The Collision of Will and Skill in Introductory Geoscience Courses: The Affective Domain and the Effective Application of Cognitive Strategies

The affective domain involves attitudes, feelings and emotions that may hinder or promote learning. Social-cognitive theory proposes that students who are confident that they can do well (self-efficacy), will make more effort to learn, persist to overcome obstacles, and will use effective cognitive strategies such as rehearsal, elaboration, and organization. The use of effective cognitive strategies has been positively correlated with student class grades in introductory science classes. Self-efficacy guides decisions on which tasks to undertake and how much effort to expend on a given task. We reviewed student attitudes and learning strategies using self-reports and student work products from more than 200 learning logs covering the first three weeks of a general education earth science class. Our review revealed that: 1. Students generally use more cognitive strategies associated with elaboration and rehearsal than organization. 2. Students give the lowest ratings to strategies in all three categories that require writing or drawing (making lists, writing summaries, drawing charts or diagrams, outlining material) and give higher ratings to low effort strategies such as memorizing, reading, and reviewing notes. 3. There is no obvious correlation between greater use of cognitive strategies and student performance. 4. Student willingness to complete an assignment does not necessarily match the skill applied to the task. For example, students in the lower third of the class were as likely to complete an assigned rehearsal task as students in the upper third. However, almost all students in the upper third answered the associated question correctly while approximately half of the lower third responded incorrectly.