Orientations to learning in mid-career management students

This article identifies the orientations to learning of a group of mature students, all practising managers, who were on part-time postgraduate management courses. The orientations to learning approach provided an effective framework for gaining insights into the complexities of learner motivations and how these influence learning behaviour. A social cognitive framework was used to analyse the processes by which orientations to learning develop, and this enabled a systematic investigation to be carried out of the meanings that managers made of their management education experience, as well as the significance that the learning outcomes from courses assumed in their professional and personal lives. The typology of orientations to learning reported here differs significantly from those found in earlier studies and provides some basis for a consideration of the elements which appear to be common to different sectors of the student population and those which are specific to a particular set of student characteristics. The findings also begin to establish a link between orientations to learning and different learning outcomes.