Phenomenographic pedagogy and a revised Approaches to teaching inventory

Abstract

The Approaches to teaching inventory (ATI) is now being widely used as an instrument for formally monitoring approaches to teaching. A lesser‐known use is as a stimulant for discussion among groups of teachers to raise awareness of the variation in qualitatively different ways of approaching teaching. The phenomenographic origins of the ATI are consistent with these uses in academic development, both formative and summative. Following this increase in use, the validity and utility of the ATI were reviewed in 2003 using data from over 1600 teachers. We now summarize the outcomes of this review and report new results of the tests conducted on an expanded ATI with a further 318 academics. While the revised ATI maintains a focus on the qualitative variation in two key dimensions of teaching (a conceptual change/student‐focused approach and an information transfer/teacher‐focused approach), the number of items in those scales has now been increased. This version enhances those features of the original instrument that helped make it a useful trigger tool in ‘phenomenographic pedagogic’ discussion. Both phenomenographic pedagogy and the development of the ATI are discussed in this paper.