Going Deeper than Deep and Surface Approaches: A study of students' perceptions of time

This paper supports Paul Ramsden's call to look beyond students' approaches to learning towards their perceptions of the educational context. However, we argue that Rams den's suggestions for an analysis of student perceptions are somewhat limited, and present an method which is more qualitatively and linguistically grounded. In the present study, this method was used to analyse students' perceptions of time in a second year chemical engineering course. Regardless of approach to learning, all students displayed two distinct ways of talking about time, one reflecting a perception of 'being in control' and the other a perception of 'being out of control' of time. Where students using a conceptual approach differed to the others was in the way they used perceptions of 'being in control', specifically in the way they chose to allocate time. For those not using a conceptual approach, the highly time-pressured environment seemed to militate against the adoption of a conceptual approach.