Final year biosciences students’ willingness to engage: teaching-learning environments, authentic learning experiences and identities

Dr Velda McCuneCentre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, University of Edinburgh

Paper to be presented as part of the Invited Symposium of the Higher Education Special Interest Group at the 12th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction, August 28th to September 1st, Budapest, Hungary.

Abstract

The research reported in this paper investigates what influences students’ willingness to engage actively with their studies. In the context of this analysis, active engagement is seen as being situated within specific disciplinary contexts and communities. Thus active engagement implies students working within the ways of thinking and practising (WTP) of the subject area. The interview transcripts which form the basis of this analysis are a subset of the data from the Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses (ETL) Project, a large-scale project which was funded from 2001-2005 by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The data set used in this paper comprises transcripts from 19 semi-structured group interviews with 59 experienced biosciences students from 3 contrasting types of university in the UK. A rigorous thematic analysis of the data, using HyperRESEARCH (version 2.6.1 from Researchware, Inc.), was drawn together in a multi-faceted conceptual model of the influences on the students’ willingness to engage. This model describes the interplay between aspects of students’ identities and facets of their learning contexts in university and on work placement. The analysis suggests that no single influence can explain the extent of the students’ engagement but, for some students, identification with the role of ‘scientist’ seemed particularly important. The notion of ‘authentic learning experiences’ is used to illuminate the students’ perspectives on how key learning experiences influenced their enthusiasm and willingness to engage with their studies.

Introduction

This paper focuses on how students account for their willingness to engage actively with their academic studies. It investigates how final year biosciences students on three different course units talked about their interest and enthusiasm for the units and the subject area more generally. In the context of this analysis, active engagement implies students working within the ways of thinking and practising (WTP) of the biosciences. The notion of ‘ways of thinking and practising’ in a subject area was developed within the ETL research project to describe the richness, depth and breadth of what students might learn through engagement with a given subject area in a specific context. This might include aspects which were explicitly taught, as well as more tacit norms and practices (McCune and Hounsell, 2005). The analysis reported in this paper builds on earlier analyses of data from these students, which highlighted the different facets of ways of thinking and practicing relevant for these contexts and drew attention to the impact of teaching-learning environments on students’ understandings of WTP (McCune and Hounsell, 2005; Hounsell et. al. in press).

The interview transcripts which form the basis of this analysis originate from the Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses (ETL) Project, a large-scale study which was funded from 2001-2005 as part of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme of the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The overall aim of the project was to understand and enhance undergraduate courses as 'teaching-learning environments (TLEs)' and to investigate student and staff perspectives on how these environments impacted on the quality of the students’ learning (www.tla.ed.ac.uk/etl).

Figure 1: Conceptual map of the “inner” teaching-learning environmentFrom Entwistle, McCune and Hounsell (2003)

Teaching and assessing content

Teachers' beliefs, conceptions of teaching, and reflective practice

Choicesprovided for

students

Course contexts

Staff-student relationships

Students and student cultures

Contact hours and workload

Course design & organisation

Aims and learning outcomes

Choice and organisation of content

Teaching methods Assessment

and feedback

Orientations, beliefs, norms

and values Peer groups, morale,

identities

Abilties, knowledge and skill in learning

Sense of fairness and moral order

Affective quality of

relationships

Guidance and support for

learning

Learning histories and developmental levels

Influences from outside the university -

demands and support

Specific institutional and

disciplinary contexts

The ways in which teaching-learning environments were understood in the ETL project drew heavily, although not exclusively, on a body of research focusing on students’ perceptions and understandings of their day-to-day experiences in Higher Education settings (Biggs, 2003; Marton, Hounsell and Entwistle, 1997; Prosser and Trigwell, 1999) The research focus in the ETL project was on course units or modules as teaching-learning environments; this being the case, the data collection concentrated more on students’ perceptions of these units than on wider institutional, social or cultural influences. Figure 1 maps out the broad conceptualisation of a teaching-learning environment used in the project.

The work of the ETL project was influenced by constructivist perspectives on teaching-learning environments which emphasise the importance of involving students in active knowledge construction and co-operative learning in relation to authentic tasks, which are similar to the situations in which the knowledge will actually be used (Dochy, 2001; Tenebaum et al., 2001; Tynjälä, 1997; Vermetten, 1999). Stein, Issacs and Andrews (2004) suggest that authentic learning opportunities are, ‘personally meaningful and relevant to students, socially relevant to the field and in harmony with the nature of the discipline’ (p. 254). Stein and colleagues’ theoretical perspective on authentic learning experiences is valuable as it goes beyond simply suggesting that learning activities should mirror their ‘real life’ counterparts. Rather these authors discuss the ways in which a given activity might help students to engage meaningfully

and realistically with the practices of their subject area, without necessarily participating directly in the ‘real life’ setting. Authentic learning experiences, as described by Stein and colleagues seem particularly well suited to encouraging learners to engage actively with the WTP of their subject areas.

Recent work on the place of learners’ identities in the learning process seems pertinent to understanding the extent to which students are willing to engage with their studies. Accounts of learner identities in the literature are varied and sometimes contradictory but they often encompass certain key themes. A student’s senses of who they are can be seen as important dimensions of their identities (for example, Ivanic, 1998; Wenger 1998) and some of the literature on identities also includes how individuals are often seen by others (Bobbitt-Nolen et al. 2005; Sfard and Prusak, 2005). The plural form ‘identities’ is used in this paper to acknowledge that an individual’s understanding of who they are may be multifaceted, fluid and may encompass tension between different strands of identity (Hall, 2004; Ivanic, 1998). Identities can be understood as encompassing: an individual’s sense of their place in a network of roles and relationships; their interpretations of their personal history; and their ideas about how they would like to be in the future (Bobbit-Nolen et al. 2005; Wenger, 1998). For some authors identity is seen primarily as an experience of being in the world (Wenger, 1998) whereas others see identity as a set of stories or narratives about an individual, from which a sense of identity arises (Sfard and Prusak, 2005).

