Higher Education 20: 459---469, 1990. �9 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

An investigation of the approach to learning of Nepalese tertiary students

DAVID WATKINS 2 & MURARI REGMI 2 t Department of Education, University ofHong Kong Department of Psychology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

AbStract. This investigation with 342 Nepalese tertiary students indicates that current conceptions of approaches to learning are relevant to these students. Factor analysis of the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) also suggests that the structure of learning processes is similar for Nepalese, Australian, and Filipino students. Internal locus of control also seems to be a factor in the adoption of deep and achieving approaches to learning in each of these cultures. Evidence of differences in secondary and tertiary student approaches to learning within Nepal and comparisons between Nepalese and Australian tertiary students' approaches to learning are also presented.

Introduction

In recent years there has been considerable progress made in our understanding of how and why students go about their studies (Biggs 1987; Marton, Hounsell, and Entwistle 1984). This research has clear implications for the improvement of tertiary teaching and learning (Biggs 1989; Ramsden 1988). To date the great majority of this research has been conducted in Europe, America, and Australia. Cross-cultural researchers have often warned of the dangers of assuming that social science theories and research findings derived in one culture are applicable to other cultures (Hui and Triandis 1985; Poortinga 1989). Developing countries around the world are currently struggling to ensure that they can provide a reasonable quality of higher education. Additionally students from such countries are enrolling in increasing numbers at Western universities. So it would seem important to find out how relevant the current research on student approaches to learning is to such students. This paper reports an investigation with students from one such struggling country, Nepal.

Education in Nepal

Nepal is a landlocked, mountainous kingdom of some 18 million people sandwiched between the population giants, India and China. It is a country rich in natural resources but lacking in economic development. The annual per capita income of its people is estimated at about U.S. $150. Nepal is also a land of diverse ethnic groups. The national language is Nepali, with Devnagari script, but about thirty-six dialects are spoken in the country (Malla 1980). The Hindu religion and values predominate.

Education in Nepal has gone through two black periods - seventy-eight years of

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neglect (1768-1846) and a hundred and four years of opposition to education (1846--1950). However, considerable progress has occurred since 1951 when the Nepalese people overthrew the century-old Rana oligarchy. In 1947 only four high schools existed but there are now over halfa million secondary students. The rate of literacy has increased from 12% in 1961 to 32% in 1986. An integrated non-formal education strategy has also been introduced. A new system of education was introduced in 1971 which popularized education and promoted the socio-economic status of the common people. Decentralization of educational facilities was emphasized.

Prior to the founding of Tribhuvan University in 1959, all educational activities at college level were affiliated to Patna University in India. There are now ten institutes where post-secondary level programmes are operating (Education, Medicine, Engineering, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Forestry, Applied Science and Technology, Humanities and Social Science, Sanscrit, Management and Law). In 1987-1988 there were 82,421 students (65,304 male and 17,117 female) at Tribhuvan University's 64 constituent and 66 private or affiliated campuses. These figures reflect the lower priority placed on tertiary education for women.

The medium of instruction for university teaching is English but recently Nepali has been introduced for undergraduate classes. The methods of instruction are lectures, demonstrations, and projects. Nepalese students are described as passive learners relying on their teacher to provide the material to be learned. Consequently there is little evidence of a capacity to think independently and critically (Regmi 1987). Regmi argues that this is partly a function of family and economic pressure which girls feel more than boys.

Tribhuvan University is currently experiencing serious financial problems. Consequently there is little opportunity for staff promotion even though the present salaries of university teachers are barely sufficient to meet their basic needs and teaching loads are high. Lack of funds also means that library facilities are poor and few faculty have the opportunities for research. Not surprisingly there is little incentive for lecturers to upgrade their qualifications or to improve the quality of their teaching (Pandey 1985).

Perhaps as a consequence of the above, tertiary pass rates are very low (of the order of 10%). Students are allowed to repeat courses indefinitely. While this is consistent with the time-free nature of Nepalese culture, it represents a waste of resources for a nation struggling for economic progress. Recent political distur- bances which have resulted in frequent closures of the campuses have exacerbated the problem.

