Achievement goals predict learning in children and young adults, but it is unclear whether they apply to older adults and how they are related to approaches to studying. An online survey examined achievement goals, approaches to studying and academic attainment in distance learners. The Achievement Goals Questionnaire-Revised and the Approaches to…

Background: There is evidence that learners may adopt different kinds of achievement goals: mastery approach, mastery avoidance, performance approach, and performance avoidance. In higher education, this evidence has mainly come from young people who have recently gone straight from secondary education to higher education. However, higher…

In June 2010, a survey was carried out to explore access to digital technology, attitudes to digital technology and approaches to studying across the adult life span in students taking courses with the UK Open University. In total, 7000 people were surveyed, of whom more than 4000 responded. Nearly all these students had access to a computer and…

A 60-item questionnaire on conceptions of learning was mailed to students taking preparatory courses by distance learning with The Open University in the United Kingdom. Complete data were provided by 372 respondents. Their scores on six factor-based scales showed satisfactory internal consistency, cluster analysis identified five groups of…

Review of research on the academic performance and intellectual ability of adult college students provides evidence to reject two common stereotypes of adult students: (1) that they lack basic skills for effective studying, and (2) that they are impaired in studying by intellectual deficits associated with the normal process of aging. (MSE)

Disputes the common stereotype that adult students are less effective and less successful as students because they are adults. Finds no evidence in the literature that they lack the skills for effective study, experience learning difficulties because of age-related impairment in intellectual capabilities, or perform less well academically than…

Comparison of the study skills of 38 adult and 60 traditional-age college students in the same course found that older students had significantly higher scores on meaning orientation and lower scores on reproducing orientation and had persistence and educational attainment at least as high as that of traditional-age students. (Author/MSE)

Research suggests mature college students use more desirable approaches to academic learning, adopting a deep approach (meaning orientation) more often and a surface approach less often than younger students. Explanations include motivation by intrinsic goals; acquisition of a surface approach by younger students in secondary education; and…