One of the ways in which learners’ identities can be seen as relevant to their enthusiasm for their studies, is in how identities can frame what is meaningful or relevant for a student. Wenger (1998), for example, introduces the notion of ‘learning trajectories’ which form part of learners’ identities. This notion of trajectories takes into account that identities can encompass both a sense of where an individual has been and a sense of where they are going in relation to particular communities of practice. Communities of practice are described as contexts within which individuals work together toward a shared goal for long enough to allow for significant learning. Wenger contends that an individual’s sense of where they are going in relation to such communities helps them to decide what matters to them and what does not, what they may incorporate in their developing identities and what will remain marginal for them. In a similar vein, Sfard and Prusak (2005) note that learning is the means by which an individual may close the gap between their understanding of the person they currently are and their views about the person they expect to be. These perspectives then suggest that identities may help define what an individual finds meaningful or relevant.

Wenger (1998) notes that identities can be understood partly in terms of individuals experiencing a sense of familiarity and competence in certain social contexts but not in others. In Wenger’s view, people partly define who they are by which communities feel familiar to them or in which they have a sense of unfamiliarity or lack of competence. One might imagine then that there would be interplay between students’ sense of competence in academic settings and their choice of trajectories and engagement with their studies. Some evidence for a link between a sense of competence and students’ willingness to engage comes from the more psychological literature on self-efficacy. This literature connects students’ beliefs about whether they are able to successfully complete certain tasks to various measures of the quality of their engagement with their studies (Garcia et al., 1998; Pintrich and Garcia, 1991; Wolters, 2003).

Overall then, it seems plausible to suggest that a student’s sense of who they are and where they are going may be seen as framing what they see as worthwhile in their studies and what they imagine themselves capable of doing. This potentially makes theories of selfhood very relevant to understanding students’ willingness to engage.

To summarise, the aim of the present study is to investigate the main themes in the students’ accounts of what influences their enthusiasm for their studies in the biological sciences and

their willingness to engage actively with the subject matter. These accounts cannot be seen as any kind of straightforward representation of what most impacts on students’ engagement with their learning but they may help to open up some possible ways of thinking about the interplay between teaching-learning environments, authentic learning experiences, students’ developing identities and their enthusiasm for their studies. The analysis presented here has parallels with Volet’s (2001) theoretical review of the literature in which she presents a multi-level model of influences on students’ motivation drawing together more cognitive perspectives on student learning with work from socio-cultural perspectives. The present paper is more modest in its ambitions focusing as it does on the experiences of specific groups of students in a small number of contexts.

Research Contexts Three one-semester undergraduate honours level course units (1L, 2L and 3L) were surveyed across three institutions selected to be representative of the range of different types of higher education institutions common in the UK. The course units had enrolments ranging from 14 to 44 students. The teaching in unit 1L combined twice-weekly lectures with regular tutorials. The assessment in this course unit was based on a three-hour examination (60% of the final grade) together with two coursework assignments, each of which counted for 20% overall. Unit 2L was taught in three-hour blocks beginning with a talk in which an active bioscience researcher would present on their own research area. A different researcher presented each week. In the second part of the three-hour block, the students were assigned problems or questions arising from data linked to the guest lecturer's work, and they tackled these in small groups prior to plenary discussion. Assessment in 2L took the form of a single three-hour exam paper. In unit 3L, the teaching took the form of weekly seminars in which presentations were given by two of the students followed by questions and discussion. Assessment in 3L was wholly based on coursework, combining marks for the students' seminar presentations with grades for two 1500-word essays. Almost all of the students on the 3L course unit had completed a year of placement work in professional research environments. Some of the 2L students had had similar placement experiences, whereas the 1L students typically would have had placement experiences after the data were collected.

Data Gathering and Participants

In each of the course settings a sample of students volunteered to participate in semi-structured group interviews in the penultimate week of the unit. Table 1 summarises the interview samples from the three course units.1 The response rates varied from 25% to 93%. In the interviews the students were asked about their expectations for the course unit and about what it would take for a student to do well in that course unit, or in the subject area more generally. The students were prompted to comment on their perceptions of how the course unit was taught, assessed and organised. There were also questions about the extent to which they felt they had learned to think or communicate like a bioscientist, or to use the kinds of techniques and procedures employed by bioscientist. This was followed by a discussion of the students’ plans for the future after their degree programme had finished. With particular relevance to the present analysis, the students were asked whether the course unit had made them more or less enthusiastic about the subject matter.

1 In two of the settings, 1L and 3L were surveyed twice in consecutive years. This repeat sampling procedure was necessary for the overall design of the ETL project but is not relevant to the present paper, except in that it increases the number of interviews available for analysis. The research design of the ETL project is discussed in detail elsewhere (www.ed.ac.uk/etl).

Table 1 Samples and response rates for the interviews

1L (2002-2003) 1L (2003-2004) 2L (2002-2003) 3L (2002-2003) 3L (2003-2004)no. of students 44 32 25 14 15group interviews 5 4 4 3 3students interviewed 13 8 12 13 13

Data Analysis

The interviews were transcribed in full and were analysed using HyperRESEARCH (version 2.6.1 from Researchware, Inc.). The first step in the data analysis process was to select all of the data that seemed potentially relevant to the analysis. In this initial broad-brush analysis any extracts relating to students’ accounts of what had affected their enthusiasm for the subject area or that specific course unit were coded, along with everything the students had to say about influences on their willingness to engage actively with the subject matter. Each extract was coded along with enough of the surrounding text to contextualise the students’ comments.

The next stage in the analysis involved refining the broad themes and sub-themes initially identified. The aim of this second stage in the analysis was to organise the data in such a way as to highlight what appeared to be the most salient influences on engagement from the students’ perspectives, without losing sight of other relevant data. The importance of different facets of the data were weighed by considering: how many students mentioned a particular influence; whether a particular issue was represented across interviews and settings; and the strength of the students’ expression of their comments on a given theme. Part of the process here was to reduce the large number of sub-themes initially identified down to a set which provided a coherent overview of the influences identified by the students. The analysis also involved careful clarification of what exactly would be included within the meaning of a particular theme or sub-theme.

The final stage in the analysis involved checking the themes and sub themes back against the entire data set. The data were carefully checked to identify any salient perspectives which had been missed in the initial analysis. The distribution of the findings on the themes across course units and interviews was also carefully logged so that the prevalence of different findings could be reported. Less common findings were still presented but it seemed important to report their relative rarity in the data set. Counter-examples to the broad findings were sought and these are reported with the findings on the themes where they arose.

