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Introduction
I was an active researcher in the field of educational psychology and student learning at university level between 1968 and 2005, During my career I was Editor of the British Journal of Educational Psychology and, later, Higher Education. My subsequent research interests related to the nature of academic understanding and seeing student learning in its context, resulting in two books; Palgrave Macmillan (2009) and Academic Press (2018) - 'Student Learning and Academic Understanding'
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October 1978 - September 2005
October 1968 - September 1978
Publications
Publications (184)
____________________________________________________________ What is motivation ? For psychologists and teachers alike 'motivation' has been one of the key concepts used to explain different levels of performance. It purports to explain differences in the amount of effort applied to learning tasks and is thus expected to be strongly related to diff...
Previous research on student learning has established the importance of the contrasting conceptions of learning held by students, and of the distinction between deep approaches to learning, intended to achieve personal understanding of academic topics, and surface approaches directed towards the reproduction of information more or less in the form...
Data describing students' study orientations, in relation to their evaluations of courses and their preferences for different kinds of learning environment, are reanalysed in the light of recent suggestions that failing students perceive their learning context in atypical ways. Factor analysis and unfolding analysis are used to demonstrate that fai...
Introduction One of the main problems in trying to decide how best to improve the efficiency of teaching and learning in higher education is the wide range of different courses and subject areas covered within the system. As a result, there can be few detailed suggestions about improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness which could apply across su...
Ways in which research into student learning and university teaching originated and developed over a forty-year period are illustrated by following a single line of research conducted by the author and his colleagues. The early research drew heavily on established psychological concepts, such as ability, motivation, and personality, to predict degr...
This chapter describes the origins and development of research into both student learning and the influences of teaching on studying, providing a rationale for many of the research and development studies described in this book. The research is traced back to the emergence of cognitive psychology, with its distinction between meaningful and rote le...
Ways in which research into university teaching and student learning originated and developed over a forty-year period are illustrated by following a single line of research conducted by the author and his colleagues. The early research drew heavily on established psychological concepts, such as ability, motivation, and personality, to predict degr...
This chapter describes the origins and development of research into both student learning and the influences of teaching on studying, providing a rationale for many of the research and development studies described in this book. The research is traced back to the emergence of cognitive psychology, with its distinction between meaningful and rote le...
This commentary looks at the first four articles, those by Hazel Francis, David Hay, Max Scheja and Anna Bonnevier, and Lennart Svensson. Each of these four papers examines the processes by which students come to understand, or fail to understand, ideas within academic disciplines. It concentrates on those ideas introduced in the four papers that c...
A wide-ranging review of the literature identified a series of factors within higher education courses that tend to affect either completion rates or the effectiveness of student learning, or both of these. It also indicated which features of course design, and approaches to teaching and assessment, seemed to show most promise, both from a theoreti...
The main purposes of research into university teaching and learning can be seen as both academic and practical. Academic research has been exploring ways of describing and explaining how students go about their studying and what affects the nature of the learning that takes place. The practical value of the research is to help teachers and students...
This article is the starter paper summarising research into student learning and considering why the results of such research have not be taken up widely by teachers in higher education
The commentators on the 'starter paper' in this issue were chosen to ensure a broad range of response. Although the research considered in my paper focused entirely on learning in higher education, the term student learning in the title could refer to students of all age groups, and so we have two distinct focuses within the commentaries; one on hi...
Previous research has described some of the main characteristics of university teachers who teach in different ways, using a variety of methods and conceptions. What is generally missing from previous research is the impact of contrasting teaching approaches on students with different learning characteristics. The present investigation builds on a...
This article looks at research into student learning and university teaching, looking specifically at the differing perspectives and levels of focus typically adopted. The perspectives are those of researchers, students, and teachers, while the differing levels of focus are based on the individual students’ experiences of learning, the classroom co...
This first chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book. It provides a rationale for the line of research I have been following for over 40 years, with its direction being influenced by findings and insights from many other researchers. It also describes the research background of the author and explains the use of both quantitative and qualitat...
The research described in Student Learning and Academic Understanding had its origins in the pioneering work of Ausubel, Bruner and McKeachie, and followed two complementary lines of development. The first extended the ideas of Marton on approaches to learning through an inventory designed to assess these approaches among large samples of students...
This chapter looks at different perspectives on teaching and learning through four studies differing in methodology and in the level of analysis undertaken, The first looked at the relationships between tutors and students and how a 'meeting of minds' could be established, while the second showed how the learning environment affected students appro...
Research into university learning and teaching is generally intended to suggest ways of enhancing students’ experiences of studying and the quality of their learning. To gain a fuller understanding of the complexity of the processes involved, research has adopted contrasting perspectives and differing levels of analysis. This article looks at these...
Research into the ways in which university students' perceptions of teaching, teachers, and assessment affect their approaches to learning and so the quality of their academic understanding
Research into university teaching and learning is generally intended to suggest ways of enhancing students’ experiences and their quality of learning. To gain a fuller understanding of the complexity of the processes involved, research has adopted contrasting perspectives and differing levels of analysis. This article looks at these varying approac...
