Abstract: Students’ learning concepts, i.e., epistemological beliefs about learning from emic perspective, have resulted from their intuition about learning phenomena and the experience. In the late 20^th century, Chinese American Professor Jin Li conducted systematic research on structural differences between Western and East Asian learning concept models, using adult college students as subjects and Word Association Tests. She concluded that Western way of learning emphasizes on “Mind Orientation” while Chinese or Asian learning model focuses on “Virtue Orientation”. We examined the development of learning concepts among Chinese students ranging from first graders of primary school to college juniors, with some amendments to Li’s methods. The result shows that Chinese learning concepts evolve with age from “Virtue Only Model” to “Virtue and Mind Model”. This is because virtue-oriented learning tradition is deeply rooted in today’s Chinese students, but global cultural integration and modern education system have also brought about increasing element of mind model. For the foreseeable future, the gap between Virtue and Mind models is sure to be narrowed and even eliminated. And the ideal education vision of learning model should pay balanced attention to both virtue and mind.

Key words: learning concepts, virtue orientation, mind orientation