SALing the OCEAN Blue: A Systematic Literature Review of Student Approaches to Learning and Big Five Personality Traits
Standing
Undergraduate
Type of Proposal
Oral Research Presentation
Challenges Theme
Open Challenge
Your Location
Psychology
Faculty
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty Sponsor
Brandon Sabourin
Proposal
Keywords: personality; approaches to learning; educational psychology; Big Five; R-SPQ-2F
Student approaches to learning (SAL) are a measure of a student’s perception of the learning environment (Biggs et al., 2001). Meanwhile in personality psychology, the Big Five personality traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) have been used extensively to characterize trends in human behavior (Costa & McRae, 1992). These two complementary measures can tell us a lot about a student, but together, are underexplored.
The purpose of our research is to understand the relationships between student approaches to learning and the Big Five personality traits. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) using keyword database searches of ProQuest and APA Psycnet, which after applying specific criteria, led to a pool of 26 studies for analysis. We tracked the relationships between SAL and Big Five in each of the 26 studies. We identified that openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness were significantly positively correlated with the deep approach, while neuroticism was significantly positively correlated with the surface approach. Conversely, neuroticism was significantly negatively correlated with the deep approach, and openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were significantly negatively correlated with the surface approach. In short, students may be partially drawn to a specific approach based on their personality.
This project fits the open challenge because it looks beyond specific designated groups of learners. SAL and Big Five are theories that affect human behavior beyond the context of the other grand challenges. We see this work as interdisciplinary and of importance to anyone interested in knowing more about how students approach their learning.
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SALing the OCEAN Blue: A Systematic Literature Review of Student Approaches to Learning and Big Five Personality Traits
Keywords: personality; approaches to learning; educational psychology; Big Five; R-SPQ-2F
Student approaches to learning (SAL) are a measure of a student’s perception of the learning environment (Biggs et al., 2001). Meanwhile in personality psychology, the Big Five personality traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) have been used extensively to characterize trends in human behavior (Costa & McRae, 1992). These two complementary measures can tell us a lot about a student, but together, are underexplored.
The purpose of our research is to understand the relationships between student approaches to learning and the Big Five personality traits. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) using keyword database searches of ProQuest and APA Psycnet, which after applying specific criteria, led to a pool of 26 studies for analysis. We tracked the relationships between SAL and Big Five in each of the 26 studies. We identified that openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness were significantly positively correlated with the deep approach, while neuroticism was significantly positively correlated with the surface approach. Conversely, neuroticism was significantly negatively correlated with the deep approach, and openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were significantly negatively correlated with the surface approach. In short, students may be partially drawn to a specific approach based on their personality.
This project fits the open challenge because it looks beyond specific designated groups of learners. SAL and Big Five are theories that affect human behavior beyond the context of the other grand challenges. We see this work as interdisciplinary and of importance to anyone interested in knowing more about how students approach their learning.