Perception of Workload and its Relation to Perceived Teaching and Learning Environments among Finnish and Chinese University Students

Abstract

Earlier research has shown that an excessive workload has a substantial negative effect on students' well being. The present study examines how Finnish and Chinese university students' perceptions of workload are related to their perceptions of the teaching and learning environments (TLE). This is done in order to determine whether the perceived workload of students could be reduced by improving the quality of their TLE. Also the levels of experienced workload of Finnish and Chinese students are compared in this study. The group of participants consisted of 3035 Finnish students and 2309 Chinese students. Since this work is cross-cultural in nature, the adequacy of the level of structural equivalence of the research instrument was confirmed, and, when appropriate, the effect of different response styles on the results was taken into account. Both standard and robust statistical methods were used for the analyses. The results show that in both the Finnish and the Chinese groups the students' perceptions of their workload and TLE are significantly but rather weakly related. Furthermore, irrespectively of whether the response styles are accounted for or not, the results indicate that Chinese students perceive a heavier workload than do Finnish students.

Students’ achievement motivation in Finnish and Chinese higher education and its relation to perceived teaching‐learning environments

“… Note : The response style measures were calculated for the Finnish and Chinese students separately using the unrecoded responses to all items of the questionnaire (82 items: 68 (72) positively worded and 14 (10) negatively worded items in the Finnish (Chinese) version). Adapted from Reynolds and Smith (), also in Hernesniemi, Räty, Kasanen, Cheng, Hong & Kuittinen, , . …”

“…This study focuses on 15 items measuring students' AM and on seven variables (scales) measuring students' perceptions of their TLE. The TLE variables (Table 2) have been formed previously (Hernesniemi et al, 2017b). The set of AM items ( Table 3 in Results) comprise items assessing students' ability beliefs, students' expectancies for success, students' utility value beliefs, and students' cost beliefs, specifically, fear of failure (items adapted from Wigfield & Eccles, 2000, by Kuittinen & Meril€ ainen, 2011Meril€ ainen, 2014;Meril€ ainen & Kuittinen, 2014).…”

“…The Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). This procedure for studying the suitability of the research instrument for comparing Finnish and Chinese students, which led to the formation of the AM variables, is similar to the procedure applied in Hernesniemi et al (2017b) for TLE items. The corresponding TLE variables are displayed in Table 2 together with item examples and pertinent details.…”

“…r i 2 Þ where, C = the number of categories in the scale; r i = the ratio of responses that fall into the i:th category Note: The response style measures were calculated for the Finnish and Chinese students separately using the unrecoded responses to all items of the questionnaire (82 items: 68 (72) positively worded and 14 (10) negatively worded items in the Finnish (Chinese) version). Adapted from Reynolds and Smith (2010), also in Hernesniemi, R€ aty, Kasanen, Cheng, Hong & Kuittinen, 2017a, 2017b to the right of the center (ξ = 0.78). Hence, the independence-ofthe-covariate-and-treatment-effect -assumption is not met in this study.…”

“…Response style differences have been suggested as an alternative explanation for several research results (Van Vaerenbergh & Thomas, 2013). Several studies have demonstrated that response style varies across cultures and, specifically, differences in response styles between Eastern and Western cultures have been detected (Bachman & O'Malley, 1984;Chen, Lee & Stevenson, 1995;Harzing, 2006;van Herk, Poortinga & Verhallen, 2004). Various methods have been created for controlling response style differences (Van Vaerenbergh & Thomas, 2013), but many of these are complicated to use and require specific features from questionnaires or sample sizes (Van Vaerenbergh & Thomas, 2013).…”