The results that we present here have been developed during an investigation of 3 years¹, and tries to analyze what are the students with better university access marks doing differently that can explain their performance, with the objective of specify efficient working models that can be generalized and can be taught. To address this question we are analyzing the way of learning of several students with the best access marks of 1^st year groups from different degrees in Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. These results will be compared with students with medium access marks from the same degrees. For that we are considering the learning strategies, approach, style, attitude toward learning and other relevant variables (self-concept, C.I., teacher and group perception, integration in the university, teacher evaluation, etc). The data found directly from the students, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, is being compared with the perception of the teacher on the skills and working way necessaries for the best students, with the idea of defining models of excellent students.

The objective that is explained in the research section, whose results is presented in this work, is to collect information about the ideas and the beliefs of the teachers that are teaching 1^st year courses and because of that, they have the knowledge, based on the experience and the observation, that is related with the factors that are involved in making different the named “excellent students” from the rest of the students. The use of this information will allow collecting data from the basic cognitive skills.  The priority purpose is to obtain ideas to explain the “excellent student” model that could be compared with the information derived from the quantitative analysis from the same students.

Related to the theoretical foundation, in this work the starting point is that the ideas and beliefs are a group of special meanings that the teachers give to a phenomenon (in this case the characteristics of the “excellent students” and the teaching and the learning during the first year at the university to facilitate the adaptation and academic success)

The research on the teacher’s beliefs and knowledge has its peak during the 80s and 90s (“teacher thinking” movement).  Although the majority of the works were focused on teachers from non-university levels (Marcelo, 1987; Zabalza, 1988), there were some important works, specially in an international context, that analyzed the “university teacher thinking” and how their ideas about teaching, the courses program, the learning process of the student, etc. affected the way they teach (Fox, 1983; Gow y Kember, 1997; Samuelowicz, 1999).

The actual researches about elicitation and capture of the knowledge are connected with an old and well establish tradition from the qualitative investigations on the “personal constructs” (Kelly, 1955) in Psychology and Education. The research units that are explored under the conceptual umbrella of “thinking” and “knowledge” of the teachers have received several names: ideas, beliefs, philosophies, perceptions, etc. At the end, the international publications have established the generic term of assumed theories or beliefs (“espoused beliefs”) (Sigel, 1985; Kember, 2001; Quinlan, 2002).

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