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The role of teaching in higher education: Enabling students to enter a field of study and practice
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Pergamon
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THE ROLE OF TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ENABLING STUDENTS TO ENTER A FIELD OF STUDY AND PRACTICE GLORIA Royal Melbourne
DALL’ALBA
Institute of Technology,
Australia
Abstract Teachers in higher education commonly aim to develop their students’ ways of thinking, acting and approaching a field of study and practice. Hence, this should also be the focus of our teaching practice. This view of teaching involves providing students with experiences that enable them to enter the field as practitioners. Those experiences must be directed to developing students’ understanding of the perspective that is relevant to the field and what the content of a course means within that perspective. In exploring how teaching can enable students to enter a field of study and practice, some alternative ways in which teachers see the content of their courses are described. These ways of seeing course content were drawn from a study of experiences of teaching in higher education in a range of fields. Some limitations of focusing on skills, knowledge, procedures, concepts, and principles are outlined, particularly in relation to teaching aims. It is argued that a focus on enriching students’ experience of the field of study and practice is more closely and directly related to the aims of teaching in higher education.
Introduction At the higher education level, teachers commonly aim to develop in their students the capacity to approach the field of study and practice in particular ways. For example, we want students to learn to solve chemical problems as a chemist would, to think like an accountant, to approach patient care as a nurse, dentist or doctor would, and so on. Of course, it is the ways of thinking and acting which distinguish competent chemists, accountants, nurses, dentists, doctors, that we aim for. Hence, we not only expect our students to acquire specific skills and knowledge; what we aim for is to broaden and deepen their experience of the field, and the meaning which that experience has for them. This means that we aim to enable students to engage in practice in the informed way that is characteristic of competent practitioners. For example, we want the students Address for correspondence: G. Dall’Alba, Department of Research & Development in Medical Education, Karolinska Institute, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden.
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to learn what it means to approach geography as a geographer does, language as a linguist does, and so on. What, then, are the implications of these aims for teaching? How can we direct our teaching to the achievement of the aims? If students are to become competent practitioners, the content of our courses or subjects must provide them with experience of the relevant perspective and way of engaging in practice. Our courses must enable them to grasp what their practice means from the perspective of the field, and to recognize its significance to practitioners in other fields and to the broader community. This article is based on a study of teachers’ experiences of teaching in higher education at the undergraduate level. It arose from exploring teaching and learning issues in practical contexts with higher education teachers in a range of fields. The article raises questions about teaching practice with a view to enhancing the development of that practice. It is less concerned with reporting results of a study about teaching than with using those results to promote the development and improvement of teaching practice. The point of departure is the practice of teaching, from the teachers’ point of view. The importance of grasping the practitioners’ point of view when attempting to understand their practice is demonstrated in several studies; see, for example, Schdn (1983). While the focus of the article is primarily developmental, it also makes a theoretical contribution to our understanding of teaching and the development of teaching practice. This contribution relates to the particular way of seeing teaching which it put forward, grounded in teachers’ views of their practice. Furthermore, aspects of alternative ways of seeing teaching are identified which fall short of directly addressing the aims of teaching in higher education. Design and Method The study of teachers’ experiences of undergraduate teaching involved teachers from three Australian universities. The part of the study reported here is based on interviews with teachers of economics (lo), English literature (lo), medicine (10) and physics (5) who were teaching in the first or second year of an undergraduate course. Most of the teachers were also teaching in later years. The interviews began with a discussion of teaching at first or second year level and then proceeded to later years of undergraduate courses where applicable. Each of the teachers was interviewed about his or her teaching practice, including the following aspects: 1. What the teacher’s discipline or subject area is about. 2. What the teacher did in teaching a topic which had recently been taught. 3. What the students were expected to learn from the topic. 4. How student performance was assessed. 5. Difficulties which arose in teaching the selected topic, if any. 6. Difficulties students had in learning the topic or subject, if any. 7. Revisions the teacher had made to the subject, if any, and the basis for them. 8. The nature of the interaction with students about the course content within and outside classes. 9. The extent to which the teacher’s own or other research influenced the teaching. The interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed phenomenographically. Phenomenography is a research approach which seeks to explore the
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qualitatively different ways in which aspects of experience are understood, perceived, or conceptualized (Marton, 1986; Marton, Dall’Alba, & Beaty, 1993). This approach is based upon the principle of intentionality (described by Husserl, 1970/1901), namely, that experiences such as understanding or perceiving are directed towards something understood or perceived. Accordingly, understanding or perceiving cannot be separated from what is understood or perceived. In the present study, the qualitatively different ways in which teachers experienced their teaching role were investigated. The focus of the interviews and analysis was to elicit the teachers’ own ways of experiencing teaching in its many aspects. The research task was one of identifying the qualitatively different ways of seeing teaching which became evident from the data, rather than using a pre-determined classification scheme. Relevant aspects of the results are used in raising questions about the extent to which teaching in higher education is directed towards enabling students to enter a field of study and practice. These questions are raised in order to promote the development and improvement of teaching practice.
Enabling Students to Enter a Field of Study and Practice In accordance with our aims, teaching should focus on enabling students to fully enter the world of the relevant field. A field of study and practice includes both theoretical and practical elements, in line with competent practice. Students enter a course often with limited experience of the field they seek to enter. The task for teachers is to deepen and broaden that experience, and the meaning which it has for the students. The entry of students more fully into the field can be expected to involve some instability for them as their previous experiences or expectations of it are challenged. Donald (1983, 1986) demonstrated that there are differences in the forms or structure of knowledge which are attributed to disciplines in higher education. Hence, students are to become familiar with the forms of knowledge typically associated with their disciplines or fields. Those forms of knowledge must be learned by students in terms of their significance within the field of study. For example, sociology and economics represent different perspectives on seeing and interpreting the world. Sociology is concerned with the social nature of human interaction and organization, while economics deals with issues relating to the production and distribution of wealth. Within each of these fields, a particular type of perspective is taken; there is a difference in focus and in the questions which are raised. Depending upon the perspective taken, an issue or topic will take on a different meaning and significance. Consider how a topic such as unemployment might be treated differently from a sociological and economic perspective. Within sociology, some pertinent questions relating to unemployment might be: What is the impact of technological change on social mobility, including unemployment? Which socioeconomic groups are most affected by unemployment? What is the impact of long periods of unemployment on the unemployed? What is the responsibility of the society towards the unemployed? These questions are largely directed to the relationship between unemployment and groups within society or social organization. Questions about unemployment that are more relevant from an economic perspective might include: What is the impact of technological development on the rate of unemployment in developed countries? What
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is the relationship of the unemployment rate to peaks and troughs of a business cycle? What proportion of the population over 16 years of age were unemployed during the past five years? What is the economic cost of unemployment to society? These questions largely relate to the measurement of unemployment rates and the economic cost of unemployment, reflecting a concern with the production and distribution of wealth. Depending upon the perspective adopted (sociological or economic in the example above), an issue - such as unemployment - can be understood in distinctly different ways. The perspective and what unemployment is understood to involve in the previous example differ from one field to the next. It is this interrelationship between perspective and meaning of the course content that is considered central to the teaching enterprise. Ideas which parallel this relationship were developed earlier in phenomenology; see, for example, Husserl (1962) for a more extensive discussion of noetic and noematic aspects of intentionality in human experience. While the perspective that is adopted varies from one discipline or field to the next, there are also different views represented within a field. For example, in biology Darwin’s theory of evolution differed markedly from the earlier Lamarckian theory. Alternative theories are commonly based on different ways of seeing the phenomena being examined. As the meaning of an issue varies depending upon the perspective adopted, this means that the relevant information and facts do not have meaning of themselves; they are always interpreted within a perspective. Hence, when students enter courses with limited or more extensive knowledge, they understand that knowledge within particular perspectives. They come in neither as blank slates nor with a collection of “objective” facts. Therefore, teaching should focus on ensuring that students understand both the perspective of the field and the meaning of the course content within that perspective. The meaning which the course content has for students must be developed concurre&y with their understanding of the perspective of the field. The notion that teaching should focus on the meaning that the course content has for students draws on the work of Marton, Svensson and others (Marton, 1986; Johansson, Marton, & Svensson, 1985; Svensson, 1989) who describe the experiential and contextual nature of learning, and its active, not passive, character. However, in this article the interrelationship between the meaning of course content and the perspective from which it is understood is emphasized. This emphasis differs from the earlier work in making explicit that content is always understood within a particular perspective. This notion of learning should be distinguished from that used in constructivist research which emphasizes cognitive structure or frameworks (see, for example, Chapters l-2 in West & Pines, 1985.)
