How to develop students' approaches to learning: experiences from a programme based on co-regulated learning

Abstract

Starting from the insight that during their education students do not manage to learn how to learn, we created the programme called Blooming with the intention of enabling the students to reconsider their own approaches to learning by developing collaborative activities and relations in the classroom. The programme was realised in a secondary school class, and research goals were to explore the contribution of the programme to the change in students' approach to learning - regarding the learning motivation and strategies - and to obtain an insight into students' perspective of the benefits of the programme. The changes in learning strategies and students' motivation were investigated using the MSLQ before and after programme attendance. The data on the programme benefits were obtained via focus groups with students and analysed by the thematic content analysis. It has been established that the students achieved a significant improvement when it comes to the mastering of the learning strategies that refer to self-regulation, critical thinking, peer learning and help seeking. In addition, the students pointed out as benefits a different method of work and pleasant atmosphere, the feeling of autonomy in classes, as well as the development of a different understanding of the nature of knowledge, the learning process and instruction. The results indicate that the use of Bloom's taxonomy as the tool for co-regulated learning and self-evaluation of students can contribute to the change in students' learning approaches. This finding is relevant for further considering of the possibility for this method to grow from a special programme into everyday teaching practice.