Gordon Christopher, Debus Ray
Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia.
Br J Educ Psychol. 2002 Dec;72(Pt 4):483-511. doi: 10.1348/00070990260377488.
University students' approaches to learning have been demonstrated to affect learning outcomes across a wide range of courses, favouring the use of a deep approach. Interventions to promote the use of deep approaches have had mixed success, with the most successful interventions involving large-scale course redesign.
This paper describes a study in which contextual modifications were implemented in an existing preservice teacher education programme to increase students' use of deep approaches to learning and reduce their reliance on the use of surface approaches, without the need for major redesign. Students' perceptions of their competence in performing the tasks of teaching (personal teaching efficacy) were also expected to improve in response to improvements in quality learning.
Three cohorts of students (N = 134), enrolled in a preservice teacher education degree programme at a rural university in New South Wales, Australia participated in the study.
A longitudinal quasi-experimental design was used, with Cohort 1 acting as a control while Cohorts 2 and 3 represented treatment groups. Repeated measures were taken on Biggs' (1987b) Study Process Questionnaire, a modified version of Gibson and Dembo's (1984) Teacher Efficacy Scale and the Academic subscale within Lefcourt's (1981) Multidimensional-Multiattributional Causality Scale. An action research paradigm was embedded to enable the development and refinement of the altered teaching approaches.
Results indicated that the modifications to teaching methods, task requirements and assessment processes applied to the treatment group encouraged changes in students' approaches to learning by firstly reducing their use of surface approaches and later increasing the use of deep approaches. While both treatment and contrast groups exhibited equivalent growth in teaching efficacy, differences between cohorts were noted in the sources that informed personal teaching efficacy at the conclusion of the course.
These findings suggest that the study succeeded in its major goal of improving the quality of teaching and learning in this teacher education programme. The results conform to the findings of previous research and are consistent with learning approach theory. While the specific contextual modifications used in the current study may not necessarily be transferable to other settings, the processes employed in the generation of those modifications could find wider applicability.
研究表明，大学生的学习方法会影响众多课程的学习成果，深度学习方法更受青睐。促进深度学习方法使用的干预措施成效不一，最成功的干预措施涉及大规模课程重新设计。
本文描述了一项研究，即在现有的职前教师教育项目中进行情境调整，以增加学生对深度学习方法的使用，并减少他们对表面学习方法的依赖，而无需进行重大重新设计。随着高质量学习的改善，预计学生对自己执行教学任务能力（个人教学效能感）的认知也会提高。
澳大利亚新南威尔士州一所农村大学的职前教师教育学位课程中的三个学生群体（N = 134）参与了该研究。
采用纵向准实验设计，第一组作为对照组，第二组和第三组为实验组。对比格斯（1987b）的学习过程问卷、吉布森和登博（1984）教师效能感量表的修改版以及莱夫科特（1981）多维多归因因果力量表中的学业分量表进行了重复测量。采用行动研究范式，以促进教学方法的改进和完善。
结果表明，应用于实验组的教学方法、任务要求和评估过程的调整，首先减少了学生对表面学习方法的使用，随后增加了对深度学习方法的使用，从而促进了学生学习方法的改变。虽然实验组和对照组在教学效能方面都有同等程度的提高，但在课程结束时，不同组在影响个人教学效能感的因素方面存在差异。
这些发现表明，该研究成功实现了提高这一教师教育项目教学质量的主要目标。研究结果与之前的研究一致，也与学习方法理论相符。虽然本研究中使用的特定情境调整不一定能移植到其他环境，但产生这些调整所采用的过程可能具有更广泛的适用性。
