their generic skills as
more valuable than subject-related knowledge in their job search process and
in their jobs. Examples of such generic skills are problem solving, planning
and being able to master heavy workloads. This is in line with findings by
Knight and Yorke (2004) and is probably a result of the general disciplines of
the programme. As was shown in Paper I, most students emphasised the
importance of what they referred to as the trademark of the programme. The
trademark of the programme was the ritual aspects of knowledge (Abrandt
Dahlgren et al. 2006) such as the intensity of the studies and the high
workload. When students adapt to this sort of study conditions, they are
forced to learn generic skills such as managing heavy workloads. Students
want to retain the trademark of the programme as it gives them a formal
legitimacy as a door opener to the labour market. Students who adopt an
adaptive or a cooperative approach will probably focus more on developing
such skills, whereas someone who adopts a critical approach will try to
change his/her focus to other aspects. Another reason for the importance of
the generic skills is probably that the Y programme is a broad education
programme and that many graduates specialise when they enter working life
rather than while being students in the programme.
To conclude, this thesis contributes to research on how students perceive
their study conditions. The findings indicate that students’ perceptions of
their opportunities to influence their study conditions interact with their
motivation, self-efficacy and approaches to studying.
46
Credibility
Criteria of judgement are based on the detailed elements of the actual
strategies used for collecting, coding, analysing, and presenting data. All
qualitative analyses have been tested until the final results are presented. The
theories that have been developed in this thesis, such as the approaches to
studying, the relationships between students’ perceptions of their
opportunities to influences their study conditions and their study motivation
and self-efficacy and their experiences of becoming employable, did not only
emerge by encountering students and interviewing them, but also as a result
of reflection and in-depth analysis. Of course, these analyses are not the only
credible ones, but they are the fruits of a systematic ordering of several
rigorous analyses, which Glaser and Strauss (1967) argue is highly important
for conveying credibility.
By giving a quite detailed description of the context of the study
conditions, where the programme and the life of the students is described, the
reader can literally understand what students perceive and experience. The
results of the analyses are, however, written in general form and related to the
theoretical framework of the study, which may result in them seeming rather
abstract. Glaser and Strauss (1967) write that readers go through a
discounting process whereby they make necessary corrections and
adjustments when thinking about the theory.
For a long time, quantitative methods have dominated when exploring
the concepts discussed in this study. In the case of self-efficacy and
motivation, a sociocognitive perspective has dominated and, as a
consequence, standardized assessments and survey research methods have
been encouraged. Furthermore, most studies of self-efficacy and motivation
focus only on the relationship between the student and the teacher and have
been carried out in the classroom. Approaches to studying have been
explored by using a number of different instruments, such as Approaches to
Studying Inventory (ASI). These methods have many important advantages,
but have at the same time been criticized. For example, Maehr and Meyer
(1997) argue that in motivation research, these methods may have biased and
limited conceptions of motivation. Greasly and Ashworth (2007) argue that,
even if the ASI is complex and Entwistle has greatly elaborated approaches
to studying (e.g. 2000, 2001), the method used cannot fully sum up the
richness of approaches to studying. More extensive research is needed in
these fields to capture the cognitive processes and emotions of motivation
and approaches to studying than surveys permit. This has been one goal in
this thesis. Self-efficacy, academic motivation and approaches to studying
have been studied longitudinally, using qualitative methods. The study
47
conditions refer to much more than what occurs in the classroom alone and
influencing concerns many different situations and different forms.
The findings in the thesis indicate that students’ perceptions of their
opportunities to influence their study conditions interact with their
motivation, self-efficacy and approaches to studying. The data cannot address
causality, but it is clear that all the main variables in Figure 3 (see page 40)
are important for the students in many ways. It appears that students who
perceive great opportunities to influence their study conditions adopt certain
approaches to their studies and become more motivated. Students who have
high self-efficacy beliefs develop more strategies to influence their study
environment. These interactions are reflected in their approaches to studying
and are important in the graduates’ process of transition to work.
In the future, researchers could explore how students in other
programmes perceive their opportunities to influence their studies. Future
research could also explore in greater depth the relationships between the
three approaches to studying described in this thesis and self-efficacy,
motivation and other constructs such as self-concept, attribution of students,
wellbeing and academic achievements. A further focus could be on the
transition process of the students in relation to their approaches to studying,
levels of self-efficacy and self-determination and strategies. A study with the
purpose of exploring such relationships in more detail will have implications
for practice in higher education. If teachers and other faculty members of
institutions could better understand how students perceive their opportunities
to influence their studies and why students approach their studies in different
ways, they could help the students, e.g. by developing their opportunities to
influence their study conditions.
48
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Self‐efficacy, motivation and

