teacher's beliefs n intentions concerning teaching in higher education

Teachers’ beliefs and intentions concerning teaching in higher

education

LIN NORTON1, JOHN T.E. RICHARDSON2, JAMES HARTLEY3,STEPHEN NEWSTEAD4 & JENNY MAYES11Liverpool Hope University College, Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK; 2The Open

University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK; 3University of Keele,

Keele, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, United Kingdom; 4University of Plymouth, Plymouth,

Devon PL4 8AA, UK

Abstract. A questionnaire measuring nine different aspects of teachers’ beliefs andintentions concerning teaching in higher education was distributed to teachers at four

institutions in the United Kingdom, yielding 638 complete sets of responses. There was ahigh degree of overlap between the participants’ scores on the subscales measuring beliefsand intentions, and analyses of both sets of scores yielded two factors reflecting an ori-

entation towards learning facilitation and an orientation towards knowledge transmis-sion. However, teachers’ intentions were more orientated towards knowledgetransmission thanwere their beliefs, and problem solvingwas associatedwith beliefs based

on learning facilitation but with intentions based on knowledge transmission. Differencesin teachers’ intentions across different disciplines and between men and women seemed toresult from different conceptions of teaching, whereas differences in teachers’ intentionsacross different institutions and between teachers with different levels of teaching expe-

rience seemed to result from contextual factors. Teaching intentions thus reflect a com-promise between teachers’ conceptions of teaching and their academic and social contexts.

Keywords: approaches to teaching, beliefs about teaching, conceptions of teaching,teaching context, teaching intentions.

Introduction

Even when they are teaching similar courses, different teachers teach indifferent ways, and this may affect their students’ satisfaction, motiva-tion and attainment (Dunkin 1986; Murray 1991). The aim of our studywas to investigate these variations in teaching and their possible basis indifferent teachers’ beliefs about teaching in higher education.

Approaches to teaching in higher education

Trigwell and Prosser (1993) carried out an interview-based investigationof 24 staff who were teaching first-year courses in chemistry and physics.

Higher Education (2005) 50: 537–571 � Springer 2005DOI 10.1007/s10734-004-6363-z

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They described five different approaches to teaching that were differ-entiated in terms of their intentions and teaching strategies. Some ap-proaches were teacher-focused and aimed at the transmission ofinformation to the students, but other approaches were student-focusedand aimed at bringing about conceptual change in the students (see alsoProsser and Trigwell 1999, pp. 153–154; Trigwell et al. 1994).

Prosser and Trigwell (1993) developed a quantitative instrument, theApproaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI), to measure approaches toteaching in larger numbers of teachers. This questionnaire contained 16items measuring teachers’ intentions and strategies concerning twofundamental approaches to teaching: a conceptual-change or student-focused approach and an information–transmission or teacher-focusedapproach (see also Prosser and Trigwell 1999, pp. 154–157, 176–179;Trigwell and Prosser 1996a). Using this instrument, Coffey and Gibbs(2002) found that teachers who adopted a student-focused approachreported using a wider repertoire of teaching methods than did teacherswho adopted a teacher-focused approach.

In addition, Trigwell et al. (1999) demonstrated that students whoseteachers adopted a student-focused approach according to their scoreson the ATI were more likely to show a deep approach to learning andwere less likely to show a surface approach to learning than studentswhose teachers adopted a teacher-focused approach (see also Prosserand Trigwell 1999, pp. 158–159). Moreover, Coffey and Gibbs (in press)found that students whose teachers adopted a student-focused approachaccording to the ATI tended to rate their courses more favourably in afeedback questionnaire than did students whose teachers adopted ateacher-focused approach.

Sander et al. (2000) found that first-year students expected to betaught mainly through formal lectures but preferred more interactiveand group-based activities. Similarly, Hativa and Birenbaum (2000)found that students favoured a student-centred approach to teachingrather than a teacher-centred approach. However, the approach thatwas the most preferred in their study consisted of the presentation ofmaterial in a clear, well-structured and interesting way. Moreover, theextent to which different students favoured one approach to teachingrather than another varied with their reported motivation and learningstrategies, so that individual students seemed to define ‘good teaching’in terms of practices that best served their own approaches to learning.Analogous results were obtained from interviews with students byKember (2001) and in investigations of student teachers by Entwistleet al. (2000) and Oosterheert et al. (2002).

LIN NORTON ET AL.538

Contextual variables might explain why different teachers adoptdifferent approaches to teaching. Prosser and Trigwell (1997) devised anadditional instrument, the Perceptions of the Teaching EnvironmentInventory, to measure various aspects of the perceived teaching context.They found that there were strong associations between teachers’ scoreson this instrument and their scores on the ATI. In particular, teacherswho adopted a student-focused approach were more likely than thosewho adopted a teacher-focused approach to report that their depart-ment valued teaching, that the class sizes were not too large and thatthey had control over what was taught and how it was taught (see alsoProsser and Trigwell 1999, pp. 151–152, 156–157). More recently,Prosser et al. (2003) found that the link between scores on the ATI andperceptions of the teaching context was apparent in established aca-demic staff but not in more junior tutors or demonstrators. This sug-gests that the influence of contextual factors on approaches to teachingbecomes more important with experience.

Even so, these studies do not explain why different teachers adoptdifferent approaches to teaching in similar contexts. Some researchershave ascribed this to constitutional attributes of teachers themselves: todifferent styles of lecturing (Behr 1988; Brown and Bakhtar 1988), stylesof thinking (Zhang and Sternberg 2002) or personality characteristics(McKeachie 1997). This is not wholly satisfactory, because it leaves itunclear why approaches to teaching should develop as the result oftraining (Gibbs and Coffey 2001) or experience (Kugel 1993). Othershave maintained that different approaches to teaching reflect differentunderlying conceptions of teaching and that approaches to teaching willbe enhanced through the acquisition of more sophisticated conceptions(Biggs 1989; Entwistle and Walker 2000; Sherman et al. 1987).

Conceptions of teaching in higher education

Interview-based investigations have identified a number of differentconceptions of teaching among teachers in higher education (e.g.,Dall’Alba 1991; Dunkin 1990, 1992; Dunkin and Precians 1992; Gowand Kember 1993; Kember and Kwan 2000; Kember et al. 2001; Martinand Balla 1991; Martin and Ramsden 1993; Murray and Macdonald1997; Pratt 1992; Prosser et al. 1994; Samuelowicz and Bain 1992, 2001;van Driel et al. 1997; Willcoxson 1998). Gow and Kember (1993) usedthe analytic categories derived from their own interviews to construct aquestionnaire on conceptions of teaching. This contained 46 items

TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND INTENTIONS 539

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measuring nine subscales that were subsumed under two broad ‘orien-tations’ to teaching:

Gow and Kember obtained responses to this inventory from 170 staffat two institutions in Hong Kong, and they measured their students’approaches to learning using Biggs’s (1987) Study Process Question-naire. In those departments where the predominant teaching orientationwas towards knowledge transmission, the students’ use of a deep ap-proach to learning tended to decline during their programme of study.In contrast, in departments where the predominant teaching orientationwas towards learning facilitation, the students were throughout muchless likely to report the use of a surface approach to learning (see alsoKember and Gow 1994).

