Levels of understanding and the personal acceptance of information in higher education

Summary

A distinction is drawn between students' ability to understand information, and their personal acceptance and valuing of that information. Recent research has identified certain motivational orientations and approaches to learning geared relatively more to understanding, or to reproducing information without understanding. The results of a small-scale ‘illuminative˚s-type study are used to suggest that students may also differ in their levels of acceptance and valuing of information. Possible links are hypothesised, for future research, between understanding information on the one hand and accepting and valuing it on the other. Implications of relatively qualitative and quantitative research methodologies are briefly discussed.