Teaching And Assessing In Arts And Humanities Courses: Lessons From Inside The Classrooms Of Four Universities
Author(s):
Domingos Fernandes (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2014
Network:
22. Research in Higher Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

22 SES 03 A, Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:
2014-09-02
17:15-18:45
Room:
B020 Anfiteatro
Chair:
Johanna Annala

Contribution

Research reported and discussed in this paper was developed within a wider three-year international research project (2011-2014) involving 36 researchers from four Portuguese and three Brazilian universities (The project has been financed by National Funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) -Foundation for Science and Technology – Project PTDC/CPE-CED/114318/2009.)

In the last decades, students have been entering higher education as never before and European universities have been faced with all sorts of challenges (e.g., quality education for all, student mobility, a growing scarcity of resources). Traditional teaching and assessment practices, mostly based upon the so-called telling paradigm, still predominant in higher education, have been questioned and under pressure to change. Indeed, research have been pointing out that students learn better when they are engaged in the learning processes and when assessment for learning is integral to the organisation and development of teaching (e.g. Biggs, 2006; Black & Wiliam, 2006). As a result, a framework aiming at transforming and improving pedagogy and curricular practices in higher education was formally and politically put forward as a consequence of the so-called Bologna process.

Since then, there is a growing body of literature claiming that: a) there is a need for a greater integration of learning, teaching, and assessment; b) more attention should be put on the need to improve higher education teachers’ expertise in the teaching, learning, and assessment domains of knowledge; and c) there is empirical evidence showing that it is possible to improve higher education teachers’ pedagogical practices and students’ learning (e.g. Bryan & Clegg, 2006; Falchicov, 2005; Menges & Austin, 2001). In a literature synthesis of 30 empirical studies developed in a ten-year time span (2000-2009), Fernandes & Fialho (2012) concluded that new and innovative ways to assess students’ learning were related to profound changes in teaching practices. They also inferred that innovative assessment, namely assessment for learning, could only make sense if, for instances, students were provided with quality feedback, were engaged in finding solutions to a variety of tasks, interacted on a regular basis with their colleagues and their teachers, used self-assessments and different forms of “interactive assessments” (e.g., peer assessment, small-group assessment) to regulate their learning, and participated in the processes of curriculum decision-making at the classroom level.

These and other results from research on pedagogy in higher education were used as a framework to study teachers’ teaching and assessment practices, an area that still needs further empirical investigation. Therefore, the overall purpose of the project was to describe, to analyse, and to interpret higher education teachers’ teaching and assessment practices in the context of real undergraduate classes. Moreover, the project studied both teachers’ and students’ perceptions on issues of teaching and assessment practices. Consequently, it enabled the establishment of a variety of relationships between what happened in real classes concerning a given issue (e.g., distribution of feedback; assessment tasks; teaching planning; students’ participation) and the overall perceptions of the participants about that same issue. Both teachers and students played a major role in this research endeavour, sharing their perceptions through interviews and questionnaires and welcoming researchers to observe their classes. As a whole, the project enabled research-based qualitative and quantitative analyses and comparisons.

This paper emerged from research work that took place within the four Portuguese universities involved in the project and it was limited to the study of teaching and assessment practices in the context of undergraduate programmes of Arts and Humanities (e.g., Art History, Design, Languages and European Literatures, Music, Drawing). The other undergraduate programmes involved in the project were in the domains of Social Sciences, Health Sciences, and Sciences and Technology.

Method

Research reported herein was qualitative in nature. Data were collected by means of: a) in-depth interviews with each one of the eight participant teachers (two per university); b) interviews with eight groups of students (two per university); and c) 160 hours of classroom observations (roughly 20 h per teacher). For each one of the universities involved, two volunteer teachers teaching undergraduate courses in the Arts and Humanities domain, were selected. A research matrix included the main objects of the investigation - teaching, assessment – and a set of relevant dimensions. Thus, dimensions such as Teaching Planning and Organisation, Classroom Dynamics, Class Structure, Task Selection, and Students’ Role were related to the Teaching object whereas dimensions such as Assessment Tasks, Uses of Assessment, Nature, Frequency and Distribution of Feedback, Purposes of Assessment, and Nature of Assessments were related to the Assessment object. Based upon this matrix both interview and observation protocols were conceived and developed through a collaborative and peer-review process. These protocols provided the necessary basis to guide data collection processes and to reach acceptable levels of consistency. Data organization and systematization were developed throughout four different but quite related phases. In Phase I and for each one of the eight teachers in the four participant universities, three narratives on teaching and assessment practices have been produced: one as a result of the observations and the other two as a result of teachers’ and students’ interviews. In Phase II, these three narratives were synthesized into one single narrative providing an integrated description of both teaching and assessment practices for each one of the eight teachers. Therefore, at this stage, there were eight narratives – one for each teacher/two per university. In Phase III, the two narratives for each university were integrated into one and, as a result, a total of four narratives were obtained – one per university. Finally, in Phase IV, these four narratives were integrated into a single narrative. Actually, providing what one thinks to be a thorough description of the participant teachers’ practices as a result of both the observed and perceived teachers’ curricular practices. Aggregation and transformation of data followed the recommendations of Wolcott (1994) and called for a significant effort of coordination and interaction among the researchers/observers/interviewers involved in the research process. Both the literature reviewed, the research matrix and the instrumentation produced were taken into close account in all data analysis procedures.

