Students' Perceptions of their Learning Environments

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, University of Veracruz (Facultad de Idiomas), course: Proyecto Terminal de Aplicación Innovadora del Conocimiento, language: English, abstract: This study is the first step of an action research which seeks to make a theoretical contribution to the literature regarding university students' perceptions of their learning environment and the influence of this on their learning approaches and outcomes. The first chapter sets this study in the context where it is applied. It explains the characteristics of the institution and the role of this into society. Furthermore, this chapter introduces the question that is the basis of this first step of action research in the value of students' perceptions of their learning environment and the objectives of this work are established. The second chapter provides a review of the background regarding to the relation between learning environment and students' perceptions about this. Furthermore, it summarizes other studies before the present one and details the study on which this is based on.The third chapter describes the methodology used for this study and the reasoning for this method; the type of study, context and procedures for choosing the participants who helped to complete this research; the data collection instruments which are the Course Experienced Questionnaire used in previous studies and a semi-structured interview and the data collection procedures and analysis for both instruments. The fourth chapter presents the findings organised by the information collected by both instruments described before during the period of time when this study was performed. It presents findings emitted by the questionnaire and the interview. Over the course of this study, students' responses to the questionnaire were analysed, their voices were listened to in an interview, the results and comments were compared and classified. T