What academic language and learning advisers bring to the scholarship of teaching and learning: problems and possibilities for dialogue with the disciplines

Higher education policy is seeking, in the interest of ‘quality assurance’, to reward teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Academic language and learning (ALL) advisers, who work closely with students to improve their performance in their courses of study, have much to contribute to SoTL. ALL advisers who adopt an ‘academic literacies’ approach share with lecturers in the disciplines an engagement with issues of ‘‐ography’ (i.e. writing in and for a discourse community)—including the relationships between epistemology, form, and language—yet, misconceptions about ALL advisers’ work can prevent discipline lecturers from consulting them when thinking about questions of teaching and learning in their own field. This paper discusses ALL advisers’ access to insights into students’ experiences of learning and of being taught, with relevance both for particular disciplines and for academic culture across the disciplines; their contributions to SoTL; the difficulties they encounter in trying to communicate across the borders of the disciplines; and ways of improving this situation in the context of the new emphasis on encouraging improvement in the quality of teaching.     

Academics’ experiences of understanding of their subject matter and the relationship of this to their experiences of teaching and learning

In this paper we focus on the issue of how academic staff experience the understanding of their subject matter and the relationship of this understanding to their experience of teaching. In recent years there has been a substantial amount of research into how academic staff conceive of teaching and learning, how they approach their teaching, and how their approaches to teaching relate to how their students approach their learning. In our present project this research is being extended by looking at the way 31 academics from four broad fields of study experience their understanding of their subject matter and how this relates to the way they experience their teaching. Using a phenomenographic approach we show that academics who experience their subject matter in atomistic and less integrated ways experience their teaching in more information transmission and teacher-focused ways, while those with a more integrated and holistic experience of understanding their subject experience their teaching in more conceptual change and student-focused ways.in final form: 9 September 2004     

The research-teaching nexus in nurse and teacher education: contributions of an ecological approach to academic identities in professional fields

In developing graduates for the knowledge society lecturers in higher education may seek to strengthen links between research and teaching. Much of the previous work on the research-teaching nexus is within traditional universities and subject disciplines. In aiming to deepen understanding of the research and teaching nexus this paper focuses on the academic identities of higher education lecturers working in newer higher education institutions and in the professional fields of nursing and of teacher education. A qualitative study, informed by professional identity construction as an ecological concept, was conducted. The findings align with previous studies concerning similarities between lecturers in nurse and teacher education, but they contrast with previous studies concerning differences between these two groups of lecturers. Similarities include the priority given by professional educators to their responsibility for preparing new clinical practitioners; the research-led model as the lecturers’ main approach to the research-teaching nexus; and their difficulties in coping with current demands in academic work. Differences between the two groups of lecturers include the way that ‘practitioner identity’ is positioned within their current academic identities and the way that they position initial education within the wider professional field. These differences indicate different kinds of connections between teaching and research. The paper proposes an ecological approach to understanding the research-teaching nexus.     

Power,pedagogies and lifelong learning: reading between the lines

The UK English subject benchmark statements express the discipline’s commitment to contribute to an ‘ideal of lifelong learning’. In this article, I consider what this commitment may mean for practice and explore why its attainment is complex and contentious. In doing so, I examine some of the ways in which lecturers’ professional identities are experienced and enacted in educational settings where students have their first introduction to higher education English Studies. I suggest that the pedagogic principles and practices which lecturers describe need to be seen as deeply embedded within networks of social and discipline-based discourses and social and institutional relations.     

Relations between teachers' approaches to teaching and students' approaches to learning

This paper reports on an empirical study which shows that qualitatively different approaches to teaching are associated with qualitatively different approaches to learning. More specifically, the results indicate that in the classes where teachers describe their approach to teaching as having a focus on what they do and on transmitting knowledge, students are more likely to report that they adopt a surface approach to the learning of that subject. Conversely, but less strongly, in the classes where students report adopting significantly deeper approaches to learning, teaching staff report adopting approaches to teaching that are more oriented towards students and to changing the students conceptions. The study made use of a teaching approach inventory derived from interviews with academic staff, and a modified approach to learning questionnaire. These conclusions are derived from a factor and cluster analysis of 48 classes (involving 46 science teachers and 3956 science students) in Australian universities. The results complete a chain of relations from teacher thinking to the outcomes of student learning. Previous studies have shown relations between teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning and their approaches to teaching. Numerous studies have shown correlations between students' deeper approaches to learning and higher quality learning outcomes. The results reported here link these two sets of studies. They also highlight the importance, in attempts to improve the quality of student learning, of discouraging teacher-focused transmission teaching and encouraging higher quality, conceptual change/student-focused approaches to teaching.     

