STUDY APPROACHES, PROCESSES AND STRATEGIES: ARE THREE PERSPECTIVES BETTER THAN ONE?

Abstract

S ummary . A sample of 383 students in educational psychology classes at a large American university completed three inventories, one based on cognitive psychology, one on approaches to learning, one on autonomous studying. A series of factor analyses of items and subscales showed common emphases that transcend differences in theoretical background and terminology: effort‐intensive organised study; intention to understand, personalise and integrate the information being learned; strategic or context‐sensitive study behaviour; and an unselective intention to reproduce information, impervious to external cues and without personal involvement.