learning-styles

Conclusions
Entwistle and his colleagues have spent almost
30 years refining the validity and reliability of their
inventories to arrive at items that have reasonable
predictive validity. They acknowledge the tendency
for detailed, continuous refinements to make technical
constructs less credible and less easy to use by
researchers outside educational psychology. They have
therefore supplemented their analysis of approaches
to learning with data from qualitative studies to explore
the consistency and variability of learning approaches
within specific contexts (see McCune and Entwistle
2000; Entwistle and Walker 2000). In this respect,
their methodology and the data their studies have
produced offer a rich, authentic account of learning
in higher education.
However, one feature of a positivist methodology,
which aims for precise measures of psychometric
traits, is that items proliferate in order to try to capture
the nuances of approaches to learning. There are other
limitations to quantitative measures of approaches
to learning. For example, apparently robust
classifications of meaning and reproduction
orientations in a questionnaire are shown to be less
valid when interviews are used with the same students.
Richardson (1997) argued that interviews by Marton
and Säljö show deep and surface approaches as
different categories or forms of understanding, or as
a single bipolar dimension along which individuals
may vary. In contrast, questionnaires operationalise
these approaches as separate scales that turn out
to be essentially orthogonal to each other; a student
may therefore score high or low on both. According
to Richardson, this difference highlights the need for
researchers to differentiate between methods that
aim to reveal average and general dispositions within
a group and those that aim to explain the subtlety
of individuals’ actions and motives.
Despite attempts to reflect the complexity
of environmental factors affecting students’ approaches
to learning and studying, the model does not discuss
the impact of broader factors such as class, race
and gender. Although the model takes some account
of intensifying political and institutional pressures
in higher education, such as quality assurance
and funding, sociological influences on participation
and attitudes to learning are not encompassed
by Entwistle’s model.
There is also confusion over the theoretical basis
for constructs in the ASI and ASSIST and subsequent
interpretation of them in external evaluations.
Two contrasting research traditions create these
constructs: information processing in cognitive
psychology; and qualitative interpretation of students’
approaches to learning. Outside the work of Entwistle
and his colleagues, a proliferation of instruments
and scales, based on the original measure (the ASI),
has led to the merging of constructs from both research
traditions. Unless there is discussion of the original
traditions from which the constructs came, the result
is a growing lack of theoretical clarity in the field
as a whole (Biggs 1993). Entwistle and his colleagues
have themselves warned of this problem and provided
an overview of the conceptions of learning, their
history within the ‘approaches to learning’ model
and how different inventories such as those of
Entwistle and Vermunt relate to each other (Entwistle
and McCune 2003).
There are a number of strengths in Entwistle’s work.
For example, he has shown that ecological validity is
essential to prevent a tendency to label and stereotype
students when psychological theory is translated into
the practice of non-specialists. The issue of ecological
validity illuminates an important point for our review
as a whole, namely that the expertise and knowledge
of non-specialists are both context-specific and
idiosyncratic and this affects their ability to evaluate
claims and ideas about a particular model of learning
styles. High ecological validity makes a model
or instrument much more accessible to non-specialists.
Entwistle’s work has also aimed to simplify the diverse
and sometimes contradictory factors in students’
approaches to studying and learning, and to offer
a theoretical rationale for them. He has attempted
to reconcile ideas about the stability of learning
styles with the idea that approaches are idiosyncratic
and fluctuating and affected by complex learning
environments. His work highlights the need for
researchers to relate analysis and theoretical
constructs to the everyday experience of teachers
and students, and to make their constructs accessible
(see also Laurillard 1979).