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

32 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
Table 3.2 Percentage of students agreeing with questions on the ASSIST scale
Reason for entering higher education
The qualification at the end of this course would enable me to get
a good job when I finish
The course will help me develop knowledge and skills which will be
useful later on
I wanted a chance to develop as a person, broaden my horizons
and face new challenges
The opportunities for an active social life and/or sport attracted me
I would be able to study subjects in depth, and take interesting and
stimulating courses
I basically wanted to try and prove to myself that I could really do it
Having done well at school, it seemed to be the natural thing to go
on to higher education
It would give me another three or four years to decide what I really
wanted to do later on
I suppose it was a mixture of other people’s expectations and no obvious
alternative
I rather drifted into higher education without deciding it was what
I really wanted to do
Source: Based on Magee et al., 1998
92%
89%
63%
63%
61%
46%
39%
37%
9%
7%
but they are offset by an equal number who become less intrinsically motivated. A similar
finding emerged in a study by Jacobs and Newstead (2000), who found that students’
interest in their discipline seemed, if anything, to decline over the course of their studies.
A three-year longitudinal study of 200 undergraduates, ideally suited to detecting
more complex change patterns in approaches to studying over the course of a degree,
found that students’ achieving approach gradually declines over the year of their
degree, but that surface and deep approaches were changeable over the period of
their degree (Zeegers, 2001). The Biggs study process questionnaire was completed early
in the students’ first year, then again at 4-, 8-, 16- and 30-month intervals. While there was
no significant difference in deep approaches at the beginning of the students’ period of
study to the 30-month point, there was an early dip in scores at the 4-month point
(continuing through to the 16-month point). This dip coincides with a rise in surface
approaches, but with the final surface approaches proving lower than at the beginning
of the degree.
The development of student motivation over the course of their degree is not simple
and not always what we might expect, or hope for. It certainly indicates that there is a great
deal of room for improvement, perhaps improvement that we can support.