trigwell_academics’ experiences of understanding.pdf

7/28/2019 Trigwell_Academics’ experiences of understanding.pdf

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/trigwellacademics-experiences-of-understandingpdf 1/21



and learning, and approach their teaching in qualitatively different ways(Martin & Balla, 1991; Samuelowicz & Bain, 1992, 2002; Gow &Kember, 1993; Trigwell & Prosser, 1996). The approaches they take aresystematically related to the conceptions of teaching that they hold andthere is a relationship between the way teachers approach and conceiveof their teaching and the way their students experience learning(Trigwell & Prosser, 1996; Trigwell et al., 1999).

University teachers conceive of, and approach, their teachingfocusing on either their own activities as teachers (teacher-focused) withthe aim of transferring information to students, or on what their stu-dents are doing in relation to what they, as teachers, are doing, with the

aim of developing and/or changing their students’ understanding (stu-dent-focused). These experiences are conceived of as relational andhierarchical. They are relational in the sense that teachers may adoptdifferent conceptions and approaches in different circumstances. Theyare hierarchical in that teachers adopting the more teacher-focusedperspectives lack an awareness of a more student-focused perspective inthe situation in which they nd themselves, while teachers with morestudent-focused perspectives have an awareness of the more teacher-focused perspectives (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999; Ramsden, 2003).

There have also been investigations of what it is that teachers consti-tute for their students to learn in theclassroom(Martin & Ramsden, 1998;Patrick, 1998). It is argued that the same topic, with the same materialsand assessments and documented teaching methods, will be representedto students differently by different teachers – different meanings will beconstituted in their actions in the classroom. Teachers have differentunderstandings of what knowing a subject involves and consequentlyrepresent thesubject to students differently. Notsurprisingly,a relationshiphasbeen established between thewayteachers make sense of andpresent atopic to be learned by students and the way they conceive of teaching andstudent learning (Martin & Ramsden, 1998; Martin et al., 2000).

Finally, and importantly, the relationship between how teachersapproach their teaching and how their students approach their learninghas been studied. That research shows replicable relationships, with

teachers who report adopting more information transmission/teacher-focused approaches to teaching having students who report more sur-face approaches to study, while teachers with more conceptual changeand development/student-focused approaches have students reportingdeeper approaches to study (Gow & Kember, 1993; Trigwell et al.,1999, Prosser & Trigwell, 1999).

So far, however, there has been little attention paid to the waysin which university teachers understand the subject matter they are

138



teaching and how that relates to their teaching and their students’learning. In the present study we explore this understanding andexamine what it is that teachers experience to be the subject matter of their teaching and how different aspects of the subject matter arestructured and relate one with another.

Work on approaches to, and conceptions of, teaching have tradition-ally been undertaken from a phenomenographic perspective. From thisperspectivethe main outcome isanoutcome spaceshowing thestructure of the variation in the way teachers approach and conceive of their teachingandan associated setof decontextualised categories of description of theseapproaches and conceptions. The complete set of categories, which is

typically between four and eight, map key aspects of the experience of thephenomenon under consideration (Marton & Booth, 1997).The strength of this approach is that it provides an overview of the

variation in understanding the phenomenon, the key aspects of varia-tion in understanding and relations between those key aspects within agroup of individuals. This approach has been used widely to understandthe range of ways students make sense of a phenomenon being taughtwithin a course or topic (Marton & Booth, 1997).

What this approach does not do, however, is to consider the richnessand variety of individual experience and there has been criticism of this(Webb, 1997; Hazel et al., 1998). In the present study we havealso used ananalysis of metaphor to capture more of this individual richness. We haveinvited teachers to talk about three separate but related issues, rst, theirown understanding of their subject specialism, second, what it is theyconstitute for students to learn in the classroom (the object of study) and,third, their understanding of teaching andlearning.Thesecondof these is,in effect, a replication of Martin et al. (2000), and the third a replication of Prosser et al. (1994). We have linked outcomes from the phenomeno-graphic analysis to results of the metaphoric analysis. The present paperfocuses on the results of the phenomenographic analysis, while a relatedpaper in preparation focuses on the results of the analysis of metaphorand its relation to the result of the phenomenographic analysis.

