Keith Trigwell

A phenomenographic study of academics' conceptions of science learning and teaching

Abstract This paper outlines the qualitative research method and results of an investigation of the conceptions of teaching and learning held by teachers of first year university chemistry and physics courses. In both cases a limited number of qualitatively different categories of description were identified (6 and 5 respectively) ranging from information transmission to facilitating conceptual change in teaching and knowledge accumulation to conceptual change in learning. An analysis of the referential and structural components of the conceptions is used to develop the internal structure of the conceptions. Finally, the relation of the results to conceptual change programs is discussed.

How approaches to teaching are affected by discipline and teaching context

Two related studies are reported in this article. The first aimed to analyse how academic discipline is related to university teachers’ approaches to teaching. The second explored the effects of teaching context on approaches to teaching. The participants of the first study were 204 teachers from the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration and 136 teachers from the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University who returned university teaching inventories. Thus, altogether there were 340 teachers from a variety of disciplines in Finland and the UK. The second study involved only the Finnish sample. The results showed that there was systematic variation in both student‐ and teacher‐focused dimensions of approaches to teaching across disciplines and across teaching contexts. These results confirm the relational nature of teachers’ approaches to teaching and illustrate the need, in using inventories such as the Approaches to Teaching Inventory, to be explicit about the context.

Scholarship of Teaching: A model

In this paper we present a model which describes the scholarship of teaching. We first explore what scholarship of teaching means, both in terms of the way it is represented in the literature and also the way it is understood by academic staff themselves. From this information, we derive a multi-dimensional model of scholarship of teaching which captures the variation found in the literature and empirical studies. In the final section, we illustrate how the model is used in informing the design of programs for development of the scholarship of teaching in universities.

Can 'Blended Learning' Be Redeemed?

Although the term ‘blended learning’ is widely used, this article argues against it. Two arguments are advanced. The first is primarily philosophical, although it has several pragmatic implications. It proposes that ‘blending’ either relies on the idea of dichotomies which are suspect within the context of learning with technology or else becomes ineffective as a discriminating concept and is thus without purpose. The implication of this is that the term ‘blended’ should either be abandoned or, at the least, radically reconceived. The second argument proposes that learning, from the perspective of the learner, is rarely, if ever, the subject of blended learning. What is actually being addressed are forms of instruction, teaching, or at best, pedagogies. The implication of this is that the term ‘learning’ should be abandoned. The second half of the article attempts to redeem the concept of blended learning by arguing that learning gains attributed to blended learning may have their explanation in variation theory. It offers a new way to conceptualise what is being ‘blended’ that is theoretically coherent, philosophically defensible and pragmatically informative. The article concludes by setting an agenda for further work in this area.

Student learning and the scholarship of university teaching

A variety of models of the scholarship of university teaching have been advocated since Boyer first proposed that the scholarship of teaching be considered as one of four forms of scholarship associated with university practices. These models have evolved from theoretical and empirically based analyses, and have as their core value concepts as diverse as reflection, communication, pedagogic content knowledge, scholarly activity and pedagogic research. They tend to take aspects of scholarship rather than of teaching as their starting points, and to give priority to the construction and critical review of the knowledge base for teaching. This article focuses on a model of the scholarship of teaching that specifically includes students and it is argued that representing the scholarship of teaching as a reflective and informed act engaging students and teachers in learning is supportive of the aims central to the project of developing a scholarship of teaching.

What University Teachers Teach and How they Teach It

In this article we make three related arguments. The first isthat different teachers have different intentions concerning whatstudents will learn and consequently in their teaching they constitutethe topic or subject to be taught quite differently. The second is thata teachers intentions concerning what it is that students should learnis closely aligned with a teachers expectation of how students learnand how they can be helped to learn through teaching. The third is thatwhen teachers focus specifically on the teaching of a particular topic,within a specific context, there is a close relationship between theirintentions and their teaching practice. In this article we explore thesearguments through an empirical study which considers the different waysin which 26 university teachers intended to constitute a subject ortopic for their students to study, how they then taught the subject andsubsequently how consistent were their intentions and their practice.The analysis shows that when the context of teaching and learning istightly defined there is a clear relationship between a teachersintention and their practice. In particular, university teachers whoadopt more conceptual change and student-focussed approaches to teachingconstitute objects of study which are more relational and focus on thestudents knowledge. Approaches which are more information transmissionand teacher-focussed constitute objects of study which are moremulti-structural and have a focus on knowledge which is as constitutedas being external to the student.

Variatio Est Mater Studiorum

There is no learning without discernment. And there is no discernment without variation. If good teaching is about making learning possible, how do good teachers help students experience variation? In this paper, we argue that they constitute a space of learning which contains those aspects of the object of learning that are subject to variation simultaneously. For learning to occur, whether it be in the formal learning contexts established by these teachers, or in the less formal contexts of participation in social practices, there must necessarily be a certain pattern of variation present to experience, and this pattern must be experienced.

Towards an Understanding of Individual Acts of Teaching and Learning.

Abstract This article uses a phenomenographic perspective to interpret and integrate the results of relational research, including phenomenography in particular, in analysing the experiences of teaching and learning in higher education. In this analysis the experience is conceived of as temporal and not extended over time. We describe conditions associated with two qualitatively different approaches to teaching which, as suggested by other research results, are associated with differences in the quality of student learning. Such an analysis can help explain the variation in the experience of the same lecturer in different teaching contexts or of different lecturers in the same teaching context.

Phenomenographic pedagogy and a revised Approaches to teaching inventory

The Approaches to teaching inventory (ATI) is now being widely used as an instrument for formally monitoring approaches to teaching. A lesser‐known use is as a stimulant for discussion among groups of teachers to raise awareness of the variation in qualitatively different ways of approaching teaching. The phenomenographic origins of the ATI are consistent with these uses in academic development, both formative and summative. Following this increase in use, the validity and utility of the ATI were reviewed in 2003 using data from over 1600 teachers. We now summarize the outcomes of this review and report new results of the tests conducted on an expanded ATI with a further 318 academics. While the revised ATI maintains a focus on the qualitative variation in two key dimensions of teaching (a conceptual change/student‐focused approach and an information transfer/teacher‐focused approach), the number of items in those scales has now been increased. This version enhances those features of the original instrument that helped make it a useful trigger tool in ‘phenomenographic pedagogic’ discussion. Both phenomenographic pedagogy and the development of the ATI are discussed in this paper.

Judging university teaching

In this paper two recent ideas are used to describe an approach to judging the teaching of individuals or small teams of university teachers. The first idea builds on research which shows that good teaching is oriented towards, and is related to, high quality student learning. The second is that good teaching is scholarly. These ideas are at the heart of what might constitute a description of competence in teaching, and both are underpinned by the realization that teaching involves much more than what happens in a classroom or on-line: it includes planning, compatibility with the context, content knowledge, being a learner, and above all, reflection and a way of thinking about teaching and learning. It is argued that judging good teaching involves the effective application of a combination of these qualitative elements in the teaching approach and the quantitative dimension – about how well the teacher is carrying out this approach. It is also argued that unless the criteria being used to judge university teaching are consistent with the criteria being used to develop teaching (for example through formal teaching in higher education courses) little will be achieved through such activities.