Student Approaches to Learning

The clinical studies of Educational Psychologists Ference Marton and Roger Säljö looked at how students approached learning and found that they could be divided into two distinct groups, those that took an understanding approach to learning and those that took a reproduction approach to learning (Marton & Säljö 1976). These are more commonly referred to as deep and surface approaches to learning.

In these studies students read a 1,500 word article on which they were questioned by an interviewer. In the interviews students were asked about what they remembered, how they felt about the task and how they approached the task. Analysis of the interviews showed that students could be divided into two groups:

1) Surface learners who focussed on parts of the article to memorise that they might be questioned on.

2) Deep learners who engaged in an active search for meaning.

The laboratory studies of Pask and co-workers came to similar conclusions (Pask 1976). Pask referred to the two different learning strategies that he had found as "serialists" and "holists". Serialists look at the detail and steps in the argument and appear to be a sophisticated surface approach. Holists have a broad focus and see the task in context, using analogies and illustrations.

Brown and Atkins in their review of studies of student learning suggested that the surface approach is not always inferior to the deep approach. Sometimes "'Knowing that' and 'Knowing how' are important." (Brown and Atkins 1990). For them:

Learning can then be conceived as a continuous process of development backwards and forwards between the two orientations.

Learning Approaches and Phenomenography
Marton has also been involved in the development of Phenomenography research, but this should be distinguished from the simpler model of student approaches to learning. Phenomenography aims to produce a detailed understanding of people's experiences and thoughts(in this case the students), whereas his earlier work on student approaches to learning examines how this behavior manifests itself in the approach the student takes.

Learning Approaches vs Learning Styles
It is important to distinguish between learning approaches and learning styles. Students can use different learning approaches for different tasks. These are not inherent personality traits and they are produced by the interaction of the student with the learning tasks. Research by Diana Laurillard confirmed this view by studying the learning approaches adopted by students across a number of different modules with different learning outcomes (Laurillard 1979, Laurillard 1997).

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