Methodology

Data collection

We interviewed 31 university teachers with several years of teachingexperience on two occasions about their experiences of teaching a topicwithin a large rst-year subject in four discipline areas: social science and

139



humanities (7), business andlaw(7), science andtechnology (8)andhealthsciences (9). Therst occasion was in the2 weeks before teaching thetopicand the second was in the 2 weeks after completing their teaching andassessment of that topic. Thefocusof those interviews wason theteachers’experiences of their object of study, the teachers’ experiences of theirteaching and learning and their experiences of understanding their subjectmatter. The same semi-structured interview schedule was used on bothoccasions. During the interviews the intervieweeswererepeatedly askedtomaintain a focus on the topic they were about to teach (rst interview) orhad just nished teaching (second interview). The two sets of interviewswith each teacher – about 10 weeks apart – were designed to investigate

change in understanding of subject matter (Trigwell et al., in press).Conduct of the interviews and analysis of the interview data

The data were collected by in-depth, semi-structured interviews, whichaimed at probing the teacher’s experiences of their understanding of theirsubject matter, the object of study they were constituting for their stu-dents, and teaching and learning in relation to a particular topic they wereteaching. In the collection and analysis of the data we were not trying todescribe in any objective sense how the interviewees understood theirsubject matter, but rather how they described their understanding – theirexperience of understanding. In probing their experience of understand-

ing their subject matter, the opening probes were:• How do you understand hsubject matter i?• How do you see its parts being connected in your understanding of

hsubject matter i?• How does hsubject matter i t into broader eld or elds of study?• What do you see as the key inuences in the development of your

understanding of hsubject matter i?

The analysis was conducted in two parts. The rst part was toidentify the structure of the qualitative variation in the experiences of their understanding of their subject matter, their object of study, andteaching and learning, and to describe this variation in terms of cate-gories of description and the structural relationships between the cate-gories (the outcome spaces). The identication of the categories of description and the outcome spaces involved several sub-stages:

• An initial identication, by four of the analysts individually, of a setof categories of description, based upon reading a subset of the full setof transcripts.

140



• Comparisons of the categories of description and an analysis of thestructural relationship between the categories independently of thetranscripts by the four analysts as a group, resulting in a revised set of categories of description and an initial outcome space.

• An iteration between the transcripts, categories of description and thestructural relationship, individually and in groups, until a stable set of categories and structural relationships was constituted or givenmeaning.

As a result of this process, the categories of description and theoutcome space represents the relationship between the transcripts andthe analysts individually and as a group.

In the second part of the rst stage, the analysis went beyond astrictly phenomenographic analysis by using the categories to classify allthe transcripts, with some subsequent adjustment to the categories andtheir structure to ensure that they captured the full variation representedin the full set of transcripts. In any one transcript, more than one cat-egory may be represented. Given that the outcome spaces representa hierarchically related set of categories of description in terms of increasing complexity, the transcripts are classied in terms of the mostcomplex category represented in the transcript.

Results

The phenomenographic analysis of the interview data resulted in theconstitution of three sets of categories of description and associatedoutcome spaces. They were:

1. Teachers’ experiences of their understanding of the subject mattertaught in the topic.

2. Teachers’ experiences of teaching and learning in the topic.3. Teachers’ experiences of the object of study constituted in the topic.

The rst set of categories and outcome space are new, the remainingtwo are iterations on outcome spaces identied in previous studies(Prosser et al., 1994; Martin et al., 2000).

Teachers’ experiences of understanding their subject matter

The set of categories of description identied for the outcome space of teachers’ experiences of the understanding of the subject matter taughtin the topic is:

141



Experience A: The understanding of the internal structure of thesubject matter is experienced as a series of facts and/or techniques – atomistic in structure. There is an awareness of how the subject mattersits within one or more elds of study but the focus of awareness is onthe individual internal facts and processes pertaining to the subjectmatter itself.

