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Does higher education promote independent learning?
There is general consensus in the literature that the goal of education is to increase the students' capacity to learn, to provide them with analytic skills and to increase their ability to deal with new information and draw independent conclusions. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the extent to which higher education does promote these abilities which can be summarised as independent learning. Quantitative data from the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) and qualitative data (semi-structured student interviews) from a tertiary institution in Hong Kong are compared with similar findings from institutions in other parts of the world. The relationship between demographic variables and the SPQ sub-scales appears to follow a pattern consistent with results from elsewhere. As students become older they are less likely to adopt a surface approach and more likely to adopt a deep one. However, there is a decrease in the use of a deep approach from first to third year of a course, suggesting that education at this tertiary institution does not promote independent learning. Possible explanations are derived from the literature and the student interviews. Implications for the structure of tertiary education in Hong Kong are discussed.
History
Publication title
Higher EducationVolume
19Pagination
307-322ISSN
0018-1560Department/School
Faculty of EducationPublisher
Kluwer Academic PublPlace of publication
Van Godewijckstraat 30, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 3311 GzRepository Status
- Restricted