Educational Psychology, Vol. 23, No.

2, 2003

Approaches to Learning, Cognitive Style, and

Motives as Predictors of Academic Achievement

ÅGE DISETH & ØYVIND MARTINSEN Department of Psychosocial Sciences,

University of Bergen, Norway

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to analyse the relationship between
approaches to learning (deep, strategic, and surface), cognitive style, motives, and academic
achievement. A sample of 192 undergraduate psychology students with a mean age of 21.7
years participated. Motives and styles were related to the three approaches to learning in
theoretically meaningful ways. Moreover, approaches to learning were found to predict
academic achievement, while styles and motives only had indirect effects on achievement.
Among the approaches to learning, the deep approach unexpectedly did not predict achieve-
ment, while the surface and strategic approaches as expected significantly predicted achieve-
ment.

Introduction
Several authors have focused on various conceptions of approaches to learning during
the last three decades (such as Messick, 1994), and they have emphasised the import-
ance of these constructs when trying to understand learning from a more applied
perspective. Approaches to learning refers to individual differences in intentions and
motives when facing a learning situation, and the utilisation of corresponding strategies.
Such approaches may also be considered to reflect different levels of processing.
Although approaches to learning seem to have become a relatively important conceptu-
alisation of individual differences in studies of learning and academic achievement, the
construct validity of these approach constructs seems to have been less emphasised. In
particular, it is important to study further the relationship between approaches to
learning and other variables that are theoretically relevant for our understanding of such
approach constructs. Based on the above-mentioned definition of approaches to learn-
ing, which includes both intentions and strategies, it seems particularly important to
study the relationship between approaches to learning, cognitive styles, and motiva-
tional constructs. Motives and intention are closely related (Biggs, 1993; Weiner,

ISSN 0144-3410 print; ISSN 1469-046X online/03/020195-13  2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0144341032000039574
196 Å. Diseth & Ø. Martinsen

1992), and cognitive styles have been seen as related to cognitive strategies (Messick,
1987). Thus, to further validate approaches to learning, the present study seeks to shed
light on the relationship between these variables, and between these variables and
academic achievement.

Approaches to Learning
The constructs of deep and surface approaches to learning were introduced by Marton
and Säljö (1976). A student with a deep approach has an intention to understand the
learning material and is motivated by an interest in the subject matter. Use of evidence
and the relating of ideas are the predominant strategies. These strategies reflect
operation and comprehension learning respectively. In contrast, a surface approach
refers to the intention to reproduce the learning material. Surface approach is related
to different forms of rote learning, with fear of failure as the predominant motive.
Instead of restructuring the learning material, the surface learner will adopt the
structure already presented by learning the sign, rather than what is signified by the
sign.
In addition to the deep and surface approaches, a strategic approach was later
introduced (Entwistle & Waterston, 1988; Ramsden, 1981). A strategic approach refers
to the intention to achieve the best grades possible by adapting to the assessment
demands. This is obtained by managing time and intellectual resources in line with the
perceived criteria for high grades. Competing with others is the predominant motiv-
ation. Contrary to the deep and surface approaches, the strategic approach is not
related to any distinct learning strategy. Instead, the student will utilise whatever
strategy (whether operation, comprehension, or rote learning) that serves the purpose
of achieving success. Consequently, a strategic approach may be combined with
strategies associated with both deep and surface approaches. But the predominant
motivation in strategic approach is achievement rather than interest in ideas (deep
approach) or fear of failure (surface approach). In contrast to the independence of the
strategic approach, deep and surface approaches are mutually exclusive because it is not
possible both to focus and not to focus upon meaning at the same time. The deep
approach does, however, possess surface approach features, as operation learning may
include elements of rote learning.
These distinct approaches to learning have been reproduced in several studies (see
below) by means of different inventories such as the Approaches to Studying Inventory
(ASI), Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI), and Approaches and Study
Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) that typically produce three or four factors
(Christensen, Massey, & Isaacs, 1991; Clarke, 1986; Duff, 1997; Entwistle, Tait &
McCune, 2000; Entwistle, Hanley, & Hounsell, 1979; Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983;
Ramsden & Entwistle, 1981; Watkins, 1983).
Relations between approaches to learning and academic performance have also been
found in several studies. Typically, high achievement has been positively related to the
strategic and deep approaches and negatively related to the surface approach. In a study
of psychology students’ academic achievement at different stages in their study, New-
stead (1992) found performance to be positively correlated with the meaning orien-
tation (deep approach) (r ⫽ 0.22, P ⫽ 0.05) and with the achieving orientation (strategic
approach) (r ⫽ 0.32, P ⬍ 0.01). This is in line with the results from a study by
Sadler-Smith (1997), who found a significant and positive correlation between per-
formance and the deep approach (r ⫽ 0.26, P ⬍ 0.01), and between performance and
 Approach, Style and Academic Achievement 197