Experience B: The understanding of the internal structure of thesubject matter is experienced as a series of individual concepts or topics – atomistic in structure. There is an awareness of how the subject mattersits within one or more elds of study but the focus of awareness is onthe individual internal concepts and issues pertaining to the subject

matter itself.Experience B differs from Experience A in that the focus is onconcepts, issues and procedures and not just on facts and techniques.They are both, however, atomistic and focus on the subject matteritself.

Experience C: The understanding of the internal structure of thesubject matter is experienced as a series of concepts, issues or proce-dures, which are linked and related to form a whole with a coherentstructure and meaning – linked relational structure. There is anawareness of how the subject matter sits within one or more elds of study but the focus of awareness is on the internal structure of thesubject matter.

Experience C differs from Experience B in that while the focusremains on concepts, issues and procedures, these concepts issuesand procedures are seen to be linked or related to form a coherentwhole rather than being seen as atomistic.

Experience D: The understanding of the internal structure of thesubject matter is experienced as a series of concepts, issues or proce-dures, which are integral to the formation of a whole with a coherentstructure and meaning – integral relational in structure. The focus of awareness is on the internal structure of the subject matter and the waythe concepts or procedures are related, but there is an awareness that thesubject matter is structured according to one or more organising prin-ciples within a eld (or elds) of study.

Experience D differs from Experience C in that while the focuscontinues to be on concepts, issues and procedures, the conceptsissues and procedures are seen to be aspects of an integral wholerather than linked together to form a whole.

142



Experience E: The understanding of the internal structure of thesubject matter is experienced as a coherent whole, which is supported byorganising theories within one or more broader elds of study. Thethemes or issues comprising the internal components of the subjectmatter are experienced as problematic, such as a series of debates, butthe focus of awareness is on the ways in which the whole is generalisedto a high level of abstraction.

Experience E differs from Experience D in that the focus is on theunderlying or underpinning theories within which the concepts,issues and procedures are constituted rather than just on theconcepts, issues and procedures themselves. With the focus onunderpinning theories, the experience shifts in focus away from thesubject matter itself to how that subject matter ts into the broadereld of study.

The structural relationship between the categories of description issummarised intheoutcomespace showninTable 1. It shouldbe notedthatwehavedrawnuponideasfromBiggs’andCollis’(1982)SOLOTaxonomyin describing the structural relationship between the categories.

As this is a new set of categories of description, illustrative quotes foreach category are given in Appendix A.

Teachers’ experiences of teaching and learning

The set of categories of description identied for the outcome space of teachers’ experiences of teaching and learning in the topic is:

Experience A: Teacher-focused, teacher activity with the intention of transferring information to the students. This approach is one in whichthe teacher adopts a teacher-focused strategy with the intention of transmitting information about the discipline. It is presumed that stu-dents do not need to be active in the teaching/learning process. The focusof teacher activity is on demonstrating discipline-based facts and skills.

Experience B: Teacher-focused, student activity with the intention of transferring information to students. This approach is one in which the

teacher maintains a teacher-focused strategy with the intention of transferring information to students. It goes beyond Experience A inthat it presumes that students need to be active in the teaching/learningprocess, but the focus of activity remains on the teacher disseminatingdiscipline-based information with an understanding that different dis-semination strategies will assist students to understand the material.

Experience C: Teacher-focused, student activity with the intention of students acquiring the concepts of the discipline.This approach is one in

143



T a b l e 1

. T e a c h e r s ’ e x p e r

i e n c e o f t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e s u b j e c t m a t t e r

b e i n g t a u g h t i n t h e t o p i c

R e f e r e n t i a l

S t r u c t u r a l :

