Abstract:
Recognising and understanding the diverse ways that students learn is
an important step in setting up effective environments for learning. A traditional
way of getting this information is to observe the quality of assessed work and
classroom interactions. An alternative and more direct method is to actually ask
students to tell you about their own learning. While some students will be less
successful than others in articulating their ideas, an overall picture will emerge of
the variety of ways in which students understand what it means to learn. Such an
approach has been used to investigate students' experience of learning in a
variety of contexts. One practical effect of this line of enquiry has been the
discovery of the dichotomy between teacher focused, content orientations to
learning associated with a surface approach to learning and student focused,
learning orientations associated with a deep approach to learning. These
qualitatively different conceptions of learning result in discernible differences in
learning outcomes. While some aspects of learning seem to be universal, others
depend on the context of learning. In this paper, we look at two parallel studies of
students' conceptions of learning in statistics and in music, areas quite different
both in content and traditional methods of pedagogy. Research in these and other
academic disciplines suggests that there is a strong relation between students'
(and teachers') perception of professional work and their conceptions of their
discipline and learning within that discipline. We discuss how this 'Professional
Entity' is apparent in statistics and music, and how an appreciation of the
Professional Entity can help teachers enhance their students' learning in other
disciplines.
