Underprepared students or underprepared teachers or both? Is there a mismatch between students' and academic teachers' expectations of the processes of learning and teaching in higher education?

Critical reflections on research conducted in South Africa and Australia

A round-table discussion is planned with the following participants, all of whom are actively involved in academic development practice:

Alan Cliff, Organiser - Academic Development, University of Cape Town
Phillip Parsons - Teaching Development Unit, Cape Technikon
Derek Sharwood - Port Elizabeth Technikon
Alex Radloff - Teaching Learning Group, Curtin University of Technology
Katherine Samuelowicz - Learning Assistance Unit, University of Queensland

• philosophical and theoretical frameworks within which research is being/has been conducted;
• research methodologies, designs and methods;
• measurement instruments and procedures;
• research findings generated from data sets collected at the University of Cape Town over a three-year period in the light of research conducted in Australia.

1. the notion of understanding and intervening on ways in which tertiary teachers can attempt to bridge "gaps" between their and their students' beliefs and expectations about learning and teaching; and

2. given that increasing numbers of students in South African and Australian Higher Education are likely to be underprepared in conventional terms for tertiary study, what kinds of reappraisals of notions of "desirable" learning and teaching might be indicated by the changing profile of student enrolments in these contexts. Such reappraisals are likely to involve both teachers' and students' conceptions of learning and teaching.

A core aspect of the conference session will be to critically examine a framework which has guided much of the discussants' work in the past five years. The students-awareness-of-learning (SAL) framework is evident in the work of Marton and Säljö (1976; 1984), Entwistle and Ramsden (1983), Meyer (1988; 1991) and Ramsden (1988). Both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches have been used. Pioneering work in this area at UCT has involved the development of Inventories, in which constructs associated with student learning are operationalised in the form of statements about learning (for example, The Qualitative Context Inventory, Meyer, 1988, and The Conceptions of Learning Inventory, Meyer, 1995). The QCI and CLI provide measurement instruments which enable the quantitative measurement of what have been considered phenomena accessible only through qualitative data collection methods.

The phenomenographic approach (Marton, 1981; 1986) to researching student learning has been actively utilised and explored in higher education contexts in countries such as Australia. Most recently, phenomenography has focused on providing a conceptual model for describing and categorising qualitatively distinctive conceptions of learning and teaching.

It has been argued that teachers' and students' beliefs about learning have a fundamental impact on the processes of learning and teaching in higher education (and other) contexts (Samuelowicz and Bain, 1992; Gow and Kember, 1993; Kember and Gow, 1994; Bruce and Gerber, 1995; Cliff, 1995a and b). It has been further argued that teacher and student beliefs about learning and teaching have had a fundamental and significant impact upon course design and the way students perceive discipline-specific knowledge to be structured and contested (Perry, 1970; 1988; Sheppard and Gilbert, 1991).

Studies at the University of Cape Town conducted with samples of undergraduate and postgraduate students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds have reported clear associations between students' beliefs and expectations about learning, their perceptions of their learning contexts, and their learning outcomes, in qualitative terms (Meyer, Parsons and Dunne, 1990; Entwistle, Meyer and Tait, 1991; Meyer, Dunne and Sass, 1992; Meyer, Cliff and Dunne, 1994). In particular, these studies have pointed to the phenomenon of students being "at risk" of underperforming or of failing to make appropriate responses to the demands made upon them in conventional academic study. Meyer, Cliff and Dunne (1994) and Cliff (1996, in press) have suggested lines of intervention which can be offered by the average academic practitioner in an everyday academic setting. These are aimed at increasing students' awareness of their own study behaviour. These studies suggest grounds for cautious optimism that providing students with a framework for understanding and interpreting their own study behaviour, as well as the conceptual "tools" for determining its desirability or otherwise, is associated with qualitative, and in many cases, quantitative, learning improvement.

One of the primary purposes of the round-table discussion at HERDSA must be seen, in the light of the foregoing, to be discussion between researchers in South African and Australian higher education settings about different forms of context-based study behaviour intervention and their impact upon student learning outcomes.

Most recently, work conducted at the University of Cape Town amongst postgraduate students (Cliff, 1995b) has suggested that these students' beliefs about what learning is, are often at considerable variance with what other international studies of mature learners' approaches to learning have reported (Richardson, 1994). Studies conducted at UCT have provided evidence of a conception that learning involves the quantitative accumulation of bits of knowledge amongst postgraduate, post-qualification school teachers. These studies, which will be reported in due course in the international research literature on student learning, also provide quantitative evidence of the influence of learning context on these students' self-reported learning conceptions and demonstrate that it is possible to alter these conceptions in everyday academic contexts.