Expected Outcomes

For the purposes of this particular research paper the following conclusions and reflections have been selected: 1. Students did appreciate to be involved in curriculum practices and this seemed to work as a means to motivate them to engage in all sorts of assessment and teaching practices. This is a quite interesting issue to be discussed taking into account perspectives on the cultural and social construction of the curriculum (e.g., Pacheco, 2005). 2. Study results suggest that task nature, task form, and task content together with other conditions such as classroom dynamics, could help in the creation of favourable environments for teaching, learning, and assessment (e.g., Fernandes & Fialho, 2012). 3. Teaching and assessment practices at the higher education level are still far from both research recommendations and the “Bologna’s vision”. To a large extent, teaching means telling. Assessing, in general, is a teacher’s matter and, ultimately, means grading. Thus, faculty professional development emerged as an issue that should deserve careful attention. Indeed, teachers’ practices, even of those who promoted excellent learning environments, were based on intuition rather than on pedagogical grounded knowledge. This can raise questions about the sustainability of innovative curricular practices and calls institutions to present and discuss their “projects of knowledge” and the relationships between knowledge, pedagogy, and “being” (e.g. Barnett, 2009; Young, 2008). Although most of the empirical data of this study were gathered through classroom observations, teacher practices were, at a large extent, the unit of analysis. This is a methodological issue that one might want to consider in further research studies since the possibility of using the classroom as whole as the unit of analysis seems more consistent with efforts to come up with more integrated and holistic views about what happens in the classrooms (e.g., Fernandes, 2011).

References

Barnett, R. (2009). Knowing and becoming in the higher education curriculum. Studies in Higher Education, 34 (4), 429-440. Biggs, G. (2006). How assessment frames student learning. In C. Bryan & K. Clegg (Orgs.), Innovative Assessment in Higher Education (23-36). New York: Taylor and Francis. Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (2006). Assessment for learning in the classroom. In J. Gardner (Ed.), Assessment and learning (9-25). London: Sage. Bryan, C. & Clegg, K. (2006). Introduction. In C. Bryan e K. Clegg (Orgs.), Innovative assessment in higher education (3-10). New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Dancer, D. & Kamvounias, P. (2005). Student involvement in assessment: a project designed to assess class participation fairly and reliably. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 30 (4), 445-454. Falchikov, N. (2005). Improving assessment through student involvement: practical solutions for aiding learning in higher and further education. New York, NY: Routledge. Fernandes, D. (2011). Articulação da aprendizagem, da avaliação e do ensino: questões teóricas, práticas e metodológicas. In M. P. Alves & J-M. Deketele (Orgs), Do currículo à avaliação, da avaliação ao currículo (131-142). Porto: Porto Editora. Fernandes, D. & Fialho, N. (2012). Dez anos de práticas de avaliação das aprendizagens no Ensino Superior: uma síntese da literatura (2000-2009). In C. Leite e M. Zabalza (Coords.), Ensino superior: Inovação e qualidade na docência (3693 – 3707). Porto: CIIE da Universidade do Porto. Goodlad, J. (1979). Curriculum inquiry: the study of curriculum practice. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Goodson, I. (1997). A construção social do currículo. Lisboa: Educa. Menges, R. & Austin, A. (2001). Teaching in higher education. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed) (1122-1156). Washington, DC: AERA. Pacheco, J. (2005). Estudos curriculares: para a compreensão crítica da educação. Porto: Porto Editora. Yorke, M. (2006). Formative assessment in higher education: moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice. Higher Education, 47, 477-501. Young, M. (2008). Bringing knowledge back in: From social constructivism to social realism in the sociology of education. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Wolcott, H. (1994). Transforming qualitative data: description, analysis, and interpretation. London: Sage.

Author Information

Domingos Fernandes (presenting / submitting)
University of Lisbon
Institute of Education
Lisboa

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