Approaches to learning among occupational therapy undergraduate students: A cross-cultural study
Sammanfattning
Background: Students may adopt various approaches to academic learning. Occupational therapy
students’ approaches to study and the impact of cultural context have not been formally
investigated to date.
Aim: To examine the approaches to study adopted by undergraduate occupational therapy
students from four different cultural settings.
Method: 712 undergraduate occupational therapy students (n ¼ 376 from Australia, n ¼ 109 from
Hong Kong, n ¼ 160 from Norway and n ¼ 67 from Singapore) completed the Approaches and
Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted
to compare the ASSIST subscales for the students from the four countries.
Results: Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean scores for the
strategic approach were significantly different between Australia and the other three countries.
The mean scores for the surface approach were significantly different between Australia and
Hong Kong, and Hong Kong and Norway. There were no significant differences between the
deep approach to studying between Australia, Norway, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Conclusion & implications: Culture and educational context do appear to impact the
approaches to study adopted by undergraduate occupational therapy students. Academic and
practice educators need to be cognizant of what approaches to studying the students they work
with adopt.