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Why Study? How Reasons for Learning Influence Strategy Selection.
Susan Bobitt Nolen
Abstract
Learners' use of strategies cannot be understood without understanding the nature of
their motivation for learning. Using an intentional framework which emphasizes
learners' purposes, research in the last 10 years has found that different goals, or
different definitions of success and failure, have distinct implications for strategy
selection and use. In this review, I describe what we have learned to date about
these relationships and suggest how approaches to research on goals and strategies
might be broadened.
Introduction
1 Learning strategies, should be employed when someone wishes to learn. There
are many reasons for learning, however, and different kinds of learning satisfy those
different goals. For some time, strategy researchers have known that knowing the
utility of a strategy is necessary for its spontaneous use in relevant situations (Paris,
Cross, and Lipson, 1984). However, merely knowing that a strategy leads to greater
learning does not guarantee its use, even when students are capable of executing
the strategy.
2
For example, consider the student who enrolls in an introductory psychology
course to satisfy a general studies requirements. She has little interest in psychology
as a discipline and is primarily concerned with getting a satisfactory grade in the
course. Although our student may know that thinking of ways she might use her new
psychological knowledge outside of class (a deep-processing strategy) might prove
her understanding and long-term retention, there may be no real reason for her to
employ such a strategy. If she can memorize enough of the information and retain it
long enough to do well on a multiple-choice exam, she is unlikely to spend time
looking for connections and applications to her life or experience. In fact, it might well
be counterproductive to do so if it takes time away from studying for more important
courses. Looking only at strategy knowledge, then, only gives part of the picture.
3
Without an understanding of the student's purpose for learning we cannot explain or
predict her learning strategy use.
3 For many years, researchers studying learning strategies either ignored students'
purposes or treated them in a simple approach-avoidance manner: If students were
motivated, they would be more likely to use learning strategies. Research over the
last 10 years, however, has shown that students' reasons for studying play an
important role in their views of strategy usefulness and in their selection and
application of specific kinds of learning strategies. This has led to a more prominent
role for goals in recent models of self-regulated learning (Alexander, 1995;
Alexander, in press; Butler and Winne, 1995). In this review, I first discuss research
that laid the groundwork for investigations of the relationship between students' goals
or purposes and their learning strategies. Then I summarize the general findings of
the last decade of research on the relationship between goals and learning
strategies, using an intentional perspective. This includes a discussion of the
limitations of this literature, as well as suggestions for new directions in topic and
method. Although some of this work might provide some guidance to students, it is
beyond the scope of this article to provide a set of strategies students might use to
motivate themselves to learn. Interested readers are referred to recent reviews of
work on volition and metamotivation (e.g., Corno, 1993; Kanfer and Ackerman,
1989).
Laying the Groundwork
4
Building on the work of Asch (1952) and Crutchfield (1962), motivation
researchers have argued that an understanding of motivation depends on an
understanding of the goals toward which individuals are oriented (Ames, 1984;
Dweck, 1985; Maehr, 1983; Nicholls, 1984a, 1989; Spence and Helmreich, 1983).
Condry and Chambers (1978), for example, suggested that whether learners had
task-intrinsic or task-extrinsic goals might influence not only their subsequent, but
their approach to the task itself. Extrinsically motivated learners, they proposed, were
more likely to take shortcuts to the extrinsic goal, sacrificing learning in the process
by using strategies that ensured short-term but not long-term gain.
5 In the early 1980s, reports began to appear in the literature that suggested the
importance of goals for understanding strategy use. Flavell (1981) made cognitive
goals a central part of his proposed model of cognitive monitoring strategies. He
suggested that the formation of a goal causes related metacognitive knowledge and
skills to be activated. Goal formation triggers a "metacognitive experience (Flavell,
1981, p. 43)," including memories of past attempts and predictions of future
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performance, as well as affective responses. Similar themes emerged from work on
task engagement (Marx, 1983; Paris and Cross, 1983; Posner, 1982). Posner (1982)
proposed that students' interpretation of the task and subsequent task engagement
determined what and how much they learned. Interpretation of the task included past
experience, available resources, costs and benefits of task engagement, and
learners' purposes for being in the situation. Based on these factors, Posner
suggested that learners set goals and develop plans to attain those goals. Goals and
plans, in turn, determine task engagement.