Subsequently, Kember (1997) reviewed the accumulating interview-based research on this topic. He noted that there were some variationsin terminology, but he suggested that most studies converged on fiveconceptions of teaching which could be located on a continuum from atotally teacher-centred, content-orientated conception of teaching to atotally student-centred and learning-orientated conception of teaching,as follows (see also Kember 1998):• Teaching as imparting information• Teaching as transmitting structured knowledge• Teaching as an interaction between the teacher and the student• Teaching as facilitating understanding on the part of the student• Teaching as bringing about conceptual change and intellectualdevelopment in the student.

Beliefs versus intentions in teaching

There is, nevertheless, a fundamental ambiguity in the notion of ‘ap-proaches to teaching’. On the one hand, a teacher’s ‘approach toteaching’ might reflect the teaching behaviour that, other things beingequal, the teacher finds the most congenial, in which case it is likely to be

Learning facilitation Knowledge transmission

Problem solving Training for specific jobs

More interactive teaching Greater use of media

Facilitative teaching Imparting information

Pastoral interest Knowledge of subject

Motivator of students


closely aligned with the teacher’s conception of teaching (see Kemberand Kwan 2000). On the other hand, an ‘approach to teaching’ mightreflect behaviour that the teacher is constrained to adopt by the curric-ulum, the institution or the students themselves. In this case, it is likely tobe more closely aligned with the teacher’s perceptions of the teachingenvironment than with their own conception of teaching: it represents aspecific response to a defined teaching situation that will be directlymanifested in the teacher’s classroom behaviour (Martin et al. 2000).

This ambiguity is apparent in Trigwell and Prosser’s (1993) analysisof approaches to teaching in terms of intentions and strategies and itssubsequent implementation in the ATI. Their account of teachers’intentions and the items in the ATI that are intended to measureteachers’ intentions are concerned mainly with beliefs about teaching(for instance, ‘I feel that assessment in this subject should be anopportunity for students to reveal their changed conceptual under-standing of the subject’). In contrast, Trigwell and Prosser’s account ofteachers’ strategies and the items in the ATI that are intended to mea-sure teachers’ strategies are concerned mainly with teaching intentions(for instance, ‘In lectures for this subject, I use difficult or undefinedexamples to provoke debate’: Prosser and Trigwell 1999, pp. 176–179).

Pratt (1992) proposed that there was an internal consistency betweendifferent teachers’ actions, intentions and beliefs and the specific contextswithin which they were operating. Fox (1983) used the phrase ‘personaltheories of teaching’ to subsume variations both in beliefs and in inten-tions. Sherman et al. (1987) argued that different ‘schemata of teaching’integrated the conceptual, attitudinal and behavioural differencesamongst individual teachers, and Dunkin (1990) used the term ‘orien-tations to teaching’ in a similar manner. Although Gow and Kember(1993) used the latter term simply to refer to broad categories of con-ceptions (see also Kember and Gow 1994; Kember 1997; Samuelowiczand Bain 2001), their questionnaire contained items that might refer toteaching intentions rather than to beliefs about teaching (for instance, ‘Iguide students in learning rather than force things down their throats’).

Nonetheless, despite these assumptions of a fundamental consistencybetween teachers’ beliefs and intentions, Samuelowicz and Bain (1992)detected suggestions from their interviews that teachers might have both‘ideal’ conceptions and ‘working’ conceptions of teaching:

It seems, from the limited data available, that the aims of teachingexpressed by academic teachers coincide with the ‘ideal’ conception ofteaching whereas their teaching practices, including assessment, reflect


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their ‘working’ conception of teaching. If this is the case researchmight profitably be directed towards the factors (teacher, student,institution-related) which prevent academic teachers from actingaccording to their ideal conception of teaching and thus contribute tosolving one of the mysteries of higher education – the disjunctionbetween the stated aims (promotion of critical thinking) and educa-tional practice (unimaginative coverage of content and testing offactual recall) so often referred to in the literature. . . (p. 110).

Trigwell and Prosser (1996b) compared the findings from their re-search on approaches to teaching (Trigwell et al. 1994) and conceptionsof teaching (Prosser et al. 1994) in 24 staff who were teaching first-yearcourses in chemistry and physics. They found that teachers who held aparticular conception of teaching tended to adopt a commensurateapproach to teaching and to ascribe an analogous conception oflearning to their own students (cf. Bruce and Gerber 1995). However,fewer than half the teachers in the sample were consistent in theirconceptions of teaching and their approaches to teaching. Theremainder described approaches to teaching that were less learner-fo-cused and more teacher-focused than would have been expected fromtheir reported conceptions of teaching (see also Prosser and Trigwell1999, pp. 150–155).

Murray and Macdonald (1997) similarly identified inconsistenciesbetween teachers’ conceptions of teaching and their reported teachingpractices. This ‘disjunction’ seemed to be more common in teacherswhose conceptions of learning involved supporting students or theirlearning. Murray and Macdonald suggested three possible explanationsfor this phenomenon: teachers might be frustrated in their true aims bycontextual constraints; teachers’ true beliefs about teaching might bemore accurately reflected in their actual practices rather than in theirespoused conceptions (cf. Argyris and Schon 1974); and teachers mightnot have undergone sufficient training or staff development to enablethem to operationalise their conceptions of teaching in appropriateteaching strategies.

The aim of the present investigation was to investigate teachers’beliefs and intentions at four institutions of higher education in theUnited Kingdom using a formal questionnaire based on the inventorydevised by Gow and Kember (1993). This amended questionnaire wasdevised to measure differences in teachers’ beliefs and intentions alongthe two primary dimensions that were identified by Gow and Kember(that is, knowledge transmission and learning facilitation). We were


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Though these are not ESL teachers but basically teachers do not walk the talk, and are more teacher centred in teaching

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particularly interested in investigating whether teachers’ beliefs andintentions were influenced by their institution, their academic discipline,their amount of teaching experience and their exposure to formaltraining in teaching in higher education.

Methods

Material

Roughly half of the items in each of the nine subscales of Gow andKember’s (1993) inventory were rephrased in order to refer to therespondent’s personal intentions rather than teaching in general. Sixitems were removed because they were felt to be similar in meaning toother items, and 20 of the remaining items were reworded either forclarification or to avoid bias towards a specific response. This resulted inan instrument containing 20 ‘belief ’ items and 20 ‘intention’ items thatwere interleaved with one another to disguise the purpose of the ques-tionnaire. This was piloted with 25 lecturers in 14 different departmentsfrom one higher education institution in the United Kingdom. Ananalysis of the responses indicated that six further items should be re-moved, and the 34 items that remained in the final questionnaire areshown in the Appendix 1.

