Approaches to learning and academic achievement of Filipino students

Conceptions of learning factors in postgraduate health sciences master students: a comparative study with non-health science students and between genders

BACKGROUND

The students' conceptions of learning in postgraduate health science master studies are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to compare the factors influencing conceptions of learning in health sciences and non-health sciences students enrolled in postgraduate master programs in order to obtain information that may be useful for students and for future postgraduate programs.

METHODS

A modified version of the Learning Inventory Conception Questionnaire (COLI) was used to compare students' conception learning factors in 131 students at the beginning of their postgraduate studies in health sciences, experimental sciences, arts and humanities and social sciences.

RESULTS

The present study demonstrates that a set of factors may influence conception of learning of health sciences postgraduate students, with learning as gaining information, remembering, using, and understanding information, awareness of duty and social commitment being the most relevant. For these students, learning as a personal change, a process not bound by time or place or even as acquisition of professional competences, are less relevant. According to our results, this profile is not affected by gender differences.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results show that the overall conceptions of learning differ among students of health sciences and non-health sciences (experimental sciences, arts and humanities and social sciences) master postgraduate programs. These finding are potentially useful to foster the learning process of HS students, because if they are metacognitively aware of their own conception or learning, they will be much better equipped to self-regulate their learning behavior in a postgraduate master program in health sciences.

The role of personal self-regulation and regulatory teaching to predict motivational-affective variables, achievement, and satisfaction: a structural model

The present investigation examines how personal self-regulation (presage variable) and regulatory teaching (process variable of teaching) relate to learning approaches, strategies for coping with stress, and self-regulated learning (process variables of learning) and, finally, how they relate to performance and satisfaction with the learning process (product variables). The objective was to clarify the associative and predictive relations between these variables, as contextualized in two different models that use the presage-process-product paradigm (the Biggs and DEDEPRO models). A total of 1101 university students participated in the study. The design was cross-sectional and retrospective with attributional (or selection) variables, using correlations and structural analysis. The results provide consistent and significant empirical evidence for the relationships hypothesized, incorporating variables that are part of and influence the teaching-learning process in Higher Education. Findings confirm the importance of interactive relationships within the teaching-learning process, where personal self-regulation is assumed to take place in connection with regulatory teaching. Variables that are involved in the relationships validated here reinforce the idea that both personal factors and teaching and learning factors should be taken into consideration when dealing with a formal teaching-learning context at university.

The revised learning process questionnaire: A validation of a Western model of students' study approaches to the South Pacific context using confirmatory factor analysis

BACKGROUND

Research evidence seems to suggest that the social and cultural environments influence students' approaches to their study. This social and cultural contention has led to the rethinking and reconceptualization of theories (e.g. Biggs, 1987; Marton & Säljö, 1976) pertaining to student approaches to learning (SAL) in academic settings.

AIMS

The present research discusses two separate empirical studies on student learning approaches situated in the South Pacific region with two respective cohorts of secondary students. Study I involved the examination of secondary Pacific Islands students in their learning approaches using a modified version of Biggs' (1987) original Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ). Study II involved the administration of a revised version of the LPQ (R-LPQ-2F; Kember, Biggs, & Leung, 2004) to another cohort of secondary Pacific Islands students.

SAMPLE

The first sample included 2,150 (1,285 girls, 865 boys) students and the second sample included 2,295 (1,363 girls, 932 boys) students.

METHODS

The factor structures of approaches to learning were examined by means of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the LISREL program. Different a priori models were hypothesized and tested.

RESULTS

Results of Study I indicated a two-factor structure solution to Biggs' LPQ, supporting Richardson's (1994) theoretical model of learning and emphasized the factors of Reproducing and Meaning. Study II indicated a hierarchical organization of two main study approaches - deep and surface - that are structured as higher-order factors and a defined by four first-order factors.

CONCLUSION

The results from the two studies accentuate the important argument for the rethinking and reconceptualization of learning approaches, as well as for the redevelopment and modification of learning inventories such as the LPQ. They also suggest the importance of situating the theoretical paradigm of learning approaches in a social and cultural environment.