Was Hochschuldozierende aus Lehrevaluations-Rückmeldungen lernen k?nnen

The extent to which students profit from a university course depends on the lecturers?? approach to teaching, with a student-focused approach being more supportive for student gains in competences than a teacher-focused approach. Little is known, however, about how to foster a student-focused approach to teaching. In this paper, we want to investigate how to frame the feedback lecturers obtain from students?? course evaluations in such a manner that a student-focused approach to teaching is encouraged. In two studies using either a qualitative or a quantitative methodology it can be shown that providing lecturers with a feedback on students?? subjective gain in competences (output-focused teaching evaluation) is more effective in promoting a student-focused approach to teaching than a feedback on how satisfied students were with the lecturer (process-focused teaching evaluation). Results are discussed in the context of the Bologna reforms which demand a continuous evaluation of all university courses.     

Chinese tertiary teachers’ goal orientations for teaching and teaching approaches: the mediation of teacher engagement

This study investigated the effects of Chinese tertiary teachers’ goal orientations for teaching on their approaches to teaching mediated by teacher engagement. In a survey of 597 Chinese tertiary teachers, the respondents placed particular emphasis on relational and mastery goals and expressed a preference for student-focused approaches to teaching. An emphasis on mastery goals was found to predict a preference for student-focused teaching, whereas ability-approach and work-avoidance goal orientations predicted a preference for teacher-focused teaching. Ability-avoidance and relational goals were found to be positively related not only to teacher-focused approaches but to student-focused approaches to teaching as well. In addition, teacher engagement was found to significantly mediate the effects of ability-approach, mastery and work-avoidance goals on teacher-focused intention, student-focused intention and student-focused strategy. These results have significant implications for Chinese higher-education institutions in light of their transition from teacher-focused to student-focused approaches to teaching.     

Lecturers' approaches to teaching and their relationship to conceptions of good teaching

Previous research has established a close link between students'conceptions of learning, approaches to study and learning outcomes.Until recently, there have been few studies of lecturers' approaches toteaching in higher education and their relationship with conceptions ofteaching. This study aimed to characterise the alternative approaches toteaching of university lecturers, and to examine the relationshipbetween lecturers' approaches to teaching and their conceptions of goodteaching. This study adopted an open naturalistic approach. Seventeenlecturers in three departments in a university were selected forinterview based on their rank, years of teaching and industrial orprofessional experience. Lecturers were interviewed individually abouttheir conceptions of good teaching, motivational strategies andeffective teaching. The interview records were then content analysed bythe two researchers of the study. The study found that (a) it waspossible to characterise lecturers' approaches to teaching with onemotivation and five strategy dimensions; (b) the conceptions of teachingof the lecturers were best described by two main orientations oftransmissive and facilitative teaching; (c) lecturers who conceivedteaching as transmitting knowledge were more likely to usecontent-centred approaches to teaching, while those who conceivedteaching as facilitative tended to use learning-centred approaches. Thestudy concludes by suggesting that fundamental changes to the quality ofteaching and learning are unlikely to happen without changes tolecturers' conception of teaching.     

Reflections on the Dilemmas and Tensions in Mathematics Education Courses for Student Teachers

The paper outlines the dilemmas and paradoxes faced by lecturers and student teachers as they interact in a mathematics education subject that deals with both mathematics as a discipline and as a language, and with appropriate pedagogies for the teaching and learning of mathematics in primary schools. For the lecturer there is a tension between comforting and challenging the students. Are they to be wooed into a more positive attitude to mathematics, at the cost of avoiding the complexity of the discipline; or are they to be challenged by the unique character of mathematics, at the risk of alienation and exclusion? The latter often returns students to their original perception of maths as a harsh and unforgiving subject which is beyond their capabilities as they struggle with unfamiliar concepts and the discomfort of ‘not knowing’. For student teachers there is, paradoxically, a desire to ‘instil understanding’ when they themselves may not fully understand. They often idealise what is good practice but deny it in their own learning.     

