CONCEPTUAL MODELS OF LECTURE LEARNING: GUIDING METAPHORS AND MODEL-APPROPRIATE NOTETAKING PRACTICES

Abstract

The metaphors that college students use to describe lecture learning may reflect conceptual models that direct, organize, and constrain the nature of the notetaking practices they prefer to use. Specific notetaking practices that would be dictated by the metaphors of "Sponge," "Tape Recorder," "Stenographer," "Code Breaker," "Reporter," and "Explorer" were rated as to frequency of use by 84 college students in an introductory psychology class. Subsequent ratings of the adequacy of each metaphor by these students were used to predict preferences for metaphor-appropriate notetaking practices in individual stepwise regression analyses. The perceived quality of a notetaking metaphor was predictive of the metaphor-appropriate notetaking practices reported by students for every metaphor except the Explorer metaphor. The discussion focuses on the role that students' conceptual models of lecture learning might play in facilitating or hindering efforts to improve their notetaking practices. The importance of assessing conceptual models as well as specific behavioral practices in the diagnosis of lecture-learning difficulties and the evaluation of training interventions is also considered.