From model answers to multiple perspectives: Adapting study approaches to suit university study

Abstract

The study looks at issues around the power of the hidden curriculum of assessment and its effects on student behaviour. The assessment regime at school level has an impact on study approaches at university level, and if we are to help students to make the transition from school to university, then it is important that we understand the beliefs and behaviours involved. The study looks at changes in behaviour in the light of beliefs about knowledge and their understanding about knowledge, that is, their epistemological beliefs, which are a pre- or co-requisite to learning in a manner consistent with the requirements of a discipline. Drawing on the literature from the transition from school- to university-level study, focus group interviews were conducted with 110 final-year students at two universities in Hong Kong in order to look at the adaptations made by students used to a particular assessment regime at school level and who, like students in all cultures, need to become more independent in their learning and to develop confidence. For students to successfully make the transition, first, they had to be exposed to issues or problems with multiple positions. Second, there needed to be active engagement through learning activities with the problems or issues.

Keywords

active learning adapting study approaches epistemological beliefs induction into discipline school university transition

First-year experience

As students have to make the transition from school to university, the first-year experience literature is key to our understanding of what we know about this. However, the first-year experience literature originated from efforts in the United States to reduce dropout (Tinto, 1975, 1987) and it is important to recognise that the first-year experience may vary from one country/culture to another. The first-year experience programmes that followed were introduced to reduce dropout, which was a major problem for US colleges, particularly in the first year (Upcraft and Gardner, 1989). Work of the period concentrated on social assimilation into college society. Work that has looked at academic transition rather than dropout indicates that students have particular difficulties when there are mismatches between their perceptions of academic expectations and actual requirements. Krause (2001) found that, in their first written assignment, it was common for students to have difficulty conceptualising their audience and their demands. Krause et al. (2005) reported that, in spite of enhanced efforts to bridge the gap between school and university, a substantial proportion of students still felt ill-prepared for university study. However, although the situation had improved by 2009 (James et al., 2010), Brownlee et al. (2009) argued that personal epistemological beliefs relate closely to beliefs about learning, so influence chances of adapting to university during their first year of study. Vinson et al. (2010) believe that failure to establish meaningful and effective transition for undergraduates could lead to academic failure. Programmes featuring a wide range of innovative and student-centred activities should be encouraged as such activities could foster positive students’ engagement and cooperation, which is one of the key components of students successfully completing their studies. Besides students’ engagement, what students learn outside of the classroom is equally important as this affects their cognitive development and academic achievement.

Christie et al. (2007) suggest that students face new sets of risks and uncertainties learning in a new environment because they must negotiate the meaning and significance of the everyday practices embodied in the new setting. Upcraft et al. (2009) state, in order to help first-year undergraduates make a successful transition from school to university, universities have to go further by taking a holistic approach, focusing not only on in- and outside-classroom teaching and learning but also on various aspects such as assessment, inclusive and supportive campus climates as well as constructive educational programmes promoting intellectual, social and emotional growth of all students.

Integration into effective learning communities

If the first-year assimilation succeeds, students will be integrated into learning communities, which Smith and Bath (2006) define as the ‘social, interactive and collaborative character of the student experience of university life’ (p. 275). However, it is important to take into account not only the learning community itself within the university in question but also the wider community and culture. The first-year experience literature can be envisaged as a two-phase process. The first phase is the social assimilation into one or more communities to a sufficient extent that they feel integrated into university society. The second phase considers the extent to which these communities promote effective learning outcomes and enable students to achieve academic congruence. There is, therefore, a need for students to become incorporated into broadly based first-phase communities as well as second-phase learning communities appropriate for their discipline. There is likely to be overlap and some commonality of membership between the types of community. It also has to be accepted that communities are likely to be dynamic in membership as students shift between courses. The characteristics of communities could also mutate as priorities shift as students progress through their degree.