f o c u s o f a w a r e n e s s o n

I n t e r n a l s t r u c t u r e o f s u b j e c t m a t t e r

R e l a t i o n s h i p

b e t w e e n t h e s u b j e c t

m a t t e r a n d

i t s e l d o f s t u d y

A t o m i s t i c i n t e r n a l

s t r u c t u r e

L i n k e d r e l a t i o n a l

i n t e r n a l s t r u c t u r e

I n t e g r a l r e l a t i o n a l

i n t e r n a l s t r u c t u r e

E x t e n d e d a b s t r a c t

s t r u c t u r e

F a c t s a n d

t e c h n i q u e s

A

C o n c e p t s ,

i s s u e s a n d

p r o c e d u r e s

B

C

D

U n d e r p i n n i n g

t h e o r i e s a n d

c o n c e p t i o n s

E

144



Experience A: The object of study is the subject matter of the topic as itis represented in the external world, i.e. knowledge which is given and/ortaken for granted. The focus is on that part of the curriculum assigned tothat teacher. The teacher will present this topic to the students.

Experience B: The object of study is the subject matter of the subject,as a whole, as knowledge which is given and/or taken for granted. Theteacher describes what is to be taught in the context of the subject. Theteacher will present the topic and draw links between this and otherparts of the subject.

Experience B differs from Experience A in that while bothexperiences focus on knowledge which is given and/or taken forgranted, Experience B goes beyond focusing on individual topics tofocusing on the topics as they are linked to the subject as a whole.

Experience C: The object of study is the subject matter in relation tothe discipline as a whole, as knowledge which is given and/or taken forgranted. The teacher introduces a body of knowledge and the ways inwhich this knowledge has been developed, is explored and applied. Thefocus however is still on the subject matter itself, with some atomisticreferences to its relation to the course or discipline.

Experience C differs from Experience B in that while there continuesto be an experience of the knowledge as given and/or taken forgranted, it goes beyond Experience B by atomistically relating thetopic to other parts of the course or discipline.

Experience D: The object of study is student understanding of thesubject matter in relation to the discipline as a whole and/or the practiceof the discipline/profession. It is knowledge which individuals constructand is essentially problematic in nature. The teacher engages the studentwith discipline knowledge and/or the elements of professional practice.

Experience D differs from Experience C in that knowledge is seen asbeing constructed and essentially problematic rather than beinggiven and/or being taken for granted, while still focusing on the topicin relation to the discipline or practice as a whole.

Experience E: The object of study is student understanding that goesbeyond the subject matter to focus on the relation of the subject matterto other disciplines and/or the development of lifelong skills. It isknowledge which individuals construct and is essentially problematic innature. These include analytical skills and a practice of critical thinking,inquiry and reection through the study of the subject matter.

146



Experience E differs from Experience D by situating the topic inrelation to a broader whole, beyond the discipline or practice itself.

The structural relationship between this set of experiences is shown inTable 3.

Having described the structure of the variation in teachers’ experi-ences of the three phenomena, we now turn to an analysis of the rela-tionship between these experiences.

Relationship between the sets of categories of description

The rst stage of this analysis was to classify the transcripts in relationto the outcome spaces. Table 4 shows the results of this classication.As the interviewees were interviewed on two occasions – before teachinga topic and after completing the teaching of that topic, the results of theclassications on each occasion are shown. The Table shows the dis-tribution of individual transcripts between the categories of description,based upon the most complex category represented in the transcripts.

Table 4 shows that in this sample there is a eld of study variation. Thedistributions suggest that the higher order categories are populated by

academicstafffromthehumanitiesandsocialsciences.Theyalsoshowthatthere is at least one case from each of the elds of study in the two highestorder categories, showing that while the distributions may vary betweeneld of study, the structure of the variation is not just eld of study based.

It is worth noting that our original hypothesis was that there wouldbe a change in the experience of understanding of subject matter as aresult of teaching that subject matter. This analysis suggests that whenusing this rst order approach (describing change in two reported

Table 3. Teachers’ experience of the object of study constituted in the topic

Referential Structural

Multistructural Relational ExtendedAbstract

Topic Subject Discipline/practice

Discipline/practice

Learningbeyonddiscipline/practice

Knowledgeas given

A B C

Knowledgeconstructed/problematic

D E

147



positions) rather than a second order approach (describing the experi-ence of change from the perspective of the interviewees) there is very

little change in the experience of understanding prior to and subsequentto teaching a topic. Indeed only one of the interviewees described achange in their experience of understanding in the process of teachingtheir topic. This was one of the humanities and social sciences teacherswhose second transcript was classied as Category E, while the rst wasclassied as Category D.