Degree of Consistency Between Perspective
of the Field and Course Content
The perspective which we want students to adopt in interpreting the course content should be aligned with the relevant field. Hence, it is necessary that the perspective inherent in a course is appropriate to the field. However, teachers’ ways of seeing the content of a field or discipline are not always consistent with their ways of seeing the content within a course of study. For example, they may see their own field as consisting of dynamic and creative ways of interpreting some aspect of the world but see their course content as selected information to be presented to students. In the extract
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below, a physics teacher describes what physics is about (numbers in parentheses to transcript and page numbers):
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Physics is umm it’s a profound subject which is devoted to understanding the natural and man-made world umm and to some extent and the man-made world includes technology and it’s umm. By the use of the word profound I mean that it attempts to understand it at the deepest level possible and umm that is really what physics is about. . . . Now what constitutes the profoundest level is not a fixed thing umm in each generation there is a kind of frontier in depth which changes. I mean if you go back to ancient times umm I mean you have . . . naive things like understanding your region then understanding umm your country the map of your country and then the sphere of the earth and then the solar system and then umm you can go outwards, the stars and then the universe and so on and mnm that again there’s a frontier in depth and it presents itself to each generation, it changes but where that frontier is is where the physicists are working. (2.89:1-2)
In contrast, this teacher saw the content of a physics course as information presented to students: My lecture course each year is umm me a very naive viewpoint to myself and I year I get new insights into the subject, myself differently and sometimes in the material or new facts about it. (2.89:10)
to be
giving a public exhibition of me explaining the subject from let the class listen from a certain point of view. Now each I understand the thing in a different way so I explain it to intervening year I’ve discovered new ways of presenting the
While the teacher’s understanding of the course content changed from year to year, the role of the students was to listen and receive the information that was being exhibited, without engaging in the dynamic process of knowledge generation at their own level of understanding. Hence, the ways in which the field and the course content are seen by this teacher are inconsistent. In other cases, teachers’ ways of seeing the content of the field and of their course coincide. For example, one teacher described anatomy as being about: the structure of the body, the normal structure of the body and I might even add the range of normality of the normal structure of the body. So already I am hinting towards that anatomy is not just a static thing that . . . there is a basic pattern but there is also variation on that pattern. . . . That it is not a black and white thing in itself - normal to abnormal. There is a range of normality, there’s grey area in between. (6.89:2)
This teacher went on to describe what was involved in teaching an anatomy course, again emphasizing the structure of the body, the patterns that can be used to understand that structure and the variation which occurs: There is a relationship between the type of nerve and which compartment of muscles it will supply. . . . (You can say to students) let’s have a look, now that you have learnt all the muscles of the limb and all the nerves that supply the skin of the limb, let us see where they come from . . and make the connection between the two. Ah, I can see that it is happening in the upper limb and I can see that it is happening in the lower limb. But . . . wait a minute, the lower limb and the upper limb are not exactly the same (goes on to explain how they vary around a common principle). . . . So you’ve got a general principle that is still basically applied, but you’ve got to make some little modifications. . . . But then to show how these concepts are not exactly black and white but there is some shades of grey. . . . What one is doing is alerting them that there is going to be a pattern that will make it worth their while looking for. That is the challenge of teaching. (6.89:17)
The degree of consistency between the ways in which teachers see their field and the content within their courses raises questions about whether the perspective inherent in the courses expresses the perspective the students should develop. If there is inconsistency between the perspective inherent in the course and the field, to what extent is the teaching directed to the kinds of aims that were outlined previously?
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Distinguishing Teachers’ Ways of Seeing Course Content From Related Issues There are three senses, then, in which the way of seeing or experiencing the content is being discussed. The first is the teacher’s way of seeing the field of study and practice and the second is the teacher’s way of seeing the content of a course (which is likely to parallel the way of seeing the course content which the teacher wants the students to develop). Third, as indicated previously, students come to courses with some (although often limited) knowledge about the course content. They understand that knowledge from particular perspectives based on their previous experiences of it. This third sense concerns the ways of seeing or experiencing the course content that the students bring to the course. Teachers’ ways of seeing their field or discipline is not dealt with further. The remainder of the article describes some ways in which teachers see the content of their courses, providing a base for elaborating what it means to teach in such a way that students’ experiences of the field are enriched. Underlying this notion of enriched experience is the assumption that there are ways of relating to the content that we want the students to acquire. Developing desired ways of relating to the course content does not imply a narrow, predetermined end point but rather, it is a recognition of the existence of, and necessity for, judgments about what constitutes quality or development in the educational context. Several studies have demonstrated that teachers in higher education experience their teaching role in a range of different ways (see, for example, Dall’Alba, 1991; Martin & Balla, 1991; Trigwell & Prosser, 1992). Prior to these studies, Fox (1983) had proposed some “personal theories of teaching,” although he neither derived them from, nor supported them with, empirical research. The various ways of experiencing teaching have several aspects in common, such as how the course content is taught and what role the teacher adopts. Benson (1989) describes a further aspect, namely, teachers’ views of disciplinary knowledge and its relationship to what they teach. The aspect that is explored in the present article is the way in which teachers in higher education see and experience the content of their courses. There are two reasons for this focus. The first is that the meaning which the course content has for teachers is closely related to their way of experiencing teaching (see also Roberts, 1982). Second, much of teachers’ work involves dealing with course content, for example presenting it in classrooms, discussing it with students, making decisions about how to teach it, and deciding what content is relevant in a course of study. Roberts (1982) argues that the perspective on the discipline which teachers adopt determines the selection of course content that is considered appropriate. A discussion of some ways in which teachers see the course content will be used to elaborate a view of teaching as deepening and broadening students’ ways of seeing and experiencing that content. In contrast to the present study, Stark, Lowther, Bentley, and Martens (1990) focused on comparing disciplines when exploring factors which teachers of introductory courses in higher education perceived as influencing their course planning. Assuming some relationship between course planning and teaching, the study by Stark et al. (1990) and the present investigation provide evidence about aspects of teaching from different angles, using significantly different methodologies. While the focus of the present article is on ways of seeing course content which cut across several fields, their prevalence may vary from one field to another as the data suggest.
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Ways of Seeing the Content of a Course of Study Some of the ways in which teachers in higher education see the course content are outlined below. Each of these ways of seeing the content are explored, to determine how effective it would be in bringing about the desired student learning. These particular ways of seeing the course content are not seen to be exhaustive but, rather, they serve to illustrate how teaching can more effectively be directed to enriching students’ experience of the field. A way of seeing the course content which focuses on students’ experiences of it, is contrasted with common ways of seeing it in terms of knowledge and skills or concepts and principles. This does not mean that knowledge, skills, concepts and principles are not important. Rather, the alternative ways of seeing the course content differ in focus and with respect to what is regarded as most fundamental. Course Content as Body of Knowledge and Skills
Some teachers see course content as consisting principally of a body of knowledge and skills to be gained; a focus on facts and procedures represents a similar view. Accordingly, the main activity of teaching becomes selecting what should be included in a particular subject or course and transferring it to, or developing it in, the students. This way of thinking is based on a view of learning as accumulation or acquisition of knowledge and skills. Knowledge is seen as consisting of separable parts that can be added together in a cumulative way, with the focus being on those parts. In the quote that follows, a teacher of pharmacology describes the content of a course for medical students as consisting of knowledge about the action of drugs in the human body and subsequent skills to be learned: We obviously expect them now (in the third year of their medical course) to have a lot more knowledge. . . . But whether we expect them to have actually got any skills, we don’t necessarily expect them to have got any more skills by then. Hopefully when they get a bit further on, say fourth, fifth (year) and that, we hope that they’ve got to the stage where they know a little bit more about prescribing and writing scripts and things like that, those sort of skills. But I suppose all we’re really hoping by the end of third year compared with second, that they know a hell of a lot more about more drugs and other systems we haven’t discussed at all, a bit more about how the body really handles them. (22.91:1&11)
A teacher of statistics emphasized that the course content consisted of essential facts and skills: Stats is mainly facts. These are the details, these are the inimitable facts. (2.90:9) Things don’t change much in stats, it’s the same. . . . There are certain tools that they all need . . . you say, well ten of them (the tools) has to stay. There’s no flexibility to say, well I’ll think I’ll drop out half a dozen and bring in some more. You just can’t do that because there is ten that are just, you just got to leave them there. For that reason there’s not much need to change (the subject) and rules never change. Mathematical laws never change fortunately. (29O:lO)
A teacher of English literature also identified essential elements that the students must know, expressing the notion that by identifying these essential elements in a piece of literature, the idea being explored (in this case, love) would become evident (T refers to teacher and I to interviewer): T:
In the portrayal of love it would lend itself, the subject lends itself to a close reading so that you look at oh, say, five sonnets . . . then you look at the structure of the sonnet and then you have depiction of the thing, love.