The overall stance taken in relation to the present analysis bears similarities to that taken by Charmaz (2003) in the sense that the intention was to offer a thorough analysis of the meanings students attributed to their experiences which could be clearly justified in relation to the underlying data. Charmaz’s constructivist perspective on qualitative data treads a line between postpositivist and postmodern perspectives and suggests the possibility of rigorous empirical analysis of perspectives and meanings without the assumption that this identifies objective universal truths unaffected by the perspectives of the researcher. While the present analysis differed from Charmaz’s work in some of its procedures, it was conducted in a similar spirit.

Findings

Three broad themes were identified which seemed to encompass the main dimensions of these students’ perspectives on their engagement with their studies. The themes and their related sub themes are summarised in Table 2. The first of these themes, teaching-learning environments, delineates what the students had to say about the impact of how they were taught and assessed on their enthusiasm and willingness to engage actively with their studies. The second theme focuses on the powerful accounts given by students of how they felt that authentic

learning experiences had changed the nature of their engagement with their studies. In some instances accounts of these authentic learning experiences also contributed to the students’ descriptions of their developing identities, which are considered here in so far as they seemed to relate to the students’ sense of engagement with the subject matter.

Table 2: Summary of themes and sub-themes from the analysis

Teaching-learning environments and learner engagement -- affective dimensions of teaching-teaching processes- assessment processes- assessment pressure- time pressure

Authentic learning experiences and learner engagement -- open ended research questions- contradictory findings and contested interpretations- social integration into a research community- independence and responsibility

Developing identities and learner engagement - -feeling like a scientist- academic self-confidence- attributing value and meaning to course content

Teaching-learning environments and learner engagement

In the present analysis, five dimensions of the teaching-learning environment were described by the students as particularly salient for understanding their willingness to engage actively with their studies. Two of these dimensions were related to teaching and two to assessment. Finally, time pressure was mention by the students in terms of its negative impact on the quality of their engagement.

Affective dimensions of teaching

The value of certain affective dimensions of teaching was raised by students across all of the sites. Some of the students spoke of how their perceptions of staff enthusiasm for the subject area were important for their own enthusiasm, as illustrated in the interchange below:

S1: I think it’s just the enthusiasm about the subject. If they are really enthusiastic […]2 S2: […] if they've got like a really monotone voice, even though they are really interesting and what they are saying is really interesting [...] it’s hard to listen to it and get enthusiastic ourselves. […]

S1: My teacher [for biology at high school] was brilliant, a great teacher, really enthusiastic about it, you know, I came out with an 'A' and everything. I was really happy about it, I thought it was a great subject! S2: It makes you wanna go away and learn it as well, it's like, "oh there must be something really exciting about this that's so interesting" […]

2L V1

2 In extracts involving an interchange between several students, the first student who speaks in each extract is labelled as ‘S1’, the second student who speaks is labelled as ‘S2’ and so on. ‘I’ designates the interviewer.

For others the quality of their relationships with staff members was described as important for their enthusiasm for their studies. The student quoted below claimed that improved relations with staff made a difference to his interest in science:

S: At my old university I was slightly less enthusiastic, I'd become slightly disinterested in science actually. I really didn't enjoy the course but I've actually begun to enjoy it again here. I think it seems to be a lot more friendly environment and, when you feel it's actually a better environment, then you actually pay more attention and you start to enjoy the course. You don't dread it or get bored by it […] I think the lecturers were more distant at my old university, they didn't really seem to be that bothered. [….] Here, they actually encourage you to do more work, ask you how things are going.

1L JN2

Teaching processes

Across all of the course settings, the students spoke about how teaching affected their willingness to engage with the subject matter.3 The students mentioned quite a wide range of aspects of the teaching process as being influential, one of the more commonly discussed issues was the quality of the explanations given by teachers, for example:

[Another course unit has] not been as interesting as [2L] because [in 2L] everything is explained to us afterwards as well so that even if we do not understand it at the beginning of the problems, they make sure we understand it before we leave.

2L V1

Several mentions were also given to teachers’ presenting styles:

I find it keeps concentration better if [the speaker is] slightly more spontaneous and it's not […] ‘I've learnt this speech and this is what I'm going to say’.

3L V1

Assessment processes

Students across all three course units spoke about how assessment processes could impact on their willingness to engage. For example, assessment processes which involved students in giving presentations led the students to speak of the effects of an imagined audience on their engagement:

If you read through a paper or whatever […] you'll read though it and think - Yeah, fine, I understand that, but when you […] have to come back to explain it to someone else the way you look at it is a lot more critical and I think it improves your understanding a lot more.

3L V1

In the 3L setting, this effect of audience was mentioned more than any other effect of the assessment process, perhaps because the students had only been assessed by presentations in that course at the time they were interviewed.

A quite different example of this sub-theme is provided by students’ comments on how assessment processes which allowed them to focus in on one topic could enhance their enthusiasm for their studies:

3 This sub-theme includes comments from students on course unit 3L speaking about other students’ presentations.

I've enjoyed [my dissertation] the most because when I start researching into something I want to know everything about it […] and I just found myself being drawn way too much into that and spending too much time on it.

2L V1

Assessment pressure

This sub-theme brings together the students’ accounts of how their willingness to engage with a topic was influenced by: their perceptions of assessment criteria; their awareness of how much an assessment counted toward their overall grade; or simply whether a topic was assessed at all. While assessment pressures were clearly seen as relevant in all three course settings, there was considerable variation in the extent to which individual students spoke as if assessment pressures were significant for their learning. Two contrasting extracts are presented by way of illustration:

I am more interested in other subjects [...] When we had our lecture about apoptosis I felt really like, "Wow!" and my first thing was arriving home and I just pick some articles and start reading. Like oops dissertation!

2LP V2

[The course coordinator said that students] gave a better representation of the data than [at] the original conference. Because we're being assessed on it, there is kind of that little bit of extra pressure to get it right, to make sure you're presenting well, whereas small conferences later on in your career, you possibly won't put quite as much effort into […]

3LC V1

Time pressure

In both 1L and 3L several students spoke about how time pressure could have a negative impact on their enthusiasm for their studies. Perceiving that it was not possible to complete coursework well in the time available and feelings of tiredness were both mentioned:

After a certain time it becomes more mechanical, just handing in the reports [...] we know for ourselves that we could have put in a much better report but, due to the lack of time, we just have to compromise on quality sometimes.

