Analysing Teaching-Learning Interactions in Higher Education

Accounting for Structure and Agency

Paul Ashwin

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781441191809
• eBook ISBN: 9781441124166
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Whilst current research into teaching and learning offers many insights into the experiences of academics and students in higher education, it has two significant shortcomings. It does not highlight the dynamic ways in which students and academics impact on each other in teaching-learning interactions or the ways in which these interactions are shaped by wider social processes.
This book offers critical insight into existing perspectives on researching teaching and learning in higher education and argues that alternative perspectives are required in order to account for structure and agency in teaching-learning interactions in higher education. In considering four alternative perspectives, it examines the ways in which teaching-learning interactions are shaped by teaching-learning environments, student and academic identities, disciplinary knowledge practices and institutional cultures. It concludes by examining the conceptual and methodological implications of these analyses of teaching-learning interactions and provides the reader with an invaluable guide to alternative ways of conceptualising and researching teaching and learning in higher education.

Chapter 1

Introduction

As its title suggests, this is a book about analysing teaching–learning interactions in higher education. It asks questions such as: when an academic engages with a group of students in a seminar, how is the interaction affected by the actions and reactions of those involved? What impact does the teaching–learning environment have on this ongoing interaction? How do the identities of students and academics influence the ways in which they respond to each other? Does the disciplinary focus of the material that students and academics discuss influence the ways in which they engage together? Does the particular institution in which this interaction takes place have an impact on the developing form of the interaction? In addressing such questions, I discuss ways of accounting for social structure and individual agency in analysing teaching–learning interactions in higher education.

There are three broad aspects to the argument that I develop in this book. First, I offer a critique of the way in which current research into teaching–learning processes in higher education analyses teaching– learning interactions and the way in which it accounts for social structure and individual agency within these interactions. Second, I explore alternative ways of analysing teaching–learning interactions that give a sense of their dynamic nature and the way in which they relate to wider social processes. Third, I examine the implications for future research of both my critique of current, and my consideration of alternative, approaches to analysing teaching–learning interactions in higher education.

In order to provide an initial sense of this argument, in this chapter I address the question of why any of this matters. After an initial word about terminology, I tackle the issue of why teaching–learning interactions in higher education matter and what are the problems with the current mainstream approaches to analysing these interactions. A danger of focusing on teaching–learning interactions is that a sense can be lost of how particular interactions are shaped by processes that stretch far beyond them. In order to avoid this, I consider issues relating to how to account for both the structured and agentic aspects of teaching–learning interactions. I then provide an outline of the structure and argument of the rest of the book, before considering the limits of my argument.

An initial word about terminology

As will be clear from the title and first few paragraphs of this book, I have chosen to use the perhaps clumsy terminology of ‘teaching– learning’ interactions and ‘teaching–learning’ processes. While this will not be the only awkward terminology adopted in this book (see Chapter 2 for the argument for the use of the phrase ‘structural– agentic processes’), I want to explain the use of this particular terminology from the outset. This is because it provides a sense of some of the issues that are central to this book.

I use the term ‘teaching–learning’ rather than the more common ‘teaching and learning’ or ‘learning and teaching’ because I want to move away from the idea that teaching and learning are two discrete and separable processes. Instead I want to emphasize that they are different aspects of the same processes in which students and academics engage together. This is clearly related to my focus on teaching– learning interactions but I use this terminology for two other reasons.

First, I wish to move away from the tacit assumption that ‘teaching’ is embodied in a ‘teacher’ and ‘learning’ is embodied in a ‘learner’. The move away from this assumption is related to challenging the idea that the ‘teacher just teaches’ and the ‘learner just learns’ in teaching– learning interactions and the related separation of academics’ role as ‘teachers’ and students’ role as ‘learners’ from other aspects of their lives within and beyond higher education. For this reason, in this book I mainly use the terminology of ‘academic’ and ‘student’ to talk about those who engage in teaching–learning interactions.

