Exploring Relationship between Learning Approaches among Postgraduate Students

Abstract

Postgraduate studies which include master's and doctoral degree programs in universities allow students to embark on a journey of independent learning and research. Entering higher education, students in particular the postgraduate students in which majority of them are working adult, face the challenge of self-regulating their learning. Despite the extended research conducted investigating the relationship between the use of learning strategies and student academic performance, there is lack of evidence on the use of learning strategies by postgraduate students in Malaysia. This study aims to explore perception of postgraduate students on their use of learning strategies and to ascertain the relationship between the learning strategies. This study employs quantitative approach. Using purposive sampling, a total of 259 participants responded to the survey. The instrument used is a 5 Likert-scale survey and is rooted from Wenden & Rubin (1987). The survey has 4 sections. Section A has 5 items on demographic profile. Section B has 19 items on cognitive components. Section C has 11 items on metacognitive self-evaluation. Section D has 11 items on resource management components. The findings indicated that the postgraduate students' cognitive strategies, metacognitive self-regulated and resource management are high, and all the learning strategies have positive relationship of each other. This explicitly means no one single learning strategy is considered predominant and superior to the other strategies. As this study tested limited variables, it is recommended that future research could focus on thorough profiling analysis. This includes investigating the level of differences of learning strategies utilized by students from different disciplines and mode of study. Moreover, a combination of both quantitative and qualitative analysis would offer richer data that could shed the light of the issue better, and eventually can recommend measures to support the postgraduate students in their academic journey.