1LC JN1

I'm going to do a PhD next year so I'm still very interested. But I have found it much harder this year, because the two placements took up the holidays so I haven't had a break and so I'm finding it generally quite hard just to keep going, have motivation and actually remind myself why I'm doing it, because I'm so tired.

3LP J1

Authentic learning experiences and learner engagement

Some of the most forceful comments made by the students about how they had come to feel more engaged with their studies related to their accounts of what might be described as authentic learning experiences. These tasks were depicted as authentic by the students in the sense that they were understood as realistic experiences of how scientists work:

[Writing a report for my placement] was a really valuable learning experience […] because it teaches you how to write a proper scientific paper. And also, the placements in general give you a scientist's feel for research […] maybe if you graduate without a placement you wouldn't necessarily appreciate what was actually involved on the day to day basis in a research [setting].

3LC J1

These accounts of authentic learning experiences were often, but not exclusively, set in the context of work placements. This being the case almost all of the data came from the 2L and 3L settings although there were some relevant data from 1L and some of the data in 2L referred to students' experiences in their classes rather than on placement. Some students described these experiences as having very marked effects on their willingness to engage with their studies, for example:

I: Do you feel in a sense you're different people because you have the placements? […]

S1: Possibly less disillusioned I think!

S2: I'd have dropped out by now if I hadn't done a placement! […]3LP D1

Open ended research questions

From the accounts available in the data it seems that certain dimensions of these authentic learning experiences may have been particularly important. Students in one of the groups in setting 2L and several groups from 3L indicated that tackling open ended research questions made a difference for them:

S1: [Placement is] much more real. It's a different world completely, yeah.

S2: Much more interesting I'd say.

S1: Yeah, much more interesting.

I: Why.. how's it different? Why's it more interesting?

S1: Real science isn't really about learning […] it's about trial and error, discovery sort of thing. Whereas being at university is about learning, it's not really about trial and error.

S2: [...] Instead of just learning stuff for the sake of learning it and just memorising it, you've got to think of how it works, you've got to understand how it works. And then you've got to start thinking about how you can change that or play with it or develop it.

S1: It could be any other number of things so then you've got to try and identify which one it is. I dunno, it's something you haven't thought of and you learn that from someone who's being doing it all their life. […]

3LP D1

This was sometimes contrasted with less favourable experiences of more controlled university laboratory classes:

S1: […] now I'm confident enough to go into a job as a scientist, completely. I wouldn't have been like that if I had not done a work placement.

S2: […] first, second and third year labs were all set up for you, all your buffers were made up, everything was pretty much done for you and you came in and they said to you "Right, there's all your stuff, this is what you have to do, follow the instruction manual". Whereas when you're on work placement, you go in, you discuss your problems with your supervisor and say "Right well, what could we do, how could we do it" and then he says "Right, on you go and see if..". Obviously he would give you help along the way and everything ,but it's basically you setting up everything, you making up your own buffers, working out your own. […] that sort of emphasises the difference between [university labs and work placements] just the difference that makes.

2LP V1

Other comments suggested, however, that it was possible for the students to perceive their university laboratory work as meaningful and as necessary preparation for their placements:

To me, exams are irrelevant […] I think we should spend more time in the labs cause generally that is what we are going to be doing. Course works are fine, lab reports, that's what we are going to be doing with the rest of our lives […]

1LC JN2

You learn the [...] background techniques from the labs and then you get to actually properly put them into practice and learn more skills from placements. But you do, as you said earlier, need the labs at first to be able to learn the basics.

3LC J1

Nor were all placement experiences described as enhancing the students’ engagement, even when they were perceived as authentic:

Like, on placement you do come to realise that although science seems really interesting from the outside, when you're working in it it takes such [a long time]. It can take you months to discover one [expletive deleted] protein interaction or whatever. […] Yeah, the repetition is probably the worst part of it. You've got to keep yourself motivated. If you've done the same thing for three weeks and it hasn't worked, you want to throw everything on the floor […]

3LP D1

Contradictory findings and contested interpretations

In a few of the interviews the authentic learning experiences were described as bringing to the fore the possibility that research findings might be apparently contradictory and that their interpretation could be a matter of debate. This in turn could be related to students’ willingness to engage critically with the subject matter:

I remember the first time we did [the problem solving part of the class] there were three problems. And the first one, has to have one conclusion, the second one as well, same conclusion, and then the third one just said that the other two were wrong. So, this makes us think of all the alternative experiments that one should do to really, you know, get an answer from something. So, it's really good. It's not just like do one experiment - ah, yeah, this is our answer. You know, it's all the other experiments that we should do as well to prove that.

2LP V2

S1: Yeah, it's a kind of once you have the experience carrying out the experiments, you know that the results of things could be taken in very different ways, we have people who could look at things with very black and white situation, and other people who can go - oh, but this variable could have affected this one, or something else. […]

S2: I think [that doing research] improves your confidence, because you are willing, on occasion to say, ‘what this person says, I don't trust’ […] Prior to the placements, or your final year projects […] all the experiments you do […] you can walk into the lab already knowing exactly what the results should be. It's very, very obvious. Whereas when you're doing any proper research there isn't any, quite such a black and white clear cut guidelines.

3LC V1

Social integration into a research community

The experience of social integration into a research community also seemed to contribute to the impact of the authentic learning experiences on some students’ willingness to engage with the subject matter. In a few interviews across 2L and 3L the students spoke of how discussing

ongoing research in context contributed to their capacity to approach the subject area in a questioning manner:

S1: […] I think some scientific sort of nature, has been honed and improved by going on placement. And I think it also helps in the work we're doing now we're back […] or there's things that you suddenly question that you wouldn't have before […]

I: You said the scientific nature? S1: Yeah, well basically, before one of the placements, I almost was, reluctant to look too much into something in case I found a hole in it basically, and my wonderful theory fell apart, or somebody else's wonderful theory fell apart, now it's sort of almost like a game, like you're trying to see if there is any data or evidence that this hypothesis doesn't stand up to, and it does make you more inquisitive and –

S2: So the fact that you know the work you're doing is going to be evaluated this way by anyone else who looks at it, and you know all those people who have slightly different opinions will be looking to pick holes [?] so you have to learn to be able to defend what you're doing, or if there is something wrong with it you need to accept it, perhaps explain it […]

I: Is this something you would have learned about at all during your studies before you went on placement or, that you've learned that you're back, or is it really the placement that makes the difference.

