In week 12 we have been looking at approaches taken by teachers and students to teaching and learning respectively in higher education.
Richardson (2005), based on surveys and analysis of other research on the subject, concluded that students' approaches to studying depended on their understanding of what learning is and their preceptions of the quality of the course. He also concluded that teacher's approaches to teaching reflected their concepts of what teaching was mitigated by contextual factors such as the curriculum demands and the students' demands.
This was apparently the distillation of 25 years of developments in the understanding of teaching and learning in Higher Education... Really? Of course I am simplifying the arguments and conclusions here and glossing over some of the issues around the user of surveys and the correlation and causation implied but as far as I can see, the output is hardly a revelation.
The concepts of what teaching and learning are were key to this and we have looked at this earlier on the course. There are models or metaphors for what learning is (as discussed earlier in the course) ranging from a simple acquisition of facts or information through to a sythesis of understanding though abstraction of concepts and also an evolving of the concept of self. Similarly, there are a range of perceptions of what teaching is that mirror/lead(?) those of learning from a didactic provider of facts through a facilitator to a coach or mentor.
There was an assumption in the paper that deeper student engagement in the learning based on higher level understandings of what learning is are more valid than simpler acquisition ones. However, surely these are all valid but in different contexts; not every metaphor or teaching/learning style flowing from that metaphor is valid in every teaching and learning situation. That said, as the study was concerned with Higher Education, I would assume that it would indeed be desirable to have students engage with the learning at a deeper level as that is surely the point of Higher Education (at least in part) but some subjects and Foundation courses perhaps could quite validly be taught and studied in a didactic/surface acquistion way.
The key message for me was actually addressed very early in the paper and then not really returned to; 'desirable approachies to studying [could be brought about] by appropriate course design', teaching methods and assessment. Basically, if it is important for students to engage critically with the material rather than just remember facts or what is needed to pass an assessment then design the course so that this comes about. There are a great many tools (including 'web 2.0' technologies) and techniques available to teachers now that drive students to actively constuct their understanding rather than passively absorb it if that is considered desirable in that context.
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References
Richardson, J.T. (2005) 'Students' approaches to learning and teachers' aproaches to teaching' Open University