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Can you give me an example? How would you look at the structure within a seminar, what would you actually do? T: . . . if you were looking at a structure (of) a sonnet umm you would look at such formal elements as in what - what a metre is - the rhythm umm the way the sonnet’s constructed, whether it’s . . in a 14 line unit, whether the course content is padded out or whether it’s too compressed . . . in more difficult tutorials there tend to be silences and then you have to come in with a, with a actual question umm like “What’s the metre that the sonnet’s written in?” (27.91:4) In Renaissance (literature) you really do have a certain amount of important material to get across because the students must know it. (27.91:12)
The major limitation of such a way of seeing the content is the underlying assumption that the students will add together all of the necessary parts in a way that allows them to think, act or approach problems in the field as an historian, mathematician or architect would. One teacher of medicine compared learning in a medical course with shopping in a supermarket, saying, “It’s like walking round a supermarket where they pick up all the items and when they eventually reach the checkout at the end of the medical course, everything needs to be in the basket and stamped as if they’d passed the subject” (24.91:2). In practice, it is making the link between specific knowledge or skills and the broader meaning of what it is to be a doctor, historian, mathematician or architect that presents one of the greatest difficulties to students. Hence, a focus on skills and knowledge is not directed towards the complex kind of learning that we aim for in our students. It is only part of what we want the students to learn. Course Content as Concepts and Principles to Which Knowledge and Skills are Linked
A second way of seeing course content is to regard it primarily as concepts and principles around which knowledge and skills are learned. Concepts and principles provide something of a linking framework for more specific knowledge and skills. Teaching may be principally directed to the acquisition or understanding of those concepts and principles. In some instances, teaching is explicitly directed to comprehending the links between the concepts and principles. This way of seeing the course content is illustrated in the two quotes that follow. Both teachers emphasize the links (relationships or patterns) between parts of the content. The first quote describes teaching biochemistry: I try to teach it in terms of showing relationships. Now you can turn around and say well, for example, that represents a metabolic pathway okay, A goes to B goes to C goes to D right. Now at one level a student could simply turn around and say . . “I’m going to memorise it, learn it by rote” and okay that’s one level at which you can approach it. But when I teach it I try to show them the relationship, you know, why is it going and how and what’s the purpose and divide it up into logical sections, this is what is happening here and this is what is happening there. So that the logic of the system is there, okay. . . And in the past the problem has always been when they’ve had to learn the pathway they spend so much time in learning the pathway that they never get to the next level which was the function and the function is what it’s all about. . . . I teach it by showing the relationships and why and where and how this bit here is exactly the same as this bit over there which we learnt a few weeks ago, because there are common themes that run through a lot of this. (21.91:8)
The second quote relates to teaching Old English: From the very beginning I have to try to get them to see the difference between the two kinds of language, the Old English and modem English. But then on a more practical level when I’m looking at, say, the patterns of the endings of parts of the grammar, say the nouns, we look at the nouns and
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I point out to them that while it looks to be a very complicated set of grammatical rules covering some eight or ten pages in the grammar section of their book, in fact it can all be boiled down to a very simple pattern that will cover about 98% or 95% of the forms they encounter. . . So I try to get them to see the patterns as it were. (28.9154) I think most of the students who have problems have them because . . . they just aren’t even used to thinking about verbs and nouns and they’re not used to thinking about syntactic concepts. And so for them I’ve got to try to introduce those concepts in a way that is as clear as possible and is as meaningful to them as possible, rather than treat it as something that is totally abstract that they’ve got to just go off and learn. I try to make every single grammatical point relevant to them, to the language they know, which is modem English. And then when I’ve got a feeling that the understanding is there on that, then I apply it to Old English. (28.91:8)
Seeing course content as concepts and principles to which knowledge and skills are linked has a different focus from seeing it as a body of knowledge and skills. While the latter is concerned primarily with the parts of the course content, the former represents an attempt to see relationships between those parts - to find patterns. However, as in the knowledge-skills view, focusing on concepts and principles directs the teaching to parts or links between them. Teaching is directed away from the more fundamental learning we desire in our students, that is, developing a capacity to approach the field of study and practice in appropriate ways. While we seek to develop students’ capacity to think as an interior designer would, solve a practical problem as an engineer does, or interpret a situation as a psychologist would, a focus on either knowledge and skills or concepts and principles is not directed to the fundamental changes we seek. It is, of course, necessary that students develop skills, knowledge, concepts and principles that are required in the relevant field of study. The issue is, rather, that when we examine the nature of the learning we aim for, it becomes evident that skills, knowledge, concepts and principles are important but not most fundamental.
Course Content as Experiences
of a Field of Study and Practice
What does it mean, then, to teach in such a way that we focus on enriching students’ experiences of the field of study and practice? It has been argued that seeing the course content as knowledge and skills or concepts and principles is to fall short of our aims. In order to meet those aims in increasingly more effective ways, we must focus our teaching on them. This means that our teaching must be deliberately directed to the ways of thinking, acting and approaching the field of study which we want our students to develop; we must teach them to think like a philosopher or play music as a musician does or develop a physiotherapist’s approach to the treatment of patients. In the quote below, a teacher of English literature demonstrates what it means to be clear about the experience of the content that is aimed for, both in terms of what the content means and the perspective from which it is to be seen: Well medieval theatre is . . . an enormous area and one about which they’ll have relatively little knowledge. . . . So they’re faced with the problem of having to get their minds around very different theatrical conditions and get their minds around very different dramatic texts. So basically I want them to read a number of what are called miracle plays, the Corpus Christi or Cycle plays . . . all derived from stories in the Bible. And also to read Everyman which is one late interesting example of a morality play. And I want them to try and understand first of all the life and vitality of medieval theatre, what went on in medieval theatre. Why it was a festival theatre and not an entertainment theatre as we understand it. I want to try and experience something of the strange but interesting world of amateur festival theatre. And I also wanted them to see how elements of that medieval
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G. DALL’ALBA theatre get profe~iona~sed as they do when it comes to talk about Everyman and the morality plays which we’ve done, against religious significance or religious context but in much more professional ways. (29.91:2) I mean one of the most interesting things about the medieval plays, the miracle plays, is that although they look amateur and unsophisticated they’re based on very elaborate typological structuring and so one of the questions you couid ask about those . . . after you’ve talked about things like, you know, why is it written the way it is, why is it humorous, what’s Noah’s wife doing in it, is to ask, well, you’ve laughed at Noah’s wife, she’s a funny character, it’s entertaining for an audience, it connects the audience with a scriptural history - what does she represent? What kind of - she’s not in the Bible except just as a name, why does she play an important role in this text? What other biblical episode is she? Is she a type of, now they don’t understand the word “type” initially but nevertheless the brighter students can begin to see that in fact that she represents Eve. And then you can ask well what does Noah represent and Noah represents Adam but he also represents mankind. What does the ark represent? Eventually they’ll come up with the idea of, say, the church or salvation. And what they’re doing is kind of elementary typological analysis themself. And you know that’s fantastic because they’re actually making connections rather than having to be told about it which they would actually listen to and forget almost instantly. . . . You don’t understand why those plays, those simple entertaining but crude plays are part of something as elaborate and as spectacular as a cathedral unless you understand the processes of (pause) unde~tand~ng types through history. (29.91:45)
The starting point in teaching must be to clarify the meaning the course content is to have for the students within the perspective being developed. Such clarification operates at several levels. At one level, we must be clear about the experience of the field itself which we-want the students to develop. For example, what does it mean to approach fine art as an artist does? How does an artist experience fine art and the way of creating it? At another level, we must clarify the place of our subject or course in the field. How is the perspective of the field evident in the content of the course? For example, how is an artist’s perspective on fine art developed through a study of sculpture? To what extent are the ways of experiencing the field, the course and the subject consistent with each other? Do individual subjects contribute to the development of students’ experience of the field or course in coherent ways? Within an individual subject, we must be clear about how the parts relate to one another and to the subject, course and field as a whole. The experience that we attempt to engender in the students must be developed through, and in relation to, the course content. For example, a teacher may want to develop students’ experience of economics as a way of interpreting and explaining events relating to the production and distribution of wealth. It would be insufficient to teach the procedures for solving equations relating to economic quantities. Rather, it would be necessary to teach the students how to use the relevant equations and quantities in interpreting and explaining economic events. The initial question to be asked becomes “What does it mean to approach economic issues as an economist does?” Students not only learn to solve equations but they also learn what the equations mean, for what purpose they are useful and how they relate to on-going economic events. The economic perspective itself becomes the course content to be studied, with the relevant equations, quantities and procedures being used to explore what that perspective means. The students learn the necessary knowledge, skills, concepts and principles but their understanding of them is broader and more meaningful in an economic sense. Van Heuvelen (1991) puts forward a similar argument in relation to physics. He points out that physicists begin solving problems by qualitatively analyzing what the problem means from a physics perspective. When they understand what the problem is about, they identify the appropriate formulae for solving it. He argues that qualitatively analyzing
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the meaning of the problem is typically not emphasized in physics instruction, nor in the way in which physics students solve problems. Similarly, a teacher in a medical course explained the importance of understanding specific content in relation to its purpose within the field of study: We can explain arterial blood pressure using mathematical formulas but it doesn’t help a medical student to rote learn those formulas . The use of mathematical formulae is not going to help them conceptualise what arterial pressure is and why it’s important. It helps us describe the system but it’s no more than a description. What they have to do is to have some conceptualisation of what arterial pressure is. . (In teaching) I’m emphasising the critical role that blood pressure has at being maintained at a normal level. . . . And I think the one thing I do try to highlight to them which is a problem that they may have with the textbook is that you can’t simply learn the formula and expect to use the information in a clinical setting. Three o’clock in the morning if you’re by the bedside and somebody’s blood pressure is failing it does not help you to repeat the formula which controls blood pressure. You must have in your own grasp or vision of the system all the elements through which blood pressure might fall and what you can do to restore it. So that’s really trying to put the dry information into a level of priority for them . . . and to give them several analogies in their own life too, whereby their own blood pressure is maintained and challenged. (23.91:3)
This teacher not only wanted the students to understand the purpose and relevance of new know!edge from a medical perspective but also to appreciate how that knowledge is derived: I feel that in particular biomedical sciences that you should be working at the cutting edge to translate some of the excitement of that sometimes to some students, not to confuse them with science but just to show them what the model is by which all of the knowledge base comes from. (23.91:12)
Relationships Between Ways of Seeing Course Content
Three different ways in which teachers see the content of their courses have been described: as knowledge and skills, concepts and principles, and experiences of a field of study and practice. In some instances, elements of one way of seeing the course content appear within other ways of seeing. For example, when course content is seen as concepts and principles, knowledge and skills are also incorporated as parts of the content but those parts do not constitute the whole. Instead, they are linked together through the concepts and principles. Similarly, when course content is seen as experiences of a field, a grasp of underlying concepts and principles is necessary to recognizing their significance to study and practice within the field. Hence, the ways of seeing course content form a hierarchical relationship. More comprehensive ways of seeing the course content incorporate aspects of more limited views, although the meaning of the incorporated part changes in accordance with the way of seeing. For example, when course content is seen as concepts and principles, the associated knowledge and skills do not only represent distinct parts but take on a new meaning in terms of their relationship to the concepts and principles. In a study of engineers at Volvo in Sweden, Sandberg (1991) demonstrated that relevant skills and knowledge are learned in different ways, depending upon the meaning which the work has for the worker. In the higher education context, this means that what students learn differs in accordance with the meaning that the course content has for them. For example, students who see economics as the manipulation of equations and quantities learn different skills and knowledge from those who’ see it as a way of interpreting and explaining the production and distribution of wealth. In order that
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students master the necessary knowledge and skills, they must learn to experience the content in appropriate ways, in accordance with the aims of teaching in higher education. Teaching which aims to develop particular ways of thinking, acting and approaching a field must focus on enriching students’ experience of what it means to engage in the field as a competent practitioner. If such a focus is not maintained throughout the course, students will continue to learn the content in accordance with their less experienced ways of seeing the subject; they will learn new content in a more narrow way than we intend (see also Aguirre, Gurney, Haggerty, & Linder, 1989). There is ample research evidence from a range of disciplines that this does, indeed, occur in higher education institutions (see, for example, Bowden, Dall’Alba, Laurillard, Martin, Marton, Masters, Ramsden, Stephanou, & Walsh, 1992; Dahlgren, 1984; Trowbridge & McDermott, 1980). It should be noted that, in addition to deepening and broadening students’ experience of the course content, the meaning which learning itself has for them is developed (see Saljo, 1979; Marton, Dall’Alba, & Beaty, 1993). The type of teaching which they experience in higher education can foster ways of learning that are in accordance with, or contrary to, the aims of our courses. Hence, while teaching must take account of the ways of learning and purposes of the students, it must not be directed to matching those. Rather, students’ understanding of what constitutes learning must be developed through their experiences of it in their courses of study.
