The Question about Learning (QaL) has been created with the intention to identify learning and motivational difficulties in vocational education and training. The aim is to present the QaL and its theoretical model. This model presupposes that academic performance depends on various variables, like metacognition, strategic behaviour and motivation. The instrument has been assessed on 590 vocational students in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The students are engaged in a 3-years training or in 2-years initial training. Our final aim is to create an instrument that permits to identify difficulties in learning and motivation on vocational students in a 2-years initial training. The presentation will focus on the validation of the theoretical model that is based on metacognition and motivation.  Secondly, we are interested in comparing 3-years and 2-years training, to identify if the QaL permit to distinguish between these training. Finally, a syndrome or classes analysis is presented. The results will be presented and various interpretations will be discussed.

The QaL consists of 83 questions that the student answers individually on a 4-level Likert scale. The QaL has been developed on the basis of a functional model of self-controlled learning in a vocational education and training (VET) setting (Büchel, 1990), and has been applied during the last ten years by a big number of VET students. Theoretical considerations and empirical validation studies (Büchel et al, 2002) resulted in a first revision of the theoretical model and the reformulation of several questions. The model consists of two main parts: the motivation and the metacognition part. The new model postulates the following effects:

Academic performance depends on strategic behavior (Borkowski & Kurtz, 1987) and the knowledge basis. The latter consists of world knowledge, basic knowledge schemata as postulated by Piagetian theory, and metacognitive experiences (Efklides, 2001). Strategic behavior consists of the application of learning strategies managed by executive functions (anticipation, planning, and control). The latter depends on metacognitive knowledge. The student will be engaged in executive functions if he or she has developed a clear definition of the task. On the other hand, the individual definition of the task depends on the student's motivational state. In the QaL the following motivational variables have been included: Self-efficacy, action control, mastery goals and work avoidance goals. The motivational state of the student depends on some social conditions, e.g. parent's attitude against school, student's dependence on special interests, and student's dependence on the social environment.

As Pintrich et al. (2000) stated, "there seem to be more factors or components predicted by theory than supported by the data generated from the empirical studies of the instrument" (p.63). Taking into account this general experience in the construction of measurement instruments, we decided to undertake a statistical analysis of the validity of the QaL model.

The goals of the study are to:

-        Validate the QaL in order to select the items revealing learning difficulties and to establish norms for first year vocational students in three-year and two-year initial training.

-        Compare students in the different kind of training (elementary training, two-year initial training and classical three-year initial training).

-        Describe some kind of syndromes or classes of students.

The sample is constituted of 590 vocational students aged 15 years and more. 59% (348 students) are men, 27.1% (160 students) are women and 13.9% (82 students) missing. Their nationality is Swiss for 51.4% (303 students) and non-Swiss for 33.6% of them (198 students).

We employed the robust Weighted Least Square (robust WLS) method that is based on this kind of correlations to estimate parameters in exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. This method is more appropriate for our study than Maximum Likelihood, generally employed. So we used M+ (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2006) in order to analyze the factorial structures because this statistical package proposes the robust WLS method. Moreover, to compare the different kind of formations (elementary formation, two-year initial formation and classical three-year initial formation), we will apply multiple regression analysis. Finally, to describe some kind of syndromes or classes of students, clusters analyses are carried out.

Statistical analyses of the data are actually in progress. Some of the subscales are rather well confirmed, others have to be revised. Most important, the distinction between executive functions and learning strategies could not been confirmed until now. Final results will be presented.

Importance of the research:

The importance of the research is that on the theoretical level, this research will contribute to clarify the relation between metacognition and motivation as well as to better understand the internal structure of metacognition. On the practical level, the QaL will be applied for two different goals: 1. In Switzerland, the new law (2002) concerning vocational education and training states that vocational students with important learning problems can undertake a 2-year training instead of the 3-4 year training. The transfer to the 2-year training has to be motivated by a psycho-educational examination. The QaL should allow teachers to contribute to this examination; 2. the QaL should also guide the teacher when he or she speaks to students about their learning problems.

References

Borkowski, J.G. & Kurtz, B.E. (1987) Metacognition and executive control. In: J.G. Borkowski & J. Day (Eds.) Cognition in special children (pp. 123.152). Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

Büchel, F.P. (1990). Konzeptentwurf für eine systematische Weiterbildung zum Erteilen von Stützunterricht in der beruflichen Ausbildung. Unveröffentlichter Bericht zuhanden des Amtes für Berufsbildung des Kantons Bern.

Büchel, F., Grassi, A., Scharnhorst, U., & Ghilardi, M. (2002). Die Evaluation des DELV-Programmes bei Schülerinnen und Schülern in der beruflichen Ausbildung. SIBP Schriftenreihe Nummer 16. Zollikofen,BE: Schweizerisches Institut für Berufspädagogik.

Efklides, A. (2001). Metacognitive experiences in problem solving. In A. Efklides, J. Kuhl, & R.M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Trends and prospects in motivation research (pp. 297-323). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Flora, D. B., & Curran, P. J. (2004). An empirical evaluation of alternative methods of estimation for confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data. Psychological Methods, 9(4), 466-491.

Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (1998-2006). Mplus User's Guide. Fourth Edition. Los Angeles, CA: Muthén & Muthén.