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In essence, Marton, Dall'Alba and Beaty (1993) postulated a model of learners' beliefs about learning which pointed to the existence of a "hierarchy" of learning conceptions. The study suggested that at the "lowest" point of the hierarchy, learning was reported to be a process of accumulating factual information, without any articulated intention on the part of the learner to rework or process information learned in any coherent or integrated manner. "Bits" of information thus gleaned remained isolated from one another.
At the "highest" point of the hierarchy, on the other hand, learning was self-reported to have a dimension of personal transformative power. Learning was said to be associated with increased awareness and a sense of learners becoming irreversibly different people as a result of learning. Thus, the way in which learners reported their beliefs about learning could be said to be descriptive of a developmental process. Of interest in the study under consideration here, is the fact that it was conducted longitudinally, i.e. subjects who formed the sample for the study were interviewed on a number of occasions over a number of years. In this sense, it could be argued that learners would be likely to undergo some form of developmental progression in their views of learning anyway.
In essence, the Marton, Dall'Alba and Beaty (1993) study modified and extended earlier work of Säljö (1979) which first described and categorised qualitatively distinctive conceptions of learning.
Recent research interest in the above phenomenon has sought to build upon the platform established by these earlier studies. Thus, for example, studies have been conducted classifying students' articulated conceptions of learning in terms of their association with the descriptive categories of Biggs SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs and Collis, 1982). Studies by Boulton-Lewis (1994), Boulton-Lewis, Wilss and Mutch (in press) and Cliff (1995) have demonstrated that students self-report conceptions of learning which are often more than uni-dimensional (or "uni-structural" in SOLO Taxonomy terms).
Learners' responses to the question "What is learning?" suggest that some learners hold "multi-structural", "relational" or "extended abstract" views of the dimensions of learning. Learning can be described as involving the accumulation of information, the application of this information to procedures, seeing things differently, and changing as a person, for instance. To the extent that these self-reports appear to be characterised by views that suggest learning to consist of many processes which are integrated into a coherent whole, the reports can be said to approximate "higher" SOLO Taxonomy classifications.
In essence, then, the three studies reported in the previous two paragraphs have corroborated descriptive classifications of "hierarchical" models of conceptions of learning, which argue that each learning conception "step" in the hierarchy also includes any "steps" lower on this hierarchy. But the above three studies have also pointed to associations between learning conception and the structural complexity of learners' articulations of what they think learning is. In the Cliff (1995) study, for example, conducted amongst a sample of postgraduate Education students, it was found that those students who articulated a uni-structural view of learning also reported learning to be primarily about the accumulation of information.
Studies of students' conceptions of learning have also begun to explore the extent to which these conceptions might be said to be influenced by learners' cultural perspectives. Interview studies by Dahlin and Regmi (1995) and Pratt (1992), conducted with samples of Nepalese and Chinese students respectively, have contributed important insights into the formulation of culturally nuanced interpretations of learners' reported learning conceptions. From these and other studies, it is becoming clearer that qualitatively distinctive conceptions of learning might be understood differently from within different cultural perspectives. Thus, for instance, the notion of accumulating information is not necessarily seen as a process of rote memorisation, but has been described by Nepalese students as a more active process of expanding awareness (Dahlin and Regmi, 1995).
The study by Cliff (1995) provides quantitative and qualitative evidence of a conception of learning as a moral obligation or duty to a community. Commentary in that paper argued for the influence of both cultural and academic contexts on that conception. Of note, is that this study was conducted in a context which is anecdotally assumed to consist of learners who favour rote memorisation as a way of acquiring knowledge.
Furthermore, the study under discussion here was conducted amongst a sample of postgraduate students who are also qualified school teachers, and, as such, it raises some important considerations about the extent to which these teachers' views of learning and knowledge might be said to be influential in their pupils' formulation of the meanings of learning and knowledge.
In addition, a focus on the conceptions of learning of a group of postgraduate students becomes an investigation of "mature" students conceptions. A literature survey citing studies describing the learning approaches of mature students (Richardson, 1994), suggests important features of these learners' approaches, such as their intrinsic motivation and the important role played by life experience. A key question for the study described in this paper, therefore, revolves around an exploration of the nature and features of mature students beliefs about learning and knowledge.
Essentially, then, the present study was undertaken as an attempt to illuminate and augment the findings from the first two studies, using interview data as an as-yet- untapped source of data collection. It was felt that in-depth interview engagement with a sample of postgraduate learners would provide an important framework for further exploration of the findings from the first two studies.
Given the above purposes, the present study had the following aims:
The sample of students on which the present study was based were all Education students enrolled in the B.Ed. Programme of the Faculty of Education at the University of Cape Town. As is the case in many B.Ed. Programmes worldwide, a number of students are enrolled part-time, while others undertake a full-time course of study.