Dynamic Nature of Fields of Study and Practice The discussion of teaching as enriching students’ experience of the field of study and practice has, to this point, largely been based on the notion that a field can be characterized by a particular perspective. For example, an anthropological perspective differs from a theological one. While anthropology and theology differ with respect to the primary questions that they seek to address, it is rarely the case that a single field encompasses only one perspective. For example, not all anthropologists would share a common view of anthropology and the phenomena it seeks to describe. Furthermore, within any single field there are usually alternative theories on particular phenomena. It has already been pointed out that evolution can be understood in distinctly different ways, depending upon whether a Darwinian or Lamarckian theory is adopted. The perspective that is most prominent or accepted within a field tends to change over time, with periods of vigorous debate as the perspective develops. Two teaching issues emerge from the dynamic nature of fields of study and practice. The first is that teachers must be clear about the perspective which courses implicitly or explicitly portray and the extent to which that portrayal accords with our aims. This does not exclude aiming to develop students’ critical awareness of alternative theories and perspectives, rather than their understanding of only one of a possible range. The second issue is that just as the field is constantly re-defined so, too, are students’ (and teachers’) ways of seeing the course content. We do not deliver a fixed body of knowledge; the course content is dynamic for all practical purposes. Ways of seeing the course content change and develop through interaction with others, exposure to new ideas and reflection upon the current way of seeing. Martin and Ramsden (1993) and Roth (1989) describe how such change and development also occurs for teachers as they
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reflect on their teaching practice. While presenting a challenge for teaching, the dynamic and interactive nature of learning can be productively used to facilitate the aims of our courses. For example, we can use discussion and interaction between students to expose them to the meaning which the course content has for other students, and to explore and extend their own ideas through interaction with, and challenges from, others (see also Svensson & Hogfors, 1988). As each field is approached in a different way, the experience that is relevant for our students differs accordingly. Hence, critical thinking in history differs from critical thinking in other fields; what is taken into account and the perspective that is adopted differ from one field to the next and from one way of seeing the field to the next. In clarifying the aims we want to achieve in our courses, it is necessary to examine what it means to approach the field, course or subject in the way we intend our students to learn. General notions of critical thinking or problem solving ignore what it means to think critically or solve problems in relation to specific content and within particular perspectives. Rather, an exploration of what it means to think in the way that a literary critic does would provide a more useful starting point for a study of contemporary literature. In many instances, the enrichment of students’ experience of the field will involve major changes for them, while in other instances it will involve further development of their current way of seeing and experiencing the field. When students change from seeing the course content in a more limited way to seeing the perspective or approach that is aimed for by the teacher, the learning process is far from complete. A change in students’ ways of seeing the field does not automatically mean that subsequent interaction with the course content will be in accordance with that change. The “new” meaning that the field has for the student must be developed in a range of contexts. As long as a changed perspective or meaning for the content lacks integration with related knowledge, inconsistencies would be expected in the way in which students think about, or approach, the course content or parts of it. On occasion, it is likely that the student will “slip back” into adopting the previous meaning of the course content until the new meaning is grasped in its many aspects. Bowden et al. (1992) and Walsh, Dall’Alba, Bowden, Martin, Marton, Masters, Ramsden, and Stephanou (in press) provide examples of how the desired meaning of physics content can be developed in a range of contexts. Only when students have had opportunities to extend and explore what the relevant approach or perspective means in a range of contexts and to integrate its various aspects will development occur in a comprehensive and enduring way. Hence, students’ ways of seeing the course content are dynamic, as are changing views of the field itself. It will be evident from the previous discussion that course content takes on meaning for teachers and students within a social context. This means that they are exposed to ideas which are prevalent at the time, through interaction with other people in a social context of knowledge (see Saljo, 1991a,b). Interaction with others is taken to include both dialogue and printed media, radio, television, computer networks and so on. Rarely do major shifts in the existing theories about phenomena occur; Einstein’s theory of relativity and Marx’s view on power in society represent such shifts. As a consequence, much knowledge generation occurs within prevalent perspectives. It is within these perspectives that students are introduced to courses and fields of study and
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practice. The meaning which the course content and the tield itself have for students depends upon the kinds of experiences they have of them. Here higher education has a role to play in providing learning contexts and experiences that put forward perspectives on the course content and the field. The nature of those contexts and experiences can encourage particular meanings and can foster the reproduction or questioning of existing perspectives.
Conclusion In this article distinctions were made between teachers’ ways of seeing a field, teacher’s ways of seeing the content in a course of study, and the experiences of the content that students bring to a course. Some alternative ways in which teachers see course content were described in order to present an argument that teaching should be directed to enriching students’ experience of the field of study and practice. These alternative ways of experiencing course content included seeing it as: a body of knowledge and skills; concepts and principles to which knowledge and skills are linked; and seeing the content itself as experiences of a field of study and practice. Some limitations of focusing on skills, knowledge, procedures, concepts, and principles were outlined, pa~icularly in relation to teaching aims. Teaching for the enrichment of experience of the field was shown to be more closely and directly related to the aims of teaching in higher education. In particular, it was argued that the meaning which the course content has for students must be developed coacurrentZy with their understanding of the perspective of the field. We can, therefore, conclude that if we teach for enriched experience of the field of study and practice, we teach what we claim we want students to learn.
Acknowledgement _ The assistance of an Australian Research Council grant is acknowledged for the project, “Conceptions of teaching in higher education.” Academic colleagues in a range of fields engaged in discussions with me which contributed to the ideas in this article. Jorgen Sandberg deserves particular thanks for extensive, constructive comments on an early draft and also drew my attention to the parallels with Husserl’s phenomenology. I am grateful to John Milton for raising questions that stimulated the writing of the article and to Mike Bailey, John Bowden, Pamela Eakins, Amedeo Giorgi, John Milton and the anonymous reviewers who made comments that helped me to clarify and better express my ideas.
References
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Aguirre, J., Gurney, B., Haggerty, S., & Linder, C. (1989, June). Student-teachers’ conceptions science, teaching and learning: A case study in preservice science education. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Societv for the Studv of Education, Quebec. Benson, G. D. (1989). Epistemology and science curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 21, 329-344. Bowden. J.. Dall’Alba. G.. Laurlllard, D., Martin, E., Marton, F., Masters, G., Ramsden, P., Stephanou, A., & Walsh, E: (1992). Phenomdnographic studies of understanding in physics: Displacement, velocity and frames of reference. American Journal of Physics, 60, 262-268. Dahlgren, L. 0. (1984). Outcomes of learning. In F. Marton, D. Hounsell, & N. Entwistle (Ed%), The experience of learning (pp. 19-35). Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. Dall’Alba, G. (1991). Foreshadowing conceptions of teaching. In B. Ross (Ed.), Teaching for effective learning. Research and Development in Higher Education (Vol. 13; pp. 293-297). Sydney: HERDSA. Donald, J. (1983). Knowledge structures: Methods for exploring course content. Journal of Higher Education, 54,3141. Donald, J. (1986). Knowledge and the university curriculum. Higher Education, 15,267-282.