S3: I think it's the placement, I think, -

S2: You learn about theory of it but unless you're in the situation doing it and getting your work pulled apart by someone else –

S3: And you realise how to be, have scientific integrity […]3LC V1

Being part of these communities also seemed to influence the students’ willingness to engage with the subject area more generally. In the first extract below, the student speaks as if a change in engagement has come about through taking on some of the values of a particular community. In the second extract, the sense of integration the student experienced on placement seems to have affected their connection with the university environment:

[On placement] you become much more independent […] You actually realise you study because you want to or because you want to learn something, not so much because you've got an exam next week […] That's one thing that I found actually to do with the placement, it actually made me think what I'm gonna do when I graduate because I've never really thought about it before, like, seriously. […] [In my placement setting] they're all very career orientated over there which I thought was a good thing […] so they're always talking about and it made me start to think about it and it scared me a lot also! (Laughs). But at least it got me into thinking a bit before we got back, you know.

2LP JN1

Yeah.. I think the major thing is that it has made [me] more confident in […] integrating myself into groups of scientists […] [Before my placement] I had like one friend on my course and that was it. I just went to uni and just left it behind me. […] After last year it's like you're talking to lots of different scientists and it's more beneficial if you get involved and it has just given me much more confidence than I had.

2LP V1

Independence and responsibility

The independence and opportunities to take responsibility that students were given within some of these authentic learning experiences were also mentioned - in three interviews from two different contexts - as a catalyst for greater enthusiasm or commitment to their studies:

S1: [Placement] gives you a lot of confidence […] [On placement] you have your own projects […] you plan out your practicals […] you have some input into where your project goes as well […]

S2: I've been very lucky with both my placements actually, they've been really good and they've put a lot of trust in me. They have actually given me decent projects, my own projects, to do rather than just treating me like someone who can do your washing up for you. […]

I: Do you feel as a result of this, you're more committed to Biology, or less, or the same?

S3/4: More.

S1: More. 3LC D1

These experiences of being given greater responsibility were linked by some students to accounts of their growing confidence in their academic abilities, an issue which is considered in the next section, in relation to the theme of developing identities and learner engagement.

Developing identities and learner engagement

This theme encompasses those aspects of students’ developing identities that seemed to be related directly to their willingness to engage actively with their studies. There was evidence of an association between the extent of the students’ identification with the role of ‘scientist’ and their preparedness to engage with research findings in a questioning manner. The ways in which the students’ attributed meaning and value to the subject matter are also included within this theme, as they can be seen as part of a student’s sense of self in relation to their learning trajectories.

Feeling like a scientist

Students across all of the course settings made the connection between feeling like a scientist (or not) and feeling able and willing to engage with data in a questioning manner. In some of the most powerful extracts, students linked their growing confidence in their capacity to conduct research or evaluate data explicitly to shifts in their identities. These more marked changes were rare in the data but where they occurred seemed to have a significant impact on students’ willingness to engage deeply with the subject matter. An extended extract is presented below to illustrate the strength of some of the students’ comments and to show the link between the authentic learning experiences described earlier and the students’ developing identities:

I: You were saying you thought you've become more committed to the subject - I just wondered what makes you ?

S1: […] I think it was the work placement [...] it has made me more interested in it, and [...] more knowledgeable about it […] It makes you think for yourself […] 'Cos basically you're studying something that hardly anyone knows as much about it as you do, so.. It gave me more confidence in science more than anything else, which made me more committed. So [before the placement] it was a bit of a farce! […] I didn't go to as many lectures, and this year I've been to

everything. And I can actually see the difference between people who did work placements and people who didn't do a work placement […] the others are still committed, but I don't think they are really that.. I don't know how to put it -

S2: - motivated I think. That's what I found as well. I found myself a bit more cynical of things as well. Like, when you hear reports and tabloids and everything, these miracle cures […] It has definitely taught me to think more like a scientist and it has also given me a lot more confidence working in the labs on experiments and the interpretation of results […]

S1: [Placement] is the best thing I could have done. [Without it] I wouldn't have known anything really about the whole background of science. I'd be like, "Oh, here are the facts that we've been given", but I wouldn't have a clue about how people went around doing it [...] When you do your work placement you get to find out everything about it, and how it all works and how everyone can just phone up other scientists that they know are on the same field and just ask them for help and stuff. It's all like, the knowledge is in the people's heads rather than in books […] You've gone up a level, you're not a student anymore.

S2: You've been given a problem, so you'll think more about the problem and all the aspects of it. Like if you want to do an experiment or whatever, you'll think more of what you'll need to put in, what needs to be in there. It's almost more logical.

S1: [If you were writing a lab report in the year before the placement you] would write what you'd found out and stuff, but from [the placement] now I can write "Well this is how I went about trying to research what I was wanting to find out, this is how I researched into what the experiments I would do. These are the experiments and this is what I'd do if I had more time in the future". So you're not just writing "Oh, this is what I've done and the results are this!". […]

I: And you're sort of saying you're not a student anymore, are you saying you feel kind of different in yourselves?

S1: Definitely!

S2: I feel more like a scientist than a student. […]

S1: [In the year of study before my placement] I just felt like I was a student again and it didn't make me feel as committed, but now I do actually think that I'm a scientist now because I was given the freedom last year to do anything I wanted on this project that I was doing, and it's like you have the respect of everyone in the labs and people actually came to you to ask you stuff about what you were doing and ask you for advice […]

2LP V1

Conversely, some of the participants in each setting spoke about still feeling like students and linked this with concerns about their ability to interpret research findings; for example:

S1: It's difficult to question things that you read in journals sometimes I think because we're just undergraduates.

S2: Yeah […] this will only be a three week piece of a module and these people [who] have composed these journal articles they've spent months, years maybe, doing [it] I often find it difficult to try and question some of these things.

1LP V1

S2: Everything's peer review anyway so.. (S1: Yeah). If they really didn't catch the fact that it's complete rubbish then all the undergraduates aren't gonna..

