Socioeconomic status or the teaching and learning environment: which is more important for adopting deep and organized study approaches to learning?
基于智利两批大一学生数据，研究发现教与学环境比社会经济背景更能解释学生采用深层和有条理的学习方法，对设计促进多元学生成功的教育环境有启示。
Prior research has focused on the associations between approaches to learning and the teaching and learning environment. Less attention has been paid to the relationship between students’ socioeconomic background and their academic performance. However, this is essential to understand in unequal societies such as Chile, where students’ socioeconomic background may influence their higher education experiences. In the present study, two multi-institutional samples of 2,316 (2021) and 2,744 (2024) first-year students were employed to investigate whether socioeconomic status or the quality of the teaching and learning environment is the most significant factor in explaining the adopted approaches to learning. Our quantitative analytical approach combined confirmatory factor analysis and linear regression. The findings suggest that the teaching and learning environment is a more significant factor than the socioeconomic background in elucidating students’ approaches to learning. Particularly, positive perceptions of teaching-student interaction, constructive alignment, appropriate assessment, and peer support are key to explaining the adoption of deep and organized study approaches. These results provide evidence of the pivotal role that higher education institutions play in designing learning environments that promote the success of a more diverse student population. In turn, they may contribute to dismantling the deficit discourse that often arises in higher education systems when the student population diversifies.