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Fox, D. (1983). Personal theories of teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 8, 151-163. Husserl, E. (1962). Ideas: General introduction to pure phenomenology. New York: Collier Books. (Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson.) Husserl, E. (1970/1901). Logical investigations (Vol. 2). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Translated by J. N. Findlay from the original German version, Logische Untersuchungen.) Johansson, B., Marton, F., & Svensson, L. (1985). An approach to describing learning as change between qualitatively different conceptions. In L. H. T. West & A. L. Pines (Eds.), Cognitive structure and conceptual change (pp. 233-257). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Martin, E., & Balla, M. (1991). Conceptions of teaching and implications for learning. In B. Ross (Ed.), Teaching for effective learning. Research and Development in Higher Education (Vol. 13, pp. 298-304). Sydney: HERDSA. Martin, E., & Ramsden, P. (1993). An expanding awareness: How lecturers change their understanding of teaching. Research and Development in Higher Education, 15, 148-156. Marton, F. (1986). Phenomenography - A research approach to investigating different understandings of reality. Journal of Thought, 21, 28-49. Marton, F., Dall’Alba, G., & Beaty, E. (1993). Conceptions of learning. International Journal of Educational Research, 19, 277-300. Roberts, D. A. (1982). Develoninn the concern of “curriculum emnhases” in science education. Science Education, 66,243-260. - Roth, K. J. (1989). Subject matter knowledge for teaching science, or how long does it take oxygen to get to the cell? Paper presented to the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Saljo, R. (1979). Learning in the learner’s perspective. I. Some common-sense conceptions. Reports from the Department of Education, University of Goteborg, number 76. Saljo, R.-(1991a). Introduction: Culture and learning. Learning and Instruction, 1, 179-185. Saljo, R. (1991b). Learning and mediation: Fitting reality into a table. Learning and Instruction, 1, 261-272. Sandberg, J. (1991). Competence as intentional achievement: A phenomenographic study. Occasional Paper 91.4. Melbourne: ERADU, RMIT. Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Stark, J. S., Lowther, M. A., Bentley, R. J., & Martens, G. (1990). Disciplinary differences in course planning. Review of Higher Education, 13, 141-165. Svensson, L. (1989). The conceptualization of cases of physical motion. European Journal of Psychology of Education, IV, 529545. Svensson, L., & Hdgfors, C. (1988). Conceptions as the content of teaching: Improving education in mechanics. In P. Ramsden (Ed.), Improving learning: New perspectives (pp. 162-177). London: Kogan Page. Trigwell, K., & Prosser, M. (1992). Approaches adopted by teachers of first year science courses. Research and Development in Higher Education, 14, 223-228. Trowbridge, D. E., & McDermott, L. C. (1980). Investigation of student understanding of the concept of velocity in one dimension. American Journal of Physics, 40, 1020-1028. Van Heuvelen, A. (1991). Learning to think like -a physicist: A review of research-based instructional strategies. American Journal of Physics, 59, 891-897. Walsh, E., Dall’Alba, G., Bowden,J., Martin, E., Marton, F., Masters, G., Ramsden, P., & Stephanou, A. (in press). Students’ understanding of relative speed: A phenomenographic study. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. West, L. H. T., & Pines, A. L. (Eds.) (1985). Cognitive structure and conceptual change. Orlando, Fl: Academic Press.
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and Inwuclion, Vol. 3, pp. 29S313, 1993 Copyri ht @?_I 1994 Ekvier Science Ltd Printed in 8 rat Britain. All ri hb resewed CM!%47993 $24 00
THE ROLE OF TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ENABLING STUDENTS TO ENTER A FIELD OF STUDY AND PRACTICE GLORIA Royal Melbourne
DALL’ALBA
Institute of Technology,
Australia
Abstract Teachers in higher education commonly aim to develop their students’ ways of thinking, acting and approaching a field of study and practice. Hence, this should also be the focus of our teaching practice. This view of teaching involves providing students with experiences that enable them to enter the field as practitioners. Those experiences must be directed to developing students’ understanding of the perspective that is relevant to the field and what the content of a course means within that perspective. In exploring how teaching can enable students to enter a field of study and practice, some alternative ways in which teachers see the content of their courses are described. These ways of seeing course content were drawn from a study of experiences of teaching in higher education in a range of fields. Some limitations of focusing on skills, knowledge, procedures, concepts, and principles are outlined, particularly in relation to teaching aims. It is argued that a focus on enriching students’ experience of the field of study and practice is more closely and directly related to the aims of teaching in higher education.
Introduction At the higher education level, teachers commonly aim to develop in their students the capacity to approach the field of study and practice in particular ways. For example, we want students to learn to solve chemical problems as a chemist would, to think like an accountant, to approach patient care as a nurse, dentist or doctor would, and so on. Of course, it is the ways of thinking and acting which distinguish competent chemists, accountants, nurses, dentists, doctors, that we aim for. Hence, we not only expect our students to acquire specific skills and knowledge; what we aim for is to broaden and deepen their experience of the field, and the meaning which that experience has for them. This means that we aim to enable students to engage in practice in the informed way that is characteristic of competent practitioners. For example, we want the students Address for correspondence: G. Dall’Alba, Department of Research & Development in Medical Education, Karolinska Institute, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden.
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to learn what it means to approach geography as a geographer does, language as a linguist does, and so on. What, then, are the implications of these aims for teaching? How can we direct our teaching to the achievement of the aims? If students are to become competent practitioners, the content of our courses or subjects must provide them with experience of the relevant perspective and way of engaging in practice. Our courses must enable them to grasp what their practice means from the perspective of the field, and to recognize its significance to practitioners in other fields and to the broader community. This article is based on a study of teachers’ experiences of teaching in higher education at the undergraduate level. It arose from exploring teaching and learning issues in practical contexts with higher education teachers in a range of fields. The article raises questions about teaching practice with a view to enhancing the development of that practice. It is less concerned with reporting results of a study about teaching than with using those results to promote the development and improvement of teaching practice. The point of departure is the practice of teaching, from the teachers’ point of view. The importance of grasping the practitioners’ point of view when attempting to understand their practice is demonstrated in several studies; see, for example, Schdn (1983). While the focus of the article is primarily developmental, it also makes a theoretical contribution to our understanding of teaching and the development of teaching practice. This contribution relates to the particular way of seeing teaching which it put forward, grounded in teachers’ views of their practice. Furthermore, aspects of alternative ways of seeing teaching are identified which fall short of directly addressing the aims of teaching in higher education. Design and Method The study of teachers’ experiences of undergraduate teaching involved teachers from three Australian universities. The part of the study reported here is based on interviews with teachers of economics (lo), English literature (lo), medicine (10) and physics (5) who were teaching in the first or second year of an undergraduate course. Most of the teachers were also teaching in later years. The interviews began with a discussion of teaching at first or second year level and then proceeded to later years of undergraduate courses where applicable. Each of the teachers was interviewed about his or her teaching practice, including the following aspects: 1. What the teacher’s discipline or subject area is about. 2. What the teacher did in teaching a topic which had recently been taught. 3. What the students were expected to learn from the topic. 4. How student performance was assessed. 5. Difficulties which arose in teaching the selected topic, if any. 6. Difficulties students had in learning the topic or subject, if any. 7. Revisions the teacher had made to the subject, if any, and the basis for them. 8. The nature of the interaction with students about the course content within and outside classes. 9. The extent to which the teacher’s own or other research influenced the teaching. The interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed phenomenographically. Phenomenography is a research approach which seeks to explore the
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qualitatively different ways in which aspects of experience are understood, perceived, or conceptualized (Marton, 1986; Marton, Dall’Alba, & Beaty, 1993). This approach is based upon the principle of intentionality (described by Husserl, 1970/1901), namely, that experiences such as understanding or perceiving are directed towards something understood or perceived. Accordingly, understanding or perceiving cannot be separated from what is understood or perceived. In the present study, the qualitatively different ways in which teachers experienced their teaching role were investigated. The focus of the interviews and analysis was to elicit the teachers’ own ways of experiencing teaching in its many aspects. The research task was one of identifying the qualitatively different ways of seeing teaching which became evident from the data, rather than using a pre-determined classification scheme. Relevant aspects of the results are used in raising questions about the extent to which teaching in higher education is directed towards enabling students to enter a field of study and practice. These questions are raised in order to promote the development and improvement of teaching practice.
Enabling Students to Enter a Field of Study and Practice In accordance with our aims, teaching should focus on enabling students to fully enter the world of the relevant field. A field of study and practice includes both theoretical and practical elements, in line with competent practice. Students enter a course often with limited experience of the field they seek to enter. The task for teachers is to deepen and broaden that experience, and the meaning which it has for the students. The entry of students more fully into the field can be expected to involve some instability for them as their previous experiences or expectations of it are challenged. Donald (1983, 1986) demonstrated that there are differences in the forms or structure of knowledge which are attributed to disciplines in higher education. Hence, students are to become familiar with the forms of knowledge typically associated with their disciplines or fields. Those forms of knowledge must be learned by students in terms of their significance within the field of study. For example, sociology and economics represent different perspectives on seeing and interpreting the world. Sociology is concerned with the social nature of human interaction and organization, while economics deals with issues relating to the production and distribution of wealth. Within each of these fields, a particular type of perspective is taken; there is a difference in focus and in the questions which are raised. Depending upon the perspective taken, an issue or topic will take on a different meaning and significance. Consider how a topic such as unemployment might be treated differently from a sociological and economic perspective. Within sociology, some pertinent questions relating to unemployment might be: What is the impact of technological change on social mobility, including unemployment? Which socioeconomic groups are most affected by unemployment? What is the impact of long periods of unemployment on the unemployed? What is the responsibility of the society towards the unemployed? These questions are largely directed to the relationship between unemployment and groups within society or social organization. Questions about unemployment that are more relevant from an economic perspective might include: What is the impact of technological development on the rate of unemployment in developed countries? What
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is the relationship of the unemployment rate to peaks and troughs of a business cycle? What proportion of the population over 16 years of age were unemployed during the past five years? What is the economic cost of unemployment to society? These questions largely relate to the measurement of unemployment rates and the economic cost of unemployment, reflecting a concern with the production and distribution of wealth. Depending upon the perspective adopted (sociological or economic in the example above), an issue - such as unemployment - can be understood in distinctly different ways. The perspective and what unemployment is understood to involve in the previous example differ from one field to the next. It is this interrelationship between perspective and meaning of the course content that is considered central to the teaching enterprise. Ideas which parallel this relationship were developed earlier in phenomenology; see, for example, Husserl (1962) for a more extensive discussion of noetic and noematic aspects of intentionality in human experience. While the perspective that is adopted varies from one discipline or field to the next, there are also different views represented within a field. For example, in biology Darwin’s theory of evolution differed markedly from the earlier Lamarckian theory. Alternative theories are commonly based on different ways of seeing the phenomena being examined. As the meaning of an issue varies depending upon the perspective adopted, this means that the relevant information and facts do not have meaning of themselves; they are always interpreted within a perspective. Hence, when students enter courses with limited or more extensive knowledge, they understand that knowledge within particular perspectives. They come in neither as blank slates nor with a collection of “objective” facts. Therefore, teaching should focus on ensuring that students understand both the perspective of the field and the meaning of the course content within that perspective. The meaning which the course content has for students must be developed concurre&y with their understanding of the perspective of the field. The notion that teaching should focus on the meaning that the course content has for students draws on the work of Marton, Svensson and others (Marton, 1986; Johansson, Marton, & Svensson, 1985; Svensson, 1989) who describe the experiential and contextual nature of learning, and its active, not passive, character. However, in this article the interrelationship between the meaning of course content and the perspective from which it is understood is emphasized. This emphasis differs from the earlier work in making explicit that content is always understood within a particular perspective. This notion of learning should be distinguished from that used in constructivist research which emphasizes cognitive structure or frameworks (see, for example, Chapters l-2 in West & Pines, 1985.)