The relationship between the experience of understanding the subjectmatter being taught in the topic and the experience of teaching and

Table 4. Distribution of transcripts in terms of the categories of description by eld of study from interviews on two occasions

Category of description

Field of study

Business andlawoccasion

Health sciencesoccasion

Humanities andsocial sciencesoccasion

Science andengineeringoccasion

First Second First Second First Second First Second

Understanding of subject matterFocus on internal structure of subject matterA 1 1B 1 1 3 3C 1 1 7 7 3 3Focus on relationship between the subject matter and its eld of studyD 3 3 1 1 2 1 1 1E 2 2 1 1 5 6

Teaching and learningTeacher-focused A 1 1B 3 3 3 3C 6 7 3 3 1 1 3 3Student-focused D 2 2 1 1 1 1E 1 1 1 5 5

Object of studyMultistructural A 2 2B 3 3 3 3 1 1 3 3C 1 1 4 4 1 1 2 2Relational D 2 2 2 2 3 3 1 1Extended abstractE 1 1 2 2

148



learning in the topic is shown in Table 5 and between the experience of understanding the subject matter being taught in the topic and experi-ence of object of study constituted in the topic is shown in Table 6.

Tables 5 and 6 show close and replicable empirical relationshipsbetween teachers’ experiences of understanding the subject matter taughtin the topic on the one hand and their experiences of teaching andlearning in the topic and object of study constituted in the topic on theother. Table 5 shows detectable (statistically signicant) and substantial(Somers’ d ¼ 0.74, p < 0.001; Somers’ d ¼ 0.72, p < 0.001) relation-ships between experience of understanding the subject matter of the topicand experience of teaching and learning in the topic on both occasions,

respectively. (Somers’ d is a measure of association between two ordinalvariables that ranges from ) 1 to 1. Values close to an absolute value of 1indicate a strong relationship between the two variables, and values close

Table 5. The relationship between teachers’ experiences of understanding the subjectmatter and their experiences of teaching and learning

Experience of teaching andlearning

Experience of understanding subject matter

Focus of awareness on internal structure Focus of awareness onrelation between subjectand eld

A B C D E

First occasionTeacher-focused A 1B 3 3C 1 7 4 1Student-focused D 1 2 1E 1 6

Second occasionTeacher-focused A 1B 3 3C 1 7 4 2Student-focused D 1 2 1E 6

N = 31.First occasion: Somers’ d = 0.74, p < 0.001.Second occasion: Somers’ d = 0.72, p < 0.001.

149



matter they are teaching are more likely to be experiencing the consti-tution of objects of study for their students in more integrated andholistic ways, and academicswith less integrate and atomistic experiencesof understanding are likely to be experiencing the constitution of theirobject of study for their students in less integrated and atomistic ways.

An important point here is that 16 of the 31 academics interviewedwere experiencing their understanding of their subject matter in atom-istic and less integrated ways.

It should be noted that while the relationship has been analysed interms of cross tabulations, the categories of description were not nec-essarily independently constituted. Indeed the phenomenographic per-

spective assumes that there is an internal relationship between theoutcome spaces, and that peoples’ experiences are holistic. Experiencesare analytically separable, but not independently constituted.

Discussion and conclusion

The study has identied the variation in the way academics experiencetheir understanding of the subject matter they are teaching. It has alsoslightly revised, but substantially conrmed two previous sets of cate-gories of description – the experience of teaching and learning in thetopic and the experience of the object of study constituted for study – and examined the relationships between the experience of understand-ing, the experience of teaching and learning and the experience of theobject of study.