Renaming teaching practice through teacher reflection using critical incidents on a virtual training course

This study approaches teacher learning from a dialogical viewpoint where lecturers’ voices used in a training course context reflect how lecturers generated new professional discourse. The design of the training course considered the analysis of several critical incidents (CIs) in online teaching. An analytical framework based on lecturers’ discourse and ways of thinking about teaching was used to identify types of renaming teaching practice. The empirical element of the study analysed the written utterances about teaching provided by 12 online instructors in order to determine what kinds of new discourse emerged during the analysis of 15 CIs in online teaching. Results showed that local discourse is the lecturers’ most commonly used discourse, prototypical incidents generated more professional discourse than personal and real CIs, and professional discourse can be created by means of at least nine different ways of articulating discourse. On the basis of these results, some pedagogical implications for lecturer learning are discussed.     

Development and Use of the Approaches to Teaching Inventory

This paper describes how research into approaches to university teaching, from a relational perspective, has been used to develop an inventory to measure the key aspects of the variation in approaches to teaching. The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) is one of several that derive from the research perspective applied by Marton and colleagues in Europe (Marton, F., Hounsell, D., and Entwistle, N. (eds.) (1997). The Experience of Learning, 2nd edn., Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh) to student learning. A feature of these inventories is that they measure the response of a group to a particular context, rather than more general characteristics of individuals in that group. Studies using these inventories have consistently shown relations between students' approaches to learning and the quality of their learning outcome. The question of interest to many university teachers is whether there are relations between the way teachers approach their teaching and ways their students approach their learning. This question was answered in a study published in 1999 that used the ATI to show that teacher-focused approaches to teaching were associated with students' reproducing orientations. Subsequent research revealed that in subjects where teachers adopted more student-focused approaches to teaching, their students adopted a deeper approach to learning. Some recent research using the inventory is reviewed along with an analysis of the validity of the ATI. The current version of the inventory is reproduced in this paper.     

Teaching quality matters in higher education: a case study from Turkey and Slovakia

Despite a growing number of studies on the effectiveness of teaching and quality in higher education, reports indicate that more work is needed regarding meeting expectations in teaching quality, in particular, in investigating lecturers’ application of pedagogical knowledge when transferring discipline-specific knowledge. This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of both students and lecturers on teaching in higher education in two countries. The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative data in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of the research problems and to obtain sufficiently detailed data. The results indicated a difference between students’ and lecturers’ perceptions regardless of country, highlighting a discrepancy over views on the pedagogical competence of lecturers. Although this was a small-scale study in two countries, the results pointed to the failure of university lecturers to meet students’ expectations in terms of teaching quality. The study suggested that, regardless of subject area, it would be beneficial to emphasize self-reflection, awareness, improvement of teaching skills, and consequent changes in students learning. University administrations should also have realistic expectations of lecturers.     

Generic gold standard or contextualised public good? Teaching excellence awards in post-colonial South Africa

ABSTRACT

Teaching Excellence Awards have raised the profile of teaching as a scholarly project. There are however a number of questions about what constitutes teaching excellence and how ‘excellence’ is understood in current higher education. In a post-colonial South Africa, where significant injustices permeate our society, we question whether excellence can be understood in a generic manner. Furthermore, we argue that as universities are a public good, teaching excellence needs to explicitly attend to the ways in which universities contribute to broad goals of transformation and inclusivity. We analysed data from the national Teaching Excellence Awards and 13 South African universities’ awards to interrogate the discourses that underpin ‘excellence’ in this context of social inequality. We found that while the awards have gone some way to enhancing the position of teaching in institutions, ‘excellence’ was largely articulated in fairly generic ways which failed to take into account the enablements and constraints of the discipline and the institution. Furthermore, the guidelines and criteria privilege a decontextualised notion of excellence that seeks a ‘gold standard’ and validates performativity, rather than a contextualised response to the needs of the students.     

‘Teaching’ or ‘support’? The poisoned chalice of the role of Students’ Skills Centres

After the 1992 Further and Higher Education Reform Act enabled polytechnics and the qualifying franchised colleges to be renamed universities or higher education institutions, the dominance of the rhetoric of skill development aggravated long‐standing schisms between further and higher education about whether or not degree‐level courses should be available in further education. One aspect of these disagreements concerns the dominance of a skills deficit model and its influence in learning and teaching. This article draws on the findings of a study into the role of a Students’ Skills Centre (SSC) in a post‐1992 university. It focuses on how and why working in SSCs is envisaged as a subordinate function, as a ‘support’ and not a ‘teaching’ role. The research study utilised both quantitative and qualitative research methods in a case‐study design to examine the nature of students’ requests for help in an SSC. The article argues that academic skills, including writing, study and key skills, are more effective if taught in a subject/disciplinary‐specific context. Hence, lecturers in the SSC had to provide intensive teaching, which, at the same time, also addressed this contextual dimension. This is a complex and highly specialised teaching process, yet, despite the yearly increase in numbers of students attending the centre for help, university managers and some academic staff refused to acknowledge the complexity of the nature of students’ learning requirements or the teaching function of the role of lecturers working in the SSC.     

