The instrumental student: A changing problem?

Our interest in this issue was aroused by anecdotal evidence that students were becoming more 'instrumental' in their approaches to study. This paper describes the results of a survey of academic staff at the University of Canterbury, which asked them to indicate how prevalent a number of given behaviours were amongst their students - behaviours which may be related to an instrumental approach to study - and how concerned they were about such behaviours. We also asked them if they thought these behaviours had increased and, if so, whether there was anything the University could do to counteract this trend.

The results of our survey show that the student behaviours (or misbehaviours!) most frequently reported were: not doing extra reading or other non-assessed work; not preparing for tutorials; wanting to be told in detail what will be in a test or exam; not attending lectures on material which will not be assessed (or when assessment can be avoided); wanting full lecture notes to be supplied (by the lecturer). Three quarters of our sample of staff had taught at the University for at least five years and of these two thirds thought there had been an increase in these types of behaviours among students over that period.

In this paper, we discuss the findings of our study and the various uses of the term instrumentalism in education. We also speculate about the relationship between instrumentalist approaches to learning and the changing learning context of the University and society at large.