3LP D1

Academic self-confidence

Beyond the specific issue of the interplay between feeling like a scientist and having confidence to critically evaluate research findings, there was a more general link in all three course settings between students’ confidence in their ability to tackle academic questions and their willingness to engage actively with their studies. While some students spoke of engaging less with tasks or content which seemed overly difficult:

[…] don't tell him I haven't started it yet! […] I can’t actually remember doing it in a lecture, and it just seemed so way out there and a lot of people struggled with it this year, I know a lot of people were cramming it in to the last week […] I actually had a few tantrums at home [laughs], I was trying to do it but, aaargh. I found his particularly difficult this year. […]so much information, so little time.

1LC JN2

others seemed to feel confident enough to work with challenging material:

Generally I see myself in that subject area […] It’s my favourite module of the semester, so I don't have anything bad to say about it. I think the only thing is that things can get complex, but of course that is the nature of the science that you are talking about. It's a challenging and interesting aspect cause it involves such a scope of areas that come under so many areas in Biology […] yeah, generally it’s fantastic –

1LC JN2

Attributing value and meaning to course content

As explained in the introduction, what an individual values and cares about can be conceptualised as important dimensions of their identities. In the present study, how the students valued the subject matter was often linked in their comments to their willingness to engage with course content. While some students spoke of disinterest in their studies, many more spoke of their intrinsic interest in the subject matter, which extended for some to descriptions of real fascination:

That I think is fascinating, the fact that something as small as that can mean so much to the whole […] it’s just amazing, its fantastically amazing. [The other lecturer] tells us all the bits and what it then goes on to do, and that is quite fascinating as well cause you think, you know, all these little letters go on to do this, that goes on to do that and there's you, and you're like - wow, that is quite, it’s phenomenal, it screws your noodle a bit, but it's brilliant, just to find out all about it.

1LC JN2

A few students went beyond this general interest to suggest a stronger identification with some aspect of the subject matter:

If you are very good at one subject then you have a special way of thinking about that subject, […] so outside that subject you try to link it to this main subject […] I'll always be thinking from a micro-biological point of view [...] So that it can help me direct my interest.

1LC JN1

I think the students have a lot more questions to ask because they have their own specific areas of interest now. And before I think, a lot of people have just been sitting there, asking simple questions and now they are really relating it to their actual real life experience, their actual projects […]

3LC D1

Wenger (1998) suggests that individuals’ intended trajectories – their sense of where they are going in relation to particular communities – form important facets of their identities. The majority of the students interviewed saw themselves going on to further study in the sciences or to work in scientific research of some kind. The link between students’ intended trajectories and their willingness to engage with their studies can be seen in the comments made in every setting about how seeing the future relevance or applicability of their studies was important to students' willingness to engage:

Personally I find it easier to motivate myself to learn something if it's got an obvious application in industry or, you know in the working world.

3LC J1

S1: I feel more enthusiastic about the subject area, definitely. I think in particular […] it was the Pathologist –

S2: He put what we would be learning into context. The pathologist came in and said "This is what it looks like if someone has this sort of thing". And he puts what you're actually learning into the context of people actually get cancer and die from this sort of thing […] So we're not just learning mechanisms and pathways, it actually has a point.

S1: Yeah, I think that's the problem as well, you go through it and you don't really get why you're doing this and why you're studying this and what's gonna be the outcome of it. […] This has been a quite good module, where we saw pictures of tumours and things like that, and it helps you to realise that this is actually a real life thing, that you are gonna go out and, as she said, people do die from it.

2LP JN2

While most of the comments the students made about the vocational relevance of course content suggested an intrinsic interest in their studies, there were a few comments which suggested a more instrumental motivation:

S: […] that seems to be the main thing this year is giving your own opinions, correctly evaluating the stuff you're getting as opposed to just, this is good because it says so.

I: Is that hard to do?

S: I find it hard - [?] at the end of the year I just want to go and get a job. I don't want to go and change the world and find some new cure for anything, just want to go out and get a job. It's part of the course so you have to do it.

1LP D1

Further, it was clear that a sense of vocational relevance was not always necessary for students to be willing to engage with course content:

I always liked the enzymology lectures in the past and I like the lecturers […] it's not, probably not what I'm going to go into, but, it's just something that interests me.

3LC D1

Discussion

Overall, the ways in which these final year biosciences students accounted for their willingness to engage with their studies describes an interplay between aspects of their identities and facets of their learning contexts in university and on work placement. The students’ accounts suggest that no single influence is sufficient in itself to explain the extent of their engagement but, for some students, developing confidence to identify with the role of ‘scientist’ seemed particularly important. The students’ accounts of authentic learning experiences described some of the

ways in which they were given opportunities to develop their identities in the direction of greater confidence and greater identification with the scientist role. How the students were taught and assessed also formed part of their accounts of influences on their enthusiasm for the subject. In this section of the paper, these themes are drawn together to offer a conceptual framework to integrate the findings. Links to the existing literature are explored and the analysis process is evaluated. This then provides the background to the conclusions and implications presented in the final part of the paper.

A conceptual framework

Figure 2 presents a conceptual framework which draws on the literature and the present analysis to suggest one way in which the interplay between students-as-learners and the contexts within which they learn can be understood in relation to the students’ willingness to engage actively with the ways of thinking and practising of their subject areas. Further research using, for example, individual interviews will be required to fully validate the connections made in this model. The group interview data underpinning the present analysis do not allow the full set of connections to be traced for individuals.

In this Figure, the themes from the present analysis are used as examples of wider constructs such as ‘university teaching learning environments’ or ‘research communities of practice’. This representation acknowledges that different themes might well come to the fore in future analyses with different groups of students in different contexts. The interaction between what the students bring to their learning and the immediate task environment is seen as mediated through the social practices of the relevant communities, as described in sociocultural perspectives on learning. Following Volet (2001) the model presented here invokes the possibility that there may or may not be a good ‘fit’ between a student’s current position and the demands placed on them by a particular task. There may be ‘constructive friction’ (Vermunt and Verloop, 1999) where the demands placed on the student are sufficient to stretch them and encourage development but there may also be ‘destructive friction’ where the demands placed on the student are excessive or conversely where too much control is taken away from a student who is capable of managing their own learning in a given context.

