Decreasing enrolment in IT programs suggests it is important to understand how students learn a discipline in order to support student success. This paper describes a study to examine student attitude to learning in the IT discipline of Engineering (ie Software Engineering). The Approaches to Study Inventory was applied to successive cohorts of students. The results describe a level of orientation (meaning or reproduction) for each participant and the cohort as a whole. However, examination of the subscales of the ASI indicate that the level of coherence in study approach exhibited by individual students is somewhat masked in their overall ASI result. Student reflective comments support the interpretations made of the subscale scores. The results suggest such a deconstruction enables teachers to assist students to know themselves as learners, thus raising their metalearning awareness, which, in turn has the potential to enhance student success
