Cultural reading on Korean students’ learning strategies

Abstract

This chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, we reviewed the past 20 years of research on Korean students’ learning strategies. The results of the review show that learning strategies are closely related to learning outcomes similar to the results of the Western studies. The studies revealed that students’ prior achievement, self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and mastery goal orientation have significant impacts on their use of effective learning strategies. Social support from parents and teachers is also identified as an important environmental factor in the use of effective learning strategies. In the second part, we used data of 6,908 Korean middle school students and investigated the relations of Korean students’ learning strategies to academic achievement, effort, and interest through a person-centered approach. We divided the students into four groups based on their use of active and passive learning strategies: (a) Active Strategy-Low &Passive Strategy-Low (AS-L &PS-L) group, (b) Active Strategy-High &Passive Strategy-High (AS-H &PS-H) group, (c) Active Strategy-Low &Passive Strategy-High (AS-L &PS-H) group, (d) Active Strategy-High &Passive Strategy-Low (AS-H &PS-L) group. The four groups showed differences in academic achievement, effort, and interest. Overall, the AS-H &PS-H group showed more positive outcomes than the other three groups. The main finding of the investigation implies that even though passive learning strategy is often regarded as an ineffective method of learning, the combined use of active and passive learning strategies is the most effective way of learning for Korean students. This finding is thought to be related to the cultural characteristics of Korean people’s belief in the meaning of learning and the effective way of learning.