Initial investigation of Hong Kong post‐secondary students’ learning patterns
| Date | 27 September 2011 |
| Published date | 27 September 2011 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684881111170069 |
| Pages | 335-356 |
| Author | Dennis C.S. Law,Jan H.F. Meyer |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Initial investigation of Hong Kong
post-secondary students’
learning patterns
Dennis C.S. Law
Caritas Institute of Higher Education, Hong Kong, and
Jan H.F. Meyer
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of the present study is to report the initial analyses of relationships between
various components of the learning patterns exhibited by a group of 1,572 post-secondary students in
Hong Kong as operationalized via the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS), a quantitative instrument
developed by Vermunt originally for the Dutch higher education context.
Design/methodology/approach – The ILS was adapted and translated into Chinese for the new
response-context. After validation of the ILS scales (results reported in another paper), the possible
direct, indirect, or spurious effects among the learning constructs operationalized by these scales were
explored using a general theoretical model proposed by Richardson, according to the exhibited
statistical significance and magnitude of the beta weights derived from multiple regression analyses.
Findings – Empirical support was found in this new Chinese response-context for the theoretical
model that underpins the ILS. In particular, the findings confirm the central explanatory role of
regulation strategies in students’ learning patterns, as originally hypothesized by Vermunt.
Originality/value – The present study contributes to the ILS literature by expanding the application
of the instrument to a new Chinese response-context. It is also believed to be the first attempt to adapt
Richardson’s general theoretical model to analyse the relationships between the ILS components.
Keywords Inventory of learningstyles, Learning methods, Students,Learning, Regulations,
Concepts of learning,Hong Kong
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
This article reports the initial analyses of relationships between various components of
the learning patterns exhibited by a group of Hong Kong post-secondary students, in
the form of their processing strategies, regulation strategies, learning orientations and
mental models of learning as operationalized via the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS),
a quantitative instrument developed by Vermunt (1998). While the ILS has mainly been
used for research conducted in Western higher education contexts, in the present study
it was administered to a large sample of students coming from six schools/colleges in
Hong Kong.
The aim of the present study is to contribute to the rigorous development of
quantitative instruments for collecting credible data on student learning for quality
assurance (QA) purposes. To a large extent such a practice is currently lacking in the
post-secondary education sector of Hong Kong[1]. Towards this end a composi te
research instrument was developed by adapting and translating into Chinese the ILS
and the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ; Ramsden, 1991), two existing
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Post-secondary
learning patterns
335
Received January 2011
Revised June 2011
Accepted June 2011
Quality Assurance in Education
Vol. 19 No. 4, 2011
pp. 335-356
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0968-4883
DOI 10.1108/09684881111170069
quantitative instruments developed and validated in Western higher education
contexts. While relatively recently two studies have reported using CEQ-based
instruments with Chinese students (Sun, 2008; Webster et al., 2009), the authors are not
aware of any other published studies that have used ILS-based instruments in Chinese
response-contexts. The present study therefore contributes to the ILS literature
(Vermunt and Vermetten, 2004) by expanding the application of the instrument to a
new response-context.
Post-secondary institutions in Hong Kong, like their counterparts in many other
cities or countries, are increasingly under public pressure to explicitly demonstrate the
quality of their academic provisions. However, there is now consensus that the concept
of educational quality is multifaceted, value laden and stakeholder relative (Harvey
and Knight, 1996; Van Kemenade et al., 2008), and that affected by the currently
prevalent approaches to QA, resources and efforts have typically been committed more
to the institutional aspects of the quality issues in most institutions. Consequently,
insufficient attention has been paid to the student aspects, particularly students’
experiences on various dimensions of their academic lives, which should be of
paramount concern in Hong Kong’s education reform, especially for the post-secondary
education sector in which a substantial expansion of student participation has recently
occurred (EMB, 2006).
Amid the debate over various quality issues for post-secondary education, a major
focus of the recent research is the centrality of the student experience (Tam, 2001), as
students are the primary and arguably the most important stakeholders of this system
(Lomas, 2007). Different quantitative instruments, in the form of inventories or
questionnaires, have been developed for soliciting students’ various experience s in
their academic careers. These instruments collect students’ feedback on individual
courses’ teaching effectiveness (e.g. Marsh, 1987; Pounder, 2007), students’ program
experiences (e.g. Ramsden, 1991; Richardson et al., 2007), students’ total educational
experiences (e.g. Kuh, 2001; Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005), students’ satisfaction
(e.g. Harvey et al., 1997; Douglas et al., 2008) and students’ views on the service quality
of their educational institutions (e.g. Parasuraman et al., 1988; Brochado, 2009). More
details can be found in Law’s (2010) recent review of the field.
To monitor and enhance educational quality, a practical approach is to follow the
suggestion of York (1996, 1998) to view an education system as a nested set of levels,
with the higher levels (e.g. the system or the institution) more responsible for the
accountability aspects of quality, and the lower levels (e.g. the program or the course
module) more responsible for the enhancement aspects. When one moves from the
higher levels towards the lower levels, quality indicators that are of importance
change, and they also tend to get softer, i.e. they are more related to student experience
in general, and student learning in particular. In this multi-level system, indicator data
should be evaluated and acted on at the lowest level possible, and higher levels are
expected to audit whether the data have been obtained and acted on in an appropriate
manner. To promote such an approach to QA, besides the solicitation of students’
general educational experiences (using some of the questionnaires and inventories
mentioned above), it is also important to collect students’ feedback on their learning,
which is viewed by many as “the heart of quality” in education and training
(Carmichael et al., 2001). In this regard, researchers have devised a variety of
instruments to assess the relevant student learning constructs, such as students’
QAE
19,4
336
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