Social affiliation is a prerequisite for the formation of learning communities, but there is certainly no guarantee that assimilation will automatically result in effective learning communities. Indeed, social affiliation often results in less learning activity, as attention is diverted from academic tasks to social activities. The academic affiliation part of Tinto’s (1975, 1987) model corresponds with the normative congruence or value integration part of Durkheim’s (1961) theory of suicide. In academic terms, integration occurs when students hold beliefs consistent with the demands of higher education and follow academic conventions in their work.

When interpreting the nature and quality of social and academic affiliation, a series of studies indicate that the nature of the collaboration and the type of communal learning activities engaged in affect the outcomes of the collaboration (Yan, 2001). Yan and Kember (2004a) reported that collaborative activities could be placed on a spectrum from low to high task involvement. Yan and Kember (2004b) showed that the types of activities could be classified into engager or avoider approaches, which were the group equivalent of deep and surface learning approaches adopted by individuals. Engager approaches were focused on collaboration to gain a better understanding of a concept, while avoider approaches were adopted with the aim of minimising the work of individuals in a group. Yan and Kember (2003, 2005) showed the nature of the teaching and learning environment strongly influenced both the degree of collaborative learning and whether engager or avoider approaches were adopted. Creating an appropriate teaching and learning environment promoted out-of-class relationships and encouraged the deployment of engager approaches, which resulted in students helping each other to understand key concepts and hence to achieving high-quality learning outcomes. Teaching approaches and curriculum development can, therefore, play an important role in developing effective learning communities.

Epistemological beliefs

Difficulties in adapting study behaviours appear to be influenced by students’ naïve beliefs about knowledge on entry to university. There are qualitative schemes characterising epistemological beliefs. The best known of these is probably that of Perry (1970, 1988). His scheme contained nine developmental positions starting with basic duality. The following stages recognised multiple theories or opinions but retained a belief that one was right. Intermediate stages recognised relativism. The final four stages all featured some degree of commitment to positions and beliefs. Perry’s sample was of Harvard undergraduates, who were mostly male. Belenky et al. (1986) and Baxter Magolda (1993) conducted studies with samples that included more females. The number of categories differed, but stages of belief shared a close resemblance to those of Perry (1970, 1988), varying from absolute certainty, through indecision to reasoned judgements. Two broad categories commonly recognised among researchers to simplify the schemes are naïve and sophisticated. This categorisation is based on high and low factor scores on a questionnaire developed by Schommer (1989). In a later study, Schommer (1994) provided more details on the characterisation of beliefs as naïve and sophisticated.

King and Kitchener (1994) related the ability to make reflective judgements about ill-defined problems to a seven-stage epistemological scheme. Their seven categories of knowledge ranged from those arising from single concrete observations to knowledge developed through enquiry in a probabilistic manner. Their analysis of levels of reflective judgement through interviews of college students in the United States reports mean scores of around 3.5 for college first years and 4.0 for seniors on the seven-level scale (pp. 224, 225). These results imply that the average senior is still at a quasi-reflective stage of development and, as these are mean scores, many must graduate still holding pre-reflective beliefs.

Epistemological beliefs will naturally vary from culture to culture. It might be argued that much of the literature on epistemological beliefs looks at this in the context of the West. Yet, if we are better understand epistemological beliefs, there needs to be studies undertaken in other, non-Western cultures. One such culture is that of Hong Kong. Concerns in Hong Kong have been the influences of schools and examination systems on learning approaches and beliefs about learning, teaching and knowledge (Watkins and Biggs, 1996). Pressure to do well in examinations commonly induces both school students and teachers to adopt approaches to teaching and learning that are not compatible with the ideals of higher education (Kember, 2009; Kember and Watkins, 2010).