the strategic approach (r ⫽ 0.14, P ⬍ 0.05) in a sample of undergraduate business

students. These results suggest a significant but rather weak relationship between
approaches to learning and performance. Entwistle, Tait & McCune (2000) argues that
a relationship between the deep approach and academic success is typically found
among graduate students. In fact, a combination of surface and strategic approach may
be adaptive among undergraduate science students, or whenever fact-oriented assess-
ment is administered.
While constructs associated with approaches to learning obviously have implications
for our understanding of learning, it is important to investigate further the construct
and criterion validity of such learning approaches. In this regard, it is relevant to
investigate whether approaches to learning are related to cognitive styles and motives,
since these variables are conceptually close to the definition of approaches to learning.

Approaches to Learning, Cognitive Styles, and Motives

There are numerous conceptualisations of individual differences, but cognitive styles
and motives seem to be particularly relevant constructs to include in validation studies
focusing on approaches to learning. Among the several theories of cognitive styles
(Martinsen, 1997) the distinction between assimilator and explorer styles (AE styles),
originally developed by Kaufmann (1979, 1995) and further by Martinsen (1993a,
1995a; Martinsen & Kaufmann, 2000), may represent an interesting stylistic variable to
be compared with the above-described approaches to learning variables. The AE
distinction refers to individual differences in disposition towards using qualitatively
different strategies in learning, problem solving, decision making, and creativity. The
theory has been based on Piaget’s constructs of assimilation and accomodation, but has
been expanded to account also for explorative, problem construction activities, and
individual differences in disposition towards utilising these three ways of processing
information. Assimilators tend to interpret new events in terms of existing knowledge
by preferring rational, analytic processing and following rules. Explorers use infor-
mation-seeking strategies to the point of trial and error. Accomodators are posited to
combine these two ways of processing according to task demands. Several studies have
supported important hypotheses associated with the theory (Martinsen, 1993a, b,
1994, 1995b; Martinsen & Kaufmann, 1991, 2000). The distinction between assimila-
tors and explorers is measured using an inventory (Kaufmann & Martinsen, 1992)
where high scores describe explorers and low scores describe assimilators.
As regards a relationship to approaches to learning, it may be argued that explorer
style is associated with a deep approach to learning due to the active, information-seek-
ing strategies that describe both these constructs. Furthermore, a deep approach is
characterised by the relating of evidence to a conclusion. The resulting acquisition of
new knowledge through understanding may be compared to the high level of idea
production and the utilisation of novel information-seeking strategies associated with
the explorer style. In contrast, a surface approach is a passive stance that implies
reproduction of the structure already present in the learning material and environment.
This seems related to the need amongst the assimilators to uphold cognitive economy
by relying upon past experience. As regards the relationship between the strategic
approach and AE styles, our expectations are somewhat uncertain. However, theoreti-
cally the strategic student is oriented towards using strategies that will lead to success.
Such strategies should exist in the study environment as explicit or implicit rules that
198 Å. Diseth & Ø. Martinsen

