Conference Agenda

This study examines how students’ critical thinking (CT) skills and well-being are associated with their academic achievement during early stages of higher education. Understanding these connections is important because these factors play a central role in studying and learning in higher education.

CT is defined as purposeful, self-regulatory, and goal-directed thinking, combining a set of cognitive skills and affective dispositions (Facione, 1990). This study focuses on CT skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation (Facione, 1990). CT is recognized as a key learning outcome in higher education (Arum & Roksa, 2011). The European Union has also emphasized the importance of CT in managing the complexity and constant change of today’s society (European Comission, 2019).

Well-being refers to optimal psychological functioning, encompassing both hedonic (happiness) and eudaimonic (personal growth) perspectives (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Well-being includes the feeling of relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2001), or the sense of belonging, defined as students’ feeling of being accepted, included, and connected to their institutions (Goodenow, 1993).

Academic achievement can be defined and measured in multiple ways, but commonly used indicators include grade point average (GPA), the weighted average of course grades, and earned study credits (ECTS), which reflect students’ progress toward degree completion (van Rooij et al., 2018). Although these metrics do not directly assess learning outcomes or competency development, they serve as practical and widely accepted proxies for academic performance (York et al., 2015).

The study addresses the following research questions: (1) To what extent do first year students’ CT skills explain their academic achievement in their first year of higher education studies? (2) To what extent is students’ well-being connected to their first-year academic achievement?

One of the key skills for successful achievement and progress in studies is CT (e.g. Martín-Raugh et al., 2023). Cognitive strategies such as problem solving, reasoning, analysis, and interpretation - core components of CT (Facione, 1990) - form the foundation of students’ readiness for higher education and enable them to learn content across disciplines (Conley, 2008). However, students enter higher education with widely varying levels of CT skills (Arum & Roksa, 2011). Previous studies have shown that the majority of Finnish first-year higher education students demonstrate CT skills at a basic or lower level (Ursin et al., 2021), and international research indicates that some entering students may lack these skills altogether (Zahner et al., 2022).

Given the critical role of the early months in higher education, this study investigates students’ well-being and CT skills upon entry to higher education studies to determine whether these factors are associated with academic achievement and study progress. By exploring these relationships, we can better understand the factors that contribute to early academic performance and identify students who may be in need for support. Academic achievement, as measured by GPA and ECTS, is important already at the beginning of studies as some institutions require minimum credit accumulation or GPA threshold for continued study.

Background, aim and theoretical approaches

Physical attendance at university lectures has been declining internationally (Nagappan et al. 2025), despite long‑standing evidence linking attendance to improved learning and achievement (Ancheta et al. 2021). Class attendance is generally not mandatory at Finnish universities, reflecting Finland’s autonomy-based education model (Ursin 2019), which often allows students to choose whether to attend lectures or study independently.Finnish universities are tuition-free which, in theory, reduces financial pressure for students, enabling them to focus on their studying. However, because students do not incur high personal costs for their education, there is less perceived financial ‘loss’ from skipping lectures, which may lower the incentive to attend lectures regularly.

Students’ limited engagement with lectures highlights the need to understand what drives their attendance and research has identified motivation as a key predictor of lecture attendance (Fryer et al. 2018). Given this fact, it’s important to understand more clearly the motivations associated with classroom attendance.

The aim of this qualitative study is therefore to explore university students’ motivation to attend on-site lectures at two universities in Finland. The theoretical frame chosen for the study is the expectancy–value theory (EVT) (Eccles and Wigfield 2020, Wigfield and Eccles 2020; 2023). The study focuses specifically on the values students associate with certain tasks as well as the costs that come with the choices students make (Wigfield and Eccles 2023). Task value is composed of four main factors: a) utility value, referring to how useful a certain task is for a student, b) attainment value, referring to the perceived personal importance that a student attaches to a given task, c) intrinsic value, referring to the enjoyment or interest derived from performing the task itself and d) extrinsic value, defined as the perceived value of a task based on external rewards (Eccles and Wigfield 2020). Research indicates that value beliefs are strong predictors of interest, persistence, and achievement across educational levels (cf. Wigfield and Cambria 2010).

