A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

30 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
at first sight. Pintrich and Garcia (1991) found that intrinsically motivated students did
indeed use strategies designed to develop a conceptual understanding of material, but
that extrinsically motivated students did not, as would have been predicted, use more
rehearsal strategies.
In addition to deep and surface approaches, another approach consistently emerges
in the analysis of responses to the approaches to studying inventory. This is usually
termed the strategic approach, and it is closely related to achievement motivation.
Strategic students vary their approach depending on the circumstances; if they judge that
a surface approach is necessary in one situation they will use it, but in others they may
use a deep approach. Their main aim is to secure high marks and they will adapt their
strategy in whatever way they see fit to try to achieve this aim. Certainly while deep and
surface approaches have been inconsistently associated with academic achievement, a
strategic approach is often associated with higher grades (e.g. Cassidy and Eachus, 2000).
Interestingly Cassidy and Eachus (2000) also identified that students’ self-perceptions
play a role in the motivation–learning strategy–achievement relationship. They found
that perceived proficiency was positively correlated with strategic learning and academic
performance. Pintrich and Schunk (2002) go some way towards explaining this relationship.
They found that more confident students are more likely to try harder (amount
of effort and persistence) and thus perform better. However, while Duff (2003) too found
that high scores on the strategic approach predicted performance in course work and
project work it was less reliable in predicting closed-book examinations and oral
presentations.
MEASURING STUDENT MOTIVATION
In addition to the original approaches to studying inventory developed by Entwistle and
Ramsden (1983) there are now several revisions of this tool, including the revised
approaches to studying inventory (RASI) that includes a further three dimensions thought
to influence motivation: lack of direction, academic self-confidence and meta-cognitive
awareness of studying (Entwistle and Tait, 1995). In a recent evaluation of this tool it was
considered entirely appropriate for use by educational and research purposes alike (Duff,
2000). A small number of other motivation measures have been developed specifically
for use with students in higher education. The three most important of these are explored
below.
• The academic motivation scale developed by Vallerand et al. (1992) consists of 28 items
which are designed to assess three types of intrinsic motivation, three types of
extrinsic motivation, and amotivation. It would appear to have reasonable reliability
and validity (Vallerand et al., 1992), and its short length means that it can realistically
be used in educational research.
• The motivated strategies for learning questionnaire developed by Pintrich et al.
(1993) is a much longer scale containing 81 items (perhaps rather too long to be