Intellectual Environment and Academic Achievement at Tertiary Level

Abstract

In the search for determinants of academic success at University, many attempts to determine the effects of intellectual, social and physical environment on achievement in education have been hampered by the lack of theoretical framework, inadequate experimental design or analysis, and invalid measures of environment and achievement. The study reported in this paper, conducted with Physics students at university, attempts to overcome each of these problems. This has entailed the development of new measures of intellectual environment, the adaption of models of interaction and learning to the University situation, and the use of an unusual research design.

Two major hypotheses are tested, one related to the impact on achievement of staff/student congruence in student goal orientation, the other to the impact of congruence in staff role orientation. Data supported the first but not the second hypothesis in all groups of students.