Session Information
22 SES 09 D, Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Higher Education
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
For the last two decades research in the field of university students’ approaches to learning has repeatedly used the Study Process Questionnaire- SPQ (Biggs, 1987) in a wide range of educational settings. As a result deep and surface approaches to learning emerged and remain as conceptual and empirically consolidated constructs in educational research. Richardson (2004) points out that scores on SPQ have showed reasonable stability over time, moderate convergent validity with other questionnaires, and reasonable levels of both discriminating power and criterion-related validity. Nevertheless, both the evidence on the internal consistency of its scales and the factorial validity have been variable.
After more than twenty years using the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) it seems necessary to update and improve the survey structure; that is why a reduced version of the SPQ (R-SPQ-2F) has been proposed (Biggs, Kember and Leung, 2001). Nowadays the R-SPQ-2F is widely used in many different countries (e.g. Baeten, Dochy and Struyven, 2008; Gijbels, de Watering, Dochy and den Bossche, 2005; Gijbels and Dochy, 2006; Justicia, Pichardo, Berbén and De la Fuente, 2008; Leung, Ginns and Kember, 2008; Skogsberg and Clump, 2003).
However, the results obtained using the R-SPQ-2F does not merge well with those obtained using the SPQ, and so at the present there is still limited evidence about the psychometric properties of the new instrument. Consequently additional evidence on the internal structure of the questionnaire is needed especially through survey applications to students following different academic disciplines and also developing a cross-cultural research so as to generalize the factorial validity of this new instrument.
In this context, this research aims to:
1. Adapt the R-SPQ-2F to the German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese languages using a back-translation method under the supervision of John Biggs, the original author of the instrument.
2. Examine the internal structure of the R-SPQ-2F in different cultural and academic contexts and in samples of German, Spanish, French, English, Italian and Portuguese university students following different degrees.
The research plan is divided into two parts. The first one has already been completed producing different language versions of the R-SPQ-2F and examining its psychometric properties in a large and diverse Spanish sample. The second part is currently being developed to extend the empirical results of Spanish university students’ approaches to learning to a wider, international population (German, French, English, Italian and Portuguese students). The Association of Catholic Institutes of Education (ACISE), the sectorial group of education of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), will support the empirical development of the project so that preliminary results of the second phase are expected shortly.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Baeten, M., Dochy, F. and Struyven, K. (2008). Students´approaches to learning and assessment preferences in a portfolio-based learning environment. Instructional Science, 36, 359-374. Biggs, J.B. (1987). Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ). Hawthorn, Victoria: Australian Council for Educational Research. Biggs, J.B., Kember, D. and Leung, D. (2001). The revised two-factor Study Process Questionnaire: R-SPQ-2F. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 133-149. Gijbels, D. and Dochy, F. (2006). Students' assessment preferences and approaches to learning: Can formative assessment make a difference? Educational Studies, 32(4), 399-409. Gijbels, D., de Watering, G. V., Dochy, F., and den Bossche, P. V. (2005). The relationship between students' approaches to learning and the assessment of learning outcomes. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 20(4), 327-341. Hambleton, R., Merenda, P. and Spielberger, C. (Eds.) (2005). Adapting educational and psychological test for cross-cultural assessment. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Justicia, F., Pichardo, M.C., Berbén, A.B.G. and De la Fuente, J. (2008). The revised Two Factor Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F): Exploratory and confirmatory analyses at item level. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 23(3), 355-372. Leung, D.Y.P., Ginns, P. and Kember, D. (2008). Examining the cultural specificity of approaches to learning in universities in Hong Kong and Sydney. Journal of cross-cultural Psychology, 39 (3), 251-266. Richardson, J. (2004). Methodological issues in questionnaire-based research on student learning in higher education. Educational Psychology Review, 16(4), 347-357. Stein, J.A., Lee, J.W. and Jones, P.S. (2006). Assessing cross-cultural differences through use of multiple-group invariance analyses. Journal of Personality Assessment, 87(3), 249-258. Skogsberg, K., and Clump, M. (2003). Do psychology and biology majors differ in their study processes and learning styles? College Student Journal, 37(1), 27-33.
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