Approaches to learning research

Research has demonstrated that students embark on tertiary studies for a diversity of reasons and that these reasons influence the manner in which they go about their learning. In more technical language, a student's motive(s) for learning affect their strategy(s) for learnin~ This motive/strategy combination is called an approach to

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learning. An approach is not seen as a relatively permanent aspect of a student's makeup independent of the learning task and context but rather as reflecting the interaction between individual characteristics of the student and the learning situation they are facing. Qualitative studies have identified the two most fundamental as deep and surface approaches to learning (Marton et al. 1984). Factor analytic studies have not only confirmed these two approaches but have added a third common approach, the achieving (Biggs 1987; Entwistle and Ramsden 1983). Each of these approaches has both motivational and strategic components and are important determinants of the quality of the outcomes of particular learning tasks (Watkins 1983; Van Rossum and Schenk 1984). Research has also identified aspects of the learning context which influence a student to adopt a particular approach (or combination of approaches) to learning. These include the method of assessment, the teaching strategy, and the learning environment (Ramsden 1985).

The cross-cultural perspective

Much of the research reported here explores the approach to learning of a sample of Nepalese students utilising their responses to one of the most widely used measuring instruments, the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ; Biggs 1987). Cross-cultural methodologists have pointed out that there is a hierarchy of levels of usage of questionnaires in different cultures each of which requires the demonstration of a corresponding hierarchy of assumptions (Hui and Triandis 1985). The lowest level involves conceptual equivalence and the highest metric (or scalar) equivalence. In this research it must be asked firstly whether the concepts of deep, surface, and achieving approaches to learning are relevant to Nepalese students (conceptual equivalence)? If so, is the SPQ valid for use in Nepal to assess these concepts? Finally, are we justified in directly comparing the scores of students in Australia, where the SPQ was developed, with those of Nepalese students (metric equivalence)?

The issue of conceptual equivalence involves the concepts of 'emic' and 'etic' approaches to research (Triandis 1972; Berry 1989). The former involves using only concepts that emerge from within a particular culture and is associated with the traditions of anthropological research. The latter approach seeks to compare different cultures on what are thought to be universal categories. Triandis particularly warns against what he calls 'pseudoetic' research which involves the imposition of the concepts of one cultue onto another as if they are universals. Tang (1990) has been able to show through phenomenographic analysis of interview data that the Western concepts of approaches to learning are relevant to Hong Kong students.

Factor analysis of responses to a questionnaire is one of the main strategies of demonstrating cross-cultural validity (Hui and Triandis 1985; Watkins 1989) but this type of validity is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for metric equivalence. The factor structure of the Study Process Questionnaire has been investigated in a number of cultures. Studies in Australian (Hattie and Watkins

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1981; Biggs 1987), the United Kingdom (O'Neill and Child 1984), and Hong Kong (Biggs and Watkins 1990) have generally supported the factorial validity of the SPQ. However, a Filipino study found a rather different factor structure (Hattie and Watkins 1981). That this may be more a problem with the English wording of the SPQ for Filipinos is suggested from the finding that two other learning process questionnaires, based on similar concepts to the SPQ, were found to be factorially valid for Filipinos (Hattie and Watkins 1981; Watkins Hattie, andAstiUa 1986).A previous study (Watkins and Regmi 1990) has also found a meaningful factor structure in Nepalese student responses to one of these questionnaires, the Approaches to Studying Inventory (Entwistle and Ramsden 1983).

Aims of research

The aims of this research then were as follows: 1. To investigate the validity of the concepts of surface, deep, and achieving

approaches to learning for Nepalese students. 2. To investigate the reliability and factorial validity of the Study Process

Questionnaire for Nepalese students. 3. If the above reliability and validity conditions are reasonably satisfied, then to

investigate the relationship between the students' approaches to learning and variables such as gender, academic major area, English language ability, academic grades, and locus of control.

4. To compare the approaches to learning of Nepalese school and tertiary students. 5. To compare (very tentatively) the approaches to learning of Australian, Hong

Kong, and Nepalese students.