Procedure

The questionnaire was distributed in a postal survey to all 1469 mem-bers of teaching staff at four institutions of higher education in theUnited Kingdom. They were asked to indicate their level of agreementor disagreement with each item along a five-point scale from 1 (‘defi-nitely disagree’) to 5 (‘definitely agree’). They were also asked to indicatetheir academic subject or faculty and for how long they had beenteaching in higher education. After the survey had been distributed attwo institutions, it was noted that gender might be another predictor ofteachers’ beliefs and intentions (see below), and so staff at the tworemaining institutions were asked to indicate their gender. Finally, staffat one institution were asked to say whether or not they had taken thatinstitution’s course on teaching and learning in higher education.

The responses to the questionnaire were anonymous, and the par-ticipants were assured that no attempt would be made to identify any


individual respondent. They were also assured that particular depart-ments, faculties and institutions would not be identified in any pub-lished account of the results. We therefore cannot provide anyinformation about the nature of the institutions (such as their history,their subject mix or the number of staff teaching at each institution), asthis might well assist in the identification of the institutions themselves;they will simply be referred to as Institutions A–D. Completed ques-tionnaires were returned to a designated person at each institution insealed envelopes, and these were then forwarded unopened to a researchassistant who collated the responses into an anonymous database forstatistical analysis.

Results and discussion

Completed questionnaires were returned by 696 respondents. Thisrepresents a response rate of 47.4%, which is considered adequate for apostal survey (Babbie 1973, p. 165; Kidder 1981, pp. 150–151). Theresponse rates for the four institutions were: A, 61.4%; B, 48.9%; C,42.7%; and D, 43.9%. However, 58 participants had failed to respondto one or more of the items in the questionnaire, and so our analysis isbased upon the 638 respondents who provided complete data. Theywere assigned scores on each of the 18 subscales by taking the meanresponse across the relevant items. Consequently, their scores variedfrom 1 (low) to 5 (high) on each subscale.

On the basis of the information that they had provided about theiracademic subject or faculty, it was possible to classify 556 of therespondents as belonging to three broad academic disciplines: arts,science and social science. Similarly, it was possible to classify 584 of the638 respondents on the basis of their teaching experience as being ‘new’(1–3 years), ‘experienced’ (4–20 years) or ‘established’ (21–45 years).Finally, 330 of the respondents from Institutions C and D had indicatedtheir gender when completing the survey. Table 1 shows the distribu-tions of academic discipline, teaching experience and gender across thefour institutions.

Relationships between beliefs and intentions

A multivariate analysis of variance demonstrated that the scores on thesubscales measuring teaching beliefs and the scores on the subscales


measuring teaching intentions had 94% of their variance in common(Wilks’s k ¼ 0.06), F(81, 4016) ¼ 27.49, p < 0.001. The correlationcoefficients between the scores on subscales representing correspondingbeliefs and intentions were as follows: problem solving, þ0.31; inter-active teaching, þ0.41; facilitative teaching, þ0.57; pastoral interest,þ0.70; motivating students, þ0.56; training for jobs, þ0.42; use ofmedia, þ0.51; imparting information, þ0.51; and knowledge of subject,þ0.60 (p < 0.001 in each case). There was thus an overall consistencybetween the teachers’ beliefs and intentions that was strongest in thecase of pastoral interest and weakest in the case of problem solving.

A canonical correlation analysis was carried out to investigate fur-ther the relationships between the scores on the nine subscales mea-suring teaching beliefs and the scores on the nine subscales measuringteaching intentions. This involves the specification of linear combina-tions of the two sets of variables (canonical variates) that are maximallyand significantly related to one another (Tabachnik and Fidell 1996,chapter 6). Eight pairs of canonical variates were highly significant(p < 0.001 in each case), but the ninth pair was not (p > 0.20).Accordingly, eight pairs of canonical variates were extracted and sub-mitted to varimax rotation. The correlations between the subscales andthe rotated variates are shown in Table 2. Correlations greater than 0.30in absolute magnitude were regarded as being salient for the purposes ofinterpretation.

Table 1. Percentage frequency distributions by discipline, experience and gender

InstitutionA

InstitutionB

InstitutionC

InstitutionD

Overall

Academic discipline

Arts 59 37 24 15 31

Science 23 38 65 47 44

Social science 19 24 11 38 25

Teaching experience

New 25 18 12 11 15

Experienced 60 54 70 65 62

Established 15 28 18 24 23

Gender

Male n/a n/a 70 63 65

Female n/a n/a 30 37 35

Note: n/a = not available.


Each pair of canonical variates showed very high correlations with apair of subscales representing corresponding beliefs and intentions. Thisprovides further evidence for the idea of an underlying consistencybetween beliefs and intentions in eight of the nine domains tapped byGow and Kember’s (1993) questionnaire, but there was no such evi-dence for problem solving. Instead, problem solving beliefs showedmodest correlations with the variates representing motivating students,imparting information and interactive teaching; problem solvingintentions showed modest correlations with the variates representing

Table 2. Correlations between subscale scores and eight pairs of canonical variates

Subscale Canonical variates

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Beliefs: Learning facilitation

Problem solving 0.41 0.39 0.24 0.24 �0.09 �0.05 �0.02 0.33

Interactive teaching 0.11 �0.09 0.15 0.06 0.14 0.13 0.09 0.88

Facilitative teaching 0.17 �0.02 0.94 0.03 0.15 0.15 0.10 0.13

Pastoral interest 0.16 0.10 0.16 0.17 0.10 0.93 0.03 0.11

Motivating students 0.92 0.06 0.18 0.11 0.14 0.18 0.16 0.10

Beliefs: Knowledge transmission

Training for jobs 0.11 0.10 0.03 0.96 0.09 0.16 0.10 0.05

Use of media 0.11 0.02 0.13 0.09 0.97 0.09 0.04 0.10

Imparting information 0.06 0.92 �0.03 0.11 0.02 0.11 0.22 �0.09Knowledge of subject 0.14 0.20 0.10 0.10 0.04 0.03 0.94 0.07

Intentions: Learning facilitation

Problem solving 0.56 �0.08 0.47 0.05 �0.06 0.05 0.15 0.15

Interactive teaching 0.18 �0.09 0.20 0.03 0.08 0.19 0.11 0.93

Facilitative teaching 0.11 �0.05 0.92 0.04 0.14 0.16 0.09 0.20



Intentions: Knowledge transmission


Use of media 0.11 0.01 0.11 0.12 0.95 0.10 0.06 0.07

Imparting information 0.03 0.97 �0.05 0.17 0.01 0.05 0.14 �0.08Knowledge of subject 0.09 0.14 0.09 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.97 0.10

Note: N = 638. Correlations greater than 0.30 in absolute magnitude are shown initalics.


motivating students and facilitative teaching. Thus, even the modestapparent consistency between beliefs and intentions in problem solvingwas essentially an artefact of the relationship between motivating stu-dents and problem solving and the genuine consistency between beliefsand intentions in motivating students.

