Summary of Quantitative Findings

The final section of this chapter summarises the quantitative findings in relation to the original research questions. This research set out to explore a group of culturally diverse post-graduate science students’ conceptions of learning. The following section will address each of the three key questions for this research.

4.8.1 What does learning mean to a group of culturally diverse post-graduate health and life sciences students?

The Conceptions of Learning Inventory (Purdie & Hattie, 2002) was used to collect data from the group of 156 post-graduate students registered on taught Life and Health Science Masters’ programmes. The data from the COLI were factor analysed to explore whether conceptions of learning identified by the original authors were relevant to the current population. The original nine factors, as identified by Purdie et al. in 1996, had

been revised to five factors (Purdie & Hattie, 2002). This research found eight factors which were meaningful to the population of culturally diverse taught post-graduate health and life sciences students; ‘new information’, ‘making sense’, ‘remembering’, ‘using information’, ‘broadening horizons’, ‘personal development’, ‘social interaction’, and ‘social outcome’.

The factor from this analysis that was most prevalent was learning as ‘broadening horizons’. The population of students viewed learning as looking at life in new ways, changing ways of thinking, widening views and finding new ways to look at things. This finding aligns with a deep approach to learning (see Chapter 2, Table 2.1), which is what would be expected from students who are registered on a post-graduate degree programme. This, however, is not supported the findings from the focus group activity when students were asked to rate their top five of Purdie et al.’s (1996) learning

conceptions. Overall, students from the focus groups rated ‘seeing something in a different way’ which was Purdie et al.’s (1996) learning conception most closely affiliated to ‘broadening horizons’, as their third-most pertinent learning conception, with no students rating it as the highest.

‘Using information’ was the identified factor in this study which closely followed ‘broadening horizons’. Students viewed learning as the ability to use information when necessary in a variety of situations. This featured as the fourth most prominent learning conception in the focus group activity. ‘Using information as a means to an end’ could arguably be categorised as being aligned to a surface approach to learning in the

literature, therefore, it is interesting that post-graduate health and life sciences students’ responses in the COLI scored learning as ‘using information’ so highly.

The factor analysis of the COLI identified a conception which was associated with the relational aspect of learning, termed ‘social interaction’. This included items regarding learning from other people, not necessarily in the classroom. It was on items from this conception that students scored most highly, following ‘broadening horizons’ and ‘using information’. However, learning as ‘developing social competence’ was not rated highly by those students who attended the focus groups, with only four out of the ten students rating it at all. There was no clear relational learning conception in the list presented to the students in the focus groups, but learning as ‘developing social

Learning as ‘making sense’ was the identified factor that covered items in the

questionnaire such as ‘learning means I can talk about something in different ways’ and ‘learning is making sense out of new information and ways of doing things’. This, arguably a deep learning approach, was scored highly by the students. Learning as seeing something in a different way was the third ranked conception in the focus group activity with seven out of ten students rating it.

Five items from the COLI made up the ‘personal development’ learning conception, which all related to improving as a person. This conception yielded the fifth highest mean. It could also be aligned to the ‘developing social competence’ learning conception from Purdie et al. (1996), which was rated highly by students in the focus groups. ‘Learning as developing good relationships’ and ‘the development of common sense’ made up the conception ‘social outcome’ was rated lower than the conceptions previously noted. ‘Social outcome’ as derived from this research would also be a best fit with Purdie et al.’s (1996) ‘social competence’.

Students in this research are less likely to perceive learning as ‘remembering’ or ‘gaining new information’ in comparison to the previously discussed learning conceptions, both of which are considered to be a surface approach to learning (see Chapter 2, Table 2.1). There is an interesting contrast between students perceiving learning as ‘increasing knowledge’ as the principle learning conception as identified by Purdie et al. (1996), rating it most highly in the focus group activity, and viewing learning as ‘gaining new information’ as being less meaningful to their experience and understanding when responding to the CLOI items. This finding will be explored in detail in Chapter 5.

4.8.2 How do conceptions of learning interact with academic performance?

This research was interested in both predicted academic performance and students’ actual academic performance. As previously explained, predicted academic

performance was students’ forecast, in their third week of their studies, of their mean score across the first trimester. Their academic performance was their actual mean mark at the end of their first trimester. Contrary to the literature in this field

(Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012), this research found no relationship between how students predicted they would perform and how they actually performed. Overall, students predicted they would perform better than they did, and when broken down by

cultural cluster, this was most evident in the MENA and Central Africa cultural clusters. There were no differences across cultural clusters or gender in actual academic

performance. However, students from the Central Africa cultural cluster predicted they would perform better than students from MENA, Europe and Asia cultural clusters predicted they would perform.

It was expected that students who scored higher in the learning conceptions affiliated to a deeper learning approach would perform better than students who rated conceptions more closely aligned to a surface approach to learning. However, no relationship was found between any of the learning conceptions identified in this study and actual academic performance. It was found that the ‘broadening horizons’ and ‘personal development’ learning conceptions predicted academic performance, however, the interaction was small.

Academic performance was discussed in relation to students’ understanding and experiences of learning in the focus groups. The content of these discussions will be considered in Chapter 5 where the implications of the findings are reported.

4.8.3 Are there cultural differences in conceptions of learning?

Addressing the above research question necessitates a comprehensive discussion around cultural classification, which is a highly complex factor in understanding conceptions of learning. This cultural classification will be critically addressed in Chapter 6.

Considering the cultural clusters as identified in this research there were some differences across the groups for six of the eight identified learning conceptions. Generally, students from the European cultural cluster scored the items in the COLI (Purdie & Hattie, 2002) lower than students from the other cultural clusters, with students from Central Africa scoring them highest. The primary differences were those observed between European students and Central African students for ‘broadening horizons’, ‘personal development’, ‘social interaction’, ‘social outcome’,

‘remembering’ and ‘new information’. European students viewed the ‘personal development’ learning conception as less meaningful than students from all other culture clusters, except North America. European students also regarded the ‘social outcome’ learning conception as less meaningful to their experience and understanding of learning in comparison to students from Asia and MENA as well as Central African students.

Considering the literature around Chinese learners (e.g. Watkins & Biggs, 2001), it is interesting to note that students from Asia, as well as Europe, rated ‘remembering’ as less important to learning that students from Central Africa. ‘New information’ had a similar pattern with students from the European cultural cluster, rating it as less important to learning that students from all other cultural clusters except North

America. Finally, there were no cultural differences in the ‘using information’ learning conception.