Evaluating ‘Study Skills’: What’s the context?

Pilcher, Nick; Richards, Kendall

Abstract

Study Skills in any guise are integral to Higher Education worldwide, existing to help student success. Some argue generic or bolt-on Study Skills do not help with success, others that embedded Study Skills do, but no-one advocates actually evaluating Study Skills in a context of success defined as helping with student educational gain and attainment in their specific subjects. Instead, many evaluate them in arguably inappropriate contexts of a silo or bubble of Study Skills such as attendance or perceived improvements in Study Skills. Indeed, when Study Skills are found effective for success, they are often embedded or delivered in the subject context, but it is not suggested they actually be evaluated in that context. We outline what we consider to be inappropriate contexts for evaluation, and appropriate ones, and outline theory from thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin regarding the key role of context and discuss key issues of definitions, silos, and decontextualised metrics. We suggest Study Skills be evaluated by asking: ‘What’s the context? to make them effective in helping aim for student success. We suggest ways to do this, such as through student module evaluations, module reports, or objective student analysis by a third party.

Citation

Pilcher, N., & Richards, K. (online). Evaluating ‘Study Skills’: What’s the context?. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2025.2506170

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 12, 2025
• Online Publication Date: May 31, 2025
• Deposit Date: Mar 20, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: May 31, 2025
• Journal: Research in Post-compulsory Education
• Print ISSN: 1359-6748
• Electronic ISSN: 1747-5112
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2025.2506170
• Keywords: Study Skills, Impact, Evaluation, context
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/4180512