Students' approaches to learning across the transition between psychology courses

The Student Approaches to Learning (SAL) tradition focuses on assessing student transitions taking place in the learning context of higher education. Previous research suggests that approaches to learning are indeed sensitive to transitions in the learning context, and affect the quality of student learning. However, the knowledge regarding variations in student approaches relating to learning flexibility is still limited. This study investigates whether a natural learning context, providing parallel and resembling courses, involves different approaches to learning. Second semester psychology students were asked to describe their approaches to learning separately for two parallel courses. The analyses suggest that even though individual students seem to exhibit a consistent core regarding their approaches to learning, transitions between similar learning contexts can bring about large changes in both surface and deep approaches to learning. Strategic approaches to learning seem less flexible, but not unaffected. The findings add to the theoretical idea of considering approaches to learning as a flexible construct, which is sensitive to smaller transitions in learning contexts. From a practical view, the results support the idea that there are ways of designing powerful learning environments.