A study by Kember (2001), which examined the influence of beliefs on the ability to cope with higher education, interviewed 53 novice or experienced students enrolled in part-time courses in Hong Kong universities. It was found that the attitudes and ability to cope with study were influenced by a coherent set of beliefs about knowledge and the process of teaching and learning. This belief set was characterised in two broad orientations as didactic/reproductive or facilitative/transformative. Novice students holding didactic/reproductive beliefs found it difficult to adjust to higher education if the teaching was not expository. These students also experienced problems with assignments that went beyond the reproduction of material since these were incompatible with their epistemological beliefs. The experienced students were enrolled in higher degrees and held beliefs consistent with the facilitative/transformative set. Several of them recalled holding naïve beliefs at the start of their undergraduate degree and were able to describe what had stimulated them to make the transition.

Study behaviours at both school and university are heavily influenced by perceptions of the teaching and learning environment or the hidden curriculum and particularly the assessment. It is well established that approaches to study are a function of students’ perceptions of the teaching and learning environment, and particularly the assessment (Biggs, 1999; Ramsden, 1992). The pressures of the examination system at Hong Kong schools, over the years, had a deeply ingrained impact on study beliefs and behaviours. Adapting to the different environment at university was, therefore, a difficult and lengthy process. There are studies of epistemological beliefs of Western university students, which suggest that they have to go through similar transitions, though there may be a difference of degree. The studies of epistemological beliefs cited were conducted on Western students. The existence of categories of naïve beliefs indicates that many students do need to adapt to more sophisticated positions. Indeed, King and Kitchener’s (1994) work suggests that many are still struggling to do so upon graduation. This suggests that adapting study approaches to conform to the requirements of university is an issue in the West as well. The literature review suggests that the issue of difficulties facing students in adapting to university study is worthy of further investigation and that there is a need to do so in terms of the culture in which such students learn.

The research questions addressed in the study are as follows:

What were the study approaches and beliefs about understandings about knowledge that students acquired at school in Hong Kong?

What were the study approaches and beliefs about understandings about knowledge that students had to adopt at university in Hong Kong if they were to successfully undertake studies at this level?

How might these be understood by students in a particular cultural context, namely, that of Hong Kong?

How could the curriculum and the teaching and learning environment help students to successfully manage the transition?

Method

Small focus group interviews were conducted with students at two research intensive universities in Hong Kong. Final-year undergraduate students were picked, so as to be able to look back across their experiences and discuss the nature of changes made. The focus groups were usually of about three to five students from a cognate discipline, except the discipline of Information Engineering (from University 1) where only two students were available for the group interview. In total, 26 students were interviewed from the Faculty of Arts from University 2, ranging from 3 to 6 students forming a group from cognate disciplines. Table 1 shows the faculty of the interviewees and the number of disciplinary groups within each faculty.

Table 1.

Interviewees and programmes selected in the two research intensive universities in Hong Kong

University	Faculty	Number of disciplines	Number of students
University 1	Faculty of Medicine	1	4
	Faculty of Science	1	5
	Faculty of Engineering	1	2
	Faculty of Social Science	3	9
University 2	Faculty of Arts	6	26
	Faculty of Business and Economics	2	9
	Faculty of Dentistry	1	9
	Faculty of Education	1	6
	Faculty of Law	1	3
	Faculty of Medicine	3	14
	Faculty of Social Sciences	7	23
Total		27	110

Where quotes are given, the discipline is indicated, together with a code to distinguish students within a focus group.

Interview schedule

The interviews were semi-structured and quite open, with prompting and probing questions used to bring depth to issues students raised. Questions focused on concrete acts of study rather than abstract approaches. All interviews were conducted separately by two research assistants in Cantonese and lasted between 1 and 2 hours. Signed consent was sought from all interviewees prior to each interview. Collecting data from University 1 took place from November to December 2007 and from September to December 2008 for University 2. Full transcripts in English were produced by the two research assistants.

The analysis was principally based upon grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Lincoln and Guber, 1985). The analysis also employed the constant comparative method (Strauss and Corbin, 1990), in which parts of an interview are constantly examined in respect to the whole. This ensured that descriptors of constructs and categories were consistent with the whole sense of an interview.