Factor analyses of beliefs and intentions

Separate factor analyses were carried out on the participants’ scores onthe subscales measuring beliefs and intentions. In both cases, there weretwo factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.00, and these explained47.6% and 47.1% of the total variance, respectively. The notion thattwo factors should be extracted was confirmed by Cattell’s (1966) screetest and by Montanelli and Humphreys’ (1976) criterion, which com-pares the obtained eigenvalues with those of a random correlationmatrix. Accordingly, two factors were extracted and submitted tovarimax rotation. Table 3 shows the factor loadings in each of the ro-tated solutions. Loadings greater than 0.30 in absolute magnitude wereregarded as being salient for the purposes of interpretation.

Table 3. Factor solutions for beliefs and intentions

Subscale Beliefs Intentions

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 1 Factor 2

Learning facilitation

Problem solving 0.51 0.05 0.25 0.42

Interactive teaching 0.69 �0.03 0.52 0.02

Facilitative teaching 0.67 0.00 0.66 0.12

Pastoral interest 0.54 0.19 0.45 0.33

Motivating students 0.59 0.16 0.57 0.42

Knowledge transmission

Training for jobs 0.16 0.37 0.26 0.42

Use of media 0.37 0.16 0.45 0.11

Imparting information �0.15 0.95 �0.07 0.61

Knowledge of subject 0.33 0.30 0.15 0.54

Note: N = 638. Factor loadings greater than 0.30 in absolute magnitude are shown in

italics.


For the analysis of the subscales measuring beliefs, Factor 1 showedsalient loadings on all of the subscales measuring learning facilitation,although it also showed salient loadings on the subscales measuring useof media and knowledge of subject. Factor 2 was dominated by thesubscale measuring imparting information, but it also showed salientloadings on the subscales measuring training for jobs and knowledge ofsubject. For the analysis of the subscales measuring intentions, Factor 1showed salient loadings on four of the five subscales measuring learningfacilitation, plus the subscale measuring use of media. Factor 2 showedsalient loadings on three of the subscales measuring knowledge trans-mission, plus the subscales measuring problem solving, pastoral interestand motivating students.

In broad terms, the first factor solution supports the distinction madeby Gow and Kember (1993) between learning facilitation and knowl-edge transmission as conceptions of teaching, and the second factorsolution supports the distinction made by Trigwell and Prosser (1996a)between student-centred and teacher-centred approaches to teaching. Inbroad terms, too, the factor solutions were similar to each other in thepattern and magnitude of the loadings: the correlation coefficients be-tween the loadings on the corresponding subscales were þ0.88 forFactor 1 and þ0.73 for Factor 2. However, there were also certaindiscrepancies with the results obtained by Gow and Kember and be-tween the two factor solutions shown in Table 3.

First, knowledge of subject made a minor contribution to beliefs inlearning facilitation (as well as to beliefs in knowledge transmission),but it made little contribution to intentions in learning facilitation. Thissuggests that most teachers value a knowledge of the subject but that inpractice it matters only to those who have an orientation towardsknowledge transmission.

Second, pastoral interest and motivating students contributed tointentions in knowledge transmission (as well as to intentions in learningfacilitation), but they made little contribution to beliefs in knowledgetransmission. This suggests that most teachers are concerned with thewell-being and motivation of their students, but that these concernsform part of an underlying conception of teaching only in teachers whohave an orientation towards learning facilitation.

Third, problem solving contributed to beliefs in learning facilitation,but not to intentions; conversely, it contributed to intentions inknowledge transmission, but not to beliefs. On the one hand, teacherswith an orientation towards learning facilitation claim to value problemsolving but do not make more use of it in their teaching. On the other


hand, teachers with an orientation towards knowledge transmission donot claim to value problem solving but do use it in teaching, presumablyto check whether the relevant knowledge has been acquired.

Perhaps of most interest are the findings with regard to the subscalemeasuring the use of media. In their final questionnaire, Gow andKember (1993) subsumed this subscale within an orientation towardsknowledge transmission, and they interpreted this to mean that mediawere being predominantly used to support the clear and accurate pre-sentation of subject matter. Nevertheless, in their pilot study using anearlier version of the questionnaire, this subscale had been intimatelyrelated to problem solving, facilitative teaching and interactive teaching.In the results of the present study, the subscale measuring use of mediahas been located (albeit only weakly in teachers’ beliefs, but morestrongly in their intentions) within an orientation towards learningfacilitation. Contrary to Gow and Kember’s suggestion, this impliesthat teachers with the latter orientation are entirely capable of making aprincipled use of media in their teaching.

Differences between beliefs and intentions

The results of the interview-based research carried out by Murray andMacdonald (1997), by Samuelowicz and Bain (1992) and by Trigwell andProsser (1996b) imply that there should be a difference (or ‘disjunction’)between teachers’ conceptions of teaching and their teaching intentions.To be more specific, the findings that were obtained by Murray andMacdonald and by Trigwell and Prosser suggest that teachers’ intentionsshould be less orientated towards learning facilitation and more orien-tated towards knowledge transmission than their beliefs.

Table 4 shows the mean scores obtained by the 638 participants onthe 18 subscales. A multivariate analysis of variance using a doublymultivariate design showed that, as predicted, there was a highly sig-nificant difference between the participants’ scores on the nine subscalesmeasuring teaching beliefs and their scores on the nine subscales mea-suring teaching intentions, F(9, 629) ¼ 229.56, p < 0.001. Univariateanalyses identified significant differences in the case of seven out of thenine pairs of subscales: problem solving, interactive teaching, motivat-ing students, training for jobs, use of media, imparting information andknowledge of subject.

Interpretation of these results is not a straightforward matter becausefour of the nine pairs of subscales (problem solving, pastoral interest,


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THe teacher focus misundertood the problem solving tools

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motivating students and knowledge of subject) had a somewhatambiguous status in the factor solutions described in the previous sec-tion. The participants obtained higher scores on intentions than onbeliefs in the case of problem solving and knowledge of subject, but theyobtained higher scores on beliefs than on intentions in the case ofmotivating students. Nevertheless, these trends cannot be interpreted asevidence for a systematic shift either towards or away from knowledgetransmission.

Three of the remaining subscales (interactive teaching, facilitativeteaching and use of media) contributed to an orientation towardslearning facilitation in the factor solutions of both beliefs and inten-tions. The participants obtained higher scores on intentions than onbeliefs in the case of interactive teaching, they obtained higher scores onbeliefs than on intentions in the case of use of media, and there was nosignificant difference in the case of facilitative teaching. There wastherefore no clear evidence for a systematic shift away from learningfacilitation.

