Students’ learning behaviours and their perception about quality of learning experience: the mediating role of psychological safety

ABSTRACT

Experiential learning is considered important to develop managerial skills. Several archetypes are developed to facilitate learning, and various outcomes of experiential learning have been studied by organizational scholars. In an effort to contribute to the literature about learning, this research pursues (1) to examine the effect of students’ learning behaviours on their perception about the quality of learning experience in business education, (2) to examine the mediating role of psychological safety between learning behaviours and students’ perception about quality of their learning experience. Based on Kolb’s experiential-learning theory and Mezirow’s transformational learning theory this research used a cross-sectional design. Data were collected from 208 students studying in the final semester of their master degree program. Initially, the use of confirmatory factor analysis helped in assessing the validity of the scales in this research context. Later on, hypothesized relationships were tested through structural equation modelling (SEM). Results revealed significant positive impact of critical reflection, student-to-student interactions, and instructor-to-student interactions on students’ perceptions about the quality of learning experience. Moreover, psychological safety was found to mediate the relationship between learning behaviours and students’ perceptions about quality of learning experience. Practical implications for management educators have also been discussed in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Experiential learning
• critical reflection
• student-to-student interactions
• instructor-to-student interactions
• quality of learning experience
• psychological safety
• transformational learning

Disclosure statement

Authors declare that they don’t have any conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This is not a funded research.

Notes on contributors

Umer Ayub

Umer Ayub is Assistant Professor in the department of Management, School of Business & Economics (SBE) at University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore, Pakistan. His research interests include areas related to management innovation, human capital management, leadership and organizational behavior, transformative learning, and international business. Umer Ayub is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]

Naveed Yazdani

Naveed Yazdani is Associate Professor and Dean, School of Business & Economics (SBE) at University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore, Pakistan. He has skills and expertise in the areas of medicine, health care systems development, management consulting, corporate training, and OD consulting. His research interests include: qualitative and critical discourse of management in the context of different civilizations; Inter-disciplinary research encompassing management, and social and medical sciences.

Fizza Kanwal

Fizza Kanwal is lecturer in Lahore Business School (LBS) at the University of Lahore (UoL), Lahore. Ms. Kanwal's research interests include organizational Behavior, leadership, knowledge creation and sustainability. In this regard, she has published various articles in renowned journals including Scopus indexed journals.