Student Learning

Building on earlier work the present study examines the empirical association between contrasting forms of "memorising", as suggested in the phenomenographic literature (but operationalised here in a form amenable to statistical modelling), and also between such forms of "memorising" and other established explanatory sources of variation in student learning. The aim of this work is directed towards the construction and interpretation of multivariate models of student learning that are sensitive to variation in contrasting forms of "memorising". To this end the degree of linear association, in particular, between contrasting forms of "memorising" and conceptions of learning, "deep-level" processes, and other introduced modelling observables is reported. Inventory responses from three samples of entering first-year economics students at the Universities of South Australia, Adelaide, and James Cook University (combined n=l334)form the basis of the present study, and these data are subjected to exploratory factor analysis, cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling. Findings support a uniform and unambiguous interpretation of an underlying empirical model of "memorising" in which contrasting forms of "memorising" are respectively associated with other modelling observables in a conceptually consonant manner.