Finally, two of the subscales (training for jobs and imparting infor-mation) contributed to an orientation towards knowledge transmissionin the factor solutions of both beliefs and intentions. Indeed, in bothsolutions imparting information essentially defined this orientation. The

Table 4. Mean (and SD) subscale scores for beliefs and intentions

Subscale Beliefs Intentions

Mean SD Mean SD

Learning facilitation

Problem solving* 4.40 0.63 4.60 0.56

Interactive teaching* 4.57 0.65 3.60 0.76



Motivating students* 4.65 0.58 4.55 0.57

Knowledge transmission

Training for jobs* 3.35 0.94 4.04 0.74

Use of media* 3.38 0.93 4.09 0.95

Imparting information* 2.94 1.06 3.75 0.99

Knowledge of subject* 3.99 0.84 4.43 0.71

Note: N = 638.* Significant univariate effects (p < 0.05).


participants obtained higher scores on intentions than on beliefs in thecase of both of these subscales. These results therefore provide evidencefor a systematic shift towards knowledge transmission. In short,teachers’ intentions are more orientated towards knowledge transmis-sion than their beliefs, but at the same time they are not less orientatedtowards learning facilitation.

Institutional differences

As mentioned earlier, the interest of our study lay in examining whetherteachers’ beliefs and intentions were influenced by contextual variablesor personal characteristics of the teachers themselves. We investigated inturn whether the participants’ scores on the 18 subscales of our ques-tionnaire varied with their institution, their academic discipline, theirteaching experience and their gender. We examined the effect of each ofthese variables both in isolation and when the effects of the othervariables were taken into account in an additive multifactorial model.

Pratt (1992) and Samuelowicz and Bain (1992) suggested that con-ceptions of teaching varied with the academic context, though the evi-dence for this was largely anecdotal. Trigwell et al. (1999) arguedinstead that approaches to teaching were influenced jointly by theteachers’ conceptions of teaching and by their perceptions of theirteaching environment. This suggests that contextual variables will havea more pronounced effect on teachers’ intentions than on their beliefs.One contextual variable is the teacher’s institution. However, althoughseveral studies have included participants from two or more institutions(Brown and Bakhtar 1988; Gow and Kember 1993; Prosser and Trig-well 1997; Prosser et al. 1994; Samuelowicz and Bain 1992, 2001;Trigwell et al. 1994), none reported comparisons among the relevantinstitutions.

Table 5 shows the means and standard deviations of the subscalescores obtained by the participants at each of the four institutions in thepresent investigation. A multivariate analysis of variance showed thatthey differed significantly from one another in their patterns of scores,F(54, 1839) ¼ 1.73, p < 0.001. Univariate analyses identified significantdifferences on one of the beliefs subscales, interactive teaching, and onfour intentions subscales: interactive teaching, facilitative teaching,motivating students and training for jobs. These results are consistentwith the view that contextual variables have a greater effect on inten-tions than on beliefs. Indeed, the results in Table 5 suggest that staff at


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different institutions have similar beliefs about teaching that are biasedtowards learning facilitation rather than knowledge transmission, butthat their institutions vary in how much they constrain their staff whenputting those beliefs into practice.

With regard to the beliefs subscale measuring interactive teaching,post-hoc tests found that respondents at Institution A produced sig-nificantly higher scores than those at Institutions B and D, with those atInstitution C producing intermediate scores. Similarly, post-hoc tests on

Table 5. Mean (and SD) subscale scores across four institutions

Subscale Institution A Institution B Institution C Institution D

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

n 103 199 122 214


Problem solving 4.47 0.60 4.32 0.66 4.43 0.64 4.42 0.60

Interactive teaching* 4.76 0.40 4.51 0.76 4.61 0.61 4.53 0.64

Facilitative teaching 4.30 0.76 4.23 0.85 4.42 0.76 4.32 0.73





Use of media 3.42 0.92 3.30 0.88 3.52 0.93 3.34 0.98

Imparting information 2.85 1.14 2.92 1.02 2.97 1.04 2.99 1.07

Knowledge of subject 4.08 0.81 3.91 0.87 3.93 0.86 4.05 0.80


Problem solving 4.65 0.48 4.63 0.54 4.61 0.60 4.54 0.59

Interactive teaching* 3.90 0.70 3.50 0.80 3.57 0.73 3.57 0.75

Facilitative teaching* 4.56 0.70 4.26 0.93 4.50 0.81 4.28 0.88


Motivating students* 4.76 0.36 4.50 0.59 4.54 0.60 4.51 0.60


Training for jobs* 4.10 0.69 4.01 0.74 4.21 0.65 3.95 0.79

Use of media 4.19 0.93 4.02 1.02 4.17 0.88 4.05 0.92

Imparting information 3.96 0.94 3.67 0.98 3.69 1.03 3.75 0.99

Knowledge of subject 4.50 0.64 4.42 0.75 4.38 0.76 4.43 0.69

* Significant univariate effects (p < 0.05).


the intentions subscales that measured interactive teaching, facilitativeteaching and motivating students found a consistent pattern for therespondents at Institution A to produce higher scores than those atother institutions. However, when the effects of academic discipline andteaching experience were taken into account, only the subscale mea-suring interactive teaching intentions showed a significant variationamong the four institutions. The latter was no longer significant whenthe additional effect of gender was taken into account, though thiscomparison was based solely on the two institutions (C and D) wheregender had been recorded. Even so, these results suggest that the trendfor teachers at Institution A to be orientated towards learning facilita-tion was largely a consequence of the mix of subjects and their teachingexperience. (Table 1 shows that the latter sample contained the highestproportions of arts teachers and of new teachers.)

With regard to the intentions subscale measuring training for jobs,post-hoc tests found that respondents at Institution C produced sig-nificantly higher scores than those at Institutions B and D, with those atInstitution A producing intermediate scores. Moreover, this differenceremained significant when the effects of academic discipline, teachingexperience and gender were taken into account. In other words, the onlydifference that could be directly ascribed to the institutional context wasa trend for some teachers to be rather more likely than others to adoptteaching intentions that focused on the vocational implications of theircourses, and this presumably reflects the particular learning outcomesvalued by the different institutions.

Academic discipline

Teachers in higher education use teaching methods that reflect theepistemological assumptions of their different disciplines (Neumannet al. 2002). Even when using the same teaching method (e.g., lecturing),teachers in different disciplines seem to adopt different approaches toteaching (Behr 1988; Brown and Bakhtar 1988). Staff in different dis-ciplines have undergone a different process of socialisation as teachersand as a result may have acquired different conceptions of teaching(Samuelowicz and Bain 2001). However, different disciplines are taughtin different departments, and hence variations in teaching might resultfrom variations in the departmental context (Knight 2002; Knight andTrowler 2000). Of course, in research studies that are based uponteachers at a single institution, differences among academic disciplines


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are completely confounded with differences among the departments thatare responsible for teaching those disciplines.

Kember and Gow (1994) found little variation in conceptions ofteaching in the staff at 15 departments at two institutions, and theycommented that the departmental differences ‘did not show any obviousrelationships to fields of study’ (p. 70). However, surveys of teachers atinstitutions of higher education in the United States have found thatbeliefs about teaching vary markedly across different disciplines; thesevariations are related to the teachers’ beliefs about the nature of thediscipline that they were teaching and in turn have a direct influence ontheir teaching intentions. The local context appears to play an addi-tional but far less important role in this process (Braxton and Hargens1996; Stark et al. 1988, 1990; see also Stark 2000).