The model suggests that where there is a good ‘fit’ between the student and the environment, and where the affordances of the immediate task environment are conducive, then there is a greater potential for authentic learning experiences. The authentic learning experiences described by some of the students in this study fit well with Stein, Isaacs and Andrews (2004) perspective, which sees authentic experiences as personally meaningful for students and as situated within social contexts which allow students to engage actively with the practices of the subject area. It seems highly plausible that authentic experiences of this kind will be particularly supportive of students’ willingness to engage with the WTP of their subject area, the final step in Figure 2. In the present study learning activities which where perceived as particularly authentic and meaningful by the students were those which the students saw as realistic in relation to how scientists worked in the wider world. This did not mean that the students had to move into the working world to see what they were doing as meaningful, although placement experiences were very powerful for some. Within the university context the students in setting 2L, for example, valued the experience of interacting with active researchers during classroom problem solving with authentic research data. Further, few of the students interviewed had yet begun their final year projects, which might be expected to provide opportunities for authentic research experiences within the university context.

Figure 2 A conceptual framework for influences on the students’ willingness to engage

UNIVERSITY TEACHING-LEARNING

ENVIRONMENT

RESEARCH COMMUNITIES OF

PRACTICE

IMMEDIATE TASKENVIRONMENT

EXTENT OF AUTHENTICITY OF

LEARNING EXPERIENCE

STUDENT'S WILLINGNESS TO ENGAGE ACTIVELY

WITH 'WTP'constructive or

destructive friction mediated through social

practices

teaching -processes

and affective dimensions assessment -

processes and

pressurestime

pressure

willingess to engage

with placement students

norms and practices of

relevant communities

findings contested/

contradictoryopportunity for integration into

research community

WHAT THE STUDENT BRINGS

independence,responsibility

open-endedness

feeling like a scientist

academic self-

confidence

value and meaning attributed to

course content

personal meaning of the experience for

the student

student's perceptions of

opportunities for engagement in practices of the

subject area

Stein and colleagues' perspective on authentic learning experiences draws on the work of Van Oers and Wardekker (1999) who suggest that:

‘Authentic learning is a dynamic relation between a personality-under-construction and cultural-practices-being reconstructed, which is aimed at developing an authentic and autonomous person able to participate in a competent yet critical way in cultural practices.’ p231

This broader perspective raises the possibility that authentic learning experiences may have an importance beyond simply encouraging learners to be more engaged with their studies. It draws attention to the potential value of authentic experiences for promoting students’ autonomy in learning, which was reflected in the present study in relation to the biosciences students’ positive accounts of the independence and responsibility they were given in some of their authentic experiences and the impact of these experiences on their identities.

Wenger (1998) discusses the importance of participants in learning communities having some control over the development of meanings within that community. He suggests that when an individual cannot contribute in a manner that is recognised as competence they come to identify themselves as non-participants, which inhibits their ability to learn. Making a related point, Baxter-Magolda (1999) emphasises the importance of involving students in processes of knowledge construction and recognising their contributions as worthwhile in order to facilitate the capacity for ‘self-authorship’. These perspectives, on the importance of involving learners in processes of knowledge construction, offer possible explanations for the power of the students’ accounts of how the authentic learning experiences affected their identities and engagement. These authentic experiences seemed to offer particularly rich opportunities for students to feel they were really making a contribution to knowledge construction and thus to begin to see themselves as valid members of the community of practice.

A more fine grained account of the dimensions of authentic learning experiences is offered by Herrington and Herrington (1998) in relation to authentic assessment. These authors suggest that authentic learning activities: take place in a context which parallels the context in which what is learned would be used; requires students to perform effectively using what they have learned; and involves ‘complex, ill-structured challenges’ p309. The authentic learning experiences described by the biosciences students in the present study – which involved open ended questions and contradictory or contestable findings - show close parallels with Herrington and Herrington’s theorisation.

Looking at the broader findings on the students’ perceptions of their teaching-learning environments draws attention to aspects beyond the authenticity of the learning experience which might be relevant to understanding students’ willingness to engage. These findings echo several themes from the existing literature. For example, Entwistle’s (1998) review suggests that good explanations, enthusiasm and empathy in teaching are all important in supporting students’ active engagement with their studies. The literature also suggests that students’ perceptions of assessment requirements are of considerable importance in influencing how they engage with their learning (Hounsell, 1997; James, 2000). Thus it was not surprising to find some of the students in this study commenting on how their engagement was in part assessment-driven, although it is important to note that other students spoke as if they were not primarily influenced by the pressures of assessment. The comments made by some of the students about the effects of an imagined audience on their learning have parallels with other research into students’ experiences of oral presentations (Hounsell and McCune, 2000).

The data from the present study provide some support for Wenger’s (1998) emphasis on mutual engagement in a shared social enterprise as a vehicle for students’ learning and development. It is important to bear in mind, however, that a relatively small number of accounts of engagements in placement communities were available within the data set for this study. Further, this and other studies also signal the value of learning experiences of different kinds.

The university course units as investigated in this paper and in previous work, seem to have been perceived very positively by students and were supportive of high quality learning (McCune and Hounsell, 2005). This despite these units not closely mirroring the activities of research communities of practice. Further, the students acknowledged in their interviews the value of their university experiences as preparation for their placements. Putting new and inexperienced students into placement contexts might have had quite different results.

The dimensions of students’ identities which particularly came to the fore in trying to understand their willingness to engage actively with their studies were: their confidence in themselves as learners; their level of identification with the role of scientist; and their trajectories (Wenger, 1998) – that is their views of where they had been and where they were going in relation to their studies. In the present analysis, the interplay between students’ identities and their willingness to fully engage with the ways of thinking and practising of biosciences communities came through most strongly in the connections made between ‘feeling like a scientist’ and being prepared to take a critical and questioning approach to research findings. It is not possible from the present analysis to make any attribution of causality and it seems distinctly possible that there would be a two way interaction between feeling like a scientist and becoming more willing to question and think independently. The findings from these biosciences students accounts of their developing identities resonate with Bobbitt-Nolen et al’s (2005) suggestion that when an individual can imagine themselves as part of a particular world they are more likely to engage with the activities valued in that context. The findings on the interplay between confidence and willingness to engage also have parallels with the literature on self-efficacy (Garcia et al., 1998; Pintrich and Garcia, 1991; Wolters, 2003).