This inventory was developed from an earlier inventory - Approaches to Studying (ASI). The items came mainly from interview comments made by students, Factor analysis of the items created three main scales describing deep, surface, and strategic approaches to learning and studying, each with a number of sub-scales. The factor structure has proved r...
Using a case-study approach, interviews with four final-year psychology students showed different approaches to learning and varying experiences of teaching in courses assessed through open-book exams. Analysis of their experiences, supported by previous research findings, provided insights into the reasons for the contrasting approaches being adop...
The study examined the use of the modified Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire (ETLQ) in the Finnish context by focusing on its factor structures and comparing them with those for British data. A total of 2,509 Finnish and 2,710 British students completed the questionnaire. The comparison of the factor structures were conducted using...
A re-analysis of several university-level interview studies has suggested that some students show evidence of a deep and stable approach to learning, along with other characteristics that support the approach. This combination, it was argued, could be seen to indicate a disposition to understand for oneself.
To identify a group of students who show...
This is the opening article for an open-discussion of the nature and experience of academic understanding. It reviews some of the earlier attempts to explain the nature of understanding, before looking at research carried out by educational psychologists. The main description is of research into students' experiences of developing understanding, in...
This article is a response to the discussion of this topic published in this open-dialogue issue of the journal. It suggests that understanding depends on the discipline and the culture, involves a coherent web
of interconnecting ideas and evidence, and develops through relationships with people and their ideas. It suggests that metaphors play an i...
Quality seen solely in terms of students being able to obtain acceptable grades on their assessments can be seen as a minimal expectation within a university education, and dangerously limiting when considering the part it should play in the long-term development of the student. Whereas knowledge and skills form the bedrock of that education, it is...
The development of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) is reported, which incorporates a revised version of the Approaches to Studying Inventory. This questionnaire was completed by three separate samples; 1284 mainly first-year students from six British universities, 466 first-year students from a Scottish technological...
Quality seen solely in terms of students being able to obtain acceptable grades on their assessments can be seen as a minimal expectation within a university education, and dangerously limiting when considering the part that it should play in the long-term development of the student. While knowledge and skills form the bedrock of that education, it...
This article discusses the need, in 21st century university education, to encourage a ‘will to learn’ in students, and explores its meaning using a variety of empirical evidence. It draws on previous studies related to academic understanding to introduce the idea of a disposition to understand for oneself and to consider how teaching–learning envir...
Attempts at measuring students' study styles and strategies have been derived from different theoretical standpoints. Traditionally these have emerged from a combination of mainstream psychology and personal experience. More recently concepts have been derived from the qualitative analysis of students' experiences of studying and subsequently opera...
Recent research on representations of knowledge and styles of learning carried out by Pask and his colleagues is summarised and discussed in relation to earlier work. The claims made for the wide applicability of conversation theory to learning and teaching in schools and higher education are considered in the light of the evidence presented to dat...
As an alternative to correlational analysis, a method of cluster analysis has been applied to 23 psychological variables related to academic performance among university students. Twelve clusters were described which suggested the existence of alternative paths to academic success and failure. The approach appears to offer advantages for analyses o...
A small-scale interview study is used to explore a new idea about the ways in which students experience the development of academic understanding within a degree course. Initial analyses had established differences in both the students' intentions and the process by which they developed understanding during revision for final examinations. These di...
Correlations between school attainment and various intellectual, personality and social variables are reported separately for the top and bottom thirds of the ability range. The ability groups were formed from an age-group of 2,538 Aberdeen children, who had been given tests yearly between the ages of 11 and 14. Results suggest that secondary schoo...
The attitudes of 600 second-year and fifth-year grammar school pupils towards their school subjects were investigated using a repertory grid developed specifically for this purpose. Attitude dimensions of ‘interest,’ ‘difficulty,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘social benefit’ were isolated. Rank orders of mean scores of pupils on these four scales were produced...
Previous research in Britain and USA has indicated that motivation in education has several dimensions. Besides academic achievement motivation (hope for success), there are also dimensions reflecting fear of failure, extrinsic motivation related to external rewards, and intrinsic motivation out of personal interest in the subject matter itself.
In...
Of the year-group of 2,900 Aberdeen children who had been the subjects of a study on the age of transfer to secondary education, about one quarter went on to the fifth and sixth years of secondary education, and their careers were examined. The best prediction of final secondary school performance was given by assessments of attainment in the first...
This article discusses the need, in 21st century university education, to encourage a ‘will to learn’ in students,
and explores its meaning using a variety of empirical evidence. It draws on previous studies related to
academic understanding to introduce the idea of a disposition to understand for oneself and to consider how
teaching–learning envir...
This article is a commentary on the first four papers in a Special Issue of this journal on 'Experiences of learning and academic understanding in higher education'.
This chapter discusses the concepts of contextualising knowledge and academic understanding, and focuses in particular of evidence for the existence of 'knowledge objects', seen as an integration of related ideas developed in preparing for exams or for an essay which forms a coherent whole, recognised as a personal understanding. Students report of...
This book reviews research into student learning at university and into how teaching affects the quality of learning. It then uses the findings to suggest the implications for teaching.