The set of transcripts was examined for common themes relating to descriptions of the transition process. Initial analysis was done by one of the researchers going through the transcripts and noting common themes with marginal notes. Then the two research assistants verified that the thematic categories were consistent with the sense of the interviews and proceeded to systematically code the transcripts with NVivo (QSR International Pty Limited, 2007). During this process, the category system was refined through discussion between the researchers. The second level of analysis was to search for subordinate themes. Relationships between the initial codes were examined, facilitated by reordering coded parts of the transcript, according to categories, with NVivo. Again, there was verification of the subordinate coding scheme between researchers. The final level of the analysis occurred during the writing process. At the request of a referee, an analysis was made of any gender effects, but none were found. This is not surprising as approaches to learning have not generally been found to be gender specific.

Findings

Findings are reported in the following sequence. First, common study approaches at school are described. Second, there is a description of the study behaviour needed for university. Finally, the types of teaching approaches that helped students succeed in making the transition are discussed.

Secondary school

The nature of study approaches adopted at school was consistent with previous studies of the effect of the highly competitive Hong Kong school system on approaches to learning (Kember, 2009; Kember and Watkins, 2010). It was notable how little variation there was. No interviewees described a study approach at school that differed in a major way from those characterised below.

Hard memorisation

The combination of the pressure to succeed and the nature of the examinations tend to encourage what the interviewees called ‘hard memorisation’. Teachers encouraged students to resort to memorisation even for subjects like History and Literature. It is an indictment of the assessment procedures that such strategies were perceived as worthwhile:

I adopted hard memorization at secondary. Such as for History, it was unavoidable to adopt hard memorization because those were facts. You could not make up non-factual stories. Even our Literature teacher told us that rote learning was unavoidable. (Anthropology 2)

Model answers

The encouragement to adopt memorisation led to a widespread use of model answers. Teachers prepared students by giving them model answers to questions that were likely to appear. The students’ main strategy to prepare for the examinations was to try to remember the model answers.

These approaches to teaching and learning inevitably impacted upon students’ beliefs about knowledge. When there is endless drilling in model answers, it becomes hard to move away from beliefs that knowledge is uncontested and questions have just right and wrong answers. The student quoted in the following came to realise the problematic nature of such beliefs about knowledge, but a reasonable interpretation of the interviews was that most of the students would have left school with naïve epistemological beliefs:

We learned according to textbooks, what was taught by our teachers and from past papers. We were told and trained to remember model answers. (Government and Public Administration 2)

Adapting to university study

This section deals with the adaptations students had to make in order for their approaches to studying to be more suitable for university. What it shows is that these transitions are not separate but instead are interlinked, which naturally makes analysis somewhat more problematic.

Independent learning

Teachers at secondary school tended to be directive. Students were told what to study and even provided with model answers to learn. For most students, there would have been a full timetable of classes during the day. Set homework dictated out-of-class study time. University, by contrast, required more self-dependence, so students had to develop the ability to learn independently of teacher direction:

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)

Developing confidence to engage in discussion

Hong Kong students tend to be passive at school (Kember and Watkins, 2010), which is a natural corollary of a didactic teaching approach and the emphasis on teaching and remembering model answers. It was not easy to abandon this mindset even when university teachers wanted students to engage in critical discussion:

Frankly speaking, our tutors and professors highly encouraged us to be involved in group discussions but none of us responded to their requests. (Anthropology 1)

Learning to write

The analogy used most to describe the approach to writing used at secondary school was cut and paste. A variant on this was to the pharmaceutical practices of traditional Chinese medicine. Outlets commonly store herbal medicines in an array of small drawers. Prescriptions are compiled by selecting the appropriate combination of components from their designated drawers:

I think my sense began to build after I had done my first assignment. Learning was different, the teaching method was different and certainly there had to be some difference in terms of my assignment. When I first saw the question, I knew immediately that I could no longer pick things according to the Chinese medicine prescription, but rather, I had to choose supporting evidence or arguments for writing my essays. (Sociology 2)

Development of the ability to write in an appropriate manner in the arts and social science subjects appeared to be connected to advancing maturity in epistemological beliefs and the manner of thinking. A prerequisite to learning to write in an appropriate manner was achieving a relativistic belief about knowledge. Without this step of accepting multiple perspectives, there is no need to make the transition from reproductive writing styles to ones that require recognition of multiple positions and argued judgements between them. Once beliefs had changed, essays were no longer compilations of bits from various sources. Instead, it was necessary for an argument to be developed with appropriate supporting evidence.