Degree of Consistency Between Perspective
of the Field and Course Content
The perspective which we want students to adopt in interpreting the course content should be aligned with the relevant field. Hence, it is necessary that the perspective inherent in a course is appropriate to the field. However, teachers’ ways of seeing the content of a field or discipline are not always consistent with their ways of seeing the content within a course of study. For example, they may see their own field as consisting of dynamic and creative ways of interpreting some aspect of the world but see their course content as selected information to be presented to students. In the extract
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below, a physics teacher describes what physics is about (numbers in parentheses to transcript and page numbers):
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Physics is umm it’s a profound subject which is devoted to understanding the natural and man-made world umm and to some extent and the man-made world includes technology and it’s umm. By the use of the word profound I mean that it attempts to understand it at the deepest level possible and umm that is really what physics is about. . . . Now what constitutes the profoundest level is not a fixed thing umm in each generation there is a kind of frontier in depth which changes. I mean if you go back to ancient times umm I mean you have . . . naive things like understanding your region then understanding umm your country the map of your country and then the sphere of the earth and then the solar system and then umm you can go outwards, the stars and then the universe and so on and mnm that again there’s a frontier in depth and it presents itself to each generation, it changes but where that frontier is is where the physicists are working. (2.89:1-2)
In contrast, this teacher saw the content of a physics course as information presented to students: My lecture course each year is umm me a very naive viewpoint to myself and I year I get new insights into the subject, myself differently and sometimes in the material or new facts about it. (2.89:10)
to be
giving a public exhibition of me explaining the subject from let the class listen from a certain point of view. Now each I understand the thing in a different way so I explain it to intervening year I’ve discovered new ways of presenting the
While the teacher’s understanding of the course content changed from year to year, the role of the students was to listen and receive the information that was being exhibited, without engaging in the dynamic process of knowledge generation at their own level of understanding. Hence, the ways in which the field and the course content are seen by this teacher are inconsistent. In other cases, teachers’ ways of seeing the content of the field and of their course coincide. For example, one teacher described anatomy as being about: the structure of the body, the normal structure of the body and I might even add the range of normality of the normal structure of the body. So already I am hinting towards that anatomy is not just a static thing that . . . there is a basic pattern but there is also variation on that pattern. . . . That it is not a black and white thing in itself - normal to abnormal. There is a range of normality, there’s grey area in between. (6.89:2)
This teacher went on to describe what was involved in teaching an anatomy course, again emphasizing the structure of the body, the patterns that can be used to understand that structure and the variation which occurs: There is a relationship between the type of nerve and which compartment of muscles it will supply. . . . (You can say to students) let’s have a look, now that you have learnt all the muscles of the limb and all the nerves that supply the skin of the limb, let us see where they come from . . and make the connection between the two. Ah, I can see that it is happening in the upper limb and I can see that it is happening in the lower limb. But . . . wait a minute, the lower limb and the upper limb are not exactly the same (goes on to explain how they vary around a common principle). . . . So you’ve got a general principle that is still basically applied, but you’ve got to make some little modifications. . . . But then to show how these concepts are not exactly black and white but there is some shades of grey. . . . What one is doing is alerting them that there is going to be a pattern that will make it worth their while looking for. That is the challenge of teaching. (6.89:17)
The degree of consistency between the ways in which teachers see their field and the content within their courses raises questions about whether the perspective inherent in the courses expresses the perspective the students should develop. If there is inconsistency between the perspective inherent in the course and the field, to what extent is the teaching directed to the kinds of aims that were outlined previously?
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Distinguishing Teachers’ Ways of Seeing Course Content From Related Issues There are three senses, then, in which the way of seeing or experiencing the content is being discussed. The first is the teacher’s way of seeing the field of study and practice and the second is the teacher’s way of seeing the content of a course (which is likely to parallel the way of seeing the course content which the teacher wants the students to develop). Third, as indicated previously, students come to courses with some (although often limited) knowledge about the course content. They understand that knowledge from particular perspectives based on their previous experiences of it. This third sense concerns the ways of seeing or experiencing the course content that the students bring to the course. Teachers’ ways of seeing their field or discipline is not dealt with further. The remainder of the article describes some ways in which teachers see the content of their courses, providing a base for elaborating what it means to teach in such a way that students’ experiences of the field are enriched. Underlying this notion of enriched experience is the assumption that there are ways of relating to the content that we want the students to acquire. Developing desired ways of relating to the course content does not imply a narrow, predetermined end point but rather, it is a recognition of the existence of, and necessity for, judgments about what constitutes quality or development in the educational context. Several studies have demonstrated that teachers in higher education experience their teaching role in a range of different ways (see, for example, Dall’Alba, 1991; Martin & Balla, 1991; Trigwell & Prosser, 1992). Prior to these studies, Fox (1983) had proposed some “personal theories of teaching,” although he neither derived them from, nor supported them with, empirical research. The various ways of experiencing teaching have several aspects in common, such as how the course content is taught and what role the teacher adopts. Benson (1989) describes a further aspect, namely, teachers’ views of disciplinary knowledge and its relationship to what they teach. The aspect that is explored in the present article is the way in which teachers in higher education see and experience the content of their courses. There are two reasons for this focus. The first is that the meaning which the course content has for teachers is closely related to their way of experiencing teaching (see also Roberts, 1982). Second, much of teachers’ work involves dealing with course content, for example presenting it in classrooms, discussing it with students, making decisions about how to teach it, and deciding what content is relevant in a course of study. Roberts (1982) argues that the perspective on the discipline which teachers adopt determines the selection of course content that is considered appropriate. A discussion of some ways in which teachers see the course content will be used to elaborate a view of teaching as deepening and broadening students’ ways of seeing and experiencing that content. In contrast to the present study, Stark, Lowther, Bentley, and Martens (1990) focused on comparing disciplines when exploring factors which teachers of introductory courses in higher education perceived as influencing their course planning. Assuming some relationship between course planning and teaching, the study by Stark et al. (1990) and the present investigation provide evidence about aspects of teaching from different angles, using significantly different methodologies. While the focus of the present article is on ways of seeing course content which cut across several fields, their prevalence may vary from one field to another as the data suggest.
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Ways of Seeing the Content of a Course of Study Some of the ways in which teachers in higher education see the course content are outlined below. Each of these ways of seeing the content are explored, to determine how effective it would be in bringing about the desired student learning. These particular ways of seeing the course content are not seen to be exhaustive but, rather, they serve to illustrate how teaching can more effectively be directed to enriching students’ experience of the field. A way of seeing the course content which focuses on students’ experiences of it, is contrasted with common ways of seeing it in terms of knowledge and skills or concepts and principles. This does not mean that knowledge, skills, concepts and principles are not important. Rather, the alternative ways of seeing the course content differ in focus and with respect to what is regarded as most fundamental. Course Content as Body of Knowledge and Skills
Some teachers see course content as consisting principally of a body of knowledge and skills to be gained; a focus on facts and procedures represents a similar view. Accordingly, the main activity of teaching becomes selecting what should be included in a particular subject or course and transferring it to, or developing it in, the students. This way of thinking is based on a view of learning as accumulation or acquisition of knowledge and skills. Knowledge is seen as consisting of separable parts that can be added together in a cumulative way, with the focus being on those parts. In the quote that follows, a teacher of pharmacology describes the content of a course for medical students as consisting of knowledge about the action of drugs in the human body and subsequent skills to be learned: We obviously expect them now (in the third year of their medical course) to have a lot more knowledge. . . . But whether we expect them to have actually got any skills, we don’t necessarily expect them to have got any more skills by then. Hopefully when they get a bit further on, say fourth, fifth (year) and that, we hope that they’ve got to the stage where they know a little bit more about prescribing and writing scripts and things like that, those sort of skills. But I suppose all we’re really hoping by the end of third year compared with second, that they know a hell of a lot more about more drugs and other systems we haven’t discussed at all, a bit more about how the body really handles them. (22.91:1&11)
A teacher of statistics emphasized that the course content consisted of essential facts and skills: Stats is mainly facts. These are the details, these are the inimitable facts. (2.90:9) Things don’t change much in stats, it’s the same. . . . There are certain tools that they all need . . . you say, well ten of them (the tools) has to stay. There’s no flexibility to say, well I’ll think I’ll drop out half a dozen and bring in some more. You just can’t do that because there is ten that are just, you just got to leave them there. For that reason there’s not much need to change (the subject) and rules never change. Mathematical laws never change fortunately. (29O:lO)
A teacher of English literature also identified essential elements that the students must know, expressing the notion that by identifying these essential elements in a piece of literature, the idea being explored (in this case, love) would become evident (T refers to teacher and I to interviewer): T:
In the portrayal of love it would lend itself, the subject lends itself to a close reading so that you look at oh, say, five sonnets . . . then you look at the structure of the sonnet and then you have depiction of the thing, love.
