University Teaching

International Perspectives

James J.F. Forest

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135627973
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

University and college teaching is an important topic in the study of higher education around the world. This collection of original essays provides a broad perspective on the issue by examining preparation, assessment, and reward from cross-cultural perspectives, and exploring the cultural and social influences that affect these dimensions.

Perspectives on Student Learning and Assessment

CHAPTER 4

Improving Teaching Through Research on Student Learning

Noel Entwistle

INTRODUCTION

Current movements towards quality assurance in higher education have led to attempts to define high quality teaching, in order to rate both departments and individual faculty members. Emphasis on the teacher, and the performance aspect of teaching, rather than the learner and the overall context within which learning takes place, perpetuates a long-standing perception about the function of teaching in higher education. Teaching does not cause learning in the direct way that is often assumed. In higher education, in particular, much of a students learning takes place in private, through the effort to make sense of new ideas and to develop and practice new skills. Teaching contributes to this activity, but so do many other components of the overall learning environment.

This chapter looks at teaching from the learners perspective and asks what aspects of teaching contribute to effective and high quality learning. It introduces a coherent set of concepts derived from research on student learning, carried out mainly in Europe and Australasia. It is not claimed that this particular set of concepts, or the conceptual model built from them, is definitive. There are other alternative, and equally valuable, descriptions based on other theories, concepts, and research findings (see, for example, Biggs, 1993a; Janssen, 1996). The ideas presented here, however, are intended specifically to encourage a re-conceptualization of the relationship between teaching and learning. The guiding principle is that learning outcomes depend on an interaction between the characteristics of the student, the teaching style and methods of the teacher, and the policies and practices of the department and institution. This three-way interaction is represented visually in Figure 1, introduced towards the end of the chapter. However, looking at that conceptual overview just now may help to indicate both the range of concepts to be discussed and the general line of argument to be followed.

We look first at the concepts derived from the characteristics and experiences of students, before moving on to look at the way teaching and institutional policy and practice may influence the quality of student learning. Descriptions of student characteristics draw on constructs used by traditional psychologists to describe individual differences. These constructs are based on a belief that human behavior is predictable and can be explained in terms of traits which, while they may change over time, do have a marked consistency. Psychologists tend to down-play the effects of the environment on behavior, including study behavior. In contrast, a newer set of constructs has emerged from research on student learning which emphasize that study behavior is strongly influenced by the specific academic context within which learning takes place.

The traditional psychological constructs will be discussed here, only briefly. Much more emphasis will be put on the more recent concepts derived from research on student learning, which will underpin the subsequent discussion of teaching in higher education. The newer concepts are, however, linked to the psychological concepts in ways suggested by Table 1.

Table 1
Concepts Describing Student Characteristics

Traditional
psychological constructs	Concepts from research on student learning
Prior knowledge
Intellectual abilities	Epistemological level	Conception of learning
Personality	Learning style	Approach to learning
Motivation	Learning orientation	Work habits
Approach to studying	Study methods	Forms of understanding

STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS

The student characteristics introduced here have all been shown to be associated with differences in academic performance. In the earlier research, the more general psychological constructs were used to explore the existence of relationships with study behavior and academic success or failure, but more recent work has demonstrated the limitations of this way of thinking about study behavior. In particular, the psychological research does not lead to direct implications for teaching, and the focus on the individual does not do justice to the marked effects of the learning environment.

The concepts for this discussion will be introduced in the order which reflects the top half of Figure 1 (see p. 105). Student characteristics will be explored first in terms of psychological constructs, and then using concepts derived from research on student learning. This will be followed by discussions on intellectual traits, personality and motivation, and finally, work habits of students.

Prior Knowledge, Intellectual Abilities, and Epistemo logical Level

One of the founding fathers of modern educational psychology, David Ausubel, stressed the crucial importance in teaching of checking on prior knowledge—what students bring to a course.

The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach accordingly (Ausubel et al., 1978, p. 163).

Building knowledge on an insecure base is one of the main causes of early difficulty in studying, and yet academic staff are often unaware of important gaps in students’ prior knowledge or of their serious conceptual misunderstandings (Entwistle et al., 1991). In higher education, faculty members are often lecturing to groups with widely different levels of prior knowledge, which creates problems in knowing at what level to pitch the teaching. Knowing the variation in prior knowledge can help to overcome that difficulty.

Differences in ability are well-known influences on the quality of work students produce. While the term ‘ability’ is widely applied by faculty to explain academic success, it is used in its everyday sense. Psychological research has sought to clarify the nature and structure of intelligence, with a continuing debate about the value of describing a general ability factor ‘g.’ While this general factor underlies a good deal of intelligent behavior, in academic work specific abilities are often equally important to success. (Gustafsson & Balke, 1993). The specific abilities most frequently identified are those which underpin science and engineering on the one hand (analytic skills including convergent, logical-mathematical thinking and spatial ability), and those which relate to languages and the humanities on the other (synthetic skills involving, for example, divergent thinking and linguistic ability) (Hudson, 1968; Cooley & Lohnes, 1976). Although other forms of intelligence have subsequently widened the range of abilities described (Gardner, 1984; Sternberg, 1987), the broad distinction between analytic and synthetic abilities represents a useful starting point in thinking about influences on student learning.