Much of the writing had to be in English, which was a seldom spoken second language for many students (Li et al., 2001). This was a compounding effect in their efforts to learn to write in an academic manner (Johnson and Ngor, 1996):

But it is true that some of the students in our department have much difficulty dealing with English since most of our lecturers are foreigners or will lecture in English. They have difficulty picking up English, failing to get the messages clearly. (Anthropology 2)

Influence of teaching approach

This section considers how the teaching and curriculum affects the process of adapting study approaches. The interviews contained description of typical teaching and learning, facilitating analysis of this question. In one of the programmes, students commonly took two majors. In the interviews, some of them compared the two majors when contrasting effects. These parts of the interviews were helpful in discerning the influence of approaches to teaching and learning. The nature of the discipline and the teaching approach influenced the progress students made towards making judgements on issues with multiple positions. These factors affected the timing of the change and whether a full transition was made.

Developing multiple perspectives

The analysis suggested that two steps were necessary in helping students develop multiple perspectives: one – exposure to problems or issues with multiple positions, and two – active engagement with these problems and issues through learning activities.

Recognising multiple perspectives

An essential element in disturbing the black and white vision of knowledge possessed by most students was choosing topics for which multiple perspectives were legitimate. These could take various forms such as ill-defined problems or cases. Controversial topics seemed to be particularly good as they stimulated interest and debate. However, having deep-seated beliefs challenged by showing ambiguity rather than certainty can be confusing and disturbing:

The professors guided us to look at things from different points of view from the very beginning. What they said seemed abstract and confusing to us. The content was not like a block of knowledge. (Comparative Literature 2)

Active engagement

There were several ways of prompting students towards active engagement with issues with multiple perspectives. For History, the encouragement to develop their own perspectives came through stressing the importance to the discipline of primary sources. Students were encouraged to form their own conclusions from the primary sources, rather than rely on the interpretations of others in secondary sources:

During Year 2, I began to read a lot of primary sources, began to develop my own perception. Reading others’ ideas would help foster my own conclusion. I think it is the process of reading and evaluating primary sources that has aided my mode of thinking. In the past, we could only read secondary sources. (History 1)

In comparative literature, students were encouraged to think critically and challenge conventional wisdom through the choice of controversial topics. Picking suitable topics encouraged debate and critical discussion in class:

Comparative Literature compares Shakespeare’s work and the current literature and challenges the traditional ways of considering Shakespeare’s work as superior and the current literature of lower value. It also considers films as literature. Comparative Literature helped me develop critical thinking skills and encouraged me to challenge conventional wisdom. (Comparative Literature 4)

Business used discussion of case studies. There was also input from guest speakers from local businesses. As both the case studies and the experiences of the guests were based on real-life scenarios, they consisted of ill-defined issues:

For [subjects], 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. (Business Administration 2)

The Problem-based learning (PBL) approach requires groups of students to tackle a series of ill-defined problems. Students have to identify problems in the case scenarios, search for relevant background information and work together to identify solutions:

PBL is good for it teaches us how to think, how to reason. (Dentistry 3)

Time taken for perspective change

From remembering model answers to recognising multiple perspectives was a difficult transition that took a long time. Interviewees who gave a time period observed that the change was not completed until the second or third year. This suggests that the issue of academic transition is not confined to the first-year experience:

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. (Chinese History 1)

The difficulty of making the transition can be illustrated by the quotation below that uses the word ‘terrified’. Others commonly talked of confusion, particularly during their first year:

