What Students Learn

Taken from "Learning To Teach In Higher Education" by Paul Ramsden (2003). 2nd Edition. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer, Taylor & Francis Group.

Studies of the Outcome of Learning

Level 1: General Intellectual Development

Student 1 - " I think I learnt to organise my work and myself, to think theoretically and evaluate concepts, to look things up before I made statements, and that first draft work should be left in a drawer for a week before being re-read and totally re-written several times more.

I have realised since finishing at university that I didn't gain so much a body of knowledge as an approach. I became a problem-solver.

What I believe I learnt was a capacity to apply logical principles.

... self-directed research, flexibility of approach and resourcefulness and tenacity in grappling with the varying demands of university and family life."

Student 2 - " I latched on to the idea that to pass you got a clear view of what you were expected to know, and learnt it, word for word. Not much thinking. Just learn the sacred texts. I had no more trouble passing university examinations. Unfortunately, the apparent success of this mind-stunting technique impressed me and retarded my mind's development for years to come."

Level 2 & 3: Content-Related Outcomes

"In summary, the research indicates that, at least for a short period, students retain vast quantities of information. On the other hand, many of them soon seem to forget much of it an they appear not to make good use of what they do remember. They experience many superficial changes - acquiring the jargon of disciplines, for example - but they still tend to operate with naive and erroneous conceptions. Moreover, many students do not know what they do not know: they have not developed self-critical awareness in their subjects."

Accountancy teacher - "Many students go from week to week, from topic to topic, without being able to see how anything fits together. Therefore they find the subject difficult, and this reduces their motivation to work at it."

Psychology teacher - "The general impression I get is that they don't seem to see how things hang together. They seem to treat the articles they read as if they were all disparate and not related to the same topics - there's no coherence in it, they don't see a pattern. They don't see why somebody's done something in relation to somebody else's experiment, or they don't see any kind of systematic approach to the kind of reading they're doing, or the kind of material they're being offered. They aren't able to tie it together into a package."