[Efficacy of the program "Testas's (mis)adventures" to promote the deep approach to learning].
This paper provides information about the efficacy of a tutorial training program intended to enhance elementary fifth graders' study processes and foster their deep approaches to learning. The program "Testas's (mis)adventures" consists of a set of books in which Testas, a typical student, reveals and reflects upon his life experiences during school years. These life stories are nothing but an opportunity to present and train a wide range of learning strategies and self-regulatory processes, designed to insure students' deeper preparation for present and future learning challenges. The program has been developed along a school year, in a one hour weekly tutorial sessions. The training program had a semi-experimental design, included an experimental group (n=50) and a control one (n=50), and used pre- and posttest measures (learning strategies' declarative knowledge, learning approaches and academic achievement). Data suggest that the students enrolled in the training program, comparing with students in the control group, showed a significant improvement in their declarative knowledge of learning strategies and in their deep approach to learning, consequently lowering their use of a surface approach. In spite of this, in what concerns to academic achievement, no statistically significant differences have been found.
Universidad de Minho, Facultad de Psicología, Braga, Portugal. prosario@iep.uminho.pt
Pedro
P
Rosário
Julio Antonio
JA
González-Pienda
Rebeca
R
Cerezo
Ricardo
R
Pinto
Pedro
P
Ferreira
Lourenço
L
Abilio
Olimpia
O
Paiva
D002648:Child; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D015397:Program Evaluation; D013664:Teaching Materials; D058013:Test Taking Skills