Abstract:

Nowadays the requirements in many fields of work change so much that the knowledge acquired at school or university is not sufficient in many careers. Thus a person to be successful in his/her career needs a regular update of knowledge and competencies useful for his/her work. Life-long learning needs a deep approach to learning, i.e. acquiring knowledge trough developing thinking skills and constructing meaningful knowledge. Deep learning strategies are critical reading, searching for arguments, establishing links between different notion or theories. In the opposite, surface learning using learning strategies related with repetition and memorization. The pupils' learning approaches have a significant impact on the success of the educational experience, and a mismatch between the teaching methods and the learning approach is very likely to create a learning obstacle.

The purpose of this paper is to present a research on primary school pupils approaches to learning. The research tool was the self-regulated learning questionnaire developed by Bacsa (2012), which contains affirmations measured on a 5-level Likert scale. 14 items which refer to the approach to learning were selected and analyzed.

The results show that: The superficial approach to learning was mostly preferred among primary school pupils. This fact is important to know for teachers, because these results can be useful in creating future teaching, learning and assessment strategies aimed at improving a deep learning approach among primary school students.

Keywords:

Self-regulated learning, primary school, approach learning, superficial learning, deep learning.