In addition to values, the EVT model incorporates a cost component, reflecting the perceived negative implications of engaging in a task. The three cost dimensions most commonly discussed in research literature are: (a) effort cost, which refers to students' perceptions of the amount of effort or time needed to complete a task; (b) emotional/psychological cost, which relates to students' fear of failure or perceptions of the negative emotional impact of engaging in a task (Wigfield and Eccles 2000), and (c) opportunity cost, which involves students' perceptions of the activities they must forsake in order to focus on a task (Flake et al. 2015).

Students’ task values and costs are in turn shaped by beliefs formed through prior educational and sociocultural experiences (Wigfield and Cambria 2010). Socializers—especially teachers and peers—play a central role in shaping these beliefs and behaviours (Wigfield and Eccles 2023). Similarly, teachers’ pedagogical methods matter: interactive methods such as group discussions consistently increase lecture attendance in higher education (Bukoye and Shegunshi 2016).

Our research questions are therefore; 1) What are the values and costs the students attribute to their attendance in class? and 2) What is the impact of socialisers and teachers’ pedagogical methods on how students value lectures?

Higher education is commonly portrayed as a transitional space where students not only learn certain skills but also become someone new. The ‘ontological turn’ in higher education research has shed light on how such processes of being and becoming do not occur in the abstract, but take place in the day-to-day activities of teaching and learning (Barnett & Coate, 2004; Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2007; Zembylas, 2017). In this study, we explore assessment as a particularly powerful institutional practice in shaping how students are ‘known’ in higher education – and know themselves – as more or less capable future professionals. Assessment is often portrayed as a powerful practice in shaping student learning, yet it also shapes students themselves (Godfrey-Faussett & Baird, 2025). We focus particularly on how assessment constructs the very notion of ‘ability’ it seeks to measure.

Our starting point is that assessment serves not only a pedagogical function, whether summative or formative, but also an ontological one. We approach the questions of self and identity through a cultural approach that recognises the role of assessment practices in shaping how students become ‘known’ within institutional frameworks of practice. We draw on the sociology of Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne (1995, 2006) in conceptualising ‘the self’ as a dynamic relationship that emerges as people become known in culturally and historically constituted discursive frameworks of practice. In our study, we generate knowledge about the self as a cultural product through spoken narratives. Focusing on students’ identity narratives – stories about who they are as more or less capable students – we wish to better understand the role that assessment plays within these narratives. For, “narratives do not merely describe what someone does in the world but what the world does to that someone.” (Mattingly, 1998, p. 8) We are particularly interested in how assessment shapes cultural conceptions of ‘ability’ and ‘able students’: what kinds of institutional frameworks of practice are organised to construct ‘abilities’ and how such ‘abilities’ then become attached to students’ understanding of who they are.

What is already known about how assessment shapes students within the higher education institution? Perhaps most notably, assessment and grades are directly related to future prospects and life opportunities, and, in doing so, regulate who students are, are becoming, and can become (Reay & William, 1999). Yet beyond such overt mechanisms, assessment also shapes potential, normal and ideal ideas of ‘being a student’ in more hidden ways. This has been noted by critical scholarship, which has often claimed that assessment and grading systems foster competitive, customer-oriented and neoliberal student bodies (see Raaper, 2016). On the other hand, higher education institutions often wish to harness assessment to shape students into particular kinds of future professionals. For example, much of the work on ‘professional identities’ has explored how assessment can help students become the unique selves they aspire to be (see the review by Nieminen, 2025).

Yet, despite emergent interest in how assessment shapes the stories students tell about themselves, what remains undertheorised is the ontological mechanisms by which assessment practices constitute ‘abilities’ and ‘able students’. Clearly, assessment sets the parameters for how we talk and think about ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in higher education; high grades denote success, failing courses denotes failure, and so forth. But how exactly does assessment organise ‘success’ and ‘failure’? To explore this question, we conducted an empirical analysis of nine university students’ identity narratives. We focus on students with learning disabilities and mental health issues, as it is these students whose ways of knowing and being have historically been marked as ‘disabilities’ – the opposite of abilities (Nieminen, 2023).