Learning and Studying

A Research Perspective

James Hartley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134703180
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Learning and Studying looks at how psychologists study the crucial processes of learning and studying in higher education. James Hartley uses current research to explore such topics as: learning theory and educational practice, personality and learning, older learners, improving learning skills, learning and human-computer interaction and assessment and evaluation. Written in a lively style and full of up-to-date material, examples and case studies, Learning and Studying offers plenty of advice to today's consumers of educational practice - students and their teachers.

Chapter 1

How psychologists study learning and studying

THIS CHAPTER CONSIDERS the advantages and disadvantages of different methods used in psychological research in the field of learning and studying. Particular attention is paid to what readers should consider when studying research articles. The chapter concludes with a summary of the arguments made in each of the following chapters.

* * *

This text has been written for the Psychology Focus series. This means that it is mostly orientated towards psychology and towards psychology students. Many of the examples in the text are drawn from studying psychology, and much of the advice given is derived from this work. However, a great deal of the content can be applied to other disciplines, and this means that everyone should find it valuable.

Learning and Studying: A Research Perspective is not a traditional text about study skills. It is a text about how psychologists study learning and studying, what they have achieved, and what they can achieve in this area. Thus any advice that is given about learning and study skills—and there will be plenty—is incidental to this aim.

The nature of psychological investigation

Psychologists are concerned with assessing the evidence for a particular point of view. In the field of learning and studying there is a great deal of opinion—much of it contradictory. Compare, for example, ‘You can't teach an old dog new tricks’ with ‘You are never too old to learn’. The job of psychologists is to try and determine which opinion is right. Needless to say, they immediately begin to qualify any bald statements such as the two just given. They seek to sort out to whom such statements apply, under which conditions, and so on. They seek to take measurements—of different kinds and validity— and argue amongst themselves about what it is appropriate to do, how it can be done, and how the results can be interpreted.

Curiously enough, researchers often try to seek evidence for answers to questions that have already been ignored. Thus they end up trying to change and modify the effects of previous decisions. In the early 1990s, for instance, most universities in the UK modularised their courses without any evidence concerning what the advantages and disadvantages of this might be. Psychologists are now involved in assessing the effects of that decision.

Methods in psychological research

Table 1.1 shows, in a summary form, the different kinds of methods that psychologists use, together with their strengths and limitations. One implication here—if each method has advantages and disadvantages—is that psychologists should employ as many methods as they can in combination. However, what appears to have happened historically is that quantitative methods have been preferred to qualitative methods, and this is certainly true in the field of learning and studying. More recently, however, there has been a greater interest in using qualitative methods in this field, and some studies now use both approaches. Robson (1993) provides a useful text that clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of the full range of methodologies open to researchers in this field.

Psychologists generally use the different methods shown in Table 1.1 to tackle different types of questions. In the field of learning and studying, for example, we typically find experimental methods used to address issues such as whether or not one method of notetaking is preferable to another; survey methods to assess why certain people drop out from higher education; and interviews and case histories to uncover how different types of learners take different approaches to, say, essay writing. However, as indicated above, these different methods are now beginning to be used in combination. Thus, for example, in studies of mature students, ‘archival’ methods (where one examines college examination records over time) are now being supplemented by illustrative case histories and interview studies (see Chapter 4).

TABLE 1.1 Typical research methods used in psychology, together with their advantages and disadvantages

Method:	Experiments	Tests, questionnaires and surveys
Description of method	Controlled investigations that study cause-and-effect relationships through the random allocation of participants to control or treatment conditions	Way of obtaining information regarding behaviour, beliefs and abilities at a particular time and place
Form of data obtained	Quantitative (‘hard data’; statistical, verifiable by replication)	Quantitative/qualitative (‘soft data’; descriptive, practical)
Advantages of method	1. Control of independent variables 2. Permits causal inferences 3. Large numbers allow results to be generalised	1. Easily administered 2. Easily scored and analysed 3. Possibly large and representative samples
Disadvantages of method	1. The ability to generalise to realworld situations is limited 2. Little attention to individual participants 3. Possibly raises ethical issues	1. Participants rarely allocated at random to conditions, so little concern with cause and effect 2. May not be able to generalise beyond a specific time, place and test content 3. Possible discrepancies between real-life behaviour and test behaviour 4. Often low return rates

Method:	Naturalistic observations	Interviews and case studies
Description of method	Observations of real-life situations, as in classrooms, work settings or halls of residence	Intensive studies of single individuals, which draw general conclusions about experience and behaviour
Form of data obtained	Qualitative	Qualitative
Advantages of method	1. Wide applicability of results 2. Understanding of behaviour in natural contexts	Highly detailed information, including the historical context
Disadvantages of method	1. Loss of experimental control 2. Possibility that the presence of the observer may influence the observed behaviour	1. Ability to generalise from the information drastically curtailed by the small sample sizes 2. Lack of reliable data

Source: Adapted from In Search of the Human Mind by Robert J.Sternberg, copyright © 1995, Harcourt Brace International, reproduced with the permission of the author and publishers.