Method

Subjects

The subjects were 342 students in the first year of Master's level courses at Tribhuvan University (equivalent, perhaps, to senior undergraduate level in Australia). Of this number 173, 88, and 81 were enrolled in Applied Science, Management, and Humanities, respectively. Their average age was 24 years and 69% were male.

Measures

The subjects' approaches to learning were assessed by administering the Study Process Questionnaire. The SPQ consisted of 36 items grouped into six motive/- strategy scales (see Table 1). Each item was to be answered on five point scales from

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Table 1. Means of Nepalese school and university subject responses to SPQ and results of oblique factor analysis of SPQ scales

Study Process Questionnaire Scales

Means Factor loadings

University School I II (n=342) (n-509)

Surface motivation 18.48 17.87 -0.13 0.67 Surface strategy 20.15 14.59 ~ 0.17 0.39 Deep motivation 22.76 24.31 a 0.55 -0.04 Deep strategy 22.91 23.92 a 0.76 0.00 Achieving motivation 22.18 25.18 a 0.49 0.28 Achieving strategy 23.21 25.53 a 0.63 0.00

a Difference between means is significant at 0.01 level.

1 = 'never true' to 5 = 'always true'. The subjects also completed a six item locus of control scale (Biggs, 1987) and supplied background information including their gender, latest tertiary grade (coded first division = 1; second division = 2; and third division = 3), and their confidence in their use of English for academic purposes (a two item scale from 1 = 'very confident' to 4 = 'not at all confident'). Before completing the SPQ the subjects were asked to answer the following open-ended questions: 'What do you mean by learning?', 'What do you mean by good teaching?', and 'What does it mean to apply what you have learnt?'. An analysis of these answers should throw some light on the students' conceptions of learning. All measures were administered in English during normal class hours by the second author who previously checked that the level of English required would be appropriate for these students. It should be noted that the version of the SPQ administered here was the version usually used for school subjects. This allowed direct comparisons with the responses of Nepalese school students but meant that comparisons with the responses of Australian and Hong Kong tertiary students to the 42 item version had to be adjusted for length.

Analyses

The SPSS-X computer programme (Hull and Nie 1984) was utilised to conduct factor analyses, analyses of variance (ANOVA), and calculate means and correlations. Because of the large number of statistical tests the 0.01 level of significance was adopted in this study.

Results

Concept equivalence. A full analysis of responses to the open-ended questions will be reported elsewhere but it was clear that three of the most common conceptions of

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learning held by these students were as follows: 1. Learning as an increase in knowledge. There is a clear quantitative aspect of this

conception. Some examples are: - '(Learning means) knowing everything in minute detail' (Botany major). - '(Learning means) to gain more and more knowledge' (Chemistry major). - 'Learning is to know everything about something' (English major).

2. Learning as a process of seeing things differently. Whereas the first conception involves a relatively passive process of acquiring information supplied by teachers or books the learner in this conception takes an active role. The emphasis here is on gaining insights: - 'Learning is a process of opening the inner eye...' (English major). - '(Learning means) to generate new ideas' (Botany major). - 'Learning means to widen our intellectual faculty... (so we are able) to think

critically, to be unbiased, to think from as many angles as possible' (English major).

3. Learning as an aspect of personal development. In this conception learning involves far more than either acquiring facts or even gaining insights: - 'Learning is a light for life...' (English major). - 'Learning is a process that changes our experience and behavior' (English

major). - 'Learning is a revolution in consciousness and it leads to mental liberation.'

(Geology major). - ' L e a m i n g is that which makes us able to live in our community as well as in the

world as good citizens.' (English major). The first two conceptions are very similar to two of the main conceptions of

learning reported by Saljo (1979) and Beaty, Dall' Alba, and Marton (1990) from analysis of interview data with Swedish and British students, respectively. These authors consider the fast conception as characteristic of a surface approach to learning while the second as characteristic of a deep approach to learning. The third conception was also identified by Beaty et al., who consider that it represents a higher level still of the deep approach as it involves not only seeing the world differently but, as a consequence, changing as a person. Although it was difficult to find evidence for the achieving approach from this conceptual analysis support for the striving for academic success of these students is provided by 58% of them reporting that they wished to do a Ph.D. degree in the future.

