Adapting study approaches acquired at school to suit the demands of university

1. Adapting study approaches acquired at school to suit the demands of university

2. Research questions • What were the study approaches and beliefs about knowledge students acquired at school? • What were the study approaches and beliefs about knowledge students had to adopt at university if they were to become successful graduates? • What were the difficulties encountered by students in making the transition? • How could teaching and learning approaches and curriculum design aid in prompting students to successfully make the transition?

3. Sample

4. Interview schedule • How did you write an essay at secondary school? How do you do it now? • How did you revise for tests and examinations? How do you do it now? • How would you have described a good teacher at secondary school? • How does that compare to how you would describe a good teacher now? • How certain are you that theories are true? • Given the changes you have described, what sorts of things in your courses have helped you in these changes and what sorts of things have hindered them?

5. Analysis • The analysis was principally based upon grounded theory • The aim was to identify and characterize significant constructs in a manner compatible with the data, with theory being derived from the data • The analysis also employed the constant comparative method

6. Impact of secondary school Exam oriented Hard memorization Model answers Writing Teacher-centred

7. Exam oriented I was very much exam oriented. My aim was to meet with exams. Rarely would I spend time going after my own interest, but I would spend time studying how I could perform better at exams. (History 1)

8. Hard memorization I worked as a scanner. I scanned everything to the mind and copied them on the exam papers. (Japanese Studies 1)

9. Model answers I studied Arts in secondary school. I did a lot of practice on past examination papers and tried to memorize model answers. (Translation 2)

10. Writing Once when we saw the question, a list of points would soon come up in front of our eyes, all we had to do was to use those points to support our views. We didn’t need to wonder or question the authenticity of those points for they were always true, and we would get marks by listing them out. (Speech & Hearing 3)

11. Teacher-centred My literature teacher was very biased, we could only comply with his/her views. If our ideas were not in-line with his/hers, we might receive a failing mark. (History 2)

12. Adapting to university study Self-management Independent learning Confidence to engage in discussion Recognizing multiple perspectives Learning to write Learning to read

13. Self-management At university, goals are set by ourselves; whereas from primary till secondary, goals are set by our parents, the schools and social norms. (History 4) In university, learning does not mean only acquiring knowledge, but also learning the skills of time management and collaboration with others. (Music 1)

14. Independent learning Learning is like eating. We were spoon-fed in secondary school. We have to assemble our own dishes in the university and look for our favourite vegetables in the market. (Music 3)

15. Confidence to engage in discussion Frankly speaking, our tutors and professors highly encouraged us to be involved in group discussions but none of us responded to their requests. … What we learned at university was too broad, very often, we didn’t know what and where to begin with our debate or discussion, therefore we could become rather quiet. Actually I wanted to speak up but I dared not because I was afraid I might have said something wrong, and be laughed at by others. Since I wasn’t sure about my own concepts, I chose not to speak up. When I first came here, I wasn’t used to it, but as time progressed, I didn’t like this silence and so I forced myself to speak up. After I finally did, I realized my professors and tutors highly appreciated my participation. (Anthropology 1)

16. Recognizing multiple perspectives In Psychology, we are encouraged to see things from various perspectives, to integrate knowledge when studying a case or an illness, and that there are no theories that are absolutely true or authentic. If I come across anything, I will go back to my other readings trying to relate and integrate what I have learned in other courses. (Psychology 2)

17. Learning to write By the time I had to submit the first essay for Comparative Literature, I had not learned from the course the methods for doing research work and searching for references from the library. I had never heard about including bibliography in essays and the formats, such as MLA, to be used. When I wrote my first essay, I did not know how to cite footnotes and bibliography in my work. (Comparative Literature 4)

18. Learning to read Life was quite harsh during the first year for we were loaded with a lot of readings to study. We were required to read a lot of things and to write a lot of reports within a limited time frame. At that time, I was very miserable for I worried I could not finish all things on time. It was impossible to read every character word-by-word. All I could was to force myself to read faster, and to better managed my time. But once when we got used to PBL, we knew how to play its game by scanning certain issues that were to be discussed during tutorials, prepared beforehand, ignoring other minor or unimportant issues. (Speech & Hearing 4)

19. Influence of teaching approach Teaching approaches Recognising multiple perspectives Active engagement with ill-defined problems Time taken for perspective change

20. Teaching approaches There are 3 kinds of teaching approaches: one where the teaching staff will interact with students and such interactions are frequent, in which both sides will ask questions and share views with one another. The second one would be the teacher teaching according to lecture notes and interactions with students are rare and limited. The third one would be the teacher teaching didactically ignoring everything. Luckily never have I attended such lessons but my friends did. (Chinese Language 1)

21. Memorization in language learning We had to adopt the approach of rote memorization to learn a language. (European Studies 1) I have to adopt the learning approach of rote memorization to study for these two subjects. I think that I have to apply this approach to study a language. Otherwise, I would not be able to use it properly. (Japanese Studies 1)

22. Making the transition • Exposure to problems or issues with multiple positions • Active student engagement, through learning activities, with problems or issues with multiple positions

23. Critical dialogue in class At tutorials, we are required to make our own stance, to voice out our opinion; it is true that I have learnt a lot through exchange of views for that has prepared me and nurtured me to think with multiple perspectives. (History 5)

24. Case studies For IT & Entrepreneurship and Project Management, guests were invited to share with us their experiences and knowledge, and sometimes we would do case studies. Guest speakers would present their PowerPoint slides, we would then discuss and even criticize their points and the lecturer would round up the presentation at the end. It might sound shallow to you but to me, the atmosphere was good for we weren’t bored. At least, we could pick up something from their presentations for it was a two-way interactive type of learning. (BBA 2)

25. PBL PBL is good for it teaches us how to think, how to reason (Dentistry 3) Personally I do not favor PBL but the greatest achievement being able to learn how to learn on my own. Through PBL, I know what I do not know, then I will try to find ways to learn on my own turning my unknown to known. Or I will choose to study certain info that are useful to me. (Dentistry 1)

26. Time taken for perspective change Not until my senior year did I realize I had to view things differently from various perspectives. At the beginning, it was a bit difficult for me to pick things up for each lecturer would see things differently with their own perspectives even on the same historical issue. At secondary, we only had one absolute answer, not multiple views with multiple answers. I could recall that we had two professors who would keep on reminding us that our role was to look for the truth rather than to believe in any historical documents. They would keep on encouraging us, hoping that we could abandon our past study approach (from secondary) to pick up a new one at university. (Chinese History 1)

27. Changes • Developing self-discipline and self-management to cope with the relative freedom as a university student • Developing the ability to learn independently to adjust to the different types of teaching and learning at university • Becoming confident enough to engage in discussion in class • Developing more sophisticated epistemological beliefs so as to be able to make judgements on multiple perspectives • Learning to write (in English) in a style consistent with these more sophisticated beliefs • Coming to grips with the nature of their discipline