This paper reviews a range of studies which have looked at evidence for the quality of student learning and the influences that university teaching may have on its effectiveness.
This chapter explores the nature of threshold concepts and transformative ways of thinking, initially against the general background of previous research and then, specifically, in relation to concepts used in research into teaching and learning in higher education. Two key concepts used in the literature are Perry’s ideas on the development of epi...
This chapter provides an overview of research into student learning and university teaching as a framework through which to introduce earlier work carried out by the authors represented in this monograph. Teaching and learning in higher education can be seen as an interactive system that depends on the characteristics of the student, the specific n...
Provides an overview of a large-scale research study of how undergraduate learning and teaching was shaped by subject areas and course settings, together with ways of using research evidence to improve course effectiveness.
Students in different disciplines develop characteristic ways of learning based on their perceptions of what is required in their academic work. Within a discipline, effective learning involves interplay between the characteristics of the student and those of the learning environment that is provided by the teacher and the department.
This article describes the ways in which learning outcomes have been, or will be, investigated within the TLRP projects in higher education. It introduces the term ways of thinking and practising which has been used in one of the projects to describe the intentions of staff in higher education. This term covers what staff see as the essential natur...
There has been a substantial amount of research carried out into how teaching affects learning in higher education but there has not been a ready take-up of the ideas in university departments. Part of the reason is that the research is generally reported in education journals and in social science jargon, and part is the realisation that the findi...
This case study forms part of a large-scale project on Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses: http://www.ed.ac.uk/etl It is based on questionnaires and interviews with students and staff in a post-1992 university, on a final year module in analogue electronics. Both staff and students highlight the importance of coherenc...
This paper presents early findings from the ETL project, a national study in Britain which is investigating teaching and learning across five contrasting subject areas in higher education. The focus here is on electronic engineering and, in particular on analogue electronics. Staff in six course units have collaborated with the researchers to enabl...
Research into powerful learning environments has concentrated mainly on general influences on students' engagement and learning. This paper considers a series of inter-related concepts that have been shown to be associated with student learning in higher education including, conceptions of knowledge and learning, learning orientations, and students...
Learning styles are relatively consistent preferences for adopting particular learning processes, irrespective of the task or problem presented, but generally relating to educational or work-place settings. Learning strategies and approaches to studying are specific to education and training, being more context-specific ways of tackling learning ta...
This article describes the historical origins and development of a series of well-known study strategy inventories and seeks to identify their conceptual bases. The theories and evidence influencing the development of 6 contrasting instruments are considered before examining empirical evidence of similarities and differences between the measurement...
This paper describes ongoing research into the teaching and learning of analogue electronics in three course units at two research-intensive universities. It draws on students' experiences of teaching and learning in analogue course units to explore the nature of the learning they were undertaking and examines the teaching-learning activities they...
Two groups of students (N 28) were interviewed about their experiences of preparing for, and taking, final university examinations. The analysis examined the processes of learning used during revision, and, in particular, the ways in which under-standing and memorising were described. A sequence of categories was identified through which to present...
Background:
Among the many theories of learning, few have been developed specifically for education. Most have explained learning in terms of either the individual activities of the learner or the design of the learning context; yet both are important in education. Each theory applies strictly only to the context for which it was developed, and ye...
This report describes the early stages of a research study funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council within a major national research programme (Teaching and Learning Research Council). The project was designed to investigate ways of Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in undergraduate courses (ETL project). The researchers ca...
This paper introduces work on a major ongoing research project being carried out
collaboratively between Edinburgh, Durham and Coventry Universities in Britain. The main
concepts and conceptual frameworks being used in the project are introduced, along with a
brief summary of a literature review used to define the most salient aspects of teachingle...
Gordon Pask contributed greatly to ways of conceptualising student learning in higher education. In particular, the three learning or conceptual styles – holist, serialist and versatile – together with the associated pathologies of globetrotting and improvidence, have helped to describe important differences in the ways students tackle academic tas...
This research addresses the so-called ‘paradox of the Chinese learner’, believed to learn mainly by memorising and yet obtaining high grades in Western universities. Interviews have previously suggested that different methods of memorising exist, some intended to develop or reinforce understanding. An inventory was developed which included the thre...
Recent research into teaching in higher education has established what appears to be a nested hierarchy of conceptions of teaching moving from teacher-focused to student-focussed categories. We draw here parallels with the intellectual development of students to suggest a process of expanding awareness in academic staff of the relation between lear...
Previous research on conceptions of teaching comes from three distinct areas. The first is based on interviews with students and staff in higher education, the second involves the investigation of the conceptions and beliefs of schoolteachers, while the third derives from more general consideration of the nature of conceptions themselves. The empir...
Questions
Question (1)
Hello friends,
This seems to be a very interesting project, which is potentially bringing together three overlapping ways of describing aspects of student learning. Do you have a theoretical framework which is being used to provide an integrative function in the project. Is this entirely a quantitive research design using the differing existing inventories or are there also interviews with students to introduce additional perspectives. Also, which subject areas are involved as I am increasingly interested in seeing the different learning processes and easy of linking evidence and theory in contacting subject areas?