It must be noted that, although the samples for each of the three studies conducted from 1994 to 1996 were selected from different cohorts of students, the essential features of the student population from which the samples were drawn, remained similar on an annual basis.
Over the past three years, the composition of the B.Ed. student body has remained one-third full-time, most of whom are from rural home and work backgrounds; and two-thirds of the body have been Black students. Characteristically, these students are speakers of English as a Second Language who have completed first degrees at South African universities which have historically been under-resourced.
At the commencement of the 1995 academic year, before any formal lecture sessions had commenced, selected B.Ed. students were invited to participate individually in an interview, the purpose of which they were told was to enable the author to obtain information from them about their previous learning experiences in formal, non-formal and informal contexts.
Crucially, all students were asked three central questions, in order to tie in with the central aims of the study, viz:
The sample who were targeted for interview (n = 11) could be said to be a "purposive sample" (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994) in the sense that the aim was to ensure representativity of gender and race.
Given below, are student responses to the three key questions. Responses have been grouped according to the original question, and, in each case, only those responses which were considered representative of the range of qualitative variation for each item are reflected. Students A, B, C and D are the same student in each case:
| Question 1: | "What do you think "learning" is? |
| Student A: | "I think learning is an ongoing process ... you must have had a new perspective on something, or you must have learnt something that you actually can apply ... can relate to your own life ... if it's real learning then it will enrich your life ..." |
| Student B: | "... learning really takes place when you acquire some new knowledge or skill, and actually internalise it ... a process of making it your own" |
| Student C: | "Learning I think basically means the acquiring of knowledge and skills ... having acquired the knowledge and skills ... you have to apply them to the - in the real world" |
| Student D: | "Learning can be so many things ... experience itself is the best teacher ... learning takes place through reflective moments in one's life" |
Essentially, responses reflected here echo the descriptive categories of learning conception of the Marton, Dall'Alba and Beaty (1993) study, and would seem to be multi-structural on the Biggs SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs and Collis, 1982). In the case of Student A, there would seem to be some evidence of his description being "relational" in terms of the SOLO Taxonomy. Some sense of his beliefs about learning being integrated into a coherent whole seems apparent.
Of interest, in terms of the focus of this study being on postgraduate students, are Student B and C's focuses on knowledge acquisition and application conceptions. The finding that some postgraduate students in this context appear to hold these arguably unsophisticated conceptions is similar to those of the first two studies by this author (Cliff, 1995). Indeed, it raises important questions about the extent to which the holding of such beliefs about learning could be expected to impact on these students' expectations of the demands of postgraduate study.
| Question 2: | "Do you think there are different kinds of knowledge and different ways of knowing things?" |
| Student A: | "... a metalwork teacher in my first school ... talked about intelligence - he got it out of a book I think ... intuitive knowledge is very much played down ... where the rational model goes - empirical research, ...it [university] must challenge your views, and it must be a bit unsettling ... I'm quite happy in that abstract domain, that theoretical domain" |
| Student B: | "I mean there's knowing facts - I find that quite difficult unless it's ... something I'm really interested in ... I never forget people's faces ... and I'll remember something personal about them... there's a huge volume of knowledge... it's just a kind of knowingness ... it's a composite of everything you've experienced" |
| Student C: | "...some people might come across a certain concept - a person might have first-hand experience with a certain concept, and understand it instantly" |
| Student D: | "There are different ways of experiencing knowledge, and therefore different ways of gathering knowledge, and knowledge comes in different forms ... through reading, experience. The way I'm talking with you ... it depends upon what kind of knowledge you are looking for ... but basically knowledge is so vast that it's hard to say that you know it all ... knowledge can be compartmentalised ... if it's a specialist thing... then you get something like general knowledge ..." |
Of note in these students' views of knowledge is, that with the possible exception of Student C, each of them reports multiple sources of "knowing". But perhaps of more profound import is the apparent focus of each of them on what might be termed "experiential", "interpersonal" and "intuitive" ways of knowing. As in the case of these students' learning conceptions, the extent to which these ways of knowing impact upon their coming to "know" in a postgraduate academic context, poses interesting research questions around the degree to which these forms of knowing are "permissable" in such a context.
