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Gender-group differences in the learning behaviour of entering first-year university students

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Abstract

This study explores the existence of structural gender differences in the learning behaviour of first-year students on entry to university, based on responses to an extended form of the Approaches to Studying Inventory. The focus is on underlying dimensions of variation, that distinguish between the manner in which male and female students recalled and reported on their most recent experience of studying Science in their final secondary school year. Such differences as emerge are only partially interperatble in terms of classic ‘deep’ or ‘strategic’ structures. It is argued that gender-sensitive sources of variation, as manifested, are worth of further investigation and are of potential strategic value to university departments insofar as they are able to locate difficulties that students bring with them early in their undergraduate studies.

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Meyer, J.H.F. Gender-group differences in the learning behaviour of entering first-year university students. High Educ 29, 201–215 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01383839

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