these students can use as aids to achieve good grades. Thus, to the extent that the
strategic approach is associated with rule-following study behaviour, we expect a
negative correlation between AE styles and the strategic approach.
Other constructs with particular relevance for the present study are the achievement
motives. These motives were defined and described by McClelland, Atkinson, Clark
and Lowell (1953), and later developed by several researchers (Atkinson, 1966;
Gjesme, 1982; Heckhausen, 1988; Nygård, 1977; Raynor, 1981). The achievement
motives describe the affective factors when people deal with uncertainty, and how these
affects determine individual levels of optimal motivation, manifested in the choice of
task difficulty, the degree of risk taking, and the quality of performance. While aroused
motivation generally is seen as being dependent on several parameters such as perceived
competence, task difficulty and other situational influences, a person’s profile of
motives is seen as important, generalised disposition that determine the affective
valence of aroused motivation. Two independent and learned motives have been
posited, and both motives refer to the latent capacity to anticipate affect in situations
where performance is evaluated either by the agent or an observing part (Christo-
phersen & Rand, 1982). The anticipation of positive affect related to the motive for
success (Ms) is likely to motivate the individual to engage in the situation, while the
anticipation of negative affect in the motive to avoid failure (Mf) is assumed to result
in resistance towards engaging in the situation. The motive to approach success mainly
describes the anticipation of pleasure, and pride, in obtaining a goal, while the motive
to avoid failure mainly describes anticipation of unpleasantness or fear if one cannot
obtain the desired state of affairs. The latter has also been seen as related to test anxiety
(Hagtvet & Ren-Min, 1992). The general implication of these motivational orientations
for learning is that Ms facilitates while Mf hampers acquisition of knowledge. Thus,
Ms should be positively correlated with academic achievement, while Mf should be
negatively correlated with achievement. We also expect that Ms should be positively
related to the deep and strategic approaches, while Mf should be negatively related to
these two approaches. Moreover, based on Martinsen and Kaufmann’s (2000) study,
Ms should be positively correlated with AE, while Mf should be negatively correlated
with AE.
The final construct that we included in this study is the need for cognition (NFC)
(Cacioppo & Petty, 1982), which refers to a need to structure relevant information in
meaningful, integrated ways and to understand and make reasonable the experiential
world (Cacioppo & Petty, 1984). In short, NFC is the degree to which the individual
has a need to understand, a quest for reality, and enjoyment in thinking. A one-factor
solution for NFC, reflecting a continuum ranging from low to high NFC, has been
found in several studies (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996). Individuals of
high rather than low NFC are more likely to organise, elaborate on and evaluate the
information to which they are exposed. This chronic tendency to process information
effortfully may result in more, or more accessible, information on a range of topics and
more knowledgeable and substantive responding to those topics. In contrast, individu-
als low in NFC are likely to rely on others, utilise cognitive heuristics and social
comparison to provide structure (Cacioppo et al., 1996). NFC emphasises the process-
ing aspects in terms of intrinsic, cognitive motivation, but does not ascribe information
processing to particular domains or individual differences in cognitive complexity.
Consequently, NFC may be considered predominantly to be a motivational construct.
Thus, we expect positive correlations between Ms, AE and NFC, while we expect a
negative correlation between NFC and Mf. In previous studies, correlations with
 Approach, Style and Academic Achievement 199

academic achievement in terms of grade point average among undergraduate students

have been observed with correlations ranging from r ⫽ 0.14, P ⬍ 0.05 to r ⫽ 0.34,
P ⬍ 0.05 (Cacioppo & Petty, 1984; Petty & Jarvis, 1996). Hence, a relation between
NFC and examination grade can be expected in the present study.

Aims of the Present Study

The above variables will be analysed in order to explore their interrelationships and
their ability to predict academic performance. Based upon the above discussion, we
expect that there will be positive correlations between the deep approach, the AE styles,
the motive to achieve success (Ms) and NFC. We expect positive correlations between
the surface approach and the motive to avoid failure, and negative correlations between
the surface approach and NFC. We also expect positive correlations between Ms and
the strategic approach, and to some extent, a negative correlation between the AE styles
and the strategic approach.
As regards prediction of academic achievement, we expect that the deep approach,
the motive to achieve success (Ms) and NFC will be positively correlated with
achievement. On the other hand the AE styles should primarily have an indirect effect
through more situation-specific strategies (Messick, 1987), or eventually effects
through interactions with task- and situation-relevant variables (Martinsen, 1995a). In
the present study, we expect that the AE styles should be related to approaches and
motives as described above, while they should not be strongly related to achievement.
Following Messick (1987) an expectation of indirect effects may also hold for the
motivational constructs (Ms, Mf and NFC), since they represent more consistent
patterns of affect and behaviour, while approaches are operationalised as more task-ori-
ented strategies. In the present study a path model will test this idea further.

