Learner profiles in secondary education: Occurrence and relationship with performance and student characteristics

The authors explore the occurrence of different learner profiles in secondary education, as well as their relationship with test performance and student characteristics. Based on a cluster analysis of 1,931 secondary school students’ self-reported text-learning strategy use and study traces, the authors identified and validated four distinct learner profiles: integrated strategy users, information organizers, mental learners, and limited strategy users. Integrated strategy users engaged in different text-learning strategies and obtained the highest scores on the performance test. Limited strategy users generally used only a limited number of text-learning strategies and scored the lowest. In addition, a significant difference was established in gender and reading ability distribution across learner profiles, but home language distribution was not found to be significant.