Educational Decision Making of Repeatedly Unsuccessful Czech Vocational Education and Training Examinees Leading to Passing the Matura Exam

Abstract

          Repeatedly unsuccessful vocational education and training (VET) examinees are educational policy actors who, through their decision making, influence not only their completion of upper secondary education but also their futures. Drawing on biographical narrative interviews with 18 Czech VET examinees who failed the Matura exam at least twice, we identified how examinees make their decisions about the Matura exam and how their individual decision-making ways differ. For our participants, we can confirm that the ways they make decisions depend on which attempt to pass the Matura exam it is, as well as on in what context and on what the repeatedly unsuccessful examinees have to decide. We concluded that repeatedly unsuccessful VET examinees perceive decision making about passing the Matura to follow the principle of free choice in the first and second attempts. Due to the influence of institutionally formed beliefs about their own academic success, it is a rather limited choice. If in the third attempt they integrate their decisions about passing the Matura exam in the context of their career development, their decision making becomes a process in which we identify several individualized steps.