Session Information
Session 2A, Teaching and learning in higher education (2)
Papers
Time:
2004-09-22
17:00-18:30
Room:
Chair:
Elinor Edvardsson Stiwne
Discussant:
Elinor Edvardsson Stiwne
Contribution
In this communication we are concerned with the personal, individual, manifestation of a 'spirit of inquiry' as it appears through the questions that learners ask during the course of their learning. In our previous work we have established that some learners are more curiosity-driven than others, depending on such understandable factors as learning material, learning context, disposition for learning and mode of inquiry.Here, we defend the existence of a 'questioning style', associated with student learning styles, and we try to link these 'questioning styles' to strategies used by teachers. So, the intended outcome of this research is to explore aspects of the 'match-mismatch' problem, addressing the question as to whether to teach to students preferred style of learning - or not. There are benefits to be seen from working within a learner's 'zone of maximal learning comfort'. There are also arguments for deliberately operating slightly away from this zone: discomfiting, challenging and thereby extending students' strategies for learning. With this in mind we seek to establish relations between the capacity of learners to generate and formulate questions with different organisations of teaching, including traditional approaches such as: lectures, tutorials and practical classes, and some innovations such as: supplementary classes, 'conference-classes', 'mini-projects' and 'Questions in Chemistry' classes. Therefore, students were provided with diverse opportunities to explore, discover and construct knowledge that is relevant, applicable and useful to them.This paper deals with the results of a broader research project aimed at relating learners' questions to learning styles, here of Chemistry students, in the first years of Science and Engineering courses at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. This particular study involves the testing of the Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) with a sample of 100 students. The LSI was used to identify students' learning styles (Accommodative, Divergent, Assimilative or Convergent). Here, we report on four of these students (one from each learning style) in some detail: as a study of cases. Students' questions are collected through various ways: (i) written questions are collected through 'Question Boxes' placed in each laboratory and classrooms and through an 'intra-net' system incorporating an e-mail correspondence facility; (ii) oral questions are logged through observation of classroom and lecture sessions. The number and types of questions formulated by students have been analysed in an attempt to relate these to teaching. Students have also been interviewed and observed in different classroom settings and undertaking different learning tasks.This study allows us to conclude that different learners with diverse learning styles have dissimilar preferences as to teaching strategies. We also observe that students with distinct learning styles have particular questioning behaviours. Thus, learners probably have intrinsic characteristics that lead them to ask different numbers and different kinds of questions. On the other hand, distinctive teaching strategies also lead students to ask different types of questions. So, probably, if the teacher tends to use a variety of teaching strategies, he/she is likely to make connections with all students, and to stimulate questioning in various ways.
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