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This article describes the historical origins and development of a series of well-known study strategy inventories and seeks to identify their conceptual bases. The theories and evidence influencing the development of 6 contrasting instruments are considered before examining empirical evidence of similarities and differences between the measurement instruments. This analysis is tackled in three stages, looking first at inventories developed in the 1970s and 1980s that focused mainly on motivation, study methods, and learning processes. The more recent work that brought in mental models, metacognition, and self-regulation is then introduced, leading to a concluding section that discusses the conceptual bases of the whole set of inventories. The trends found in this research area are described and used to explore the current confusion of overlapping terms describing apparently similar aspects of learning and studying in higher education.KEY WORDS: approaches to studying; study strategy inventory; student learning; higher education; university.There has recently been an upsurge in interest in describing and measuring the study strategies of students in higher education. This development can be attributed, in part, to the increasing requirements on universities to justify public funding by demonstrating effectiveness and efficiency in their teaching. Moreover, convincing empirical evidence is increasingly being sought to inform policy decisions, some of which relate to the training

This paper reviews the recent literature on learning styles and approaches to learning. It identifies two separate streams of research, one originating from mainstream cognitive and psychometric psychology and one from research undertaken within the everyday learning environment. The latter is dealt with in greater detail as it seems to have more immediate practical relevance. A simple model of the teaching-learning process is presented showing how students learn in different ways which are partly attributable to their preferred learning style and partly to the context in which the learning takes place. Three basic approaches have been identified: surface, deep and strategic, each resulting in a different learning outcome. The most desirable and successful is the deep approach. The way in which the teaching and the policies of the department and school influence the students' approach to learning are reviewed in some detail. A consideration of these characteristics in medical schools suggested that many may hinder rather than assist in the development of the desired approach. The work reviewed here suggests that the remedy will require not only substantial changes in the teaching, curriculum and, particularly, assessment, but also a new strategy based on identifying and assisting individual students whose approaches to study are not those expected of a competent university-educated doctor.

SUMMARY. 2208 students from 66 academic departments in six contrasting disciplines from British universities and polytechnics completed an 'approaches to studying' inventory and a course perceptions questionnaire. Factor analyses of these instruments confirmed the factor structures previously reported. Approaches to studying can be described in terms of three main factors-orientations towards personal meaning, reproducing, and achieving. In the present analysis the final factor split into two: achieving orientation and a factor labelled 'disorganised and dilatory' which showed a close relationship with self-rating of academic progress. The course perceptions questionnaire produced two main factors. One described formal teaching methods, vocational relevance, and clear goals and standards, and the other represented a favourable departmental evaluation with the highest loadings on good teaching and openness to students. Subsequent analyses examined links between students' perceptions of their main academic departments and their reported approaches to studying. Departments with highest mean scores on meaning orientation were perceived as having good teaching and allowing freedom in learning. Departments with the highest mean scores on reproducing orientation were seen to have a heavy workload and a lack of freedom in learning. The implications of these statistical findings are discussed in relation to continuing analyses of interview data which clarify the ways in which the organisation of teaching and courses may affect students' approaches to learning.

Previous research has demonstrated that the academic environments provided by departments in higher education have direct effects on students' approaches to studying. But other studies have indicated that these effects are mediated by the students' own perceptions of those environments. Here two studies are reported which explore the relationships between approaches to learning, or study orientations, and perceptions of the academic environment. Those perceptions are measured in two distinct ways, one which minimises the effects of differential perceptions, and one which highlights them. Factor analyses of the responses of three groups of students taking engineering and psychology are used to clarify the nature of the relationships between study orientations and perceptions of the academic environment. It is found, as in earlier studies, that there are relationships which associate deep approaches with perceptions of relevance, and surface approaches with a heavy workload. But here it is also shown that students with contrasting study orientations are likely to define effective teaching in ways which reflect those orientations. Implications both for the design of feedback questionnaires and for the improvement of teaching and learning in higher education are discussed.