Reflections on the analysis process

The analysis process used in this study focused on drawing out what seemed most salient from the students’ points of view. The emphasis was on generating descriptive themes and sub themes, rather than the structured conceptual categories often used in research into student learning in higher education (Marton, Hounsell and Entwistle, 1997). The pros and cons of more structured analyses based on ordered categories have been discussed in detail elsewhere (Beaty, Dall’Alba and Marton, 1997; Entwistle, McCune and Walker, 2001; Haggis, 2004; McCune, 2000). In relation to the present paper, a more structured category-based analysis might have allowed a more exact delineation of the main variations in the data, or might have made it possible to log the precise frequencies of particular types of explanations of the students’ engagement. It was possible, however, to have some record of the commonness and distribution of themes within the present analysis without using structured categories.

Perhaps the main strength of the more open, thematic, analysis used here is that it affords a greater opportunity for the researcher to draw attention to the details and nuances of students’ perspectives and to emphasise what seemed powerful for the students within specific contexts. It also allows the analysis to more easily incorporate developmental and learning processes, in a way that is difficult to do with fixed categories. So, for example, some of the students’ explanations for their engagement with their studies could have been assigned to the categories vocational intrinsic or vocational extrinsic used by Beaty and her colleagues (Beaty, Gibbs and Morgan, 1997). Such an analysis may well have proved fruitful but it would not have been possible to draw out the difference between, say, a student who was generally interested in something because they thought it might prove useful in their career, as compared with a student whose whole sense of self was shifting as they envisaged them self taking on a scientist role. A similar point is made by Haggis (2004) when she notes the limitation of simple vocational categories for representing mature students' individual accounts of the meanings their studies hold for them.

It is nonetheless important to bear in mind the limitations of the present analysis. This particular group of final year students were generally successful and confident in academic contexts and their stories were often about the positive nature of their experiences. This contrasts with other accounts in the literature, of the difficulties students can have in engaging with academic communities and the conflict that their studies can provoke between different facets of their identities (Lucey, Melody and Walkerdine, 2003; Read, Archer and Leathwood, 2003).

The interview data, in line with the wider aims of the ETL project, referred mainly to students’ experiences within academic contexts; thus wider influences on students’ engagement would be less likely to be mentioned. The focus of the present analysis and the nature of the data also meant that issues of power were not directly considered and one might expect that students’ power, or lack of it in a given context, might be significant for their engagement (Lillis, 2001; Read, Francis and Robson, 2001). There were hints that this might be relevant for the biosciences students in their comments about their placement experiences, where they were often given more power and responsibility than in other learning contexts. Thus, while the current analysis seems to provide insights into students’ understandings of their engagement with their studies, many further studies will be required to provide a more complete picture.

Conclusions and implications

The findings from this study, in combination with the wider literature suggest that there may be considerable potential in exploring further how higher education learning experiences can best be designed to offer students authentic engagement with the practices of their subject areas. It may be helpful here to think of the extent to which a given learning environment could provide such opportunities, rather than expecting that it will often be possible or desirable for students to engage fully with communities of practice beyond the university setting. Such authentic learning experiences would have the following characteristics:

personal relevance for students, with respect to their developing identities

situated within social contexts which mirror as far as possible how the practices of the subject area are employed in ‘real life’ settings

providing students with sufficient independence and responsibility to support them to become more autonomous learners

scaffolding students’ developing understanding of the ways of thinking and practising of their subject area such that students become more able to critically engage with the subject area

make use of complex, ill-structured and open-ended problems

treat students as valid participants in the construction of knowledge

Supporting such learning experiences does not necessarily imply dramatic changes to university courses. In many university teaching-learning environments students are interacting with active practitioners of the discipline, thus blurring the boundaries between university environments and wider communities of practice. It should be possible to take advantage of these blurred boundaries without placing unrealistic demands on institutional resources. Indeed examples of teaching-learning environments which include elements of authentic learning or similarities with communities of practice are already available in the literature (Herrington and Herrington, 1998; Hounsell and Anderson, in press; McDowell and Sambell, 1999; Stein, Isaacs and Andrews, 2004). This kind of work does not even need to wait until the later years of study; it seems possible, for example, to have students engaging actively with contested findings and

open ended tasks in the first year of university study in a manner which they perceive as authentic (Hounsell and Anderson, in press).

Wenger suggests that teaching-learning environments which lack the characteristics of communities of practice may lead to learning being perceived by learners as boring or meaningless. While it would be useful to further evaluate the extent to which Wenger’s claims are borne out in practice within higher education, the students in the present study generally seemed to have positive and engaged experiences of learning on their university course units, despite the fact that none of these units would have met all of Wenger’s criteria for a learning community. Wenger’s writings do, however, draw attention to the value of learners engaging with more experienced practitioners in shared enterprises, which did seem important for the students. Overall, however, the findings from the present study chime well with Vosniadou and Vamvakoussi’s (2006) emphasis on the need to strike a balance in designing learning environments between opportunities for situated cognitive apprenticeship and other kinds of learning experiences which might better support the development of a conceptual knowledge base which can transfer between settings.

Wenger (1998) also draws attention to the importance of identity development as a theoretical perspective on student learning. Neither the literature focusing on students’ perceptions of teaching-learning environments in higher education nor the literature on authentic learning tasks focus on the potential of learning experiences as vehicles for students to develop new dimensions of their identities in ways which might support them to more fully engage with their studies. A greater focus on identity development and the social processes through which students come to understand themselves as learners, as implied by research in the socio-cultural or social constructivist traditions, may draw attention to fruitful ways of understanding students’ engagement with their learning, which tend not to be addressed so directly elsewhere.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Professors Noel Entwistle, Dai Hounsell and Carolin Kreber for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. The data reanalysed in this paper were drawn from the Enhancing-Teaching Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses (ETL) project funded by the Teaching and Learning Research Programme of the UK Economic and Social Research Programme. This project was undertaken by at team from the Universities of Coventry, Durham and Edinburgh in collaboration with partner departments in the subject areas. Members of the project team over time were Charles Anderson, Liz Beaty, Adrian Bromage, Glynis Cousin, Kate Day, Noel Entwistle, Dai Hounsell, Jenny Hounsell, Ray Land, Judith Litjens, Velda McCune, Erik Meyer, Jennifer Nisbet, Nicola Reimann and Hilary Tait. Further information about the project is available from its website (www.tla.ed.ac.uk/etl) from which copies of conference papers, reports and research instruments can be freely downloaded.

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