INDIVIDUAL STUDY ORCHESTRATIONS AND THEIR ASSOCIATION WITH LEARNING OUTCOME

In this study a synthesis of research into student learning at the individual level is used to derive a general categorisation rule that can be applied to individual study orchestrations. The term 'orchestration' is introduced in this study to indicate that the association of constructs that represent approaches to studying at an individual level is a context-specific response and is affected by the qualitative level of perception of the individual towards certain key elements of learning context. In the first part of this study the association between context-dependent study orchestrations and learning outcome, and between 'deep' perceptions of learning context and learning outcome, is established. In the second part of this study the general categorisation rule is empirically validated by means of an unfolding analysis that sets out to illuminate the variability of individual study orchestrations as well as the group study orchestrations of academic achievers and failures. It is concluded that learning outcome is associated with categorisations of individual study orchestrations/contextual perceptions. Furthermore, based on an unfolding analysis of academic achievers and failures, it is concluded that academic success is associated with a well defined meaning orchestration coupled with a holistic perception of learning context, while academic failure is associated with the disintegration of such an orchestration/perception. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.