Method
Subjects
The sample consisted of 192 undergraduate psychology students, 137 female and 55
male. Their mean age was 21.7, age ranging between 19 and 46.

Instruments
Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). ASSIST (Entwistle, 1997)
is the last in a line of inventories (the ASI and the RASI) that has been refined and
developed over the years. Although the ASSIST inventory consists of several sections,
only the second section with 52 items designed to measure the deep, strategic, and
surface approaches to learning was used in the present study. These three approaches
to learning are further divided into subscales and motive scales but only the three main
approaches will be analysed in the present context because only the major approaches
are of theoretical interest. A five-point scale (where 5 is ‘agree’ and 1 is ‘disagree’) is
used for each item, and the sums of the items for each of the three approaches are used
in the further analyses. In the present study, a Norwegian translation of the ASSIST is
used. This version has been analysed and validated in a separate study by the first
author (Diseth, 2001).
200 Å. Diseth & Ø. Martinsen

Need for Cognition. The short version of the NFC scale is a 18 item one-dimensional
inventory which is highly correlated with the longer 34-item version on the NFC
(r ⫽ 0.95, P ⬎ 0.001) (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984). The respondents are asked to
indicate their relative agreement with statements such as “I would prefer complex to
simple problems” and “Learning new ways to think doesn’t excite me very much” along
a five-point scale. Half of the items are formulated negatively, hence they are reversed
before they are computed to a total score.

Assimilator–explorer styles. The AE inventory (Kaufmann & Martinsen, 1992) consists of

34 items. Of these, 15 items reflect assimilator style, 15 reflect explorer style, and the
remaining 4 are distractors. A five-point scale of the Likert type is used on each item.
One dimension is extracted, with high scores indicating explorer style and low scores
assimilator style, as the assimilator scores are reversed before the total score for the
inventory is calculated. High scores describe people with an explorer style, and low
scores people with assimilator style, and scores around the mean describe people with
the accomodator style, although the final label has not been directly validated so far.
Data describing various indicators of validity were published by Martinsen (1993a,
1993b, 1994, 1995b) and by Martinsen and Kaufmann (1991, 2000). An example of
an explorer item is, “I like best to work without a prearranged plan.” An example of an
assimilator item is, “I mostly stick to accepted ideas.”

Achievement Motives. The Achievement Motivation Scale (AMS) (Nygård & Gjesme,
1973, 1991) consists of 30 items which indicate perceived affect in achievement
situations. Two factors are extracted from the items, reflecting motive for success (Ms)
and motive to avoid failure (Mf). An example of item from the Mf is, “I dislike working
with tasks when I am not sure about the outcome.” An example item from the Ms is
“I enjoy challenging situations.”

Academic Achievement. Examination grades were used as the measure of academic

achievement. All of the students in this sample sit a four-hour exam which covers study
work equal to half a term of study.

Procedure
The questionnaires were completed during two lectures and collected by the first
author. The students volunteered. All the inventories were already present in translated
versions except for the ASSIST which was translated using a standard translation
procedure to ensure similarity in meaning between the original and the translated
version. The data were analysed by means of SPSS 10.0 (1999) and EQS 5.7b (Bentler,
1995).

Results
From the descriptive statistics shown in Table I, it is evident that most of the variables
are normally distributed and that they have acceptable alpha reliabilities.
Factor analyses and reliability estimates for the various facets on each of the three
approach constructs are reported in Diseth (2001), and only the three major approach
variables are reported in the present study.
As regards relationships between the three approaches to learning, motives, and AE
 Approach, Style and Academic Achievement 201

TABLE I. Descriptive statistics for the included variables

Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis 

Deep 59.30 9.04 ⫺ 0.33 ⫺ 0.55 0.78

Surface 41.18 9.62 0.12 ⫺ 0.20 0.64
Strategic 70.59 10.79 ⫺ 0.38 ⫺ 0.22 0.72
AE 86.32 16.54 0.27 ⫺ 0.28 0.89
Ms 47.09 5.71 ⫺ 0.24 ⫺ 0.24 0.81
Mf 34.00 8.77 0.55 0.23 0.91
NFC 63.71 10.55 ⫺ 0.32 ⫺ 0.31 0.88

