The Effects of Discipline on Deep Approaches to Student Learning and College Outcomes

“Deep learning” represents student engagement in approaches to learning that emphasize integration, synthesis, and reflection. Because learning is a shared responsibility between students and faculty, it is important to determine whether faculty members emphasize deep approaches to learning and to assess how much students employ these approaches. This study examines the effect of discipline on student use of and faculty members’ emphasis on deep approaches to learning as well as on the relationships between deep approaches to learning and selected educational outcomes. Using data from over 80,000 seniors and 10,000 faculty members we found that deep approaches to learning were more prevalent in Biglan’s soft, pure, and life fields compared to their counterparts. The differences were largest between soft and hard fields. We also found that seniors who engage more frequently in deep learning behaviors report greater educational gains, higher grades, and greater satisfaction with college, and that the strength of these relationships is relatively consistent across disciplinary categories.     

The relationship between child behaviour problems at school entrance and teenage vocabulary acquisition: A comparison of two generations of British children born 30 years apart

Behaviour problems in early childhood have a lasting impact on cognitive development and education attainment in later adolescence and into adulthood. Here we address the relationship conduct and hyperactivity problems at school entrance, and vocabulary acquisition in adolescence. We compare performance in identical assessments across two generations of British children born 30 years apart in 1970 (n = 15,676) and 2000/2 (n = 16,628) and find that both conduct and hyperactivity problems have a negative association with later vocabulary in both generations. We take advantage of rich longitudinal birth cohort data and establish that these relationships hold once family socioeconomic status and a child’s personal characteristics and earlier vocabulary acquisition are taken into account. We also find that teenagers today achieved substantively lower scores in the vocabulary assessment compared to their counterparts born 30 years earlier, and that this holds across all categories within each of the family and individual characteristics considered in this article. As vocabulary and language skills are key prerequisites for wider learning, we discuss implications the findings have for education policies.     

Mastery Motivation: Definition and Measurement

This paper presents a working definition of mastery motivation which has evolved from our research with infants and young children over the past two decades. We define mastery motivation as a psychological force that stimulates an individual to attempt independently, in a focused and persistent manner, to solve a problem or master a skill or task which is at least moderately challenging for him or her. After describing key features of this definition, we discuss three conceptual issues: 1) the distinction between mastery motivation and cognitive competence, 2) developmental transitions in mastery motivation, and 3) the breadth of the concept. The paper concludes with a long section on assessing mastery motivation. Persistence at tasks is the main measure of the strength of the child's mastery motivation. Our structured task procedure, for 15- to 36-month-old children, attempts to disentangle mastery motivation and competence. We have also developed a questionnaire to assess mastery motivation in general and in five specific behavioral domains: social, symbolic, combinatorial, means-end, and gross motor. We believe that our definition helps to clarify the concept of mastery motivation and that our assessment procedures will facilitate future research.