Session Information
Contribution
Description: The main objective of the research that we present is to analyse how different teaching and assessment styles of university professors influence on how university students learn.
Results of this paper were taken from the three-year research "Teaching and Learning Strategies at University. Analysing the impact of significant variables on how students deal with learning", managed by Professor Bernardo Gargallo (code SEC2003-06787/PSCE) (2003-2006).
Methodology: We assessed the teaching and assessment methods of 88 university professors in the three universities located in Valencia city (the University of Valencia, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Catholic University of Valencia) by means of the QETAMUP (Questionnaire for Evaluation of Teaching and Assessment Methodology of University Professors), developed and validated by the research team. We carried out a hierarchical cluster analysis following k-means procedure using as classifying variables the scores found in this questionnaire and we found out four groups which clarified four teaching styles of professors: the first one, focused on learning, with constructivist ideas, and with teaching and assessment abilities. The second one, more focused on teaching than in learning -traditional-, and with some teaching and assessment abilities, even though less than in the first group; the third one, focused on learning -constructivist conception- and with less teaching and assessment abilities than the first group; and the fourth one, more focused on teaching than the second group, and with some teaching and assessment abilities, even though less than in the second group.
After that, we selected 43 of these professors; 6 from the first group, 10 from the second, 18 from the third and 9 from the fourth one. We applied several instruments to their 753 students (237 students from the professors from the first group, 173 from the second group, 193 from the third and 150 from the fourth one). At the beginning (pre-test) and at the end (post-test) of the teaching process of their subject to see if there were changes on the ways of learning of the students depending on the teaching and assessment styles.
We assessed the learning strategies of university students by means of the LSUSQ (Learning Strategies of University Students Questionnaire) and their attitudes toward learning by means of the AUSLQ (Attitudes of University Students toward Learning Questionnaire). These two instruments were developed and validated by the research team.
We also assessed their learning approaches by means of the Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) developed by Biggs and Kember (2001).
Conclusions: We carried out a varianza analysis (ANOVA) plus post hoc at the pre-test between the four groups of students to clarify if there were significant differences of measure in the strategies, approaches of learning and attitudes. We found, as we had expected, very little significant differences between the four groups.
After that, we did the same with the post-test between the four groups of students and we found out significant differences in many learning strategies (particularly in strategies related to motivation, metacognition and information processing). The analysis showed better results on the students of the first group, the most constructivist and with more teaching abilities in contrast with the other three groups. The same happened with the marks on attitudes, they were better in the groups with constructivist professors and especially in the first group which had more teaching abilities. Also, we found better marks on the approaches questionnaire in the constructivist groups, that had a deeper approach than the traditionalists in the post-test, and especially in the first group.
These facts confirm the influence of the teaching and assessment styles of the professors on how the students learn. We found that professors with constructivist point of view, focused on learning, promote the development of autonomous and useful learning strategies on the students. Besides, these professors highlight the improvement of their students' attitudes and the development of deeper approaches of learning.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.