Abstract
The 20-question Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F), which is frequently used to categorize student learning approaches as either deep or surface, was administered to three sections of Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) courses at a highest research university in the southeastern United States as part of a larger research project. Two hundred thirty-one (231) respondents completed the full survey and 11 participants were recruited to a comparative case study. Initial review of interview transcripts raised concerns about the validity of the R-SPQ-2F results with the population of interest. Interview transcripts were coded using a priori codes corresponding to the R-SPQ-2F items, and qualitative and quantitative results were then triangulated. Additional survey responses were collected in a subsequent semester and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using the complete responses from 381 students. The CFA yielded similar or better measures of reliability and fit to the two-factor structure as those in previously reported work by other authors. Nonetheless, findings from triangulation suggest that the R-SPQ-2F was not able to group students by deep and surface approaches to learning in the context of an undergraduate A&P course. In addition, six interviews (3 deep, 3 surface) demonstrated a new theme of surface leading to deep with participants indicating that memorization was necessary for the purpose of gaining a full understanding of the course material. This mixed method analysis calls into question whether the results are valid for separating student approaches into the previously published descriptions of deep and surface approaches. The finding of the surface leading to deep orientation, which may align with previous descriptions of an achieving approach, has significant implications for both research and instruction, as memorizing and other "surface" strategies are often minimized and discouraged, yet are an important step in student learning.
Highlights
Student learning continues to be a topic of interest for educators across many contexts and educational levels
During the second week of classes, course instructors were emailed text for both an in-class announcement and an email to students. These course instructors were not part of the research team. This invitation included a link to the “Anatomy and Physiology Questions” Survey in Qualtrics [32], comprised of the 20 items that form the R-SPQ-2F followed by prompts for major, current section enrollment, and intent to enroll in the subsequent course in the semester
For item 13 (I work hard at my studies because I find the material interesting), nine participants provided information about this survey item with 30 total coded excerpts. This is not surprising, as the intention of the interview was to better understand each student’s approach to learning in their Anatomy & Physiology course and this prompt asks for similar information
Summary
Student learning continues to be a topic of interest for educators across many contexts and educational levels Within this body of literature, student approaches to learning (SAL) research has examined both the affective and contextual aspects of learning to elucidate student cognitive responses to the task of learning [1,2,3]. The SAL concepts of deep and surface approaches to learning [4] have been consistently utilized in educational research over the past 40 years and have more recently been used to understand how the biological subdisciplines of anatomy and physiology are learned, in medical education [5, 6]. The Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F), the most recently developed instrument that categorizes student approaches as either surface or deep, has been used in educational research studies and within physiology education [2, 6, 7]
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