Lecturer Competence from the Perspective of Undergraduate Psychology Students: A Qualitative Pilot Study

Silvia Di Battista,Chiara Berti,Monica Pivetti,Giannino Melotti

doi:10.3390/educsci12020139

Silvia Di Battista, Chiara Berti + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12020139

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Abstract

Understanding what students mean by lecturer competence can be crucial in order to recognise indicators with which to assess these competences, improve the quality of university teaching and support lecturers in undertaking their role appropriately. This qualitative pilot study aimed to explore the meaning of competence in a convenience sample of Italian undergraduate psychology students (N = 122). We collected free-associations about what “lecturer competence” actually means for the students. The data corpus underwent a lexical Correspondence Analysis (CA) using the ASPAR procedure of SPAD-T. Two factors were extracted: “socio-emotional dimension” and “task specialist.” Students associated the competent lecturer with those who was involved with the achievement of the task goals, on the one hand or those who was engaged in the group’s maintenance, on the other. Furthermore, Cluster Analysis identified four clusters: (1) the captivating lecturer; (2) the lecturer oriented to both task and socio-emotional aspects; (3) the rigorous lecturer; and (4) the benevolent lecturer. The preliminary results of this pilot study showed an articulated and multi-dimensional representation of the meanings of lecturer competence from the students’ point of view and lay the foundations for a broader quantitative study on the conceptions concerning lecturer competence.

Highlights

A competent lecturer is the person who has a large amount of knowledge, but is a person capable of dealing with a contingent situation and who knows how act effectively in a specific situation by making the best use of his/her resources [2]
On the first axis “socio-emotional dimension”, we found the opposition between, on the left pole, the socio-emotional specialists, described with words such as “captivating” (a.c. = absolute contribution) = 10.4) and “available” (a.c. = 7.3); while on the right pole, the benevolent lecturer described as “participative” (a.c. = 23.0), “sociable” (a.c. = 13.9), “kind” (a.c. = 12.0), “motivated” (a.c. = 5.7), “professional” (a.c. = 4.1)
A complex representation of the competent lecturer emerged in the words of a group of Italian undergraduate psychology students, covering several areas of the competence already emphasized in other research investigating the meaning of the competent lecturer or of good teaching

Summary

Introduction

In education, according to some researchers [2], the term “competence” indicates the capacity to use knowledge, skills, personal, social and/or methodological abilities in response to specific situations and problems. A competent lecturer is the person who has a large amount of knowledge, but is a person capable of dealing with a contingent situation and who knows how act effectively in a specific situation by making the best use of his/her resources [2]. Westera [3] argued that the term “competence” lacks a commonly accepted definition and he identified two main perspectives of competence in education. Competence was seen as a series of skills and behaviours that represent the capacity to cope with complex and unpredictable situations. Even if a unitary definition and understanding of what competence represents is lacking, the development of reliable methods for the evaluation of competence seems to be important to define the quality of teaching

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