ABSTRACT
Since Marton and Säljö, the pioneers in the 1970s (Marton 1976; Säljö 1975), the concept of approaches to learning has been a firmly established concept in the educational research literature for several decades now. Originally, Marton (1976) and Säljö (1975) used a phenomenographic research approach to reveal differences between students in how they approached a specific learning task. While some students made use of deep learning processes (e.g. relating ideas, using evidence and seeking for meaning) which were associated with an intention to understand and an intrinsic interest in the content to be learned, others used surface learning processes (e.g. rote memorisation and a narrow syllabus-bound attitude) in order to reproduce the learning materials (Biggs et al. 2001; Entwistle and McCune 2004). This combination of intention and related processes (deep versus surface) was called an ‘approach to learning’.
