Studaxology: the expertise students need to be effective in higher education

Students in higher education have to develop two types of expertise; the first refers to the mastery they want to acquire within a well defined occupational or disciplinary domain; the second relates to the deep level learning needed to achieve that mastery as an expert student or studax. Research has indicated that in solving a problem any expert simultaneously has to draw on four types of knowledge. Where the personal organisation of these four leads to effectiveness, this brings about the quintessence of expertise - experiencing problem solving behaviour as intrinsically motivating, or rewarding in itself. This intrinsic motivation integrates experiences of competence (through declarative knowledge), causality (through procedural knowledge), creativity (through situational knowledge) and self regulation (through strategic knowledge). The same will then necessarily hold for the student who proves, by experiencing this very same effectiveness, to be the studax or deep level learner higher education needs.This paper describes a theory - studaxology - which explains to the student, on the basis of what is being experienced while studying, how to become organized as a person within the study environment, so as to succeed in the required task. Studaxology's core is a 3 × 3 matrix of study experiences, based on that number of sources of variance, empirically identified by means of factor analysis of Likert-type items in study inventories. Its central experience of intrinsic motivation brings together four pairs of complementary experiences (ability vs. difficulty, effort vs. relevance, intention vs. demand and time perspective vs. discipline), with each pair constituting a basic component of intrinsic motivation, and as such reflecting a specific form of metacognitive knowledge. Adequate interpretation and use of the 3 × 3 scores on a similar study inventory enable the studax effectively to meet deep level learning that optimal functioning in higher education demands. Factor analyses of students evaluations of lecturing behaviours can also be fitted into a 3 × 3 matrix equivalent to that of the studax. It is argued from these analyses that the essential prerequisites for achieving studaxological expertise stem from an appropriate initial vocational choice (which will help to produce an internally well-cohering 3 × 3 matrix of experiences) and are further enhanced by an equivalent matrix of lecturing behaviours designed to support students' own study experiences.