6 The empirical literature of this period supported a connection between goals and
intentions and strategy use. Renshaw and Asher (1983) note that social situations do
not define social goals but that individuals must define their own goals. In an
interview study of elementary school children, they found that sociometric status and
age were related to both the kinds of goals children set and the kinds of social
strategies they thought were effective.
7
In a survey study of high school students, Nicholls, Patashnick, and Nolen
(1985; see also Nicholls, Cheung, Lauer, and Patashnick, 1989; Thorkildsen, 1988)
found students' goals in school were consistent with their perceptions of both the
purposes of schooling and general beliefs about the causes of success in school.
Students for whom learning and understanding were important goals were likely to
believe that effort, interest, and trying to understand led to success in school. On the
other hand, students who felt most successful when they demonstrated ability
superior to others were more likely to see impressing the teacher and dressing and
behaving nicely as effective strategies. These differences in strategy beliefs make
sense if one remembers that the definition of success is different for different goals.
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Work on the effects of goal setting (e.g., Bandura, 1986; Locke and Latham,
1990) provided additional support for the importance of considering learners' goals.
In their review of the goal-setting literature, Erez and Kanfer (1983) suggest that goal
acceptance involves choice based on the relationship between effort and strategy
use, and between strategy use and outcome. Definition and acceptance of goals may
well change during a task, depending on these factors. This position is consistent
with studies of the relationship between goals, self-efficacy, and continuing
motivation (Bandura and Schunk, 1981; Schunk, 1994; Schunk and Cox, 1986).
These studies found that when students commit to a goal they see as challenging but
attainable, and make measurable progress toward the goal, effort, self-efficacy, and
achievement increase. Setting short-term (rather than only long-term) learning goals
and obtaining feedback, allows students to see their progress. Goal-setting seems
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especially effective if goals are in part determined by the learner. This is consistent
with motivation theories (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1984; Deci and Ryan,
1985) that posit that perceived self-determination and feedback that one is making
progress toward a goal together lead to increased intrinsic motivation.
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The theoretical frameworks within which goal-setting has been studied provide a
role for various aspects of goals, including their proximity, their attainability, and their
value. The nature of the goals persons are given or encouraged to set has not been
a major focus of theories or the research conducted within those frameworks.
However, the learning situations Schunk and his colleagues employed stressed
individual achievement goals (e.g., numbers of problems completed, learning to write
a descriptive paragraph), rather than extrinsic or social-comparative goals. As
Renshaw and Asher (1983) suggested about social strategy coaching, it is possible
that part of the positive effect on students' achievement and motivation noted in this
work can be attributed to the emphasis on mastery and improvement. Research that
began to appear in the late 1980s emerged from a different theoretical framework,
and more directly addressed the effect of different reasons for learning on the kinds
of strategies learners employed.
A Framework for Studying the Relationship between Goals and Strategies
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Much of the recent research on the relationship between goals and strategies
uses John Nicholls' intentional theory as its frame (Nicholls, 1984b, 1989, 1992).
Nicholls proposed that understanding learners' intentions is necessary before we can
understand their motivation or actions. Researchers interested in goal-strategy
relationships have capitalized on the centrality of goals in this theory. According to
Nicholls, goals are in part determined by individuals' general theories (orientations),
and in part by task-specific factors or states (involvement).
