Educational choices and mathematical motivation: tracing upper secondary students’ reconstructed trajectories through a narrative and situative lens

This study investigates how final-year Italian upper-secondary students narratively reconstruct their self-representations as (mathematical) learners and how their narratives relate to their motivation toward mathematics and their educational choices. Drawing on a situative and narrative perspective, we conducted qualitative interviews with 59 grade-13 students across five school tracks within the Italian tracked system. Through a cross-case narrative analysis, we examined how students make sense of past educational experiences, particularly in mathematics, and how these reconstructions relate to school- track decisions and future aspirations, highlighting turning-point and cross-domain contrasts. Findings indicate that students narratively reconstruct their engagement with mathematics as shaped by assessment practices, perceived competence, and social expectations within families, peer groups, and classrooms. Mathematical motivation frequently appears in students’ narratives as a gatekeeping process: a socially mediated filter that opens or closes opportunities and shapes educational trajectories, potentially reinforcing broader patterns of social inequality. The study also contributes to theoretical discussions by illustrating, through students’ narrated trajectories, how a narrative–situative approach complements EVT and SDT. It presents the learner as a situated subject whose mathematical motivation is negotiated within social and institutional contexts and shaped through the ongoing effort to make sense of lived experiences over time.