Before considering the categories and outcome spaces, we make somecomments on our use of the term ‘‘experience’’, ‘‘categories of description’’ and ‘‘outcome space’’. Here we are using the term expe-rience to denote a second order analysis of the subjective experience of phenomena of those being interviewed rather than rst order analysis of the phenomena themselves. Other studies, for example, have analysedthe rst order experience of the objects of study through observations of class room interactions (Patrick, 1998). Here our focus is on the second

order analysis of academics own descriptions of the object of study. Thecategories of description and outcome spaces are meant to describe thevariation in the key ways in which the experiences of the phenomenadiffer. They are not meant to be rich descriptions of the experiencesthemselves. They are not meant to describe individual differences inexperience. They are not meant to describe the full variation. The cat-egories form inclusive hierarchies, as shown in the descriptions of thestructural relationships between the categories. Thus, in the second part

151



of the analysis when we classify transcripts in relation to the categoriesand outcome spaces, the classication is based upon the highest level of experience represented in the transcript. Thus for a transcript classiedlow in the hierarchy, the interviewee has shown little or no awareness of the experiences higher up in the hierarchy.

We turn now to the categories and the outcome space describing theexperience of understanding the topic being taught. These results do notdescribe how much someone knows about the topic being taught, orhow correct is their understanding of the topic being taught. They dodescribe a structure of awareness of the experience of understanding(Marton & Booth, 1997). They show a structured hierarchy in terms of

whole-part relationships, with an increasing sophistication in what isbeing referred to. Thus at one extreme the focus is on isolated pieces of information (Experience A), while at the other the focus is on under-pinning theories and ideas within the broader eld of study. While itmay seem surprising that academic teachers could experience theirteaching in terms of Experiences A, B and C, this does not describe howan individual academic understands his/her specialist understanding of a topic, but rather how the topic being taught is understood.

The other two outcome spaces are iterations on, and overall conr-mation of, previous ndings. The new outcome space for the experiencesof teaching and learning in the topic differs from the previously reportedoutcome space (Trigwell & Prosser, 1996) in containing no teacher/stu-dent interaction focused act of teaching. The previously referred toteacher/student interaction focus act of teaching has, on further detailedanalysis been shown to be a sophisticated form of the teacher-focusedperspective, in which students are active. This is consistent with theresults of a recent analysis by Samuelowicz and Bain (2002).

Along with the constitution of the new outcome space for experiencesof understanding of the subject matter, the other main nding of thisstudy is the analysis of the empirical relationship between the experienceof understanding on the one hand and the experience of teaching andlearning and the experience of the object of study on the other. Thatanalysis showed that only 1 of the 16 academics whose interviews

showed little awareness of how their subject matter related to the eld asa whole (Experiences of understanding A, B, C) experienced theirteaching and learning from a student-focused perspective (Experiencesof teaching and learning D, E), while 10 of the 15 whose understandingshowed at least some awareness of how their subject matter related tothe eld as a whole experienced their teaching and learning from astudent-focused perspective. This suggests that while an experience of ahigher level understanding of subject matter in terms of the way we have

152



described it is necessary for a student-focused experience of teaching, itdoes not guarantee it. On the other hand, it suggests that a less inte-grated and atomistic experience of understanding may restrict theexperience of teaching and learning to that of a teacher-focused per-spective. It should be noted that a less integrated and atomistic expe-rience of understanding in our terms does not necessarily suggest thatthe academic does not have a very detailed knowledge of the subjectmatter, but rather that the teacher is unable to articulate in an interviewhow that subject matter they are teaching relates to the eld as a whole.

Similarly, none of the 16 teachers with a less integrated and atomisticexperience of understanding the subject matter experienced the consti-

tution of the object of study for the students in a way that showed howthat subject matter related to the eld as a whole – their focus was only onthe elements of the subject matter of the topic itself. On the other hand, 11of the 15 teachers with the more integrated and holistic experience of understanding experienced the constitution of the object of study fortheir students in ways which showed how the subject matter related to theeld as a whole. This makes logical sense. Academics who show little orno awareness of how their subject matter relates to the eld as a whole aremost unlikely to be able to constitute an object of study for their studentswhich shows or helps them understand these relationships.