11 Nicholls (1992) described two dimensions of students' theories about academic
success: task orientation and ego orientation. "These theories are orientations in the
sense of predispositions to seek certain types of experience, and they are theories in
the sense that they are beliefs about success that generalize across different fields"
(Nicholls, 1992, p. 270). In task orientation, one's purpose is to increase mastery of
understanding, or to perform one's best. In ego orientation, one tries to demonstrate
greater competence or ability than others, in order to establish superiority.
12
These orientations predispose learners to take particular approaches to
learning, but situational variations also play an important role in determining the
nature of learners' task-specific goals or involvement. Thus an individual who tends
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to employ a task-oriented theory of achievement in school might, given an
environment that stresses competition and social comparison, develop goals for that
situation that include superior performance. In most samples, task and ego
orientation are uncorrelated (Nicholls, 1989; Nolen, 1988; Nolen and Haladyna,
1990a), suggesting that they are separate dimensions rather than poles in a
dichotomy.
13
Although task and ego orientation both require some performance or
accomplishment, the success of that performance is judged differently depending on
which theory is being employed. Task-oriented individuals can feel successful by
improving performance or understanding. When ego-oriented, however, such
accomplishment does not by itself count as a success. Only when she or he
outperforms as well with less effort, can the ego-oriented individual consider her- or
himself successful. These different definitions of success embodied in the two
orientations provide strategy researchers with a framework for exploring the effects of
different reasons for learning on learners' use of strategies.
Empirical Studies of Goals and Strategies
14 The majority of learning strategy research using this intentional framework has
focused on the task-ego distinction, using both correlational and experimental
designs. In general, task involvement is associated with valuing and use of effective
learning strategies (Nolen, 1988; Nolen and Haladyna, 1990a-c), increased creativity
(Butler, 1987), and more pride in success following effort (Jagacinski and Nicholls,
1987). Ego-involvement, in contrast, is associated with use of surface-level strategies
(e.g., memorizing, unfocused rereading; Nolen, 1988) and has been shown to
interfere with deep processing (Graham and Golan, 1991).
15
In a series of studies with junior high and high school students (Nolen, 1988;
Nolen and Haladyna, 1990a-c), we found task orientation to be consistently positively
related to the valuing and use of learning strategies. Nolen (1988) using
questionnaires, measured both general and task-specific goals for science class in
junior high school students, 6 weeks apart. Rather than asking students to
characterize their general approach to studying, a method criticized as nonveridical
(Ericsson and Simon, 1980), I asked students to rate the value of various strategies
for studying science, both in general and in relationship to a just-completed science
studying task. In addition, I observed students studying a science text passage,
recorded their behaviors, and then asked them to report which strategies they had
used during the just-completed task. Valuing and using those strategies involving
comprehension monitoring and deep processing of information were correlated with
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task orientation, and to an even greater extent with task-specific task involvement
(measured immediately after the studying task). Use of multiple measures provided
strong support for the relationship between strategy valuing and behavior.
16
Valuing of deep-processing strategies was in part a function of task
involvement, but also likely reflected students' level of sophistication in studying.
Nolen and Haladyna (1990a) surveyed high school science students and found that
for ninth-graders, task orientation was associated with valuing both deep-processing
and surface-level strategies, while for older high school students, task orientation was
correlated only with valuing deep-processing strategies. Apparently the older
students were more aware of the relative usefulness of deep-processing vs. surfacelevel strategies than the younger students.
17 A later survey study (Nolen and Haladyna, 1990b, c) looked at change from the
beginning to the end of a school year in students' motivation, valuing of strategies,
and interest in high-school science. Task orientation at the beginning of the year
predicted not only year-end task orientation, but the valuing and use of deepprocessing strategies in the spring. In addition, we found that students who perceived
that their teacher wanted students to understand material and connect it to prior
knowledge and wanted students to think independently were also likely to be taskoriented and to value productive learning strategies at the end of an academic year.
Thus, strategy knowledge, individual differences in goals, and perceptions of the
teacher's goals for students were important contributors to students' beliefs about
which strategies were the most valuable. Perceived ability in science at the beginning
of the year predicted only year-end perceived ability in science, not motivation or
strategy valuing.
