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78 CHAPTER 3improving your note taking, you may avoid learning a new skill, give
up easily when things get tough, and conclude that you cannot change
that particular aspect of your academic behavior. However, if you put
in the effort and experience success, your perception about your abil-
ity to master the skill will change.I Don’t Want to Change
I have found that most students identify this category for why they
don’t change their academic behavior. Let’s look at some of the fac-
tors that contribute to this belief (Isaacson, 2002). First, students may
have a high sense of self-efficacy in their abilities and the effectiveness
of their existing study strategies. They tell themselves, “After all, I got
through high school and was accepted into college!” This response is
a reasonable approach to one’s academic work and can lead to suc-
cess for some students. There are, however, students who do not
understand the difference in the required study skills between high
school and college, and fail to realize what awaits them down the
road. In fact, many of these students have such high self-efficacy that
they are overconfident in their abilities. These students demonstrate
displeasure when faced with a requirement to take a learning strate-
gies course because it conflicts with their perception of the level of
skills they possess for academic studies: Did you take this class as an
elective or were you required to take it?
Students can demonstrate passive or active resistance in class. How
would you analyze the behavior of the following student?I dislike this learning strategies class and I know that this
is no reason for me to do poorly in the course. However, I
still think my study strategies are as good as the ones that
are discussed in class. Therefore, I do not see any reason for
me to change.Why does this student behave the way she does, considering the fact
that she is not doing well in class? Why do some students persist in
the same behavior in college even though they know their strategies
don’t work for them? Is this a way to protect their self-worth? Are
they concerned that they may not be able to learn or apply the new
study and learning strategies?
Many students have experienced an academic background consist-
ing of teacher-controlled learning (i.e., the instructor tells one what to
learn, how to learn, and when to learn) and lower-level learning (i.e.,
studying factual learning—who, what, when, and where) with limited
exposure to the academic demands that require persistence in the face
of difficulty and failure. Thus, students are not accustomed to direct-