Student learning orientations : are there differences between age and gender?

The increasing diversity and mobility of students have challenged universities, world over, to review educational courses and delivery to provide a more satisfying learning environment to students. The continuous improvement of the 'quality' of teaching and learning is one of the key goals of universities endeavouring to fulfil their obligations as learning institutions. Using a revised SPQ2F instrument (Biggs, 2003, Biggs and Leung, 2001), this exploratory study undertakes a comparative analysis of the age and gender differences in the learning orientations of two groups of tertiary students in an Australian University. The results indicate that there are no significant differences in the learning orientations of students but on average they seem to demonstrate deep learning than surface learning although they may differ in terms of the learning contexts.<br />