Reflection of conceptions of teaching in different disciplines and its effects on written online communication

Päuler-Kuppinger L, Jucks R

Zusammenfassung

Reflecting ones own conceptions of teaching is assumed a prerequisite of quality teaching (e.g. Kreber & Castleden, 2009, Mälkki & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2012) and a central perspective on professionalization in university teaching (Amundsen & Wilson, 2012). The academic discipline and its epistemological structure plays an important role for the socialization in tertiary education (Trautwein & Lüdtke, 2007) and is also linked to conceptions of teaching (e.g. Lindblom-Ylänne, Trigwell, Nevgi, & Ashwin, 2006; Päuler & Jucks, 2014) as well as to the reflection of those (Kreber & Castleden, 2009). Furthermore, a debate exists in the literature on the extent to which conceptions of teaching predict teaching behaviour (Prosser & Trigwell, 2006). It has not been examined, how conceptions of teaching influence one form of teaching behaviour that is communication with students. To gain more insight into conceptions of teaching, their reflection, and impact on communication with students in due consideration of academics’ domain of discipline, the present study asks three interrelated questions: (1) How do conceptions of teaching diverge in so called soft versus hard disciplines? (2) How do academics from those domains differ in their reflection of a particular conception of teaching? (3) And how do conceptions of teaching impact on communication with students? 88 university academics who were currently teaching in either a hard (e.g. maths) or in a soft discipline (e.g. history) took part in an online survey. 50% of the sample was male, 51% of the participants belonged to the soft disciplines. They first gave some information about context and frame conditions of the course they were giving and answered the Approaches to Teaching-Inventory (ATI-R, Trigwell, Prosser & Ginns, 2005). Then, participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups. Academics in the teacher/content focus condition were asked to describe how they organize their teaching so that the content is comprehensible. Participants in the group with student/learning focus were asked to describe how students could be supported in their examination of the content. This phase aimed at making salient a particular conception of teaching. Content-analysis of reflections indicated that academics where indeed reflecting more student-/learning-oriented within the student focus and more teacher-/content-oriented within the teacher focus condition. After they reflected upon their teaching behaviour, participants were presented an email in which a student reported how stressful the self-learning-effort between classes was for her. She asked the lecturer why she needed to invest time between classes and how she could use this time most effectively. Academics were asked to write an answer to the student’s inquiry. Finally, the lecturers answered demographic questions. We hypothesized that the experimentally manipulated focus on teaching behaviour would impact on the amount of attention to the student and on style and content of academics’ answers. To rate the academics’ attention to the student, we used countable indicators such as length of the answer, number of several personal pronouns as well as content analytically gained indicators such as presence and proportion of explanation for the necessity of self learning effort and advice to how to spend this time effectively. The explanations and advices were further analysed with concern to their student-/learning-orientation vs. teacher-/content-orientation. Detailed coding schemes for qualitative content analyses were developed (Mayring, 2010). With regard to the first research question, the ATI-R-data surveyed in this German sample confirm previous findings. Academics from the hard disciplines showed a higher teacher-focus and a lower student focus than academics from the soft domain. For the second research question, preliminary analyses revealed, that academics did not differ in their reflections within the two conditions concerning length of reflection or amount of teacher- or student-centred aspects. Concerning the third research question small but significant impacts of the experimental condition and some of the content categories could be found, e.g. academics in the teacher focus condition more often constituted the self learning effort as something the content or subject required. On the theoretical level our discussion is concerned with the context-dependency of conceptions of teaching and their manifestations in communicative behaviour as well as means and outcomes of reflection on conceptions of teaching and their impact on teaching behaviour variables. On a practical level these results are discussed with regard to the professionalization of tertiary teaching. 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