Previous research in higher education indicated that students’ approaches to learning are influenced by the way teachers teach or their teaching approaches (e.g. Prosser & Trigwell, 1999). A study of Kember and Gow (1994) for instance indicated that departments in which a knowledge transmission model of learning and teaching is dominant among the involved teaching staff, students undertook in a lesser extent a deep approach to learning. Departments in which learning processes of students are put more central, appeared to have more learners who apply in a lesser extent a surface approach to learning. Although some studies showed that consistent relationships are present between learning approaches and teaching approaches, other studies point at problematic relationships within the constructs of learning and teaching approaches themselves. In literature it has been indicated that a clear relationship between conceptions of teaching and teaching strategies is problematic (Fang, 1996) and disjunctions or inconsistencies on the level of teaching approaches can occur (Murray & McDonald, 1997). Parallel findings concerning the mismatch or dissonance between similar conceptions of learning and learning strategies have also been reported in research on students’ learning approaches (Vermunt & Minnaert, 2003). The presence of ‘dissonance’ on the level of learning approaches and ‘disjunctions’ on the level of teaching approaches has been related in the literature to the influence of personal and contextual factors. Therefore it is important that studies examining the effects of teachers’ teaching approaches on students’ learning approaches take into account within the research design (1) the possible differential effects of teaching conceptions and strategies on student learning and (2) the possible additional effects of student background characteristics on learning approaches (Entwistle et al., 2003). By means of a multilevel study we explored whether students’ learning strategies are influenced by teachers’ conceptions of teaching and/or teaching strategies when different student characteristics are controlled for. Student characteristics selected in this study are selected from previous research investigating the relationship between students’ gender, age, personality traits, prior education, conceptions of learning and their metacognitive and cognitive learning strategies (Busato et al., 1999; Vermunt, 2005). The following research questions are central in this study: (1) To what extent are differences in students’ learning strategies present? (2) To what extent do student characteristics explain differences in learning strategies? (3) To what extent do teaching conceptions and teaching strategies explain differences in learning strategies after control for the possible effects of student characteristics?

2.003 students enrolled in 8 different three-year professional bachelor programmes of an institute of higher education in Belgium participated in this study. Students were nested into 24 classes or student groups (discipline X year). The teacher population of all involved disciplines participated (N= 176). Students’ learning strategies and conceptions of learning were assessed by means of 11 scales from the self-report questionnaire ‘Inventory of Learning Styles’ (ILS; Vermunt, 1998). Students’ background characteristics (gender, age, and level of prior secondary education) were provided by the student administration. Personality traits were measured by means of the NEO-FFI (Hoekstra, Ormel & De Fruyt, 2003). By means of previously validated self-report questionnaires (Donche & Van Petegem, 2007), 5 different teaching conceptions and 7 teaching strategies were measured. The effects of variables from a higher “hierarchical level” (teachers) on variables at the lower hierarchical level (students) were analysed by means of multilevel analyses (Hox, 2002).

In this study a theoretically sound interrelatedness was found between different kinds of teacher control on the level of teaching strategies (loose, shared and control) and different learning strategies (meaning oriented, reproduction oriented and unregulated). However the occurrence and size of the effects do not provide strong empirical evidence for a close match between likewise teaching strategies and learning strategies which former studies pointed out. The results are useful for practice. For instance in this study it was found that after control for the effects of student characteristics, unregulated learning is more present within student groups who are taught by teacher teams who put more emphasis on strong rather than loose control in teaching activities. Assessing on teacher team level which teaching conceptions and strategies are prevalent can be an important starting point to reflect in a data-driven way about how student learning can be further improved.