The relationship between academic performance and the learning strategies used by Physiotherapy students at University of Vigo

Resumo

Background. The learning strategies (LS) used by university students nowadays could mean different process of acquisition and elaboration of the knowledge. Some authors suggest that metacognitive skills could directly influence academic performance. The objective of this study was to establish the possible relationship between the amount of LS adopted by Physiotherapy students and their academic performance. Method. The abridged-ACRA questionnaire for university students was used (Arias & Justicia, 2003). The study was carried out in the academic year of 2010-2011 with students from second, third and fourth academic years of Physiotherapy graduation studies (a sample of 72 students with an average age of 20.86, and 69.4% of them were women), and the academic performance was considered the average performance qualification (0-4) considering every finished courses included in the graduation until the moment of the completion of the tool. Results. It was observed the extensive use of LS in every four aspects of the studying (> 60%). The most used LS by the total students were those related to the acquisition of the information (82.48%). There was not observed a lineal correlation between ACRA scores achieved and academic performance (r Spearman = ,204). Conclusion. Physiotherapy students with high scores in ACRA instrument not necessarily present a higher academic performance qualification, something that could suggest that academic performance could be influenced by other variables and not only the used LS.