The shift towards blended learning has placed various challenges on many South Africa university students. These shifts have heightened the demand for greater autonomy and self-regulation among students, emphasising the pivotal role of self-directed learning skills. Within higher education, cultivating these skills are crucial for fostering independent, lifelong learners capable of navigating intricate academic and professional landscapes and ensuring that everyone has access to quality education. This is especially important in the South African context, where many first-year students arrive at university with underdeveloped learning skills due to persistent inequalities in schooling. Through a psychological lens informed by Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, this study aims to explore the factors that have has a positive impact on first-year university students’ engagement with self-directed learning. Employing a phenomenological qualitative approach within an interpretivist paradigm, the research seeks to elucidate individual perspectives and insights. The study focuses on purposively selected first-year preservice teachers in 2024 and 2025. The sample included first-year Bachelor of Education students at an urban South African university. With permission from the university’s ethics committee, 385 students gave consent to participate in the study. Data collection involved administering open-ended questionnaires at the end of the first teaching term. Data was analysed using codes based on the factors participants indicted. This enabled me to identify specific factors that participants noted had a positive impact on their ability to engage with self-directed learning. To ensure rigor, Lincoln and Guba’s criteria were applied to validate and enhance the reliability of findings. Findings indicate that family support, determination, self-esteem, social support and academic flexibility were perceived as positive factors that influences first-year students transition to self-directed learning. The implications of this study are pertinent to all higher education institutions endeavouring to implement effective self-directed learning strategies.

Keywords: Self-directed learning, psychological factors, first year university students, transition.