As mentioned earlier, it was possible to classify 556 of the respon-dents as belonging to three broad academic disciplines: arts, science andsocial science. Table 6 shows the means and standard deviations of thesubscale scores obtained by the participants in arts, science and socialscience. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that they differedsignificantly from one another in their patterns of scores, F(36,1072) ¼ 3.24, p < 0.001. Univariate analyses identified significant dif-ferences on three of the beliefs subscales, interactive teaching, trainingfor jobs and use of media, and on two of the intentions subscales,interactive teaching and training for jobs. These results are consistentwith the view that differences in teaching intentions across differentacademic disciplines are largely the result of differences in the teachers’conceptions of teaching.

With regard to the beliefs subscales, post-hoc tests found that scienceteachers produced significantly lower scores than arts teachers or socialscience teachers on interactive teaching, but significantly higher scoresthan arts teachers or social science teachers on training for jobs. Thesedifferences remained significant when the effects of institution, teachingexperience and gender were taken into account, and so they appear torepresent genuine differences in teaching conceptions across differentdisciplines. Science teachers produced significantly higher scores thanarts teachers on use of media, with social science teachers producingintermediate scores. Nevertheless, this difference was no longer signifi-cant when the effects of institution, teaching experience and gender weretaken into account, which indicates that it was largely the result of con-founded differences in contextual variables and personal characteristics.

With regard to the intentions subscales, post-hoc tests found thatboth arts teachers and science teachers produced significantly higher


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scores than social science teachers on training for jobs, and this re-mained significant when the effects of institution, teaching experienceand gender were taken into account. In the case of science and socialscience teachers, it reflected a corresponding difference in their con-ceptions of teaching; however, arts teachers attached more importanceto vocational outcomes in their teaching intentions than one mightanticipate on the basis of their conceptions of teaching. Arts teachersalso produced significantly higher scores than science teachers or socialscience teachers on interactive teaching, but this difference was no

Table 6. Mean (and SD) subscale scores across three broad academic disciplines

Subscale Arts Science Social Science

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

n 170 246 140


Problem solving 4.45 0.55 4.42 0.66 4.42 0.56

Interactive teaching* 4.70 0.49 4.38 0.78 4.68 0.52

Facilitative teaching 4.33 0.73 4.24 0.86 4.37 0.72

Pastoral interest 4.16 0.86 4.01 0.83 3.94 0.88

Motivating students 4.63 0.56 4.62 0.66 4.67 0.49


Training for jobs* 3.21 0.96 3.53 0.94 3.25 0.88

Use of media* 3.21 0.96 3.46 0.97 3.38 0.81

Imparting information 2.96 1.02 3.07 1.06 2.91 1.03

Knowledge of subject 3.98 0.81 3.91 0.90 3.98 0.82


Problem solving 4.57 0.57 4.61 0.61 4.65 0.49






Training for jobs* 4.03 0.70 4.10 0.70 3.80 0.78

Use of media 4.06 0.87 3.96 1.03 4.13 0.98





longer significant when the effects of institution, teaching experience andgender were taken into account. Indeed, it was mainly due to a genderdifference in interactive teaching intentions.

Teaching experience

Many researchers have assumed that teachers’ conceptions of teachingchange with experience, usually from being more teacher-centred andcontent-orientated to being more student-centred and learning-orien-tated, and that this will have benign consequences for the teachers’behaviour (Dall’Alba 1981; Fox 1983; Kember 1997, 1998; Kugel 1993;Sherman et al. 1987). However, there is very little evidence to supportthis assumption. Entwistle and Walker (2000) described this develop-mental trend in the retrospective reports of a single teacher, but Brownand Bakhtar (1988) found that teachers’ intentions did not vary sig-nificantly with their teaching experience.

Dunkin (1990, 1991) found that new teachers tended to report asingle conception of teaching, whereas Dunkin and Precians (1992)found that teachers who had been given awards for excellence inteaching had more complex and flexible conceptions. Dunkin andPrecians interpreted this in terms of a contrast between experts andnovices, but this was confounded with the contrast between good andaverage teachers. Hence, this study provides no evidence that concep-tions of teaching develop with increasing experience. Indeed, Entwistleet al. (2000) found that the conceptions of ‘good teaching’ held bystudent teachers depended more on the nature of their prior experienceof the educational system as students and parents.

As mentioned earlier, it was possible to classify 584 of the 638respondents on the basis of their experience as being ‘new’ (1–3 years),‘experienced’ (4–20 years) or ‘established’ (21–45 years). Table 7 showsthe means and standard deviations of the subscale scores obtained bythe three groups of participants. A multivariate analysis of varianceshowed that they differed significantly from one another in their pat-terns of scores, F(36, 1128) ¼ 1.66, p < 0.005. However, univariateanalyses identified significant differences only on two intentions sub-scales, problem solving and interactive teaching.

Clearly, these results provide no support at all for the idea thatteachers’ conceptions of teaching develop with increasing teachingexperience. Of course, the design of this study with regard to teachingexperience was cross-sectional rather than longitudinal, so that the


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teaching experience of the different participants was confounded withwhen they had begun teaching in higher education. An alternativeinterpretation of these same results, therefore, is that there has beenlittle or no change in the beliefs or conceptions held by teachers whohave begun teaching in higher education over the last 40 years. Incontrast, Prosser et al. (2003) found evidence for genuine developmentin teachers’ approaches to teaching, such that with increasing experiencethese became more aligned with the teachers’ perceptions of the aca-

Table 7. Mean (and SD) subscale scores across three levels of teaching experience

Subscale New Experienced Established

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

n 87 361 136


Problem solving 4.33 0.63 4.40 0.66 4.42 0.56

Interactive teaching 4.56 0.60 4.58 0.68 4.50 0.66





Training for jobs 3.34 0.90 3.36 0.96 3.29 0.94

Use of media 3.46 0.90 3.37 0.92 3.31 0.97




Problem solving* 4.48 0.57 4.58 0.61 4.69 0.46






Training for jobs 4.09 0.80 4.06 0.73 3.94 0.73

Use of media 4.18 0.99 4.08 0.94 3.96 0.92





demic context. The present study has similarly found evidence forapparent changes with experience in teachers’ intentions.

With regard to problem solving intentions, post-hoc tests found thatestablished teachers produced significantly higher scores than newteachers, with experienced teachers producing intermediate scores. Thistrend remained significant when the effects of institution, academicdiscipline and gender were taken into account. Again, it could meaneither that teachers make greater use of problem solving with increasedexperience of teaching or that those who began teaching many years agomake greater use of problem solving than those who began teachingmore recently. With regard to interactive teaching intentions, post-hoctests found that both new and experienced teachers obtained higherscores than established teachers. This trend was no longer significantwhen the effects of institution, academic discipline and gender weretaken into account, which suggests that it was due to confounded var-iation in background variables.

