The widest level of the conceptual map of teaching-learning environment, the social, cultural and political context of higher education, examines university policy and the control of education especially from the sociological and political points of view. It is a question both of the rhetoric of education policy and of the effects of education policy and of putting them to practice. The structures, cultures and actors of politics and education and the cooperation between them influence each other as a dynamic whole.

The institutional and discipline-specific context describes politics, administration, instructions and regulations, buildings and social environment from the organisation-specific and field-specific points of view. Discipline- and school-specific environment contains a group of administrative and organisational procedures and arrangements as well as jointly agreed decisions for example on the course contents and design. Course contents are also determined discipline-specifically by the choices justified by the academic culture. (Entwistle 2003, 6.) Entwistle, McCune and Hounsell (2002, 7) also include a vocational context and for example the disciplinary norms and practises on the institutional level. However, different levels should not be considered separately. For example, the teacher's own beliefs, the students' expectations and the interdependency between them have effect on the teacher´s action. Furthermore, the circumstances provided by the university for teaching and the context of institution and faculty have their own effect. (Biggs 2003, 250.)

A concrete context of teaching and learning which Entwistle, McCune and Housell (2003) call ”inner” teaching-learning environment consists of course design and organisation, teaching and assessing course content, the relationships between the students and staff, students and their backgrounds and their prior knowledge including learning strategies, learning conceptions, and learning orientations. (Entwistle et. al. 2003; Entwistle & Peterson 2004.) John Biggs has emphasised that a constructive alignment, whereby he means the uniformity of the aims, teaching methods and assessment, should be taken as a principle in the planning and organising of the learning environment. It is essential that the conceptual understanding and high-level thinking are stressed instead of the content knowledge as the aims of teaching. (Biggs 1996; Biggs 2003; Könings, Brand-Gruwel & Merriënboer 2005; Postareff & Lindblom-Ylänne 2008.)

Good teaching can be defined as a wide understanding about the relation of teaching and learning (Entwistle, Skinner, Entwistle & Orr 2000). The relationship between the teaching staff and students contains guidance and support for learning, affective nature of the relationship and sense of fairness and moral order (Entwistle et. al. 2003). Honesty, fairness, morality and constructive atmosphere are emphasised in everyday relationships. Hämäläinen and Saarinen (2007) talk about micro behaviour, in other words, how people meet each other. Among the teachers as well as the students differ of course in their beliefs and attitudes to teaching and learning.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the “inner” teaching learning environment and the paper aims to explore what kind of experiences students have about teaching and assessing, the staff-student relationships and their own role in the university teaching-learning environment.

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