Teacher educators’ approaches to teaching and the nexus with self-efficacy and burnout: examples from two teachers’ universities in China

Teacher educators’ approaches to teaching, and their experience of burnout and self-efficacy beliefs, are related to how they are able to facilitate student teachers’ learning. In this study, 115 Chinese teacher educators responded to a questionnaire in 2015. Based on the previous study investigating the teacher educators’ approaches to teaching, the present study explored how these approaches were related to their self-efficacy beliefs in teaching and burnout. Burnout was measured through inadequacy in teacher-student interaction and exhaustion subscales. The analyses revealed that a student-focused approach to teaching among teacher educators was positively related to their self-efficacy beliefs in teaching. Both student- and teacher-focused approaches to teaching were positively related to the educators’ experience of inadequacy in teacher-student interaction. However, the study revealed no relationship between teacher educators’ approaches to teaching and the experience of exhaustion. To prevent feelings of inadequate interaction with their students, pedagogical training should provide these teacher educators with efficient guidance on how to interact with student teachers. The present study provides new insights in the teacher educators’ adoption of the student- and teacher-focused approaches to teaching.     

Assessment moderation: constructing the marks and constructing the students

In this paper the author considers the positivist approaches in mainstream higher education assessment research. She contrasts this to emerging poststructuralist perspectives and goes on to report on a study into the assessment moderation practices in a higher education art department. In this research she explores the ways in which art and design lecturers talk about students’ grades in moderation meetings and reports on the different ways that groups of lecturers co‐construct meaning in relation to the practice of agreeing marks.     

Social constructivist teaching methods in Australian universities – reported uptake and perceived learning effects: a survey of lecturers

Pragmatic social constructivist teaching methods require students to construct knowledge by engaging collaboratively with realistic problems, cases or projects. It is hypothesised that they are more effective than traditional didactic teaching methods in developing undergraduate students’: (1) theoretical knowledge; (2) profession‐specific skills; and (3) knowledge creation capacity. Results of a survey show the second and third learning effects to be salient among Australian university lecturers, but not the first. Lecturers report that these teaching methods have been adopted more widely in human service‐related faculties and design‐related faculties than in business‐related faculties, possibly owing to the lesser emphasis placed by business lecturers on developing students’ profession‐specific skills and knowledge creation capacity. A corresponding survey of business practitioners revealed a surprising gap between the value that business practitioners place on new graduates’ knowledge creation capacity and the rather limited emphasis that business lecturers place upon developing that capacity in their undergraduate students.     

Teaching philosophies guiding sexuality instruction in US colleges and universities

Teaching philosophies are central to the approach of pedagogical strategies but there has been little examination of discipline-specific teaching philosophies. This study addresses a significant gap in the literature by discussing the teaching philosophies of 122 instructors of sexuality courses. Sexuality education is unique compared to most disciplines due to the personal nature of the content, thus being more difficult for students and instructors to distance themselves from the course content. The teaching philosophies in this study conveyed two overarching approaches to sexuality instruction: the instructor’s perspective of the course and the approach of the sexuality instruction. Although teaching philosophies typically inform one’s practice of teaching and course content, this study proposes that sexuality education is intrinsically different than other areas of instruction despite the interdisciplinary backgrounds of college instructors.     

Teaching to enhance research

In this paper, I present a conceptual argument for ‘teaching-led research’ in which university lecturers construct courses that directly and positively influence their research, while at the same time, safeguard and enhance the student experience. A research-pedagogy for higher education considers the link between teaching and research, but rather than the more usual conception of research-led teaching, in which teaching is enhanced by research, it becomes teaching-led research in which research is enhanced by teaching. I argue that this idea is foundational to the modern research university, but also difficult to realize unless teaching and learning are designed for these ends. A potential model is teaching undergraduates as researchers with students learning by doing research and I present a case study from a science degree programme. I conclude by anticipating the likely cultural and political barriers to teaching-led research and suggest how tensions can be managed.