Abstract
This study was conducted with 1,014 higher education Portuguese students. We intend to reanalyze the Conceptions of Learning Inventory (COLI) to assess the students’ conceptions of learning. Using the same methodology as the adaptation study for the Portuguese population the results indicated a different structure in comparison to the one found in the original. We didn’t find the conception of learning as a duty or as process not limited by time or context. The conception of learning as remembering, using and understanding information was distributed by two factors, which are now designated remembering information and understand, use and apply the information. The analysis taking into account the variables (institution, scientific field, year of attendance and gender) showed that there are statistically significant differences when considering the institutions, the scientific area and the gender but not when considering the year of attendance, which goes against some studies that stated that the learning concepts do not necessarily have a developmental hierarchy.
Conceptions of learning; COLI; Higher Education