Thinking while studying: A process tracing study of distance learners

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Abstract
Significant progress has been made in understanding the study orientations of tertiary learners, their processing styles and strategies, and the links between learning approaches and outcomes. Break‐throughs in this area have resulted mainly from research into students' self‐perceptions about how they study. What is not clear is whether, in actual study sessions, students do what they say they do. In other words, the extent to which mere is congruence between their espoused theories about how they study and their theories‐in‐use is not known. In fact, very little is known at all about the actual thought processes of students during study sessions. This paper reports an attempt to trace the moment‐by‐moment thinking of 17 tertiary students as they interact with textual materials in private study settings. All students were enrolled in undergraduate programmes offered in the distance education mode.