18
Correlations between an orientation toward avoiding work and strategy use of
any kind were negative. Correlations between ego involvement or orientation and
strategy use varied. Ego involvement was uncorrelated with value and use of deepprocessing strategies, but positively correlated with task-specific surface-level
strategies (.35 for valuing, .58 for use; Nolen, 1988). Correlations with ego orientation
ranged from zero (Nolen, 1988) to around 0.3 (Nolen and Haladyna, 1990a) but were
always less strongly correlated with deep-processing strategies than was task
orientation.
19
In a longitudinal study of elementary science students, Meece and her
colleagues (Meece, Blumenfeld, and Hoyle, 1988; Meece and Holt, 1993) obtained
similar results for learning strategies employed in a classroom setting. This study
involved repeated measures of student engagement (including monitoring and deep8
processing strategies) immediately after science lessons across seveal weeks.
Based upon results of structural equation modeling, Meece and co-authors argued
that intrinsic motivation and task-mastery goals (measured with an adaptation of
Nicholls' task orientation scales) strongly influenced the extent to which students
were engaged actively in the science lesson. Further, students with high taskmastery motivation and low ego-social motivation showed the most adaptive
achievement profile (a combination of self-reported engagement/strategies, teacher
ratings, grades, and achievement test scores).
20
Similar results were reported in Lee and Anderson's (1993) qualitative study of
science engagement. This investigation combined observations and structured
interviews of 12 children across 10-12 science teaching episodes, and found four
patterns of task engagement in their sample. Two of the patterns fit the definition of
task-involvement, and these students asserted goals of making scientific sense
during the activities. In both patterns, children exhibited what Lee and Anderson call
cognitive engagement during activities, including using strategies to achieve scientific
understanding and to integrate the new understanding with their prior knowledge.
Although one group's activities were more self-initiated, both patterns are consistent
with the theory that task involvement leads to the valuing and use of deep-processing
strategies.
21 The other two patterns combined ego-social goals and strategies aimed at either
passively or actively avoiding work in science. Students in one group seemed
convinced that since they were not likely to do as well as others, engagement in the
task seemed futile. The other group actively resisted any involvement in the ongoing
activities: Asked about her goals, one girl stated, "I don't like to understand the world.
I don't like to know about things that go on. I don't like to correct my answers, and I
don't like to go back and look through things 'cause it's boring and I'd rather do other
things" (Lee and Anderson, 1993, p. 602).
22
Other work using an intentional theory framework is consistent with the work
described above. Although not studying learning strategies specifically, Graham and
Golan (1991) tested the influence of ego involvement on depth of processing with
fifth- and sixth-grade children. In two experiments using the Craik and Lockhart
(1972) levels-of-processing paradigm to induce either shallow or deep processing of
words, these researchers examined the effects on processing performance of taskand ego-involving contexts. Task-involvement was induced by describing the task as
one in which mistakes were natural but improvement was expected, and by stressing
the challenge and fun of mastering the task. (This condition was similar to the
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"control" condition, in which the task was introduced as a game.) In the ego-involving
condition, experimenters stressed that performance would indicate ability relative to
other kids. Controls and task-involved children did not differ in performance, but egoinvolved children performed significantly worse on the tasks requiring deep
processing of information, particularly.
23
Researchers not specifically using Nicholls' (1984a, 1989) intentional
framework have nonetheless reported results consistent with the relationship
between strategies and goals described above. Schunk and Swartz (1993) taught
fifth-grade students strategies for writing paragraphs. Three different inductions
manipulated learner goals. In the process goal and process-plus-feedback goal
conditions, experimenters told the children it was important to keep in mind that they
were trying to learn to write descriptive paragraphs (a task-involved goal); in the
product goal condition they were told the goal was to produce a descriptive
paragraph. A control group was told to do their best. Compared to the two (more
neutral) conditions, students in the two task-involving (process goal) conditions were
more strategic, performed better, and had increased self-efficacy. In the process
goal-plus-feedback condition, experimenters attributed students' progress to use of
the strategy. This attribution enhanced the positive effects of the task-involving goal
induction.