Second, I wish to avoid debates of whether it should be ‘learning and teaching’ or ‘teaching and learning’ (see Edwards 2006 for a fascinating discussion of the ‘and’). While this section indicates my belief that how things are talked about helps to shape the way in which they are experienced, the question of which order two parts of a single set of processes should be placed in, seems to me to be largely factious.

In writing about teaching–learning interactions, I am particularly focused on interactions that are intended to support students in engaging with the curricula of their higher education programmes. Thus while I write mainly in terms of academics and students, it is clear that other people may be involved in such interactions. Equally, I am not simply focusing on face-to-face interactions. Clearly students and academics can interact at a distance. While this can happen via teaching–learning technologies, I have more than this is mind. When a student reads feedback on an assignment, this for me can be described as a teaching–learning interaction. Thus within this book teaching–learning interactions are situations in which students engage with other students, academics or support staff in relation to the curricula of their programmes, even if they are separated by location or time.

Beyond this rough and ready definition, the question of distinguishing between teaching–learning interactions and other types of interactions is not something that particularly concerns me in this book. This is not because this is an unimportant issue but rather, as I argue in Chapter 2, it is because it is those who analyse interactions who characterize them as particular kinds of interactions rather than different kinds of interactions existing ‘out there’ waiting to be recognized.

I use the term ‘teaching–learning processes’ as a more generic way of describing the processes related to teaching and learning in higher education. Thus teaching–learning processes include teaching– learning interactions but they also include non-interactive aspects of such processes, such as the practices of academics-as-teachers as distinct from the practices of students-as-learners. The reason for this distinction is that a central part of my argument is that while research in higher education has focused on teaching–learning processes, it has not focused on teaching–learning interactions.

There are two further points that I need to emphasize. First, I do not distinguish between teaching–learning processes and assessment processes in higher education. I take the view that assessment processes are an essential part of teaching–learning processes. Second, I do not distinguish between different levels of higher education. While much of the literature that I refer to is drawn from undergraduate higher education, I see my arguments as equally relevant to both taught and research-based postgraduate higher education. The forms and focus of the teaching–learning interactions may vary but the relations between such interactions and wider social processes can be addressed in similar ways to those which I discuss in this book.

Why focus on teaching–learning interactions in higher education?

In answering the question of why teaching–learning interactions in higher education matter, it is tempting to ask another question. If they do not matter, why do universities spend a great deal of their resources on setting up situations in which students are supposed to learn through interacting with academics, support staff and other students? Something is supposed to happen in these situations in which these groups come together that is of value in helping students to engage with the programmes they are studying and helping academics and support staff to understand the needs of their students.

In texts aimed at improving teaching–learning processes in higher education, the dynamic nature of these interactions is seen to be crucial in promoting high-quality student learning. Thus Ramsden (2003, pp. 98–9) argues that all the principles of good teaching can be derived from the idea that ‘good teaching is open to change; it involves constantly trying to find out what the effects of instruction are on learning, and modifying that instruction in the light of the evidence collected’. Similarly Prosser and Trigwell (1999) emphasize the contextual dependency of teaching–learning interactions, highlighting that they can play out in very different ways depending on the situation in which the interaction is taking place. Finally, McKeachie (1974, p. 11) elegantly summarizes the importance of the dynamic nature of teaching–learning interactions:

Fortunately most educational situations are interactive situations in which a developing, learning human being engages with a situation in ways designed to meet [her or] his learning needs. Part of that situation is another human being who has some resources for instruction and some capacity to adapt to the learner. It is this that makes education both endlessly challenging and deeply humane.

