Abstract

This article presents the results of a descriptive study of students learning from text. It describes the strategies reported by students during a period of individual work in which they were reading to develop knowledge pertaining to their area of professional training. The results indicate that the strategies used frequently by the majority of subjects were: (1) in reading strategies, the modalities of dealing with the text (partial reading of a chapter); (2) in encoding strategies, re-reading the text in order to retain the information and note taking; (3) in self- regulated strategies, the planning of the work, the evaluation of the reading and the text and the management of changing from one text to another; and (4) in resources management strategies, reading in the principal textbook of the domain and working in the morning. These most frequently used strategies are not sufficient to have effective learning as identify in the conceptual framework on learning from text. However, a more detailed analysis of the strategies used with less frequency during the week reveals nuances in these results. The conclusions stress the importance of selecting activities which require students to use effective strategies more frequently, of teaching them such strategies, and of further developing the field of study of learning from text.