The implications of these and other findings from studies of students' beliefs about learning and teaching at this university will be discussed with other participants in the round-table discussion session in order to compare and contrast different contexts. In particular, studies emanating from Australian researchers' work into learning and teaching, within a SAL framework (Samuelowicz and Bain, 1992; Bruce and Gerber, 1995;) have begun to demonstrate associations between lecturers' beliefs about teaching and learning, and the impact of these on the quality of student learning.

The above studies will also be reflected upon, at the round-table discussion, in the light of their implications for academic staff development. Specifically, the following questions present themselves as useful departure points for such reflection:

1. How can academics and practitioners involved in academic staff development contribute to changes in teacher thinking, which must occur as a prerequisite for changes in teacher practice?

2. What strategies can we (should we) use to bridge the gap between research and practice in teaching and learning?

3. How can we encourage tertiary teachers to become more aware of the relationship between thinking and practice, and the need to understand learning from the learner's perspective?

References

Cliff, A.F. (1995a). A qualitative review of study behaviour before and during the first year of engineering studies. Higher Education, 29, 169-181.

Cliff, A.F. (1995b). Postgraduate students' conceptions of learning: Implications for course teaching. Paper presented at the 6th Bi-annual Conference of the European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction (EARLI), Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Cliff, A.F. (1996, in press). Conducting a programme of learning improvement with educationally disadvantaged students in Engineering. International Journal of Engineering Education.

Entwistle, N.J. & Ramsden, P. (1983). Understanding Student Learning. London: Croom Helm.

Entwistle, N.J., Meyer, J.H.F. & Tait, H. (1991). Student failure: Disintegrated patterns of study strategies and perceptions of the learning environment. Higher Education, 21, 249-261.

Gow, L. & Kember, D. (1993). Conceptions of teaching and their relationship to student learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 63, 20-33.

Kember, D. & Gow, L. (1994). Orientations to teaching and their effect on the quality of student learning. Journal of Higher Education, 65, 58-74.

Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography - describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10, 177-200.

Marton, F. (1986). Phenomenography - a research approach to investigating different understandings of reality. Journal of Thought, 21(3), 28-49.

Marton, F. & Säljö, R. (1976). On qualitative differences in learning: I - Outcome and process. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46, 4-11.

Marton, F. & Säljö, R. (1984). Approaches to learning. In Marton, F., Hounsell, D. & Entwistle, N.J. (Eds), The Experience of Learning. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.

Meyer, J.H.F. (1988). Student perceptions of learning context and approaches to studying. South African Journal of Higher Education, 2(1), 73-82.

Meyer, J.H.F. (1991). Study orchestration: the manifestation, interpretation and consequences of contextualised approaches to studying. Higher Education, 22, 297-316.

Meyer, J.H.F. (1995). A quantitative exploration of conceptions of learning. Proceedings of the Conference of the Higher Education and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA), Rockhampton, Australia.

Meyer, J.H.F., Cliff, A.F. & Dunne, T.T. (1994). Impressions of disadvantage: II - Monitoring and assisting the student at risk. Higher Education, 27, 95-117.

Meyer, J.H.F., Dunne, T.T. & Sass, A.R. (1992). Impressions of disadvantage. I - School versus university study orchestration and implications for academic support. Higher Education, 24, 291-316.

Meyer, J.H.F., Parsons, P.G. & Dunne, T.T. (1990). Individual study orchestrations and their association with learning outcome. Higher Education, 20, 67-89.

Perry, W.G. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Perry, W.G. (1988). Different worlds in the same classroom. In Ramsden, P. (Ed), Improving Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Ramsden, P. (Ed) (1988). Improving Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Richardson, J.T.E. (1994). Mature students in higher education: I - A literature survey on approaches to studying. Studies in Higher Education, 19, 309-325.

Samuelowicz, K. & Bain, J.D. (1992). Conceptions of teaching held by academic teachers. Higher Education, 24, 93-111.

Sheppard, C. & Gilbert, J. (1991). Course design, teaching method and student epistemology. Higher Education, 22, 229-249.

Please cite as: Cliff, A., Parsons, P., Sharwood, D., Radloff, A. and Samuelowicz, K. (1996). Underprepared students or underprepared teachers or both? Is there a mismatch between students' and academic teachers' expectations of the processes of learning and teaching in higher education? Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Proceedings HERDSA Conference 1996. Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/cliff2.html