While the importance of the dynamic nature of teaching–learning interactions is clearly recognized in texts aimed at improving teaching– learning processes in higher education, the interactive aspects of such processes are currently put in the background of research in this area. There are two mainstream approaches to analysing teaching–learning processes in higher education: the ‘Approaches to Learning and Teaching’ perspective and ‘Social Practice’ perspectives (in Chapter 4 I will split this into a number of different perspectives). It is important to be clear that both of these perspectives have made significant contributions to the understanding of teaching–learning processes within higher education. The Approaches to Learning and Teaching research (for excellent summaries see Prosser and Trigwell 1999; Richardson 2005; Entwistle 2007) has given a clear indication of how students’ and academics’ perceptions of teaching–learning environments are consistently related to the quality of their learning and teaching and to the quality of students’ learning outcomes. Research from a Social Practice perspective has provided insights into the issues that students face in understanding the cultural context of their programmes of study (for example, see Lea and Street 1998; Jones et al. 1999; Mann 2000; Lillis 2001) and the impact that institutional and disciplinary settings have on academics’ understanding of their teaching (for example, see Trowler and Cooper 2002).

However, these perspectives are less helpful for analysing the dynamic nature of teaching–learning interactions in higher education. As I discuss in more detail in Chapter 3, the focus within the Approaches to Learning and Teaching perspective tends to be on either students’ or academics’ perceptions of teaching–learning processes in higher education. Thus this research views these processes from the perspective of either academics or students, which means there is little sense of the ongoing, dynamic interplay between academics and students within particular teaching–learning interactions.

Within Social Practice perspectives on researching teaching– learning processes in higher education, research tends to focus on learning practices or the practice of students (for example, see Lea and Street 1998; Mann 2000; Lillis 2001) or teaching practices or the practice of teachers (for example, see Trowler and Cooper 2002). This approach is problematic in relation to analysing the dynamic nature of teaching–learning interactions for two reasons. First, as I argue in Chapter 3, when foregrounding social practices it becomes clear that academics and students are engaged in different types of practices. Second, social practices are seen to be fairly durable ways of approaching particular tasks that are largely taken for granted by those who engage in them (for example, see Trowler 2005). Thus the focus tends to be on the stability of practices rather than the distinctive ways in which they play out in particular teaching–learning interactions.

It is important to be clear that I am arguing that this is a tendency, rather than an inevitable consequence, of adopting these ways of analysing teaching–learning processes in higher education. As I have already indicated, there is some recognition of the dynamic and interactive aspects of these processes. However, my argument is that in using the language of ‘perceptions’ and ‘practices’, the dynamic and shifting aspects of teaching–learning interactions tend to be obscured. In this book, I examine ways of analysing teaching–learning processes that foreground these dynamic and shifting elements, not because they are the only important aspects of such processes but because they are important elements that are currently under-explored in research in higher education.

Why focus on accounting for structure and agency in teaching–learning interactions in higher education?

A crucial issue that is raised by analysing the dynamic aspects of teaching–learning interactions is that this can be taken to imply that everything that matters within such an analysis is contained within the interaction itself. Thus the explanation of what happened in a particular teaching–learning interaction is taken to be located within what occurred between those involved in the interaction. My argument in this book is that such a move would be a mistake. This is because in order to understand what happened within a particular teaching– learning interaction it is necessary to understand how the interaction was shaped by processes that might not be visible within the interaction.

The issues I am raising here are issues about what counts as an explanation within research into teaching–learning interactions in higher education. I am arguing that in order to understand such interactions it is necessary to develop both a sense of how these reflect the inten- tions and practices of students and academics and how they are shaped by wider social processes. In doing so, I am raising questions of how to account for structure and agency in research into teaching–learning interactions in higher education. As I have argued before (see Ashwin 2008), while such issues are routinely discussed in debates around social theory generally (for example Bourdieu 1977; 1990a; Giddens 1984; Archer 1995; Mouzelis 1995; Layder 1997; Byrne 1998; Flyvbjerg 2001; Sibeon 2004), in research into teaching–learning processes in higher education these issues are hardly discussed at all (although for exceptions see Trowler 1998; Fanghanel 2004, 2006; Shay 2005; McLean 2006).