| Question 3: | "What should a teacher be trying to achieve?" |
| Student A: | "... at a very cynical level, one is really sort of just churning through the system ... those content subjects you grind them out until they change the syllabus ... I think most of us have this sort of vague idea that one wants to make a difference ... in terms of enriching their lives ... if I can broaden their horizons, ... then I think I've achieved something" |
| Student B: | "I suppose in a way it's to kind of plant seeds that will grow ... it's been those kind of seeds that have sort of captured your imagination ..." |
| Student C: | "So the `real' teacher ... has to see that his students ... really grasp the type of knowledge that he or she presents to them, and thereafter use that knowledge and the skills they have acquired, other than treating them for the examination ... and then they can't just apply the skills or the knowledge they have in their real-life situations thereafter" |
| Student D: | "Well, for the last few years my whole perception of the child has changed, when they introduced this integrated approach and also the problem-solving approach ... that's what I've always desired - not to teach as such but to develop a whole person" |
The range of qualitative variation in these responses provides some evidence of association with articulated learning conceptions. Respondents who, for example, see learning as being about knowledge acquisition, also appear to see teaching as providing the knowledge to be acquired. If learning is seen as a process of internalisation, then teaching appears to be seen as facilitating that process. Somewhat anomalous to this posited association, is Student E's focus on an apparent disparity between meeting syllabus requirements and "enriching [pupils'] lives".
A close association appears to exist between these respondents' views of learning and teaching, and their views of knowledge and "ways of knowing". Thus, for example, interpersonal "knowing" translates into the valuing of interpersonal relations in learning and teaching; reflective "knowing" is associated with growing awareness of changing beliefs about learning and teaching.
The first study found a dominant emphasis amongst B.Ed. students on "acquisition of knowledge" and "application of procedures" conceptions of learning. But it also reported on the manifestation of a "moral obligation/service to the community" learning conception. The second study provided quantitatively-analysed confirmation of the dominance of an "accumulative" learning conception of learning alongside a "transformation" conception. This second study also provided confirmatory empirical evidence for the conceptual coherence of a "moral obligation/service" learning conception, and demonstrated the (not necessarily theoretically desirable) effect of academic learning context on conception.
In essence, this third study adds further evidence to aspects of the first two, but does not appear to provide support for the existence of a "moral obligation/service" conception. It is of interest to this writer that none of the interview respondents referred to learning or teaching as being a duty or obligation. In the case of the first two studies, sample size was respectively 3 and 5 times greater than for the third study. It is possible, therefore, that the purposive sampling for the third study meant that this source of variation was eliminated.
In finding support for students' multi-structural (sometimes relational) beliefs about what learning is, this study supports a finding of that of Boulton-Lewis (1994) conducted in a different context. But the findings of this present study, as was the case in the first two studies conducted by this author, provide further disturbing evidence of the dominance of foundational conceptions of learning amongst some postgraduate students who are also qualified school-teachers. Associations between these conceptions, and learning outcome, as well as the conceptions of the pupils who are taught by these teachers, pose lines for further research. Already, this present study has provided some evidence of association between reported beliefs about learning and beliefs about teaching.
Postgraduate students' views of, and beliefs about, knowledge would also seem to be worthy of further research attention. In particular, this study has raised important questions about the extent to which "intuitive", "experiential" and "interpersonal" ways of knowing can or ought to be acknowledged as valid forms of knowing in the context of conventional academic tasks.
Boulton-Lewis, G. (1994). Tertiary students' knowledge of their own learning and a SOLO taxonomy. Higher Education, 28, 387-402.
Boulton-Lewis, G., Wilss, L. & Mutch, S. (in press). Teachers as adult learners : Their knowledge of their own learning and implications for teaching. Higher Education.
Cliff, A. F. (1995). Postgraduate students' conceptions of learning: Implications for course teaching. Paper presented at the 6th Bi-annual Conference of the European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction, Nijmegen, 26-31 August.
Dahlin, B. & Regmi, M. (1995). Conceptions of learning of Nepalese students. Paper presented at the 6th Bi-annual Conference of the European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction, Nijmegen, 26-31 August.
Marton, F., Dall'Alba, G. & Beaty, E. (1993). Conceptions of learning. International Journal of Educational Research, 19(3), 277-300.
Maykut, P. & Morehouse, R. (1994). Beginning Qualitative Research: A Philosophical and Practical Guide. London : Falmer Press.
Meyer, J. H. F. (1995). A quantitative exploration of conceptions of learning. Proceedings of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia Conference, Rockhampton, Australia.
Pratt, D. (1992). Chinese conceptions of learning and teaching: A westerner's attempt at understanding. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 11(4), 301-319.
Richardson, J.T.E. (1994). Mature students in higher education: I - A literature survey on approaches to studying. Studies in Higher Education, 19, 309-325.
Säljö, R. (1979). Qualitative Differences in Learning as a Function of the Learner's Conception of the Task. Göteborg : Acta Universitatis Göthoburgensis.
| Please cite as: Cliff, A. F. (1996). Postgraduate students' beliefs about learning and knowledge. Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Proceedings HERDSA Conference 1996. Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/cliff1.html |