This research was undertaken to clarify the nature of barriers to persistence in natural
resource sciences distance education at the tertiary level in order that participation through to
completion may be improved. Its aim was to provide insights and theoretical concepts useful
in clarifying distance education access as a whole, while also providing understandings
helpful in improving education and communication initiatives concerning sustainable
development and the environment.
Ethnography was used to illuminate the declarative and tacit understandings of
withdrawal and persisting students. Ethnographic interpretations of student understandings
were complemented by demographic and other data collected through questionnaires and the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a psychological survey instrument.
Statistical analysis of quantitative data yielded predictive relationships that accounted
for 24-39% of the variability in student withdrawal/persistence. However, many variables
defy meaningful measurement and quantitative analysis. Overall results suggest that student
withdrawal is related to a set of complex multivariables that act additively and interactively
in numerous context-dependent ways to result in a dropout decision that is almost
idiosyncratic in nature. Nonetheless, important common barriers to persistence are evident.
Both withdrawal and persisting students experienced situational, institutional,
dispositional and epistemological problems that acted as barriers. A number are relatively
unique to second chance learners, who are effectively disadvantaged. Many of the problems
students experienced reflect the social contradiction between their roles as students and their
roles as mature adults.
The newly elucidated cluster of potential barriers to student persistence termed
epistemological problems are the result of incongruency between the student's cognitive and
affective perceptions of knowledge, and the nature of the knowledge presented in the
courses. Although the courses mainly present hard, applied knowledge with a generally
positivistic, empirical viewpoint, they also demand high levels of integration and inference.
as well as abstract and relativistic thinking. A number of students found the courses' diverse
epistemological stances problematic: some thought the content too scientific and technical; a
few found it too abstract and ambiguous. Some were challenged by demanding prerequisite
knowledge requirements. Still others found it difficult, in the absence of face-to-face
interaction with instructors and peers, to make the epistemological shift from learning by rote
to higher level thinking.
It was concluded that more facilitative instructional design and student support are
needed. Distance education persistence could be enhanced by providing students with all the
resources and support they need in order to exercise personal control over their learning. A
dialogic construct reflecting empathetic response to the views, values, frames of reference
and varying dependency states of individual adult learners is suggested.
Elucidation of the epistemological problems also provides understandings useful in
general improvement of natural resource management education and communication
initiatives. Because the highly structured, technical and specific nature of the disciplinary
content and the dense formal jargon of the disciplinary discourse in themselves impede
effective communication, it appears that natural resource scientists could more effectively
share their knowledge if they simplified it, assumed no prior understandings, and helped
people learn by informally and subjectively putting it in a more holistic context for them,
including making inferences to application and implication. / Science, Faculty of / Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/2978 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Garland, Maureen R. |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 17012553 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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