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Can you give me an example? How would you look at the structure within a seminar, what would you actually do? T: . . . if you were looking at a structure (of) a sonnet umm you would look at such formal elements as in what - what a metre is - the rhythm umm the way the sonnet’s constructed, whether it’s . . in a 14 line unit, whether the course content is padded out or whether it’s too compressed . . . in more difficult tutorials there tend to be silences and then you have to come in with a, with a actual question umm like “What’s the metre that the sonnet’s written in?” (27.91:4) In Renaissance (literature) you really do have a certain amount of important material to get across because the students must know it. (27.91:12)
The major limitation of such a way of seeing the content is the underlying assumption that the students will add together all of the necessary parts in a way that allows them to think, act or approach problems in the field as an historian, mathematician or architect would. One teacher of medicine compared learning in a medical course with shopping in a supermarket, saying, “It’s like walking round a supermarket where they pick up all the items and when they eventually reach the checkout at the end of the medical course, everything needs to be in the basket and stamped as if they’d passed the subject” (24.91:2). In practice, it is making the link between specific knowledge or skills and the broader meaning of what it is to be a doctor, historian, mathematician or architect that presents one of the greatest difficulties to students. Hence, a focus on skills and knowledge is not directed towards the complex kind of learning that we aim for in our students. It is only part of what we want the students to learn. Course Content as Concepts and Principles to Which Knowledge and Skills are Linked
A second way of seeing course content is to regard it primarily as concepts and principles around which knowledge and skills are learned. Concepts and principles provide something of a linking framework for more specific knowledge and skills. Teaching may be principally directed to the acquisition or understanding of those concepts and principles. In some instances, teaching is explicitly directed to comprehending the links between the concepts and principles. This way of seeing the course content is illustrated in the two quotes that follow. Both teachers emphasize the links (relationships or patterns) between parts of the content. The first quote describes teaching biochemistry: I try to teach it in terms of showing relationships. Now you can turn around and say well, for example, that represents a metabolic pathway okay, A goes to B goes to C goes to D right. Now at one level a student could simply turn around and say . . “I’m going to memorise it, learn it by rote” and okay that’s one level at which you can approach it. But when I teach it I try to show them the relationship, you know, why is it going and how and what’s the purpose and divide it up into logical sections, this is what is happening here and this is what is happening there. So that the logic of the system is there, okay. . . And in the past the problem has always been when they’ve had to learn the pathway they spend so much time in learning the pathway that they never get to the next level which was the function and the function is what it’s all about. . . . I teach it by showing the relationships and why and where and how this bit here is exactly the same as this bit over there which we learnt a few weeks ago, because there are common themes that run through a lot of this. (21.91:8)
The second quote relates to teaching Old English: From the very beginning I have to try to get them to see the difference between the two kinds of language, the Old English and modem English. But then on a more practical level when I’m looking at, say, the patterns of the endings of parts of the grammar, say the nouns, we look at the nouns and
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I point out to them that while it looks to be a very complicated set of grammatical rules covering some eight or ten pages in the grammar section of their book, in fact it can all be boiled down to a very simple pattern that will cover about 98% or 95% of the forms they encounter. . . So I try to get them to see the patterns as it were. (28.9154) I think most of the students who have problems have them because . . . they just aren’t even used to thinking about verbs and nouns and they’re not used to thinking about syntactic concepts. And so for them I’ve got to try to introduce those concepts in a way that is as clear as possible and is as meaningful to them as possible, rather than treat it as something that is totally abstract that they’ve got to just go off and learn. I try to make every single grammatical point relevant to them, to the language they know, which is modem English. And then when I’ve got a feeling that the understanding is there on that, then I apply it to Old English. (28.91:8)
Seeing course content as concepts and principles to which knowledge and skills are linked has a different focus from seeing it as a body of knowledge and skills. While the latter is concerned primarily with the parts of the course content, the former represents an attempt to see relationships between those parts - to find patterns. However, as in the knowledge-skills view, focusing on concepts and principles directs the teaching to parts or links between them. Teaching is directed away from the more fundamental learning we desire in our students, that is, developing a capacity to approach the field of study and practice in appropriate ways. While we seek to develop students’ capacity to think as an interior designer would, solve a practical problem as an engineer does, or interpret a situation as a psychologist would, a focus on either knowledge and skills or concepts and principles is not directed to the fundamental changes we seek. It is, of course, necessary that students develop skills, knowledge, concepts and principles that are required in the relevant field of study. The issue is, rather, that when we examine the nature of the learning we aim for, it becomes evident that skills, knowledge, concepts and principles are important but not most fundamental.
Course Content as Experiences
of a Field of Study and Practice
What does it mean, then, to teach in such a way that we focus on enriching students’ experiences of the field of study and practice? It has been argued that seeing the course content as knowledge and skills or concepts and principles is to fall short of our aims. In order to meet those aims in increasingly more effective ways, we must focus our teaching on them. This means that our teaching must be deliberately directed to the ways of thinking, acting and approaching the field of study which we want our students to develop; we must teach them to think like a philosopher or play music as a musician does or develop a physiotherapist’s approach to the treatment of patients. In the quote below, a teacher of English literature demonstrates what it means to be clear about the experience of the content that is aimed for, both in terms of what the content means and the perspective from which it is to be seen: Well medieval theatre is . . . an enormous area and one about which they’ll have relatively little knowledge. . . . So they’re faced with the problem of having to get their minds around very different theatrical conditions and get their minds around very different dramatic texts. So basically I want them to read a number of what are called miracle plays, the Corpus Christi or Cycle plays . . . all derived from stories in the Bible. And also to read Everyman which is one late interesting example of a morality play. And I want them to try and understand first of all the life and vitality of medieval theatre, what went on in medieval theatre. Why it was a festival theatre and not an entertainment theatre as we understand it. I want to try and experience something of the strange but interesting world of amateur festival theatre. And I also wanted them to see how elements of that medieval
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G. DALL’ALBA theatre get profe~iona~sed as they do when it comes to talk about Everyman and the morality plays which we’ve done, against religious significance or religious context but in much more professional ways. (29.91:2) I mean one of the most interesting things about the medieval plays, the miracle plays, is that although they look amateur and unsophisticated they’re based on very elaborate typological structuring and so one of the questions you couid ask about those . . . after you’ve talked about things like, you know, why is it written the way it is, why is it humorous, what’s Noah’s wife doing in it, is to ask, well, you’ve laughed at Noah’s wife, she’s a funny character, it’s entertaining for an audience, it connects the audience with a scriptural history - what does she represent? What kind of - she’s not in the Bible except just as a name, why does she play an important role in this text? What other biblical episode is she? Is she a type of, now they don’t understand the word “type” initially but nevertheless the brighter students can begin to see that in fact that she represents Eve. And then you can ask well what does Noah represent and Noah represents Adam but he also represents mankind. What does the ark represent? Eventually they’ll come up with the idea of, say, the church or salvation. And what they’re doing is kind of elementary typological analysis themself. And you know that’s fantastic because they’re actually making connections rather than having to be told about it which they would actually listen to and forget almost instantly. . . . You don’t understand why those plays, those simple entertaining but crude plays are part of something as elaborate and as spectacular as a cathedral unless you understand the processes of (pause) unde~tand~ng types through history. (29.91:45)
The starting point in teaching must be to clarify the meaning the course content is to have for the students within the perspective being developed. Such clarification operates at several levels. At one level, we must be clear about the experience of the field itself which we-want the students to develop. For example, what does it mean to approach fine art as an artist does? How does an artist experience fine art and the way of creating it? At another level, we must clarify the place of our subject or course in the field. How is the perspective of the field evident in the content of the course? For example, how is an artist’s perspective on fine art developed through a study of sculpture? To what extent are the ways of experiencing the field, the course and the subject consistent with each other? Do individual subjects contribute to the development of students’ experience of the field or course in coherent ways? Within an individual subject, we must be clear about how the parts relate to one another and to the subject, course and field as a whole. The experience that we attempt to engender in the students must be developed through, and in relation to, the course content. For example, a teacher may want to develop students’ experience of economics as a way of interpreting and explaining events relating to the production and distribution of wealth. It would be insufficient to teach the procedures for solving equations relating to economic quantities. Rather, it would be necessary to teach the students how to use the relevant equations and quantities in interpreting and explaining economic events. The initial question to be asked becomes “What does it mean to approach economic issues as an economist does?” Students not only learn to solve equations but they also learn what the equations mean, for what purpose they are useful and how they relate to on-going economic events. The economic perspective itself becomes the course content to be studied, with the relevant equations, quantities and procedures being used to explore what that perspective means. The students learn the necessary knowledge, skills, concepts and principles but their understanding of them is broader and more meaningful in an economic sense. Van Heuvelen (1991) puts forward a similar argument in relation to physics. He points out that physicists begin solving problems by qualitatively analyzing what the problem means from a physics perspective. When they understand what the problem is about, they identify the appropriate formulae for solving it. He argues that qualitatively analyzing
