The revision process has resulted in a simple questionnaire which teachers can use to evaluate their own teaching and the learning approaches of their students.

Two lines of thinking are becoming increasingly important in higher educational practice. The first derives from constructivist learning theory, and the second from the instructional design literature. Constructivism comprises a family of theories but all have in common the centrality of the learner's activities in creating meaning. These and related ideas have important implications for teaching and assessment. Instructional designers for their part have emphasised alignment between the objectives of a course or unit and the targets for assessing student performance. "Constructive alignment" represents a marriage of the two thrusts, constructivism being used as a framework to guide decision-making at all stages in instructional design: in deriving curriculum objectives in terms of performances that represent a suitably high cognitive level, in deciding teaching/learning activities judged to elicit those performances, and to assess and summatively report student performance. The "performances of understanding" nominated in the objectives are thus used to systematically align the teaching methods and the assessment. The process is illustrated with reference to a professional development unit in educational psychology for teachers, but the model may be generalized to most units or programs in higher education.

The I m r n i n g Process Questionnaire (LPQ) and the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) are designed to assess the more important motives. strategies and approaches to learning ol secondary and tertiary students. respectively. An approach to learning. in line with a nietacognitively based theory o f student learning. is defined i~s a particular motive for learning that is :issociared with a congruent strategy. Three such approaches ~ surface, deep, and xhicving and one composite approach, deep-achieving, represent the most imponant ways in which htudents consistently approach academic tasks. Norms for each subscale and scale score arc available in dcciles, separately for males and females, and in the case of the LPQ, for middle and senior high school. and in that of the SPQ. for CAE and university and for the liiculties 01 arts. education, and science. Some data on the sampling. reliability. and validity are provided. mid the use of the instruments in teaching. counselling. and rebearch is discussed hrielly.A common finding in contemporary research into student learning is that students approach their learning in qualitatively distinct ways (e.g.. Bigs, 1987a;Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Marton, Hounsell & Entwistle, 1984;Wilson. 1981). These approaches to learning arise out of a student's perception of the task to be completed; that perception arises out of the student's enduring motives for study, and out of the immediate context in which the task is presented. A task that is presented as part ofthesurnmative evaluation for a course, for example, elicits quite a different approach from a student than the same task when not assessed. Likewise, the knowledge that the task is to beevaluated willelicit a different approach from astudent who is achievement oriented than from one who is, say, test anxious.Kequehts lor reprints \hould be sent to .I. R. Riggh.

Many teachers see major difficulties in maintaining academic standards in today's larger and more diversified classes. The problem becomes more tractable if learning outcomes are seen as more a function of students' activities than of their fixed characteristics. The teacher's job is then to organise the teaching/learning context so that all students are more likely to use the higher order learning processes which "academic" students use spontaneously. This may be achieved when all components are aligned, so that objectives express the kinds of understanding that we want from students, the teaching context encourages students to undertake the learning activities likely to achieve those understandings, and the assessment tasks tell students what activities are required of them, and tell us how well the objectives have been met. Two examples of aligned teaching systems are described: problem-based learning and the learning portfolio.

Research into student learning has been based on two main theoretical sources: information processing (IP), and contextually based work on students' approaches to learning (SAL). The cross-fertilisation has been valuable, but it has led to ambiguities and misunderstandings, evident in the recent literature, about constructs, methodology, and of particular concern here, the development and interpretation of inventories of learning/study processes. The basic issue revolves around a conception of student learning as taking place within-the-student, as IP models appear to assume, or within-the-teaching/learning-context, as the SAL tradition emphasises. It is suggested that student learning is best construed within a teaching/learning context that functions as an 'open system', a model that brings some clarity to the use and interpretation of study process inventories, and that locates their value in yielding functionally useful data to researchers, teachers, and staff developers.