styles, the correlations are shown in Table II and generally show the expected correla-
tions. It can be seen that both the surface approach, the strategic approach, and NFC
correlate significantly with achievement (P ⬍ 0.01). None of the other variables
measuring style or motivation correlate significantly with the measure of achievement.
Subsequently, we conducted a principal component analysis of the same constructs,
excluding achievement, to investigate further the structure in the data. Based on the
theory of approaches to learning, we decided to use three components, and to investi-
gate how the motivational and stylistic variables related to the three approaches.
Principal component analysis extracted two components with eigenvalues above 1;
however the scree plot (Cattell, 1966) clearly supported that we extracted three
components, which accounted for 78.4% of the variance. An oblique solution was
finally extracted because we anticipated these components to be correlated based on
previous research (Diseth, 2001; Entwistle, Tait & McCune, 2000; Martinsen &
Kaufmann, 2000). The component loadings are shown in Table III.
As Table III shows, the deep approach loads on the first component together with
Ms, NFC, and with a positive loading for AE styles. The strategic approach loads
together with AE styles (negative loading) on factor two, while the surface approach
loads together with Mf on factor three. The correlation between factor one and factor
three was ⫺ 0.44. Factor two did not correlate significantly with factors one and three.
Taken together, the findings from this factor analysis generally support our reasoning
in the introduction, apart from the finding that AE styles seem to primarily load on the
same component as strategic approach, and to a lesser degree on the same component
as surface approach. When inspecting the data in Table III, the correlation between AE

TABLE II. Pearson product-moment correlations between deep, surface and strategic approaches to
learning, AE styles, achievement motives (Ms and Mf), need for cognition and academic achievement
(examination grade)

Surface Strategic AE Ms Mf NFC Achievement

Deep ⫺ 0.33** 0.26** 0.49** 0.50** ⫺ 0.27** 0.60** 0.06

Surface ⫺ 0.17* ⫺ 0.39** ⫺ 0.30** 0.55** ⫺ 0.44** ⫺ 0.19*
Strategic ⫺ 0.26** 0.32** ⫺ 0.18* 0.27**
⫺ ⫺ ⫺
⫺
Ms ⫺ 0.36** 0.64** 0.05
Mf ⫺ 0.44** ⫺ 0.00
NFC 0.14

* P ⬍ 0.05
** P ⬍ 0.01
202 Å. Diseth & Ø. Martinsen

TABLE III. Principal component analysis of approaches, motives, and

styles. Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation
method: oblimin with Kaiser normalisation.

1 2 3 communalities

Deep 0.87 0.71

Surface 0.88 0.78
Strategic 0.90 0.91
AE 0.60 ⫺ 0.64 0.87
Ms 0.82 0.69
Mf 0.89 0.77
NFC 0.77 0.76

Factor loadings below 0.3 omitted

styles and surface approach is higher than the correlation between AE styles and
strategic approach. Thus, it is evident that when the other variables in the data set are
taken into account in the principal component analysis, the relationship between AE
styles and strategic approach becomes more strongly emphasised compared to the
relationship between AE styles and surface approach. Probably the inclusion of Mf
provides some controls for anxiety, which may suppress some of the strategic qualities
associated with assimilation.
Finally, the total set of variables was analysed using EQS (Bentler, 1995) to
investigate their interrelationships and their relationship to academic achievement
simultaneously. In this approach we first made a model where all the three approaches
predicted achievement, because this could be expected by theory. However, this model
showed that the deep approach, as was evident in the correlational analysis, did not
significantly predict achievement. The path from the deep approach to achievement
was thus excluded in the model that is shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 shows that the strategic and surface approaches predict academic achievement.
It can be noted that in this model, as was the case for the principal component analysis

FIG. 1. Structural model of styles, motives, approaches, and academic achievement (
2 ⫽ 26.8, df ⫽ 11,
P ⬍ 0.005, NFI ⫽ 0.96, NNFI ⫽ 0.93, CFI ⫽ 0.97, average absolute standardised residual ⫽ 0.02)
 Approach, Style and Academic Achievement 203

above, the relationship between AE styles and strategic approach was stronger than the
relationship between AE styles and surface approach (nonsignificant path coefficient,
which is not included in Fig. 1). In Fig. 1, standardised coefficients are used, and all
the included coefficients are significant at the 0.05 level or better. Correlated residuals
were allowed for the strategic and deep approaches to take into account the theoreti-
cally expected correlation between these two constructs.
Alternative models were also analysed where AE styles, NFC, Ms, Mf, deep,
strategic, and surface all were used as predictors on academic achievement, and where
the predictors were intercorrelated. These models gave good fit-indexes. However, in
exploratory analyses, when the paths from nonsignificant predictors were removed and
new models were specified, we were finally left with a model where only the surface and
strategic approaches predicted achievement. Thus, when predicting achievement, only
these two variables were meaningful predictors when controlling for the effects of the
other included variables.