Departments usually have a good idea of the general intellectual level of incoming students either through Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores or from the grades obtained at the end of secondary education. Such scores and grades do not, however, give information either about specific aptitudes which may be important in individual areas of study, or about the quality of the students’ thinking. These latter qualities are by no means fixed—abilities develop, and higher education is intended to encourage such development. Investigations of such developmental trends in higher education have led to the idea of epistemological levels (see Gardiner, 1994, pp. 12–15).

In an influential study, Perry (1970) interviewed students in successive years of study and reported a recurring developmental pattern. His epistemological scheme suggested that students progress through various stages of thinking—from what he called dualism, through multiplicity, to relativism, and finally to commitment. Dualism implies the existence of right or wrong answers to every question and, in the early stages of their course, students often expect faculty to provide the ‘right’ answers which they can learn and reproduce in tests and examinations. Having realized that there is, in fact, almost always more than one way of looking at a given situation, students seem to conclude that any one opinion (and particularly their own) is as good as any other (multiplicity). Only gradually are they ready to accept that conclusions rest on interpretations from objective evidence, with different interpretations justifiably being drawn, in many instances, from the same body of evidence (relativism). This degree of uncertainty disturbs many students sufficiently to impede academic progress (which depends on using relativiste thinking). Only a minority of students in Perry’s study were able to take the final step and demonstrate personal commitment. This final stage may be seen in the attempts which some students make to develop coherent, individual perspectives on the discipline, with a commitment to the particular forms of interpretation which develop through them.

Although the existence of some such developmental sequence might be taken to be self-evident, many courses seem to take little account of the developmental levels of the students. It cannot be expected, for example, that students in the early years of a degree course will readily use relativistic thinking. And yet that type of thinking is so routine to academics that they often fail to appreciate the difficulties which many students face as they are confronted with apparently contradictory theories or interpretations from lecturers which can differ markedly from those they meet in their reading.

Personality and Learning Style

The term ‘general ability’ describes a range of related cognitive skills. In the emotional and affective areas of behavior, the term ‘personality’ has been used with a similarly broad coverage, although no single, integrative dimension of personality has been found. Instead, there are five traits which are currently thought to cover this area—extroversion, emotionality, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and intellectual openness, each with their opposite pole (Snow et al., 1996). Early research on the influence of personality on academic performance suggested an advantage for students low in extroversion and emotionality and high in conscientiousness. However, it was subsequently found that these relationships with extroversion and emotionality were not general: they depended on ability level, gender, and subject area (Snow et al., 1996). More recently, it has been argued that descriptions of individual differences based on studies carried out within the higher education context itself are likely to show stronger, and more readily interpretable, relationships with academic performance (Entwistle, in press).

An early study by Heath (1964), which has interesting parallels with Perry’s work, followed up students throughout their university careers and sought to describe not only the main personality differences, but also developmental trends in those differences. Three personality types were identified—non-committers who were seen as cautious, anxious and disinclined to take risks, hustlers (competitive, dynamic, but insensitive), and plungers (impulsive, emotional, and individualistic). Over time, these distinctive differences were found to follow a developmental trend towards an ideal type—the Reasonable Adventurer—which integrated the most positive features of the separate personality types. The description of the Reasonable Adventurer also helps us to see how the two most distinct forms of thinking (analytic and synthetic) become integrated in academic study.

In the pursuit of a problem, (the Reasonable Adventurer) appears to experience an alternation of involvement and detachment. The phase of involvement is an intensive and exciting period characterized by curiosity, a narrowing of attention towards some point of interest …. This period of involvement is then followed by a period of detachment, an extensive phase, accompanied by a reduction of tension and a broadening range of perception …. Here (the Reasonable Adventurer) settles back to reflect on the meaning of what was discovered during the involved stage. Meaning presumes the existence of a web of thought, a pattern of ideas to which the ‘new’ element can be related … the critical attitude.

We see, therefore, in (the Reasonable Adventurer) a combination of two mental attitudes: the curious and the critical. They do not occur simultaneously, but in alternation. (Heath, 1964, pp. 30–31)

These two ‘mental attitudes’ reappear in the literature under a different guise—as learning styles. A learning style represents a preference, often with a strong feeling tone, for a particular way of learning. Many researchers have found a dichotomy in style between global and articulated thinking (Witkin et al., 1977), contrasting thinking which is impulsive and intuitive with that which is cautious and logical. Torrance and Rockenstein (1988) have suggested that these styles are associated with contrasting intellectual functions of left and right brain hemispheres, hence justifying the existence of a strong dichotomy. They describe the thinking functions of the left hemisphere as verbal, analytical, and abstract thinking, and those of the right as non-verbal, spatial, concrete, analogic, intuitive, and aesthetic (echoing the distinctive intellectual abilities mentioned earlier). There is, however, evidence of a third style—integrated—which brings together the other two, as in the Reasonable Adventurer. Such integration is inevitable, in fact, if the styles represent hemispheric functions....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• About the Contributors
• ISSUES OF INSTRUCTION
• PERSPECTIVES ON STUDENT LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT
• TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS
• IMAGES OF POLICY, STRUCTURE, AND ORGANIZATION
• Selected Bibliography
• Index