Browsing by Author "Koivuneva, Katri"

One of the central tasks of universities is the education of doctoral candidates. Doctoral student motivations for attending university and approaches to learning is one way to examine the reasons for attending doctoral studies and how to approach research work. Student motivations for attending university and approaches to learning have previously been widely studied among students in tertiary education (eg. Côté ja Levine, 1997; Entwistle, McCune, & Hounsell, 2003; Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Marton, Hounsell, & Entwistle, 1984; Marton & Säljö, 1976; Parpala, Lindblom-Ylänne, Komulainen, Litmanen, & Hirsto, 2010; Hailikari, Tuononen & Parpala, 2016), but parts of these phenomena are lacking research in doctoral education (eg. Pyhältö, Peltonen, Castelló & McCune, 2019; Stubb, Pyhältö & Lonka, 2012; 2014; Deem & Brehoney, 2010; Litalien, Guay & Morin, 2015) and when viewing them simultaneously, there´s no previous research. Purpose of this study was to find out whether there´s to be found the same dimensions of student motivations for attending university and approaches to learning than in tertiary education. Furthermore, the interest was to find if motivations for attending university and approaches to learning differ by doctoral school or the length of the studies. Adding to that, student motivations for attending university were grouped by profiles in approaches to learning. Research material was conducted as part of a larger research project HowULearnPhD. Participants were randomly selected. 415 PhD candidates in University of Helsinki answered the questionnaire. This study showed that similar profiles in approaches to learning were to be found among PhD students that have been found in earlier research. Differences in student motivations for attending university and approaches to learning were found using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) both by doctoral school and length of the studies. PhD candidates of doctoral school in humanities and social sciences reported highest values in self-development motivation and deep approaches to learning. PhD candidates participating doctoral school in environmental, food and biological sciences reported lowest values in self-development motivation. Lowest values in deep approach to learning was to be found among natural sciences. PhD candidates who had completed the first year of their studies reported highest values in self-development motivation and lowest in default motivation. PhD candidates who had been doing their dissertation over six years reported highest values in default motivation and lowest in self-development motivation. All motivations for attending university and approaches to learning correlated significantly. In the future, more research about student motivation for attending university and approaches to learning and how they are related to PhD studies will be needed.