Discussion
In the present study we sought to investigate the relationships between cognitive styles,
motives, and approaches to learning to further validate the approach variables as
operationalised in ASSIST (Entwistle, Tait & McCune, 2000). We were also interested
in the relationships between these variables and academic achievement as reflected in
examination grades.
The expected relationships between styles, motives and approaches were generally
present in the data, with positive and significant relationships between the deep
approach, AE styles, Ms and NFC on the one hand, and between the surface approach,
AE styles (negative relationship), Mf and NFC (negative relationship), on the other.
Moreover, the strategic approach correlated negatively with AE styles, positively with
Ms and NFC, and negatively with Mf.
Whereas approaches to learning have not been compared with the other variables
previously, the relationship between AE and motivational constructs has been investi-
gated in previous research (Martinsen & Kaufmann, 2000). In Martinsen and Kauf-
mann’s study a relatively strong, general factor was identified. Hence, we expected that
several of the presently included stylistic, motivational, and approach constructs would
share a relatively large amount of variance. The pattern of correlations and factor
loadings in the present study to some extent supported this idea. However, the results
also showed that several of the included constructs have discriminant validity when
compared.
As regards the relationships between AE styles and the surface and strategic ap-
proaches, these were somewhat different when subjected to factor analysis in compari-
son to the results from correlational analyses. In factor analysis, AE styles loaded
(negatively) on a factor with the strategic approach, while in correlational analysis AE
styles correlated negatively and more strongly with the surface approach than with the
strategic approach. The reason for this is probably that when Mf is included in the
analyses, and thus the negative affectivity in this variable and in AE is controlled for,
the variance that is specific to the strategic content of AE (negative loading) and the
strategic approach construct create a factor. This factor may then be interpreted as
describing a tendency to seek environmental cues for the purpose of achieving success
in learning. This seeking of cues can be related to previous experience and reliance
upon explicit or implicit rules in the learning environment.
204 Å. Diseth & Ø. Martinsen

The second factor, where the deep approach, Ms, AE and NFC loaded (all loadings
were positive), can be interpreted as describing information processing characterised by
a need to understand complex phenomena, to seek novelty, and to achieve. NFC is
primarily a motivational construct, and individuals high in NFC utilise active strategies
including seeking, acquiring, thinking about, and reflecting back upon information to
make sense of stimuli, relationships, and events in the world. Individuals of high rather
than low NFC possess active, exploring minds, and are more likely to organise,
elaborate on and evaluate the information to which they are exposed. Explorers tend to
seek out new avenues of discovery and should be seen as information seekers. More-
over, Ms describes positive affectivity when the individual confronts difficult tasks and
challenges. Clearly these three constructs share central characteristics, and this factor
should be associated with higher levels of learning and achievement when the learning
materials demand information processing beyond rote learning. This factor, perhaps
together with factor three (the correlation was above 0.40 between the two factors),
may also support the general factor that was identified for stylistic and motivational
constructs in the study by Martinsen and Kaufmann (2000).
The third factor, where the surface approach and Mf loaded together, describes
negative affectivity and rote learning approaches to learning. Negative affectivity is
associated with anxiety and, for example, feelings of threat (Hagtvet, 1989), and rote
learning strategies may be a weak but potentially safe strategy fro students who
experience cognitive interference and eventually somatic symptoms when they learn
new materials. High scores on the surface approach imply rote learning as the predomi-
nant strategy. In the context of the present study this factor seemed not to correlate
with the other two factors, which is somewhat unexpected given the strong loading of
Mf on the general factor in the previously mentioned study by Martinsen and Kauf-
mann (2000). However, the correlations are as expected for Mf alone when subjected
to correlational analysis.
When subjected to structural equation modelling, a somewhat unexpected picture
emerged when trying to predict academic achievement. Even though approaches to
learning were strongly related to the other variables in this study, only minor relation-
ships were observed between AE, NFC, AMS and achievement. These findings suggest
that approaches to learning measure variance in student performance and learning that
is not accounted for by the other variables. Thus, the present study may give support
to the hypothesis that style has an indirect effect on performance through approaches
to learning. The model may support the idea (Messick, 1987) that AE, AMS and NFC
may be more fundamental, stable aspects of individual differences in terms of infor-
mation processing style and motivation, whereas ASSIST is somewhat more influenced
by the context in terms of adaptation to the present demands of the learning environ-
ment. Schmeck (1988) argues, however, that style and approach interact dynamically
in a developmental perspective, as style partially influences approach and approach
determines the learning outcome which in time may change style. On the other hand,
Riding and Rayner (1998) emphasises the stability of style, but nevertheless recognises
that several different strategies of learning and problem solving may be adopted as a
response to environmental demands. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that some
consistency in approach across time and situation is due to the adoption of habitual
ways of approaching a diversity of learning tasks (Ramsden, 1988).
When predicting academic achievement, it is at first somewhat puzzling that the deep
approach along with MS, NFC and AE did not predict academic achievement.
However, on further reflection, it may not be so strange after all. The academic course
 Approach, Style and Academic Achievement 205