LIST OF ORIGINAL PAPERS ..............................................................................V

I Jungert, T. (2008). Opportunities of student influence as a context for the

II Jungert, T. (2008). A longitudinal study of engineering students’

III Jungert, T. (2006). Effects of the CDIO curriculum on engineering

IV Edvardsson Stiwne, E. & Jungert, T. (submitted to Education and Work).

Engineering education in Sweden

programmes (NAHE, 2007c). Students in such programmes have also

The context of higher education is a fairly complex term. In higher

determination theory, all humans are believed to have a psychological need to

The aims of the thesis

1. How do students perceive their opportunities to influence and control their

6. What strategies do students develop to become employable and how do

Formal Attendance/ Class representatives

Informal Relationships with faculty Relationships with peers

Statutory Course evaluations Student representatives

Two examples of direct formal influencing are when a student, to

Context of the thesis

which is to give feedback on courses by reflecting over them and critically

The Y programme has a large proportion of scheduled lectures, laboratory

The majority of specialisation courses are conducted in traditional format

Approaches to learning and studying

One approach to learning is how intention and process is combined in

Figure 1. Conceptual model of the teaching-learning process in higher

Parallel with this field, there is research focusing on metacognition and

Theories of motivation usually include the notion of intention as a central

their self-image), to identified regulation (students recognizing the value of

In social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), people are seen as self-

In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy functions as an

Transition in this thesis is defined as the process from being a student in

Brink, 2000; Sicherman, 1991; Schomburg & Teichler, 1993; Teichler,

experiences of several cohorts of students during the course of their studies.

Year Semester Cohort 98 Cohort 99 Cohort 00 Cohort 02

At the beginning of the project, many students expressed a worry that

when a researcher is committed to method rather than content or

Data set III

could only be interpreted on a group/cohort level and comparisons could only

The response frequency is based on all answered questionnaires in

When I started to analyse the interviews for paper I (the summer of

opportunities to influence their studies. Thus, a phenomenological analysis

at the Department of Behavioural Sciences to investigate the experiences and

Reliability and Validity

chose specialisation courses and studied in smaller groups. They appreciated

opportunities with peers than students in the other cohorts. An analysis of

activities and in work contexts. Furthermore, most students were convinced

The conceptual model of opportunities to influence study conditions and

Figure 3. Conceptual model of opportunities to influence study conditions

Each approach to studying can to some extent be stable – as a habitual

their study motivation, self-efficacy, and approach to studying. Students’

Bandura and Wood (1989) emphasised the significance of personal

cooperative approach to their studies perceive heavy workloads as a

Bong, M., & Skaalvik, E. M. (2003). Academic self-concept and self-

Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of

Entwistle, N., & Smith, C. (2002). Personal understanding and target

Hackett, G. (1995). Self-efficacy in career choice and development. In A.

Larsson, S. (2005). A pluralist view of generalisation in qualitative research.

Marsh, H. W. (1993). Academic self-concept: Theory, measurement, and

Ng, T. W. H, & Feldman, D. C. (2007). The school-to-work transition: A role

Ramsden, P., & Entwistle, N. (1981). Effects of academic departments on