Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Psychology)
There is a growing concern for the high drop-out and failure rate of university students in their first year. Numerous studies have been undertaken to determine the reasons for the high student failure. It appears as if there are academic and social factors which affect learning. One factor that has only recently been investigated is the
learning strategies of the student. Learning strategies entail the way in which a student plans and executes his studies, and the processes that are involved in this activity.
This study was undertaken to determine whether a difference exists between the learning strategies of a first year student who has supportive family relations versus a first year student who has unsupportive family relations. This study consists of two parts. A literature study constitutes the first part. in which the concepts family relations and learning strategies' are correlated. This is followed by an empirical study on
the relationships of students with supportive family relations and students with unsupportive fami7y re7ations and their use of learning strategies. To determine the degree to which the student experiences family support, the PHSF-Relations Questionnaire was used. The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) was used to determine the student's use of learning strategies. Two components of the PHSF-Relations Questionnaire namely Family Influences and Personal Freedom were studied to determine the degree of family support of the first year student. The empirical investigation made use of the first year students registered at the Rand Afrikaans University in 1990. These students were divided into groups according to sex, and language preference. The resultant groups were: Afrikaans speaking males and females and males and females speaking other languages. The- statistical analysis was done by the Statistics Computer Service. It was empirically shown that:
There are significant differences between the use of learning strategies by first year students with supportive family relations versus first year students with unsupportive family relations in most of the cases. Concerning the component Family Influences, no significant difference was found between first year males speaking languages other than Afrikaans with supportive family influences and those with unsupportive family influences. Concerning the component Personal Freedom, no significant difference was found between first year Afrikaans speaking malestudents and first year female students with home languages other than Afrikaans. Motivation, Selection of main ideas and Test strategies are the components of the use of learning strategies that are most dependent on supportive family relations. Certain components of learning strategies are not significantly dependent on the degree of family support of the student, for example : Study Aids and Information Processing.