Approaches to Learning in Statistics

Abstract

In the last decade, Australian higher education institutions have become a destination for many international students, mainly from South East Asia. If their educational culture is quite different from the Australian educational culture, then their approaches to learning might be different from that of local students. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the approaches to learning of students in statistics units and relate these to background variables such as country of origin, gender and work commitments. This study is significant because there are many international students at Macquarie University and no data of this type have been collected for the university's students in the past. The authors' analyses showed that there were no significant differences in the approaches to learning of local and international, and male and female students. However, the authors found a significant difference between undergraduate and postgraduate students, with postgraduates more likely to adopt deep strategies to learning. [Author abstract]