The study strategy–performance function among students in three Teachers’ Colleges in Masvingo and Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article summarises the results of a relatively large study that investigated the study strategy – performance function among college students. The study employed the survey research design to gather data, using a questionnaire which was administered to 300 students (150 males and 150 females) randomly selected from three Teachers’ Colleges. The study basically assumed that college students use different study strategies and that these study strategies are significantly related to gender, type of college (private or government) and learning outcome. A Two-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted to explore the interaction between study strategy, gender, type of college and learning outcome. The study found that while college students use both deep and surface study strategies, there were more deep strategy users than surface strategy users in the sample. A significant relationship between study strategy and learning outcome was observed. Gender was not significantly related to both study strategy and learning outcome. While type of college was significantly related to learning outcome, it was not significantly related to study strategy. The study made recommendations for educational practice, chiefly that students should be helped to develop and use effective and task-appropriate study strategies.