"I Only Wish I Had Known It Sooner." Education Students' Changing Conceptions of Learning Strategies.

One of the cornerstones of student learning is the ability to use appropriate learning strategies. Awareness and orchestration of learning strategies are central to selfregulation of learning. Effective learners have a range of strategies and use them appropriately for different tasks. Effective learners are flexible and can adapt their strategy use to achieve their learning goals. If we expect prospective teachers to help their students become effective learners, they themselves need to be aware of and manage their own learning. But are our prospective teachers themselves effective learners in terms of strategy use? Using a qualitative approach, we examined the learning strategies of undergraduate and graduate Education students from a private and a public university. At the beginning and end of semester, as an integral part of a unit of study, students were asked to report on their learning strategies related to the learning task and to themselves as learners. Results are discussed in terms of the range and diversity of reported learning strategies, and students’ self-awareness regarding their own learning. Changes over the semester are also discussed. Implications for teacher education programs, for the development of university curricula in general and for staff development are considered, with the view of improving the quality of teaching and learning. Introduction There is extensive literature which links the use of effective learning strategies with high academic achievement (Archer, 1998; Fuller, Chalmers, & Kirkpatrick, 1994; Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996; Janssen, 1996; Pintrich & Johnson, 1990; Tate & Entwistle, 1996; Thomas, 1988; Zimmerman, 1998; Zimmerman, Greenberg, & Weinstein, 1994). Effective learners can be characterised as self-regulated learners. They have clear, personally meaningful goals for learning which stress learning for understanding, they know and appropriately use a wide repertoire of learning strategies, and they use metacognitive strategies to manage learning tasks. They also have metacognitive knowledge of learning and conceptualise learning in qualitative terms, believing themselves to be capable of learning and responsible for their own learning (Zimmerman, 1994). Learning strategies include cognitive strategies such as basic and complex rehearsal, elaboration and organisation strategies (Weinstein, 1982; Weinstein & Underwood, 1985) which are ordered in increasing depth of processing (Radloff, 1997). Learning strategies also include adaptive strategies such time-management and organising the learning environment, cue-seeking, help-seeking and volitional strategies such as persistence in the face of obstacles to learning (see Table 1). Metacognitive strategies include planning, Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 26, No.2. 2001 2 monitoring, adapting and evaluating learning and learning outcomes. These strategies are important in effective learning across all disciplines. As future teachers, Education students, in particular, need to have effective learning and metacognitive strategies (de la Harpe & Radloff, in press). If teachers do not know how to learn effectively and cannot themselves do so, how can they hope to help their own students to be effective learners? As Jones, Slate and Kyle point out, teachers "who do not have these skills lack both the ability to function as lifelong learners and to develop the academic skills of their own students" (1992, p. 14). Moreover, future teachers need metacognitive strategies in order to engage in reflective practice and continuing professional development as part of lifelong learning (Radloff, 1997). It is, therefore, especially important that, as part of their university study, Education students develop an understanding of effective learning and use appropriate learning and metacognitive strategies in their own learning. According to Anderson and his colleagues (Anderson, Blumenfeld, Pintrich, Clark, Marx, & Peterson, 1995), helping future teachers in this epistemological development is part of the job of teacher educators. Yet, studies which have looked at the learning approaches and learning strategies of Education students suggest that students enrolled in pre-service and in-service programs may have limited understanding and use of learning strategies and show poorly developed metacognitive awareness and use of metacognitive strategies (Radloff, 1997). Jones, Slate and Kyle (1992) surveyed 115 secondary Education students using a Study Habits Inventory and found that students in the lower quartile in terms of course grades differed significantly from students in the upper quartile in terms of poor time management including procrastination, inappropriate study techniques including being less likely to review and to engage in comprehension monitoring, and being less likely to seek lecturers' help when having difficulties. They concluded that Education students would benefit from a program to improve their learning skills. A study by Alderman et al. (Alderman, Klein, Seeley, & Sanders, 1993) of 44 preservice Education students used data from weekly learning logs. Students described and reflected on their learning strategies, and it was found that more successful students reported using a greater number of learning strategies and that few students reported planning, monitoring and adapting their learning strategies. Based on their findings, the authors concluded that all students could benefit from instruction in learning strategy use. In a study by Boulton-Lewis and her colleagues (Boulton-Lewis, Wilss, & Mutch, 1996) of 40 experienced teachers enrolled in an in-service Bachelor of Education course, students were asked to write about a page on 'Your beliefs about learning'. They were to include a description of what they knew about their own learning, how they went about learning, what factors influenced their learning and the criteria they used to determine that they had learnt something, their view of learning and their beliefs about how they acquired their view. Analyses of student responses showed that most of the adult learners were not very knowledgeable about learning, did not perceive themselves as responsible for their own learning and had unsophisticated conceptions of learning . A study by Radloff (in press) of 23 adult learners enrolled in a pre-service Education program found, based on semi-structured interview responses, that at the beginning of their course, most students reported using predominantly rehearsal strategies when learning, and held quantitative views of learning. Only about half reported using metacognitive strategies such as planning, monitoring and adapting their learning (see Table 1 for a brief description of strategies listed here and elsewhere). After two years Australian Journal of Teacher Education 3 Vol. 26, No.2. 2001 of study, there were changes in the use of learning strategies, with a marked drop in the use of basic rehearsal strategies and an increase in the use of organisation strategies (both basic and complex), and in cueseeking but students still held predominantly quantitative views of learning. There were no major changes in the reported use of metacognitive strategies with still only around half of the participants reporting using these strategies to manage their study. There are a number of reasons why learners may not use appropriate learning strategies apart from not knowing what strategies to use or how to use them. First, the learning tasks students are required to complete and the assessments used to measure learning may not be cognitively demanding enough to warrant the use of other than basic learning strategies such as memorising (Garner, 1990). Second, with the typically overstuffed curricula and emphasis on content over process in much university teaching (Fox & Radloff, 1997; Shuell, 1990), there may not be enough time or opportunity for students to develop and use effective learning strategies. We were interested to find out the extent of Education students' knowledge of learning and metacognitive strategies and their use of these over a semester of study to manage the learning task and themselves as learners. Specifically, we wanted to know how students conceptualised the learning demands of their course at the beginning of the course, what strategies they believed they would have to use to meet these demands, and what strategies they reported having used at the end of the semester. Both the courses in which the students were enrolled had theories of learning as the unit content and, as an integral part of the unit, modelled, encouraged and provided examples of effective learning and metacognitive strategies and how to use them. Time and opportunity were provided for students to reflect on their learning process including strategy use. Methodology The study employed a naturalistic approach to examine reported strategy use at the beginning and end of a semester of study, for two groups of participants at two universities in Western Australia.