Complete thesis - Murdoch University

personal learning ‘profile’. Although still under development, research has established thatthe RoLI is able to capture variation in conceptions of learning and that these conceptionsdo not exist in isolation from other aspects of the learning process (Meyer, 1999).Empirical evidence indicates a large measure of conceptual overlap between the scales utilisedin the differing instruments. The LSI, ILS and ASI, therefore are adopted as appropriateinstruments to describe learner orientation to study in the context of this research, witha very small application of RoLI to explore its value in comparison to other instruments.Access to RoLI itself was refused by it’s developers for this study.Instructional-preference ModelsInstructional-preference models of learning style relate to external factors such as physiologicaland environmental stimuli associated with learning activities. Although no formalinstrument was applied to this layer, components of other instruments were seen to addresssome of the aspects of affective and habitat preferences noted below.Dunn and Dunn (1978) identify five dimensions that mark various preferences:1. environmental preferences regarding sound, light, temperature, and class design2. emotional preferences addressing motivation, persistence, responsibility and structure3. sociological preferences for private, pair, peer, team, adult or varied learning relations4. psychological preference related to perception, intake, time, and mobility5. psychological preferences based on analytic mode, hemisphericity, and action.It can be seen that many sociological and psychological elements of these categories overlapwith other layers of Curry’s onion and the instruments used.Although the term environment has been used in higher education to cover different levelsof description: from the institutional level policy, administration and regulations to aspectswhich are most immediately experienced by students, Entwistle (2003) suggests the termhabitat may offer a more appropriate metaphor to include all the members of an ecosystemand the inter-relationships between them. To this are added the notions of niche, indicatingthe fit of the species to some part of the ecosystem; and umwelt, which indicates the habitatas experienced by the animal itself. Much of the work on phenomenography can be seen asan attempt to enter the world of the student and interpret the meaning of studying in moresubjective terms.The nature of the unit as perceived by students is an important determinant of the choice ofapproach, as shown clearly in the large-scale Entwistle and Ramsden (1983) study. In terms238