that was the focus of this study includes a fixed curriculum, and the standards for what
constitutes a good examination response are assumed to be rather well defined by the
teachers and those that are responsible for the curriculum. Based on our own experi-
ences, straightforward reading of the defined curriculum together with specific training
in academic writing may be the optimal strategy if students have the ambition to get
good grades. Seen in this way, the study does not necessarily invite nor reward
exploration of learning materials that are not included in the curriculum.
Moreover, the examination procedure should be considered in order to further
understand our findings. The undergraduate psychology students in the present sample
sit a four-hour examination at the end of the semester. The opportunity for feedback
during the semester is very limited, and does not affect the final examination grade
which is given by the faculty. Hence, the examination procedure and the nature of the
curriculum might be partially responsible for the missing relationship between deep
approach and academic achievement. Moreover, many of the students in the present
sample are eager to continue with graduate studies, which demand that the students
obtain a high examination grade (no more than approximately 8.5% of the students in
the present sample actually achieved the grade required to continue graduate studies).
This may explain the positive relationship between the strategic approach and achieve-
ment. But the pressure to achieve may also prevent the higher achieving students from
being interested in the subject matter. This may also help to explain the missing
relationship between deep approach and achievement found in the present study.
This missing relationship between the deep approach and achievement is also in line
with findings from research on medical students, where Newble and Hejka (1991)
found a weak relationship between the deep approach and superior performance. They
also found the strategic approach to be the best predictor of academic performance.
These findings were attributed to the learning environment and examination proce-
dures. The learning environment was characterised as an “overload of the curriculum”
which “forces many students to adopt short-term learning strategies which focus on the
rote learning of material required to pass the next examination”. The examination
procedures, in these authors’ opinion, “require little more than the reproduction of
factual material rather than requiring the student to demonstrate a deeper understand-
ing of the subject material” (Newble & Hejka, 1991, p. 341).
As regards the surface and strategic approaches to learning, these constructs were the
best predictors of academic performance in the present study. Although the prediction
was moderate, it is comparable to results found in other studies (see above). The
positive relationship between strategic approach and academic performance, and the
negative relationship between surface approach and performance found here are as
could be expected.
Taken together, the present results suggest that inventories measuring individual
differences in style, strategies and motives do share some common variance, but that
they are not identical, as they differ in their relationships with outcome variables. In
future research, it may be interesting to attempt a further differentiation between the
stable, transitional individual differences and more contextual variables. Finally, it
seems relevant to determine which environmental factors may account for the relation-
ship between academic achievement and approaches to learning.

Correspondence: Åge Diseth, Department of Psychosocial Sciences, University of

Bergen, Christiesgate 12, 5015 Bergen, Norway (e-mail: aage.diseth@psysp.uib.no).
206 Å. Diseth & Ø. Martinsen

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