Student approaches to achieving understanding - approaches to learning revisited

This article presents a phenomenographic study that investigates students' approaches to achieving understanding. The results are based on interviews, addressing physiological phenomena, with 16 medical students in a problem- based curriculum. Four approaches - sifting, building, holding and moving - are outlined. The holding and moving approaches describe variations in deep- level processing. The moving approach is characterised by an intention to continuously refine understanding in an open- ended process. The student strives for a change in perspective and deliberately creates actions that are rich in variation and challenge. The holding approach is characterised by an intention to reach a final goal. This is achieved by high degrees of structure and control in the learning act. Understanding is sometimes sealed, ` held on to' and can be threatened by new input and other students' viewpoints. The study also shows how students deal with details when constructing understanding of wholes.