The Effects of Deep Approaches to Learning on Students' Need for Cognition Over Four Years of College

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost I want to thank my advisor Ernest Pascarella for his contributions of time, ideas, and guidance during my graduate studies at the University of Iowa. For this dissertation, his mentorship was paramount in providing me scrupulous spirit to scholarship in higher education and student affairs. I would like to thank my committee members: Dr. University of Iowa, your expertise provided a foundation of knowledge for which I pursued as a professional scholar in higher education and student affairs. I gratefully acknowledge the funding sources that helped me pursue my Ph.D. The Educational Policy and Leadership Studies Department funded me for my first four years. Leadership Studies, I had many opportunities to learn all kinds of statistical software, and cutting-edge technology. Lastly, I would like to thank my family for their supports and encouragement. I thank my parents for their unending encouragement and support in all my pursuits. I would like to share this accomplishment with my two sisters in Taiwan. I also share this accomplishment with my wife, Yu-Lan, and my two children, Ilene and Albert. iii ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of deep approaches to learning on development of the inclination to inquire and lifelong learning over four years, as an essential graduated outcome that helps students face the challenges of a complex and rapidly changing world. Despite the importance of the inclination to inquire and lifelong learning, some literature has attempted to operationalize this concept in practical ways. In another limited line of studies, researchers explored how the education process and deep approaches to learning affected students' cognitive development among first-year undergraduates. This dissertation focuses on the ways that the process of deep approaches to learning influences the development of the inclination to inquire and lifelong learning through the positive feelings from information acquisition and the conceptual change from meaningful structure of information. The individuals in the sample were 1,914 first-year undergraduate students participating in the Wabash National Study on Liberal Arts Education at each of the 17 institutions in the study. This longitudinal study was designed to use three waves of data to control for student background characteristics, institutional types, overall exposure to organized instruction, and other college experiences. The current study employed ordinary least squares regressions with a weighting algorithm and also investigated whether the effects were general or conditional based on differences in race, gender, precollege total academic preparation, …