Factor analysis. The responses to the scales of the SPQ were subjected to principal axis factor analysis followed by rotation to oblique simple structure. Both a plot of the eigen values and the eigen values greater than one criteria supported a two factor solution which accounted for 58.2% of the variance (see Table 1). Factor I had high loadings from both the deep and achieving motive and strategy scales. It thus could be interpreted as an approach to learning characterised by a striving both for high marks and for understanding. Factor 2 could be dearly interpreted as representing a surface approach to learning. This factor structure closely resembles that reported by Biggs (1987) and Biggs and Watkins (1990) for Australian and Hong Kong

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school and tertiary students, respectively. It also is very similar to the factor structures underlying Filipino and Nepalese responses to the Approaches to Studying Inventory (Watkins et al. 1986, and Watkins and Regmi 1990, respec- tively). Examination of a three factor solution indicated a similar pattern of factor loadings on the first two factors but achievement motivation having the only major loading on the third factor. The scales of the SPQ were also found to have internal consistencies of the order of 0.50, comparable to, if slightly below, the figures reported by Biggs (1987) for Australian students.

Gender and academic area. The means of the responses to the S PQ were subjected to a gender x academic area (Science, Management, or Humanities) mutivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). No significant main effects for either Academic Area or gender or a significant interaction effect were found.

Academic grades. The correlation between scales of the SPQ and the students' academic grades are shown in Table 2. When interpreting the correlations it should be kept in mind that a low academic grade indicates the better academic performance. It can be seen that significant correlations were found with the Deep Motivation scale for the Humanities students and both Surface Motivation and Surface Strategy scales for the Applied Science students. In the Humanities there was a trend for better marks to be obtained by students with an intrinsic interest in their subjects while in Applied Science both surface level motives and strategies tended to be associated with lower tertiary grades.

Confidence with language of instruction. The subjects were divided into high, medium, and low confidence groups according to their scores on a two item language confidence scale, which had an internal consistency reliability of 0.80. The six SPQ scales were then subjected to MANOVA with language confidence as the independent variable. No significant difference was found between the means of the three language confidence groups.

Table 2. Correlations of SPQ scales with tertiary grades by academic area

Applied Science Management Humanities (n=173) (n=88) (n=81)

Study Process Questionnaire

Surface motivation 0.18 a 0.06 4). 17 Surface strategy 0.19 ~ 0.03 0.08 Deep motivation 4).04 0.16 4).36 a Deep strategy 0.01 0.04 0.01 Achieving motivation 4).02 0.06 4).02 Achieving strategy 4).05 4). 10 0.05

alndicates correlation is significantly different from zero at 0.01 level.

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School and university students. The Nepalese university students' responses to the SPQ were compared to those of students at an English-medium school in Kathmandu. The 509 students were in their final year of schooling, their average age was 15 years and 254 were male and 255 were female. Students at this school would be well above average in terms of socio-economic status but would have similar backgrounds to the average Tribhuvan student. The mean responses of the two groups to the SPQ scales are shown in Table 1. It can be seen that the school students tended to report significantly higher deep and achieving motivation and significant- ly greater use of the corresponding learning strategies than did the tertiary students. However, the latter were apparently more likely to utilise surface level strategies while there was no significant difference between the degree of surface motivation reported by the two groups.

Locus of control. The hypothesis was tested that students with a more internal locus of control were more likely to report higher levels of both intrinsic and achievement motivations and the corresponding strategies of learning (Biggs 1987; Watkins 1987). This proposition was supported by the finding that the students' responses to the six-item locus of control scale correlated 0.29, 0.20, 0.17, and 0.22 (all significantly different from zero at the 0.01 level) with their responses to the SPQ's Deep Motivation, Achieving Motivation, Deep Strategy, and Achieving Strategy scales, respectively.

Nepalese and Australian university students. The means of the Nepalese students' responses to the SPQ scales were compared to those reported by Biggs (1987) for Australian students, after the latter were corrected for length. Because of this correction and doubts over the validity of directly comparing the scores of the Nepalese and Australian students, the comparisons are only tentative and no statistical tests were conducted. However, it is clear that on all scales except Surface Motivation the Nepalese students' means were well above those of the Australians- the magnitude of the differences far exceeding that required for statistical significance at the 0.01 level.

