Claire E. Weinstein

Assessment and Training of Student Learning Strategies

Learning-to-learn phenomena have been examined from a wide variety of perspectives (Anderson, 1985; Brown, Bransford, Ferrara & Campione, 1983; Dillon & Schmeck, 983; Kirby, 1984; Pressley & Levin, 1983a, 1983b; Weinstein & Mayer, 1985). While, in general, this development has served to enrich the field of study, it has also created enormous definitional problems. For the purposes of this chapter, attention is focused on a subarea called learning strategies. Learning strategies are considered to be any behaviors or thoughts that facilitate encoding in such a way that knowledge integration and retrieval are enhanced. More specifically, these thoughts and behaviors constitute organized plans of action designed to achieve a goal (Anderson, 1985; Paris, in press; Weinstein & Mayer, 1985). Examples of learning strategies include actively rehearsing, summarizing, paraphrasing, imaging, elaborating, and outlining.

Training students to use elaboration learning strategies

Abstract The feasibility of creating a training program to facilitate the development of a generalized ability to use elaboration as an individual learning strategy was investigated. Seventy-five ninth graders were randomly assigned to a training/ experimental, control, or posttest-only group. Data analyses for the immediate posttest revealed significant mean differences favoring the experimental group on the free recall and Trial 2 of the paired-associate learning tasks. On the delayed posttest, significant differences favoring the experimental group were obtained for the reading comprehension task and Trial 1 of the serial learning task. These results provide evidence that students can be trained to use elaboration to enhance learning.

Perceived Competence and Autonomy as Moderators of the Effects of Achievement Goal Orientations.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of two moderators – perceived competence and perceived autonomy – in the relationships of achievement goal orientations with a broad range of learning‐related variables, including interest, effort, learning strategy use and academic achievement. Perceived competence and autonomy played roles as moderators by strengthening the positive effects of a mastery goal pursuit on outcome measures of adaptive use of learning strategies and effort, respectively. However, no moderating role of either perceived competence or perceived autonomy was found for the effect of a performance‐approach and performance‐avoidance goal pursuit. In addition, perceived competence played a significant role in determining the level of academic achievement in the context of multiple‐goal pursuit. For students with high perceived competence, the adoption of high performance‐approach goals resulted in a higher level of achievement regardless of the levels of mastery goals. In contrast, students with low perceived competence showed the highest achievement when high performance‐approach goals are paired with low mastery goals.

Effects of a Value-Reappraisal Intervention on Statistics Students' Motivation and Performance.

The authors investigated the effects of an exploratory value-reappraisal intervention on students’ motivation and performance in an undergraduate introductory statistics course. They sampled 82 students from 2 instructors’ sections during both the fall and spring semesters. Students were randomly assigned within each section to either the Value-Reappraisal (VR) or Control condition (C). VR presented messages about the importance of statistics and guided students in exploring potential values of learning statistics. Results showed positive effects of VR on task value, endogenous instrumentality, and a choice-behavior measure of interest. The authors found VR to affect exam performance, but only for students who had a particular instructor. This research helps broaden literature on self-regulation and expectancy-value models of motivation by focusing on the regulation of value perceptions.

Why Does a School Psychologist Need to Know About Learning Strategies

Abstract School psychologists need to know more about learning strategies because an understanding of these processes can facilitate the design and implementation of intervention programs and procedures. An effective learning strategy is any cognitive, affective, or behavioral activity that facilitates encoding, storing, retrieving, or using knowledge. Four categories of learning strategies are discussed (knowledge acquisition, comprehension monitoring, active study strategies, and support strategies). In addition, a case study is presented to demonstrate how knowledge about these strategies can be used by the school psychologist. Finally, principles in determining the possible involvement of learning strategy deficits in an achievement problem are presented.

The Interactive Effects of Cognitive Learning Strategy Training and Test Anxiety on Paired-Associate Learning

AbstractPrevious researchers have generally concluded that high test-anxious students typically perform more poorly than low test-anxious students on cognitively demanding tasks. The subjects, 90 fourth-grade students, were assessed as either high or low test anxious. Students within each anxiety condition were then randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: imagery training, sentence elaboration training, or placebo control. Following treatment, all students were tested on a paired-associate learning (PAL) task and a second anxiety measure. Results indicated that students trained to use either imagery or sentence elaboration enhanced their ability to learn PAL test lists and lessened their self-reported test anxiety , as compared to control group students. In addition, imagery training was superior to sentence elaboration training in helping high test-anxious students reduce the debilitating effects of test anxiety on performance and score as well as low test-anxious students on a PAL test.

MEMORY STRATEGIES REPORTED BY OLDER ADULTS FOR EXPERIMENTAL AND EVERYDAY LEARNING TASKS

Semistructured interviews were used to identify memory strategies used by 35 older adults. Five types of tasks were used: paired‐associate learning, free recall, serial recall, rule learning, and reading comprehension. For the first three tasks, two types of materials were developed: experimental and everyday. The nine memory activities were presented separately. Participants were asked to describe the strategies they would use for each activity. Order of presentation for the experimental and everyday materials was counterbalanced. Examination of the frequency data revealed differences in the number and type of strategies reported for the five types of learning tasks. An analysis of variance revealed that the group receiving the three everyday tasks first reported a significantly greater use of strategies on all tasks. These results indicate that the elderly may have limited repertoires of alternative memory strategies and that the types of materials used can significantly affect their performance.

Relationships among Properties of College Students' Self-Set Academic Goals and Academic Achievement.

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among properties of college students’ self-set academic goals and academic achievement, using multiple theoretical perspectives. Using a personal goal-based research methodology, college students enrolled in a learning-to-learn course (N = 130) were asked to list 20 of their goals (academic and/or non-academic). For each of their goals, goal specificity, value, expectation of success and autonomous and controlled motivation were measured and then ratings on each goal property were averaged across students’ academic goals (24.75% of all goals) to predict students’ grade point average (GPA) for the semester. Regression results suggested a positive affect on students’ semester GPA for goal specificity and a negative effect for controlled motivation; the model explained 19% of the variation in GPA. This research may help to inform motivation researchers and educational practitioners who assist college students with goal setting.

The Effects of Test Anxiety on Learning at Superficial and Deep Levels of Processing.

Abstract The effect of test anxiety on learning superficial and deep level tasks was examined. Ninety college students classified as either high or low test-anxious learned a paired-associate word list using either a superficial level or a deep level processing strategy. The results indicated that on the superficial level processing task, the performance of the low test-anxious students was not significantly different from that of the high test-anxious students, while on the deep level processing task the performance of the low test-anxious students was significantly better than the performance of the high test-anxious students. The results are discussed in the context of a cognitive-attentional theory of test anxiety and the mechanisms by which test anxiety may disrupt performance.

Training versus instruction in the acquisition of cognitive learning strategies

Abstract As various cognitive learning strategies have been identified and shown to be useful, the question of how best to teach an individual to use these techniques becomes important. Two studies compared simple instruction to more extended training. In Experiment 1 training was found superior to simple instructions with the method of loci for serial recall learning. Training in generalizable strategies involving imagery, verbal elaboration, and grouping was compared to simple instruction for a reading comprehension task in Experiment 2. Training was found to be more effective than instruction with a short-answer test over easy reading material, but not with difficult readings or multiple-choice tests.