One particular quantitative statistical technique that has developed since the 1970s, and one that has been used a great deal in the field of learning and studying, is that of meta-analysis. The aim of this technique is to allow researchers both to summarise the results from many studies on the same issue, and to compare sub-groups of studies within this overall sample. This is done by calculating a summary statistic—called an average ‘effect-size’—that indicates the general conclusion that can be reached when the results from several studies on the same issue are pooled together. Thus, for example, as we shall see in Chapter 6, Kulik et al. (1980) pooled together the individual effect-sizes from fifty-nine separate studies of computer-based learning versus traditional instruction at college level and arrived at an average effect-size of 0.25.

Such effect-sizes are normally measured in standard deviations—so an overall effect-size of 0.25 means that the computer groups (overall) gained a quarter of a standard deviation above the mean score and standard deviation obtained by the traditional groups. Cohen (1987) suggests that effect-sizes can be interpreted as follows:

0.0 no effect—the groups are identical
0.2 small effect
0.5 medium effect
0.8 large effect.

So the effect-size of 0.25 found by Kulik et al. in 1980 suggested that computer-aided learning (at that time) had only a small advantage over traditional methods of learning.

The advantage of this meta-analytic technique is that all the known studies can be included—including the ones that failed to find an effect, or found them in the reverse direction to the general trend. The disadvantages emerge when one considers how the authors of these meta-analytic studies decide which studies to include, and which to leave out, and which variables to pool together. Some investigators of individual studies do not always report all the data necessary for such studies to be included in the ensuing meta-analysis. Furthermore, the results of some studies—particularly those that find no significant differences—may not have been published. Other studies may be fatally flawed, even though they provide the necessary statistics for a meta-analysis, and so on.

The most common criticism of meta-analytic studies is that ‘Garbage in leads to garbage out’! Clearly then, when reading a meta-analytic study, readers need to read with caution. I would hope that, after reading Chapter 3 for example, readers might take a critical view of some aspects of the meta-analytic study published by Chen and Rada (1996). Here, these investigators pooled the results from separate studies on the effects of spatial ability, locus of control, field dependency and learning style on students’ use of hypertext (see Chapter 6) under the general heading of ‘active’ cognitive styles and compared them with the results from other studies of ‘less-active’ ones. I imagine that, after reading Chapter 3, readers might think it odd to combine such studies together.

Reading research critically

Of course, we should read everything critically, not just meta-analyses. So my strictures above also apply to reading the articles that I cite in this text.

Indeed, it is always worth following up relevant citations if you can. By doing so you can gain a fuller picture of the issues involved. Often in this text I have had to summarise the main findings of, say, a twenty-page report in a few sentences. Such a summary may well miss out important considerations. It is actually very interesting to compare actual original (primary) accounts with secondary (textbook) versions of them. Often the oversimple conclusions drawn by secondary authors have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

In the following paragraphs I suggest some things to look out for when reading research articles in psychology (see also Girden, 1996). The best articles contain none of these faults, but some might contain one or two. Hopefully, none will contain them all!

TABLE 1.2 The standard sections of a journal article

Abstract

Introduction

Method

Results

Discussion

Conclusions

References

Table 1.2 shows that journal articles typically have a set series of sections and a standard set of conventions, which allows for ease of communication. Much academic learning is about understanding research reports in journals and that is why it is important to appreciate what each section is trying to achieve.

Some problems that may occur in these sections are as follows:

1 The abstract Abstracts contain statements about the background and aims of the study, the participants and the main results and conclusions. Since such abstracts can be published and read independently of the article (e.g., in electronic databases) it is important that there are no misleading statements or overgeneralisations. Sometimes all the caveats of the discussion disappear and a rather oversimplified conclusion emerges. This conclusion then gets cited elsewhere by people who have only read the abstract. (So don't rely on abstracts alone when doing your own literature reviews!)

2 The introduction Introductions generally fall into parts (Swales and Feak, 1994). First, the background to the study is given. Then the author makes a ‘move’, i.e. critiquing (‘However, there has been no research on…’) or linking separate areas of research (‘In this study I shall see if the differences in the findings from these two sets of studies can be resolved by…’). Making this move then leads to the hypothesis to be tested.

Introductions can be problematical for several reasons.

•The author may cite too many references—suggesting a scholarship that is false, since it does not help the reader to discriminate between the key papers.

•The author may set up a one-sided argument, or a ‘straw man’, by citing only part of the literature available.

•The author may erroneously d...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and boxes
• List of tables
• Series preface
• 1 How psychologists study learning and studying
• 2 Learning theory in practice
• 3 Individual differences and learning
• 4 Academic learning and older learners
• 5 Improving study skills
• 6 New technology and learning
• 7 Assessment
• Glossary
• References
• Index