Gender differences

Differences between men and women in terms of their beliefs and theirintentions with regard to teaching are inherently of interest because ofthe ‘gendered’ nature of the arts and sciences in higher education(Thomas 1988). Nevertheless, results from men and women separatelywere not presented in most of the research studies that were reviewedearlier; indeed, many authors even failed to report whether their par-ticipants were men or women. One survey in the United States suggestedthat gender and other demographic characteristics of teachers wereunrelated to their beliefs and intentions (Stark 2000). As mentionedearlier, 330 respondents at Institutions C and D indicated their genderwhen completing the survey.

Table 8 shows the means and standard deviations of the subscalescores obtained by the men and the women. A multivariate analysis ofvariance showed that they differed significantly in terms of their patternsof scores, F(18, 311) ¼ 2.87, p < 0.001. Univariate analyses identifiedsignificant gender differences on four beliefs subscales (problem solving,interactive teaching, facilitative teaching and imparting information)and on four intentions subscales (interactive teaching, motivating stu-dents, use of media and training for jobs). In addition, each of thesetrends remained significant when the effects of institution, academicdiscipline and teaching experience was taken into account, which indi-


cates that they were not the result of confounded differences in con-textual variables and personal characteristics.

With regard to the beliefs subscales, women obtained higher scoresthan men on problem solving, interactive teaching and facilitativeteaching, but men obtained higher scores than women on impartinginformation. Broadly speaking, then, women were more likely to hold aconception of teaching as learning facilitation, whereas men were morelikely to hold a conception of teaching as knowledge transmission. Withregard to the intentions subscales, women obtained higher scores than

Table 8. Mean (and SD) subscale scores for men and women

Subscale Men Women

Mean SD Mean SD

n 216 114


Problem solving* 4.35 0.60 4.56 0.62


Facilitative teaching* 4.28 0.75 4.48 0.73





Use of media 3.37 1.01 3.49 0.87

Imparting information* 3.12 1.06 2.70 0.98







Motivating students* 4.45 0.62 4.65 0.55


Training for jobs* 3.98 0.75 4.16 0.74

Use of media* 3.98 0.97 4.29 0.75

Imparting information 3.79 0.95 3.59 1.08




men on interactive teaching, motivating students, training for jobs anduse of media. Bearing in mind that the last subscale appeared to con-tribute to an orientation towards learning facilitation (see Table 3),these results suggest that women were more likely than men to adoptthis orientation in their teaching intentions, but that they were at thesame time more concerned with vocational outcomes.

Exposure to formal training

It is generally assumed that teachers in higher education will benefitfrom their participation in formal training programmes (see, e.g., Brownand Bakhtar 1988; Sherman et al. 1987). Murray and Macdonald (1997)suggested, in particular, that training enabled teachers to operationalisetheir conceptions of teaching in appropriate teaching strategies. Thereis, however, little or no evidence that training has any effect on teachingbehaviour (Dunkin 1990; Levinson-Rose and Menges 1981; Weimerand Lenze 1991). A recent study of training programmes in 20 differentinstitutions produced data suggesting that teachers’ participation intraining programmes led to significant changes in their scores on theATI towards a student-focused approach to teaching, a significant de-crease in the extent to which their students used a surface approach tolearning, and significant improvements in the students’ ratings of theirteaching (Coffey and Gibbs 2000; Gibbs and Coffey 2001). Nevertheless,this study suffered from severe attrition of participants, and it is possiblethat all these effects were simply artefacts resulting from sampling bias.

As was mentioned earlier, teachers at one of the four institutionsinvolved in the present study were asked to report whether they hadtaken the institution’s programme on teaching and learning in highereducation. Table 9 shows the means and standard deviations of thesubscale scores obtained by the respondents who had taken this pro-gramme and by those who had not. A multivariate analysis of variancefound no difference between these two groups in their patterns of scores,F(18, 103) ¼ 0.82, p > 0.6. Univariate tests confirmed that there was nosignificant difference between the two groups on any of the subscales,and this remained the case when the effects of academic discipline,teaching experience and gender were taken into account. Thus, it wasnot just the case that an effect of training was masked by an effect oflack of experience.

These results do not support Gibbs and Coffey’s (2001) conclusionthat participation in conventional training programmes leads to


improvements in approaches to teaching. However, they are consistentwith the position of many recent researchers that genuine developmentwill come about only by addressing teachers’ underlying conceptions ofteaching and learning (e.g., Entwistle and Walker 2000; Kember andKwan 2000; Prosser et al. 1994; Trigwell and Prosser 1996a). Ho (2000)devised a teaching development programme that was specifically aimedat bringing about conceptual change, and this produced encouragingpreliminary results in terms of its impact upon the teachers’ conceptions

Table 9. Mean (and SD) subscale scores for trained and untrained teachers

Subscale Trained Untrained

Mean SD Mean SD

n 50 72



Interactive teaching 4.53 0.69 4.66 0.55






Use of media 3.53 0.97 3.51 0.92





Interactive teaching 3.63 0.65 3.53 0.77






Use of media 4.22 0.94 4.14 0.83



Note: No univariate effects were significant (p < 0.05).


of teaching, upon their teaching intentions and upon the approaches tolearning adopted by the teachers’ students (Ho et al. 2001).

Conclusions

In common with most previous research on teachers’ beliefs andintentions, our study has been based upon teachers’ self-reports ratherthan upon their actual teaching practices. Some researchers have simplyassumed that the latter can be inferred from the former. For instance,Pratt (1992) explicitly regarded teachers’ descriptions of their teaching‘as surrogate evidence of their actions’ (p. 206), while Samuelowicz andBain (1992) claimed that teaching practices directly reflected theteachers’ own working conceptions of teaching. Even so, in compulsoryeducation, Goodlad (1977), Goodlad et al. (1979) maintained that whatteachers thought they were teaching (the ‘perceived curriculum’) mightbe at variance with what they actually were teaching (the ‘operationalcurriculum’). In higher education, Brown and Bakhtar (1988) warned ina similar way that teachers’ self-reports might not match other people’sobservations of their teaching behaviour, and Kane et al. (2002) con-cluded that the presumed link between teachers’ accounts and theirteaching practices had yet to be confirmed by direct observational re-search.

The questionnaire that we have described needs further developmentif it is to function effectively as a research tool in future investigations. Itcontains only one or two items in each scale, and the relatively highoverall mean scores suggest that it might be vulnerable to a bias torespond in a socially desirable manner, a bias to respond in a way thatfulfils researchers’ own expectations (cf. Murray and Macdonald 1997)or simply a bias to agree with all of the items. However, an instrumentof this nature could be used to help both new and experienced teachersto articulate their beliefs about teaching and to reconcile those beliefswith the demands and the constraints of the academic context in whichthey are required to teach (cf. Prosser and Trigwell 1999). It could thusbe a useful pedagogical device for staff development programmes aimedat bringing about changes in teachers’ beliefs about teaching as well astheir teaching intentions.

