Conference Program

Learning to learn (L2L) is increasingly recognised in higher education as a key competence for lifelong learning, empowerment, and equitable participation. In European debates, it is commonly described as a hyper-competence that mobilises cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and socio-affective resources to sustain learning across contexts (Caena & Stringher, 2020; Stringher et al., 2021). However, limited attention has been paid to how learners reorganise their learning strategies when previously effective approaches become inadequate in demanding academic contexts.

To address this issue, the study situates L2L within Pellerey’s (2006) framework of “self-direction” and conceptualises it as a meta-strategic competence concerned with the reconfiguration of learning strategies. In Pellerey’s framework, learning self-direction refers to the capacity through which individuals orient and regulate their actions across life domains through processes of self-determination and self-regulation supported by strategic competencies that sustain learning regulation.

Learning to learn is conceived as the reflective capacity through which individuals reorganise their strategic competencies and reconfigure learning strategies when the mechanisms that sustain learning regulation prove insufficient (Marcuccio, 2016).

The study explores how university students manage their studies and how limitations in their strategic competencies affect their capacity for self-direction. It also proposes a pedagogical interpretation of educational counselling as a situated environment where students can reflect on their study practices, identify ineffective strategies, and develop more effective ways of directing their learning. The study contributes to the literature by conceptualising L2L as a strategic competence of learning strategy reconfiguration and by interpreting educational counselling as an institutional pedagogical dispositif through which this competence can be observed and supported.

The study is based on 298 semi-structured educational counselling sessions conducted between 2023 and 2026 with 220 students at the University of Bologna as part of the Career Guidance project. Two senior pedagogists conducted the interviews using a non-directive approach and produced detailed field notes, as interviews were not audio-recorded due to legal restraints and the formative nature of the setting. Data were analysed using an inductive and reflexive thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006), with recurrent thematic patterns across sessions as the primary unit of analysis.

Findings reveal significant fragilities in students’ capacity to direct their learning. Difficulties in organising study time, sustaining concentration, and planning learning activities emerge as recurrent issues, often accompanied by performance anxiety and a perceived misalignment between effort and outcomes. The transition from secondary school to university represents a critical moment where the demand for autonomy frequently exceeds students’ strategic resources, reflecting a mismatch between institutional expectations and students’ preparedness that affects engagement and persistence (Tinto, 1975).

Interpreted through the proposed framework, these difficulties indicate limitations in the strategic competencies that sustain the regulation of learning activity. Institutional guidance can therefore be conceptualised not merely as a support service but as a pedagogically structured institutional dispositif through which learning to learn becomes observable and developmentally supported. Promoting L2L in higher education thus emerges as a structural issue of governance and equity, highlighting the need to integrate strategic learning autonomy into university guidance and retention policies.