At first, I felt terrified for I could no longer follow a concrete pattern. I felt very insecure. As time goes by, I realized this is another kind of learning approach. After 2 or 3 years, I began to learn how to digest what I had learned. I learned to seek help from tutors; I learned to seek advice from peers at the senior level, and I began to adjust to such an approach. (Anthropology 1)

The difficulties of learning to write

Students were required to display the more sophisticated thought processes developed through the various forms of active engagement with multiple perspectives, discussed above, through written work, mostly in the form of assigned essays. Explicit training in writing for the discipline appears to be effective in helping students adapt to the university study:

We do have a core course in History and its intention is to help us adapt better. In that course, we will learn how to read a book, how to write references, and how to write an essay. I think this course is very helpful in terms of writing essays for we were given a stack of materials and up until now, I still hold on to this stack of materials every time when I write my essays. There are various styles in writing references, and I will cross-check with this stack of materials again-and-again to make sure I’m doing something correct, not making any mistake. (History 5)

Individual formative help in essay writing was also seen as valuable. This included comments on original ideas and drafts of essay scripts:

Luckily our professors are very nice for we are allowed to present and discuss our ideas to our professors prior to writing an essay. They will comment on what we should and should not include, and may even provide references for us to read. Most important is that we have to prepare first, draft our ideas prior to seeing them. (History 5)

Conclusion

At secondary school, pressures from the highly selective examination system induced students to memorise model answers to likely examination questions. At university, the interviewees reported going through an interconnected set of transitions that included the following:

Developing self-discipline and self-management to cope with the relative freedom as a university student.

Developing the ability to learn independently, without the accustomed close supervision of schoolteachers, 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.

Getting to grips with the nature of their discipline.

The first three of these acted as compounding influences for the other more demanding transitions. The other three transitions were closely interrelated with the full achievement of stylish academic writing skills seeming to be conditional on the development of sophisticated epistemological beliefs. The latter three changes involved much unlearning of beliefs and ingrained habits acquired in previous schooling, which was a particularly difficult process.

To make these demanding interconnected transitions, two important steps were necessary. Students had to have significant exposure to cases, issues or problems with multiple positions or perspectives. To make the difficult and lengthy transition to multiple perspectives, there had to be forms of active engagement, through learning activities, with the issues and problems. This, therefore, provides a guide to the design of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, if students are to be prompted to make the transition towards study approaches suitable for university. Exposure to problems with well-defined solutions will not help the transition but may reinforce existing beliefs. Instead, ill-defined problems or controversial issues need to be dealt with. As it seems important for students to actively engage with the messy problems, purely didactic teaching does not help. As schooling has conditioned students to be assessment driven, active engagement through incorporating the ill-defined problems in assessment brings particular benefit.

The limitations of the study are that data were gathered from two universities in Hong Kong and the disciplines investigated were those in which the transition appeared to pose difficulties, rather than a representative sample. It would be beneficial to investigate to what extent the findings translate to other contexts. Students elsewhere have to make the same transition, as it is common for students to enter university with naïve epistemological beliefs. Students entering university have diverse beliefs and study behaviours and this varies from culture to culture. It is probable, though, that the conditioning of the school system will be either less pronounced or will vary in different ways in another culture, particularly in countries that have moved from elite to mass higher education.

Footnotes

Appendix 1 Funding

This work was supported by a General Research Fund (GRF) grant from the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong (grant number 444808).

Biographical notes

David Kember has recently retired from the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include student learning, learning environments, graduate attributes, conceptions of teaching and learning and enhancing teaching quality through action research projects.

Celina Hong has been working as a Research Assistant since 1998 in areas of student teachers, peer tutoring, student motivation and graduate attributes as a qualitative research analyst. Address: The Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education, Sha Kok Estate, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China. [email: celina@netvigator.com or celinahong@hkage.org.hk]

Amaly Ho is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education of the University of Hong Kong. She has been helping with research projects in higher education, linguistics and school education in English language since 1998. Address: The Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China. [email: amaly@hku.hk or h0988726@hku.hk]

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