ABSTRACT

Research has shown that undergraduate students’ approaches to learning are broadly related to their perceptions of their learning environment and to the quality of their outcomes of learning (Prosser and Trigwell 1999). The question addressed in this chapter is whether a similar relationship is found for doctoral students in their research environment. In other words, are the approaches doctoral students take to their research related to their perceptions of their research environment? This relationship was the focus of a study carried out with graduate students at the University of Oxford to address the question of student perceptions of the research environment and its relationship to their approaches to research.