24 Similar findings come from research on help-seeking strategies (Nelson-LeGall
and Jones, 1990; Newman, 1990; Newman and Goldin, 1990; Newman and
Schwager, 1995). Newman and Schwager investigated developmental differences in
third- and sixth-grade children's adaptive help-seeking strategies under conditions
that probably evoked task or ego involvement. In the task-involving induction,
students were told that working on math puzzles would help them in school, make
them think, and help them become more skillful. Students were asked to focus on
understanding how to do the puzzles. As in task involvement, this induction casts
learning as an end in itself. In the ego-involving condition, children were told that
experimenters were interested in how they did compared to other kids, and that it
was important to complete as many problems as possible. As in ego involvement,
this induction frames the task as a means to an end, and focuses attention on
demonstrating superior ability.
25
Given the goal of doing better than others rather than becoming more
competent, the strategy of asking for help has a down side (Nelson-LeGall and
Jones, 1990). Young children confuse effort, ability, and outcome, or presume that
effort leads to high ability. During the elementary school years, children develop the
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conception of ability as capacity, as a limit on the extent to which effort improves
performance (Nicholls, 1979; Nicholls, 1984a). They become increasingly aware that
strategies such as working hard and asking for help might imply lower ability if others
can do as well with less effort or help (Nicholls, 1989). Because they are more likely
to have acquired the conception of ability as capacity, one would expect the egoinvolved sixth-graders in Newman and Schwager's (1995) study to be more reluctant
to ask for substantive help, compared with third-graders. Sixth-graders in the egoinvolving condition did indeed show less inquisitiveness (preferring to be given the
answer rather than an explanation) and more maladaptive help seeking strategies
than those in the task-involving condition.
Summary
26 Taken together, the studies reviewed above provide strong evidence for taking
seriously the influence of reasons for learning on strategy selection and use.
Learners who seek understanding of material or mastery of skills are more likely to
use the kinds of strategies that lead to those ends. Those who seek to demonstrate
high ability compared to their peers may select different strategies, not so well-suited
to learning. This has important implications for both educators (especially those
concerned with teaching students effective learning strategies) and strategy
researchers.
27 Educators and researchers who attempt to teach effective learning strategies to
students would be well-advised to take student goals into account. If students see
strategies as leading to desired ends, they are much more likely to employ those
strategies spontaneously than if they seem irrelevant. This is probably especially true
if the trained strategies require additional effort, as many deep-processing strategies
do (e.g., taking notes, writing summaries, thinking of ways the information could be
useful outside of class). Learners who are not committed to understanding and
mastery are unlikely to maintain effortful strategies if they can achieve their goals
(e.g., high or passing grades) through less-demanding strategies like rereading or
memorizing terms. The effects, then, of study skills programs and other forms of
strategy training are likely to depend on the extent to which the strategies are seen
as useful given the students' goals, which may not be long-term retention or
understanding.
28 Although students' entering goals are important contributors to later motivation
and strategy use, it is clear from several of the previous studies that goals can be
influenced by teachers and researchers. There is growing evidence that students'
goals at any point in time are influenced in part by general orientations to learning (or
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learning in a specific subject), but even more strongly by the learning context itself,
including students' perceptions of their teacher's goals for student learning. Teachers'
goals are likely to be most strongly communicated to students through the ways they
assess student learning. Recent trends in teaching and assessment which stress
complex real-world tasks seem more likely to induce task involvement than a focus
on teaching and testing isolated facts and decontextualized skills (Nolen, 1995;
Taylor and Nolen, in press).
The End!
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