Discussion

From this research it is apparent that the concept of approach to learning, currently 'state-of-the-art' in the higher education literature, is relevant to Nepalese students. Moreover, the Study Process Questionnaire appears to be sufficiently reliable and valid, at least in terms of factor structure, for use as an instrument to explore the approach to learning of Nepalese subjects. Therefore, the SPQ can legitimately be used to investigate correlates and individual differences of learning motives and strategies within the Nepalese culture. These results can then be compared to those found within other cultures.

These results indicate that in Nepal as in Australia and (perhaps) the Philippines, the achieving and deep aproaches load on the same underlying dimension

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Table 3. Mean responses of Nepalese and Australian university students to scales of the Study Process Questionnaire

Nepalese Australian a

Applied Humanities Science Management Arts Science (n=81) (n=173) (n=88) (n=405) (n=248)

Study Process Questionnaire Scales

Surface motivation 19.28 18.39 17.96 18.26 18.64 Surface strategy 19.55 20.10 20.84 16.46 18.76 Deep motivation 22.71 23.27 21.82 20.14 18.70 Deep strategy 23.29 22.90 22.56 19.71 18.78 Achieving motivation 22.00 22.24 22.22 16.71 17.57 Achieving strategy 23.24 23.20 23.24 18.00 18.34

a Australian means are taken from Biggs (1987) and adjusted for length (see Method).

independently of the surface approach. So in all three cultures it may well be that students perceive that to achieve high grades requires an understanding of the learning task. There is also some evidence in all three countries that a surface level approach is penalised but a deep/achieving approach is rewarded by higher grades (Watkins et al. 1986; Biggs 1987). However, in the Nepalese data this trend is rather minimal.

A much stronger trend in this investigation is for deep and achieving approaches to learning to be associated with an internal locus of control. This finding is again consistent with Australian (Biggs 1987) and Filipino data (Watkins et al. 1986). Support for the direction of causality being locus -- approach has both theoretical and empirical backing. American theorists have emphasised the importance of controlling one's own learning if high quality outcomes are to be achieved (McCombs 1986; Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons 1990). Empirical backing comes from both a longitudinal study from Australia (Watkins 1987) and an evaluation of a Dutch intervention program (Van Overwalle, Segebarth, and Goldchstein 1989). Together with the results of this study, it seems that in a variety of cultures possessing an internal locus of control may well be a prerequisite for a student to adopt a deep/achieving approach to their learning tasks. The work of Van Overwall et al., holds out hope that attributional retraining may be a fruitful way of encouraging such an approach to learning cross-culturally.

The finding that as students progress through the educational system from school to university in Nepal their approaches to learning may well become more surface level and less deep and achieving is again consistent with Australian school and tertiary studies (Biggs 1987; Watkins and Hattie 1985). These results indicate that the development of students' learning processes may not be as linear as Perry's (1970) study suggests. Further work is certainly required in this area to probe both developmental trends and to determine which factors related to the content and context of learning influence these developments.

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The discussion above has focused on comparing trends within a culture. Therefore they do n o t involve the assumption that the actual scores on the SPQ in one culture can be interpreted as equivalent to those from a very different culture (the assumption of metric equivalence). The dangers of making such an assumption make it doubtful to infer that Nepalese students are actually adopting deeper level learning strategies than their Australian counterparts as this study suggests. However, these findings cannot be simply attributed to cross-cultural differences in response styles as they do not occur here in all scales of the SPQ or in other research with Nepalese and Australian students using similar scales to assess personality characteristics or learning styles (Watkins and Regmi 1990). Moreover, the magnitude of the difference between the Nepalese and Australian means is sufficient to perhaps call into question the assumption that students from such countries are much more prone to rote learning than are Western students. This research also suggests that having to study in a foreign language, English, (only one Nepalese student usually spoke it at home) may not be quite as detrimental as previously asserted (cf. Ballard and Clanchy 1984).

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