A separate issue is that our questionnaire requires the respondents togive an overall or aggregated account of their beliefs and intentions,whereas the latter might in principle depend on the situation in whichthe respondents are required to teach or the students whom they are


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required to teach. For instance, the same teacher might adopt aninformation–transmission approach when teaching first-year under-graduate students but a learning-facilitation approach when teachingpostgraduate students (Trigwell and Prosser 1993). Examples of thissort could be interpreted simply as further illustration of the influence ofcontextual factors upon teaching intentions, and they are therefore notat all problematic for our theoretical framework.

Nevertheless, Samuelowicz and Bain (1992) identified two partici-pants who reported different conceptions of teaching when teachingundergraduate and postgraduate students (cf. Trigwell and Prosser1996a). Stark (2000) found that most teachers had similar conceptionsof introductory and advanced teaching, but that some actually viewedtheir disciplines differently at an advanced level. These results imply thatteachers’ conceptions of teaching are themselves context-dependent andthat an individual teacher may hold two or more conceptions ofteaching simultaneously. As mentioned earlier, Dunkin (1990, 1991)found that new teachers tended to report a single conception of teach-ing, but Dunkin and Precians (1992) found that teachers who had beengiven awards for excellence in teaching had more complex and flexibleconceptions.

Our study has confirmed the hypothesis of an underlying consistencybetween teachers’ beliefs and intentions in higher education (e.g., Dun-kin 1990; Fox 1983; Pratt 1992; Sherman et al. 1987). This consistencyhas been demonstrated both quantitatively and qualitatively. The evi-dence for a quantitative consistency lies in the high degree of overlapbetween participants’ scores on subscales measuring beliefs and inten-tions and in the significant correlations between their scores on corre-sponding pairs of subscales. The evidence for a qualitative consistencylies in the convergence of factor analyses relating to beliefs and intentionsupon solutions reflecting an orientation towards learning facilitation andan orientation towards knowledge transmission.

However, this investigation has also confirmed the hypothesis of adisjunction between teachers’ beliefs and intentions (Murray andMacdonald 1997; Samuelowicz and Bain 1992), and this, too, has beendemonstrated both quantitatively and qualitatively. The evidence for aquantitative disjunction lies in the significant differences between theparticipants’ scores on subscales measuring their beliefs and intentions.In particular, teacher’s intentions were more orientated towardsknowledge transmission than their beliefs (cf. Trigwell and Prosser1996b). The evidence for a qualitative disjunction lies in the discrep-ancies between the results of the factor analyses of beliefs and inten-


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tions. In particular, problem solving was associated with a conceptionbased on learning facilitation but with intentions based on knowledgetransmission.

Additional evidence for both a consistency and a disjunction betweenteachers’ beliefs and intentions comes from the examination of personalcharacteristics and contextual variables. Teachers in different disciplinesseemed to vary in broadly analogous ways in their beliefs and theirintentions, in particular in terms of an orientation towards interactiveteaching. There were also broadly analogous gender differences in be-liefs and intentions, such that women were more orientated towardslearning facilitation then men. These results are consistent with thenotion that different teaching intentions result from different underlyingconceptions of teaching (Biggs 1989; Entwistle and Walker 2000;Kember and Gow 1994; Sherman et al. 1987).

Nevertheless, teachers at four different institutions seemed to haverelatively similar beliefs about teaching, but they differed in theirteaching intentions on a number of dimensions including interactiveteaching, motivating students and training for jobs. The latter differ-ences were largely due to the differences in their teaching experience andthe particular subject mix of their institutions rather than to specificinstitutional constraints on their teaching intentions. Again, teacherswith different levels of experience had very similar beliefs about teach-ing, but they differed in their teaching intentions, particularly in theiruse of problem solving. These results are consistent with the notion thatdifferent teaching intentions result from contextual factors rather thandifferent underlying conceptions of teaching (Prosser and Trigwell1997). In other words, teachers’ intentions represent a compromisebetween their conceptions of teaching and their academic and socialcontext (cf. Stark 2000; Trigwell et al. 1999).

Acknowledgements

This research was carried out with financial support from LiverpoolHope University College.

Appendix 1

The 34 items in the final questionnaire are listed below and identified by a numberindicating the order in which they were presented.



Problem solving

3. Higher education should convert students from secondary-school type learning

(e.g. memorisation) into tertiary type (e.g. problem solving).17. The most important skill graduates can develop is the ability to carry on learning

when they leave higher education.

Interactive teaching

24. A good lecturer should incorporate student discussion as part of his/her

teaching.28. Lecturers should encourage participation from their students.

Facilitative teaching

22. Teaching is about providing an environment in which students are encouraged todo the learning themselves.

Pastoral interest

12. A good lecturer is one who recognises the personal needs of his/her students.

21. Good lecturers should have a genuine interest in their students’ well-being.

Motivating students

25. It is really important that a lecturer is able to enthuse his/her students.27. A good lecturer is one who can motivate students to learn.


Training for jobs

10. The main aim of higher education should be to prepare students for their futurecareers.

30. An important function of higher education is to produce graduates for certainprofessions within the community.


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Use of media

31. Lecturers present information more effectively if audio-visual materials are used.33. New technology is going to revolutionise teaching.

Imparting information

13. A good lecturer is one whose main role is to impart information to his/her students.20. Teaching is about the transmission of knowledge.

Knowledge of subject

26. It is fundamental that lecturers know the latest advances in knowledge related to

their subject area.32. A good lecturer has to be an expert in their subject matter.


Problem solving

9. I try to teach my students how to use logical and rational thinking.

23. I try to teach my students how to analyse information critically.

Interactive teaching

1. In my lectures, I spend more time directing discussion than standing up andgiving information.

4. I try to get students to participate as much as possible in my tutorials/seminars.

Facilitative teaching

5. As a lecturer one of my principal aims is to provide an environment in which

students are helped to ‘learn for themselves’ rather than be taught.

Pastoral interest

6. I try to put into practice my belief that an important part of teaching is keeping intouch with students’ problems.

14. I try to show that I am concerned with my students’ well-being.


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Motivating students

7. I try to help my students develop into self-motivated individuals.18. I spend much of my time trying to present subject material in a way which will

stimulate the interests of the students.


Training for jobs

11. I try to ensure that by the end of their course my students will be well qualified intheir particular subject.

19. I try to prepare students for the roles they will have when they leave the insti-

tution.

Use of media

2. I try to use audio-visual materials in my teaching.34. I actively encourage my students to word-process their coursework.

Imparting information

8. I try to pass on what information I know to the students.16. I try to give as much information as possible to my students.

Knowledge of subject

15. I spend a lot of time ensuring that I have a thorough knowledge of my subject.

29. I try to keep abreast of my field of knowledge all the time.

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Address for correspondence: Lin Norton, Liverpool Hope University College, HopePark, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK

Phone: þ44-151-291-3643; Fax: þ44-151-291-3773; E-mail: [email protected]


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