Using Phenomenography in the Design of Programs for Teachers in Higher Education

This article describes two academic development activities which exemplify how phenomenographic ideas and the results of phenomenographic research, can be built into the design of teaching development workshops for staff teaching in higher education. The activities focus on two important tenets of a phenomenographic approach to teaching and learning—the experience of variation and relevance to the participant. They are structured in terms of the examination of experience of the participants and their students. They seek to help the participants see variation within the experience as a way of helping them examine their own experience and change their way of seeing teaching. They also set the experience in a context where staff can see the connections between teaching and learning such that the goal of changing teaching to improve student learning appears to the teacher as relevant.