Implicit Sense of Academic Futility: An Unexpected Burden From Lower Secondary Education

Abstract

Vocational and professional training tracks can be a good option for many adolescents, many of whom enter these programs with a sometimes hidden burden of negative experiences and attitudes to school. This paper explores the sense of academic futility in future VET students at the end of lower secondary education. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 25 Czech students in which they described their experiences from lower secondary school, we found that despite the students’ beliefs that their achievement is the product of their own effort, they describe situations from which it is evident that they noticed (i.e., perceived) that they actually did lose control over their results. At the same time, they explicitly claim that they have full control over their own achievement. This implicit sense of academic futility is created by several mechanisms at the school level: the curriculum, ineffective teaching, grading leniency, and teachers’ distrust of students’ capabilities.

Days after a Choice is Made: Transition to Professional and Vocational Upper Secondary Schools in Czechia

“…Vocational students are generally considered to be the most disadvantaged group of post-compulsory students (other than those not in education or training at all). VET students often had a mainly negative experience of lower secondary education as they graduated from their comprehensive school with an explicit or implicit sense of futility (Simonová et al, 2021). Our conclusions are in good agreement with quantitative studies that pointed to the recovery of student engagement or general well-being in the VET tracks of upper secondary schools (Salmela-Aro, 2017;Symonds et al, 2016).…”