Abstract
Over time, the academics’ approaches to teaching (i.e., content- or learning-focused approach) were intensively studied. Traditionally, studies estimated the shared variance between the items that describe a behavioral pattern (i.e., the psychometric approach), defined as a learning- or content-focused approach to teaching. In this study, we used a different perspective (i.e., network analysis) to investigate academics’ approaches to teaching. We aimed to bring in new insights regarding the interactions between the elements that define academics’ approaches to teaching. We used the Revised Approaches to Teaching Inventory to collect responses from 705 academics (63.97% female) from six Romanian universities. The main results indicated that academics’ conceptions about the subject matter are central to their preferences concerning the adoption of a content-focused or a learning-focused approach to teaching. The estimated network is stable across different sub-samples defined by the academic disciplines, class size, academics’ gender, and teaching experience. We highlighted the implications of these findings for research and teaching practice in higher education. Also, several recommendations for developing pedagogical training programs for academics were suggested. In particular, this study brings valuable insights for addressing academics’ conception about the subject matter and suggests that this could be a new topic for pedagogical training programs dedicated to university teachers.
Highlights
One of the main challenges of higher education institutions is to ensure that academics’ approaches to teaching influence effective students’ approaches to learning
Because previous research suggested that teaching approaches are related to various demographics or context-related variables, we investigated whether our network is replicable in different contexts
We found that academics’ conceptions about the subject matter could be the first variable responsible for how academics develop their teaching approach preferences
Summary
One of the main challenges of higher education institutions is to ensure that academics’ approaches to teaching influence effective students’ approaches to learning (e.g., a deep approach to learning). Research has shown that the academics’ choice of a particular approach to teaching could be explained based on their conceptions of teaching or based on their understanding of the subject matter (e.g., Kember, 1997; Prosser et al, 2008) For this reason, it becomes imperative for academics to be aware of how they understand the subject matter taught, about their teaching approach, and how these variables influence students’ learning process. It becomes imperative for academics to be aware of how they understand the subject matter taught, about their teaching approach, and how these variables influence students’ learning process Research on these subjects could provide relevant information for stimulating academics towards adopting a student-centered approach, which represents one of the most important aims of the pedagogical training programs dedicated to academics (Hicks et al, 2010)
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