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The foundation of students' perceptions.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Research on teaching and instruction revealed that the learner functions as a mediating variable determining both efficiency and efficacy of instruction. In this contribution one specific mediating variable is focussed upon, namely learners' instructional conceptions or ideas about good instruction. The proposed theoretical framework suggests that these conceptions determine in interaction with a concrete learning environment the perception of this learning environment. Additionally, research findings are presented of what is known already with respect to this theoretical framework.

Introduction

In research on teaching, researchers evolved from a behavioural paradigm towards adopting the mediating paradigm and acknowledging the impact of learners' conceptions on the potential effect of instruction. Not only students' and teachers' concrete behaviours influence the learning results, but also their cognitions, or more process-like variables, are important determinants of both efficacy and efficiency of instruction (Elen & Clarebout, 2001). Several studies (e.g. Winne and Marx 1982) indiacted that instructional interventions are effective only if learners are 'calibrated', made 'appropriate' to the instructional designer's intentions, and only if learners make use of the interventions (Butler & Winne 1995). Different studies (e.g. Andre 1979) illustrate that students' instructional conceptions mediate the learning environment's effect, and hence become an important variable to consider when designing learning environments. This contribution aims at fostering this line of research by analysing current research related to students' ideas about instruction in general and interventions in particular in view of elaborating a research framework and agenda. First a simplified theoretical framework is presented. In a second section research findings are analysed, summarising what is known already with respect to the current state of this theoretical framework.

A simplified theoretical framework

In order to come to terms with the large number of names used to refer to students' ideas the following theoretical assumptions are made. Firstly and in line with nearly the whole of the cognitive oriented research literature and especially most of the authors in the field of instructional design (see Reigeluth, 1983, 1999), it is assumed that two categories of person-related variables fundamentally influence learning behaviour and processes: cognitive and motivational variables. While these two categories are distinguished this does not imply that they are completely unrelated. It is important to note that this specific contribution focusses on cognitive variables. A second assumption contends that more stable and more fluid factors can be distinguished. Stable does not imply that the values of these variables cannot change. Rather it means that at a given point in time they can be regarded to act as an independent variable (e.g., domain specific knowledge). Fluid implies at least two things. First, the outlook of the factor is determined by the interaction of various other factors and secondly the factor itself does not...

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