An Analysis of University Students' Perceptional Change through Course Learning and a Suggestion to Academic Writing Education in Undergraduate Curriculum

Abstract

Academic writing education in Japan had remained informal until recently. The topic has recently been discussed and investigated in relation to improving Japanese university education and more and more universities have started offering academic writing courses. However, there may be some concern about this trend, because it has overlooked the important role of academic writing in students' holistic development. Academic wiring should not be regarded as an only matter of writing and thinking ability. Psychological research can contribute to this debate by providing an empirical analysis of how students actually write during their university learning. Therefore, how weekly papers, written by students after a history class learning Southeast Asian history, had changed during a semester was analyzed in this research. The results showed that there was a gap between students' attainment of the learning goal of the class and their critical thinking attitudes. This result implied that present trend of the reform of undergraduate education, which stress on the learning of generic skills, may leads to an incorrect evaluation of students' learning.