It is often argued that the variation identied in studies such as thisare a result of eld of study variation. While there may be distributionaleffects due to eld of study – and with the sampling procedures adoptedin this study it is not possible to explore this – we have shown similarvariation within each of the elds of study.

A major implication of this work is that if we want to change anddevelop the ways in which teachers approach their teaching and help theirstudents to learn we need to help them to think carefully about what theyare teachingand how itrelates toand coheres withtheeldasa whole.Thisis a particularly important issue for teachers new to teaching or teaching aparticular topicfor therst time.Webelieve thesendings have even widerimplications. Recently, Meyer and Land (2002) articulated the idea of threshold concepts. These are concepts which, when grasped by the stu-

dent, lead to a ‘‘transformed view of the subject matter’’. To identify suchconcepts may constitute the nal step in removing barriers to learning.Our thinking about such concepts suggests to us that academics wouldneedthe integratedand holisticexperience of understanding articulated inthis paper to be able to identify threshold concepts, or at least that thethreshold concept identied by an academic with an atomistic and lessintegrated experience of understanding may be different to one identiedby an academic with a more integrated and holistic experience.

153



The issue of how academic teachers can develop their experience of understanding their subject matter is one which is raised by this study.One way of thinking about this may be to further consider Boyer’s fourscholarships – discovery, integration, application and teaching (Boyer,1990). We are presently using some of the ideas and ndings presentedin this paper to further investigate the relationship between teaching andresearch in higher education. We believe that one way in which aca-demic teachers can further develop their experience of understanding isthrough their research – the scholarship of discovery. Other ways maybe through the scholarship of integration and application. In all casesthe academic teacher would need to intentionally engage in scholarship

to problematise their understanding of their subject matter.This paper has been based upon a phenomenographic analysis of ourdata. As explained earlier this leads to decontextualised sets of categoriesof description, focusing on key differences in ways of experiencing phe-nomena. In our related paper we use an analysis of metaphor to com-plement and deepen these decontextualised descriptions and focus muchmore strongly on describing the individual experiences, in the processproviding a richer description of the phenomena we have identiedthrough our phenomenographic analysis.

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the support of the Australian ResearchCouncil in funding this project.

Appendix A

Illustrative quotes for each of the categories of description for the expe-rience of understanding subject matter

Experience A

‘It would be technical information, technical information relating to thedesign of plastic components. There’s information on the ranges of plastic materials that might be available but then there are specic de-sign requirements for those materials, basic things the designer mustunderstand about drafting: how to actually get the plastic part out of ametal tool and how therefore, to design adequately to get that part out

154



of a tool; and what does a split line look for in a complex part. Andthose type of things that are applicable to a professional designer.’

Experience B

‘Managerial accounting to me is about identifying the relevant informa-tion for decision-making and providing decision support to executivemanagement. Whether that be in development of strategy,or whether thatbe in operational planning, or whether that be in day to day running of anorganisationandthefeedback which isused to control theorganisation …

it’s information required for control and strategic strategy development

within an organisation. So it’s, whereas nancial accounting is gearedtowards providing information to external users, then ManagementAccounting is geared more to providing information to internal users.’

Experience C

‘We’re really talking about the whole subject here really, and it’s all partand parcel of what makes things ticks at a molecular level, the under-standing of the enzymes and the controls of DNA, how it relates togenetic information transfer. They’re all happening at the same time.Well, sequentially in the sense that you need to understand aboutproteins to understand about enzymes to then understand about met-abolic pathways, so there’s a sequence there. On the other hand, all thestuff with DNA and protein, and the genetic stuff, while it relies onenzymology, it’s something somewhat different again. The biochemicaltechniques are something different again.’

Experience D

‘Yeah, well, the laws of conservation and momentum and energy are,I guess, part of the foundation. And we would, we would see physics ashaving a number of foundations which, once you have the foundationsallow you to describe almost any system, whatever it might be. Whether

it’s light, or particles, whether it’s magnetic, whether it’s at high tem-perature or low temperature. So, how do they t in? Well, they are partof this fundamental foundation.’

