Students’ Approaches to Learning in Agricultural Higher Education

Abstract

An Expost facto research design was adopted to understand the learning approaches of agricultural students (deep, strategic, and surface) and the data were collected randomly from 1514 students of Indian agricultural higher education institutions using the ‘Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST)’ instrument. The predominant learning approach adopted by the agricultural students was found to be ‘strategic’ (41.1%), followed by ‘deep’ (40.3 %) and ‘surface’ (15.5 %) approaches. No significant association (Chi-square statistic = 24.106, p=0.156) was found in the student learning approaches across the disciplines, while significant difference (t-statistic=2.248, p=0.028) was found between graduate and undergraduate students in case of ‘deep approach’. Gender had a significant association (Chi-square statistic =14.817, p<0.001) with the students’ learning approaches, especially in ‘strategic’ and ‘surface’ approaches. The paper calls for more systematic and effective teaching-learning and assessment strategies to enhance agricultural higher education quality.