M. Ed. (Educational Psychology) / It is often found that children entering the secondary school phase have not mastered sufficient study habits. This may be one of the reasons why pupils, who appear to have the ability to do well, do not live up to these expectations. It, therefore, seems essential for these children to be orientated as soon as possible, even at a standard five level, towards acquiring study habits. This will lead to their having established study habits which in turn, should help them to face the near demands experienced at secondary school. This study has been undertaken to investigate the study habits of standard five pupils with the aid of a self deviced questionnaire in respect of study habits...

M.Ed. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.A.(Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / There has been a growing concern for the number of first year students who drop out of university before completing the course they have registered for. The increase in technological development and the creation of new and more demanding job opportunities requires a highly. skilled workforce. Therefore it is imperative that each individual should reach his highest potential. Numerous studies have been undertaken to determine the reasons for the high incidence of student - drop out. Both academic and social factors have been investigated. One factor that has only recently been investigated is the learning strategies of the student. Learning strategies entail the way in which a student plans and executes his studies, and the processes that are involved in this activity. This study was undertaken to determine if there exists a difference between the learning strategies of a first year student who is impersonally well adjusted versus a first year student that is maladjusted with regard to interpersonal adjustment.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The object of this research project was to determine if learning strategies of first year students with different intellectual abilities differed and if these differences also applied to male and female students of different language groups. The project comprised of two parts. The first part consisted of a literature study which defined the concepts of intelligence, learning, cognition, metacognition and learning strategies. This was followed by a discussion of possible reasons why intelligent students fail to use effective learning strategies . The second part included an empirical investigation of the differences in the learning strategies of first year students with different intellectual abilities. The students were divided into the following groups: Afrikaans speaking male students, Afrikaans speaking female students, male students from other language groups and female students from other language groups. It was evident from the literature stUdy that learning strategies consist of self-management skills that the learner acquires, presumably over a period of years, to govern his own processes of attending, learning and thinking. Researchers agree that the mastering of learning strategies by a student can influence the success of his university career. When attending university even the intelligent students need effective learning strategies. Some students fail to acquire affective learning strategies while still at school. These students cannot cope with the large quantities of study material and consequently they may underachieve or even fail.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The high failure rate of especially first year students at tertiary institutions with its financial and manpower implications poses a problem. A report of the work committee of the Committee of University Principals Identified the lack of research on the learning needs of students as well as the need for a student learning profile and ways in which learning style research results can be utilised in the tertiary instruction programme. The implications of learning styles on the reading development of university students are still in doubt. Reading demands a vast amount of a student's study hours and reading ability underachievement occurs to a great extent. Consequently reading development programmes were introduced at tertiary Institutions to offer students the opportunity of developing and improving their reading skills. At the Rand Afrikaans University three different reading courses are offered, but during the past years it has become evident that not all students benefit equally from a specific course. These three courses accentuate the two main components of the reading act. namely the optical-mechanical (in course A), or the cognitive linguistic (in course B) as against the integration of both these components (in course C). The problem is which factors determine to which specific course a student should be assigned to optimise his reading ability. One probability is that a student's learning style could be such a factor. Hypotheses were posed to examine this. The aim of this study is to determine whether a student's learning style has any implications for the different reading courses which are conducted at the Student Counseling Bureau at RAU. An attempt was made to determine the preferred learning style of students in order to ascertain whether 8 student with 8 specific learning style would benefit more from a specific reading course (or courses).

D.Phil. (Education) / The purpose of this study was to apply the "Learning and study strategies Inventory" (LASSI) on first year students in South Africa and Taiwan, Republic of China, in order to identify possible differences in their respective learning strategies. It was attempted to identify effective learning strategies for both groups. The sample consisted of 1489 first year students at the Rand Afrikaans University and 2053 first year students at the chengchi University in Taiwan, the Republic of China. The following statistical package programmes were used in the study: ** The BMDP3D and BMDP4M programmes for factor analysis to determine cross culture comparability. The Kuder-Richardson 20 formula in the NPSO programme for item analysis and the concomitant determination of involvement. T-square and Student's t-tests for independent groups of programmes with the view of identifying possible differences between the two experimental groups. The statistical results showed that: The two experimental culturally; v) groups are comparable cross significant differences exist in respect of the learning strategies of the two student groups. Distinction was made between the merits and problems regarding the learning strategies in the respective countries. The most common problems in the two groups are: 1. The learning content dealt with in class is regarded as worthless. 2. Students spend too much time with friends. 3. Students experience problems with identifying the central idea when reading. 4. When writing a test they often realize that in their studies they have placed the emphasis on the less important study content

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / There is a growing concern for the high drop-out and failure rate of university students in their first year. Numerous studies have been undertaken to determine the reasons for the high student failure. It appears as if there are academic and social factors which affect learning. One factor that has only recently been investigated is the learning strategies of the student. Learning strategies entail the way in which a student plans and executes his studies, and the processes that are involved in this activity. This study was undertaken to determine whether a difference exists between the learning strategies of a first year student who has supportive family relations versus a first year student who has unsupportive family relations. This study consists of two parts. A literature study constitutes the first part. in which the concepts family relations and learning strategies' are correlated. This is followed by an empirical study on the relationships of students with supportive family relations and students with unsupportive fami7y re7ations and their use of learning strategies. To determine the degree to which the student experiences family support, the PHSF-Relations Questionnaire was used. The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) was used to determine the student's use of learning strategies. Two components of the PHSF-Relations Questionnaire namely Family Influences and Personal Freedom were studied to determine the degree of family support of the first year student. The empirical investigation made use of the first year students registered at the Rand Afrikaans University in 1990. These students were divided into groups according to sex, and language preference. The resultant groups were: Afrikaans speaking males and females and males and females speaking other languages. The- statistical analysis was done by the Statistics Computer Service. It was empirically shown that: There are significant differences between the use of learning strategies by first year students with supportive family relations versus first year students with unsupportive family relations in most of the cases. Concerning the component Family Influences, no significant difference was found between first year males speaking languages other than Afrikaans with supportive family influences and those with unsupportive family influences. Concerning the component Personal Freedom, no significant difference was found between first year Afrikaans speaking malestudents and first year female students with home languages other than Afrikaans. Motivation, Selection of main ideas and Test strategies are the components of the use of learning strategies that are most dependent on supportive family relations. Certain components of learning strategies are not significantly dependent on the degree of family support of the student, for example : Study Aids and Information Processing.

M. Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The aim of this study is to investigate some aspects of the validity of the LASSI as a gauge of the learning strategies of first year students, specifically those at the Rand Afrikaans Univeristy. This study consists of two parts. Firstly, a literature survey to provide an educational and psychological framework and to indicate the cohesion between learning strategies and related concepts, as well as to demonstrate the important role of validity pertaining to valid measurement of the learning strategies of a student. Secondly an empirical, statistical and quantitative evaluation was used to depict the content and construct validity as important priorities in the design or the LASSI as a gauge of the learning strategies of the students mentioned.