Experience E

‘How do you see within this subject it’s parts being connected? I don’tusually think of it as parts. I usually think of it as examples. So I see that

155



what we’re grappling with all the time is very complex questions abouthuman behaviour, human interactions, social change. And then in all of the bits that I like to study, because they interest me most, I just seethose as illustrations of maybe that bigger theme reected in differentways, competing pressures. So if you took, for example, the example of euthanasia, in many ways the issues that I would be interested in are thesame issues, whether it was abortion or euthanasia, or indeed some kindof regulation corporate crime. So it’s the examples that change, butfundamentally you’re looking at it as a social document.’

ReferencesBiggs, J.B. & Collis, K.F. (1982). Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO

Taxonomy. New York: Academic Press.Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered . New York: The Carnegie Foundation for

the Advancement of Teaching.Calderhead, J. (1996). Teachers’ beliefs and knowledge. In R.C. Calfee and D.C.

Berliner, eds, Handbook of Educational Psychology , pp. 709–725. New York: Simonand Schuster Macmillan.

Gow, L. & Kember, D. (1993). Conceptions of teaching and their relation to studentlearning. British Journal of Educational Psychology 31: 93–97.

Hazel, E., Conrad, L. & Martin, E. (1998). Exploring gender and phenomenography .Higher Education Research and Development 16: 213–227.

Martin, E. & Balla, M. (1991). Conceptions of teaching and implications for learning.Research and Development in Higher Education 13: 298–304.

Martin, E. & Ramsden, P. (1998). Approaches to teaching creative writing. In B. Dartand G. Boulton-Lewis, eds , Teaching and Learning in Higher Education , Melbourne:ACER.

Martin, E., Prosser, M., Trigwell, K., Ramsden, P. & Benjamin, J. (2000). What uni-versity teachers teach and how they teach it. Instructional Science 28: 387–412.

Marton, F. & Booth, S. (1997). Learning and Awareness. New Jersey: LawrenceErlbaum Associates.

Meyer, J.H.F. & Land, R. (2003). Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge(1): linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. In C. Rust, ed,Improving Student Learning: Improving Student Learning Theory and Practice – TenYears On , pp. 412–424. Oxford: OCSLD.

Patrick, K. (1998). Teaching and Learning: The Construction of an Object of Study ,

Ph.D Thesis, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne,Melbourne, Australia.Prosser M. & Trigwell, K. (1999). Understanding Learning and Teaching: The Experience

in Higher Education , Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.Prosser, M., Trigwell, K. & Taylor, P. (1994). A phenomenographic study of academics’

conceptions of science learning and teaching. Learning and Instruction 4: 217–231.Quinlan, K.M. (1999). Commonalities and controversy in context: a study of academic

historians educational beliefs. Teaching and Teacher Education 15: 447–463.Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to Teach in Higher Education . London: Routledge Farmer.

156



Samuelowicz, K. & Bain, J. (1992). Conceptions of teaching held by academic teachers.Higher Education 24: 93–112.

Samuelowicz, K. & Bain, J. (2002). Revisiting academics beliefs about teaching andlearning. Higher Education, 41: 299–325.

Trigwell, K. & Prosser, M. (1996). Changing approaches to teaching: A relationalperspective. Studies in Higher Education 21: 275–284.

Trigwell, K., Prosser, M. & Waterhouse, F. (1999). Relations between teachers’ ap-proaches to teaching and students’ approaches to learning. Higher Education 37: 57– 70.

Trigwell, K., Prosser, M., Martin, E. & Ramsden, P. (In Press). University teachers’experiences of change in their understanding of the subject matter they have taught,Teaching in Higher Education.

Trigwell, K., Prosser, M., Ramsden, P. & Martin, E. (1998). Improving student learning

through focus on the teaching context. In C. Rust, ed, Improving Student Learning ,Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Centre for Staff Development.Webb, G. (1997). Deconstructing deep and surface: towards a critique of phenome-

nography. Higher Education 33: 195–212.

157

trigwell_academics’ experiences of understanding.pdf

Documents