Entwistle Critical Reflection

There is the analogous relation between the two major approaches to learning and reflective thinking practice (Leung & Kember, 2003; Phan, 2007).This intertwined relationship is, again, pivotal to the cultivation and encouragement of quality learning in higher education contexts. Pedagogical strategies and learning objectives that entail complexities in this sense stimulate intellectual curiosity and positive perceptions of task value, facilitating in this process engagement of meaningful learning and deep learning strategies (Kember et al., 2000).

In this study, students’ learning is key aspects of investigation in understanding quality in students’ learning. Especially from a phenomenographic perspective, how students approach learning is a key issue in examining qualitative

The relevance to the dimension of quality is that it is possible to identify the features of courses that foster a surface or deep approach (Entwistle, 2000). In addition, learning is argued as an activity that combines the aspects of ‘what’ and ‘how’ and, most importantly, how the two aspects are integrated during the learning process. The ‘what’ aspect concerns the activity of learning, and the ‘how’ aspect concerns the structure of a learning task (how learning is done). How the two aspects are merged inform whether students employ a deep approach or a surface approach to learning (Ramsden, 2003). Thus, if learning is focused on the content, e.g. when a text in itself is the object of learning, and the learning task is approached by organizing it into smaller separate parts, a surface approach to learning is adopted. By contrast, if learning is focused on the content, extraction of meaning is the object of learning, and the learning task is approached or managed as a whole, a deep approach to learning is