These issues matter because there is strong evidence that the higher education systems are shaped by the societies in which they operate. To take the UK as an example, while access to undergraduate higher education has slowly widened over recent years (see Gorard 2005, 2008), there is a clear pattern of more privileged students, for example in terms of social class, attending more prestigious universities (Ashworth 2004; Brennan and Osborne 2008; Crozier et al. 2008). This is increasingly important as the field of higher education becomes more diversified, with different institutions offering different kinds of higher education (Brennan and Naidoo 2008; Teichler 2008). The interpretation of such patterns needs to be handled carefully. For example, as Gorard (2005, 2008) and Gorard et al. (2007) argue, there is no evidence of systematic bias during the admissions process on the part of universities. Rather than the outcome of simple prejudice or deliberate unfairness, such patterns appear to be the result of the coming together of many complex social processes including the impact of early childhood experiences and education (Forsyth and Furlong 2003; Gorard et al. 2007), differences in the familial familiarity with higher education (Thomas and Quinn 2007), differences in the ways in which students choose their degree programmes (Hutchings 2003a; Reay et al. 2001, 2005; Gorard et al. 2007), as well as differences in the relative cost of (Hutchings 2003b), and relative value assigned to (Archer 2003), higher education.

There is evidence, albeit more limited, of similar complex social processes impacting on students’ experience of higher education in different countries (Archer and Leathwood 2003; Forsyth and Furlong 2003; Read et al. 2003; Ostrove and Long 2007; Brennan and Osborne 2008; Crozier et al. 2008) and their outcomes in terms of achievement (Quinn 2004; Helland 2007; Richardson 2008; Severiens and Wolff 2008; Tumen et al. 2008) and progression to further study and employment (Furlong and Cartmel 2005; Brooks 2006; Brooks and Everett 2008a; Brennan and Naidoo 2008).

While such patterns appear to be the unintended consequences of complex social processes, the effects that they indicate are still real. Given the way in which such processes appear to structure entry to, experiences of, and outcomes from engagement in higher education, it seems extremely likely that they will play a role in shaping teaching– learning processes in higher education. Therefore, it is perhaps surprising that until recently the impact of social structures on teaching– learning processes in higher education has not been a central concern of research in this area. Although this situation is changing (see Brennan and Osborne 2008; Crozier et al. 2008 for two recent projects that have highlighted this issue), part of my argument is that this is because the mainstream approaches to analysing teaching–learning processes in higher education tend not to foreground such questions. This is both a conceptual and a methodological problem.

For the Approaches to Learning and Teaching perspective it is largely a conceptual problem. As I argued earlier, this perspective is focused on students’ and academics’ perceptions of teaching–learning environments in higher education. This means that it highlights students’ and academics’ intentions within teaching–learning processes rather than the way in which these intentions are shaped by other social processes. This means that as a perspective it is firmly rooted in considerations of agency. Anything that operates outside of these perceptions is bracketed outside of explanations offered. This is reminiscent of Apple’s (1979) criticism of phenomenology that it ‘inclines us to forget that there are objective institutions and structures “out there” that have power, that control our lives and our very perception’ (p. 140).

While the conceptual approach of Social Practice perspectives highlights the ways in which perceptions are structured, research projects from these perspectives often come up against a methodological problem. This is because many studies from these perspectives are based upon students’ and academics’ accounts of teaching–learning processes, whether generated by interviews or questionnaires. This means that such research is still largely based on students’ and academics’ perceptions of teaching–learning processes and it is again difficult to get a sense of how their accounts might be shaped by wider social processes.

It is not that these perspectives do not give a sense of what structures teaching–learning ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Conceptualizing structure and agency in relation to teaching–learning interactions
• 3 Current ways of analysing the relations between structural–agentic processes and teaching–learning interactions
• 4 An Activity Theory approach to analysing the relations between teaching–learning environments and teaching–learning interactions
• 5 A Symbolic–Interactionist approach to analysing the relations between student and academic identities and teaching–learning interactions
• 6 A Bernsteinian approach to analysing the relations between disciplinary knowledge practices and teaching–learning interactions
• 7 A Bourdieusian approach to analysing the relations between institutional cultures and teaching–learning interactions
• 8 Implications for researching teaching–learning interactions
• References
• Index