Exploring the engagement of lecturers with learning and teaching agendas through a focus on their beliefs about, and experience with, student support

Abstract

This article reports on research which aimed to examine academic staff attitudes to, and beliefs regarding the role and efficacy of, support for students' broader learning needs once engaged in degree study. It is contended here that the perspective of teachers represents a gap in current pedagogical research. The study has two complementary aims: one is to explore the subjective experience of academic staff at the interpersonal and organisational levels of academic life. Second, to gauge their engagement with learning and teaching issues, current agendas and practices by assessing their effects on teachers' lived experience. The context of the study was a new university with a wide spectrum of academic programmes, and which actively embraced the widening participation agenda. The research was a qualitative, ethnographic style approach, in which 48 teachers from a cross-section of faculties and fields of study were interviewed. Data are presented in two sections with accompanying analysis and interpretative commentary. In reporting the findings there is a focus on the interplay between agency and structure in pedagogical interactions and practices. Discussion focuses on the main findings and identifies a number of factors which appear to subtly and obliquely impact on teaching staff at the operational level of lived experience. The article considers how this seems to affect their engagement with current practices at the pedagogical and organisational levels of academic life.