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the meaning of the problem is typically not emphasized in physics instruction, nor in the way in which physics students solve problems. Similarly, a teacher in a medical course explained the importance of understanding specific content in relation to its purpose within the field of study: We can explain arterial blood pressure using mathematical formulas but it doesn’t help a medical student to rote learn those formulas . The use of mathematical formulae is not going to help them conceptualise what arterial pressure is and why it’s important. It helps us describe the system but it’s no more than a description. What they have to do is to have some conceptualisation of what arterial pressure is. . (In teaching) I’m emphasising the critical role that blood pressure has at being maintained at a normal level. . . . And I think the one thing I do try to highlight to them which is a problem that they may have with the textbook is that you can’t simply learn the formula and expect to use the information in a clinical setting. Three o’clock in the morning if you’re by the bedside and somebody’s blood pressure is failing it does not help you to repeat the formula which controls blood pressure. You must have in your own grasp or vision of the system all the elements through which blood pressure might fall and what you can do to restore it. So that’s really trying to put the dry information into a level of priority for them . . . and to give them several analogies in their own life too, whereby their own blood pressure is maintained and challenged. (23.91:3)
This teacher not only wanted the students to understand the purpose and relevance of new know!edge from a medical perspective but also to appreciate how that knowledge is derived: I feel that in particular biomedical sciences that you should be working at the cutting edge to translate some of the excitement of that sometimes to some students, not to confuse them with science but just to show them what the model is by which all of the knowledge base comes from. (23.91:12)
Relationships Between Ways of Seeing Course Content
Three different ways in which teachers see the content of their courses have been described: as knowledge and skills, concepts and principles, and experiences of a field of study and practice. In some instances, elements of one way of seeing the course content appear within other ways of seeing. For example, when course content is seen as concepts and principles, knowledge and skills are also incorporated as parts of the content but those parts do not constitute the whole. Instead, they are linked together through the concepts and principles. Similarly, when course content is seen as experiences of a field, a grasp of underlying concepts and principles is necessary to recognizing their significance to study and practice within the field. Hence, the ways of seeing course content form a hierarchical relationship. More comprehensive ways of seeing the course content incorporate aspects of more limited views, although the meaning of the incorporated part changes in accordance with the way of seeing. For example, when course content is seen as concepts and principles, the associated knowledge and skills do not only represent distinct parts but take on a new meaning in terms of their relationship to the concepts and principles. In a study of engineers at Volvo in Sweden, Sandberg (1991) demonstrated that relevant skills and knowledge are learned in different ways, depending upon the meaning which the work has for the worker. In the higher education context, this means that what students learn differs in accordance with the meaning that the course content has for them. For example, students who see economics as the manipulation of equations and quantities learn different skills and knowledge from those who’ see it as a way of interpreting and explaining the production and distribution of wealth. In order that
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students master the necessary knowledge and skills, they must learn to experience the content in appropriate ways, in accordance with the aims of teaching in higher education. Teaching which aims to develop particular ways of thinking, acting and approaching a field must focus on enriching students’ experience of what it means to engage in the field as a competent practitioner. If such a focus is not maintained throughout the course, students will continue to learn the content in accordance with their less experienced ways of seeing the subject; they will learn new content in a more narrow way than we intend (see also Aguirre, Gurney, Haggerty, & Linder, 1989). There is ample research evidence from a range of disciplines that this does, indeed, occur in higher education institutions (see, for example, Bowden, Dall’Alba, Laurillard, Martin, Marton, Masters, Ramsden, Stephanou, & Walsh, 1992; Dahlgren, 1984; Trowbridge & McDermott, 1980). It should be noted that, in addition to deepening and broadening students’ experience of the course content, the meaning which learning itself has for them is developed (see Saljo, 1979; Marton, Dall’Alba, & Beaty, 1993). The type of teaching which they experience in higher education can foster ways of learning that are in accordance with, or contrary to, the aims of our courses. Hence, while teaching must take account of the ways of learning and purposes of the students, it must not be directed to matching those. Rather, students’ understanding of what constitutes learning must be developed through their experiences of it in their courses of study.
Dynamic Nature of Fields of Study and Practice The discussion of teaching as enriching students’ experience of the field of study and practice has, to this point, largely been based on the notion that a field can be characterized by a particular perspective. For example, an anthropological perspective differs from a theological one. While anthropology and theology differ with respect to the primary questions that they seek to address, it is rarely the case that a single field encompasses only one perspective. For example, not all anthropologists would share a common view of anthropology and the phenomena it seeks to describe. Furthermore, within any single field there are usually alternative theories on particular phenomena. It has already been pointed out that evolution can be understood in distinctly different ways, depending upon whether a Darwinian or Lamarckian theory is adopted. The perspective that is most prominent or accepted within a field tends to change over time, with periods of vigorous debate as the perspective develops. Two teaching issues emerge from the dynamic nature of fields of study and practice. The first is that teachers must be clear about the perspective which courses implicitly or explicitly portray and the extent to which that portrayal accords with our aims. This does not exclude aiming to develop students’ critical awareness of alternative theories and perspectives, rather than their understanding of only one of a possible range. The second issue is that just as the field is constantly re-defined so, too, are students’ (and teachers’) ways of seeing the course content. We do not deliver a fixed body of knowledge; the course content is dynamic for all practical purposes. Ways of seeing the course content change and develop through interaction with others, exposure to new ideas and reflection upon the current way of seeing. Martin and Ramsden (1993) and Roth (1989) describe how such change and development also occurs for teachers as they
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reflect on their teaching practice. While presenting a challenge for teaching, the dynamic and interactive nature of learning can be productively used to facilitate the aims of our courses. For example, we can use discussion and interaction between students to expose them to the meaning which the course content has for other students, and to explore and extend their own ideas through interaction with, and challenges from, others (see also Svensson & Hogfors, 1988). As each field is approached in a different way, the experience that is relevant for our students differs accordingly. Hence, critical thinking in history differs from critical thinking in other fields; what is taken into account and the perspective that is adopted differ from one field to the next and from one way of seeing the field to the next. In clarifying the aims we want to achieve in our courses, it is necessary to examine what it means to approach the field, course or subject in the way we intend our students to learn. General notions of critical thinking or problem solving ignore what it means to think critically or solve problems in relation to specific content and within particular perspectives. Rather, an exploration of what it means to think in the way that a literary critic does would provide a more useful starting point for a study of contemporary literature. In many instances, the enrichment of students’ experience of the field will involve major changes for them, while in other instances it will involve further development of their current way of seeing and experiencing the field. When students change from seeing the course content in a more limited way to seeing the perspective or approach that is aimed for by the teacher, the learning process is far from complete. A change in students’ ways of seeing the field does not automatically mean that subsequent interaction with the course content will be in accordance with that change. The “new” meaning that the field has for the student must be developed in a range of contexts. As long as a changed perspective or meaning for the content lacks integration with related knowledge, inconsistencies would be expected in the way in which students think about, or approach, the course content or parts of it. On occasion, it is likely that the student will “slip back” into adopting the previous meaning of the course content until the new meaning is grasped in its many aspects. Bowden et al. (1992) and Walsh, Dall’Alba, Bowden, Martin, Marton, Masters, Ramsden, and Stephanou (in press) provide examples of how the desired meaning of physics content can be developed in a range of contexts. Only when students have had opportunities to extend and explore what the relevant approach or perspective means in a range of contexts and to integrate its various aspects will development occur in a comprehensive and enduring way. Hence, students’ ways of seeing the course content are dynamic, as are changing views of the field itself. It will be evident from the previous discussion that course content takes on meaning for teachers and students within a social context. This means that they are exposed to ideas which are prevalent at the time, through interaction with other people in a social context of knowledge (see Saljo, 1991a,b). Interaction with others is taken to include both dialogue and printed media, radio, television, computer networks and so on. Rarely do major shifts in the existing theories about phenomena occur; Einstein’s theory of relativity and Marx’s view on power in society represent such shifts. As a consequence, much knowledge generation occurs within prevalent perspectives. It is within these perspectives that students are introduced to courses and fields of study and
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practice. The meaning which the course content and the tield itself have for students depends upon the kinds of experiences they have of them. Here higher education has a role to play in providing learning contexts and experiences that put forward perspectives on the course content and the field. The nature of those contexts and experiences can encourage particular meanings and can foster the reproduction or questioning of existing perspectives.
Conclusion In this article distinctions were made between teachers’ ways of seeing a field, teacher’s ways of seeing the content in a course of study, and the experiences of the content that students bring to a course. Some alternative ways in which teachers see course content were described in order to present an argument that teaching should be directed to enriching students’ experience of the field of study and practice. These alternative ways of experiencing course content included seeing it as: a body of knowledge and skills; concepts and principles to which knowledge and skills are linked; and seeing the content itself as experiences of a field of study and practice. Some limitations of focusing on skills, knowledge, procedures, concepts, and principles were outlined, pa~icularly in relation to teaching aims. Teaching for the enrichment of experience of the field was shown to be more closely and directly related to the aims of teaching in higher education. In particular, it was argued that the meaning which the course content has for students must be developed coacurrentZy with their understanding of the perspective of the field. We can, therefore, conclude that if we teach for enriched experience of the field of study and practice, we teach what we claim we want students to learn.
Acknowledgement _ The assistance of an Australian Research Council grant is acknowledged for the project, “Conceptions of teaching in higher education.” Academic colleagues in a range of fields engaged in discussions with me which contributed to the ideas in this article. Jorgen Sandberg deserves particular thanks for extensive, constructive comments on an early draft and also drew my attention to the parallels with Husserl’s phenomenology. I am grateful to John Milton for raising questions that stimulated the writing of the article and to Mike Bailey, John Bowden, Pamela Eakins, Amedeo Giorgi, John Milton and the anonymous reviewers who made comments that helped me to clarify and better express my ideas.
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