University teachers:their beliefs aboutteaching as well as about their own professional learning

Abstract

In recent years, more attention has been paid to quality teaching in higher education in Hungary, however, university teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning are still unexplored. When new ways of teaching are introduced, university teachers’ beliefs on teaching and their professional learning are found to be essential since without taking those into consideration, new student-centered approaches to teaching cannot become reality or gain strength. This study aims to explore university teachers’ beliefs to depict their experience about their professional learning as well as to compare academics’ beliefs and experiences from different fields and with different length of teaching practice. 1128 Hungarian university teachers participated in the online questionnaire-based study, which is a representative sample by study areas, providers and regions in Hungary. In the questionnaire, both open-ended questions and closed Likert-type items were developed based on theoretical models and previous inventories. The data was then analyzed by exploratory factor analyses. Results show that university teachers find students’ skill development to be the most important in their teaching mission, but when it comes to teaching approaches, they prefer the knowledge- and assessment-focused approaches and to a lesser extent the practice-focused as well as the interaction-focused ones. The findings also highlight that the alignment of teaching and assessment is only realized in the knowledge- and assessment-focused approaches, but not in the student-centered ones. While academics are still less open to student-centered teaching approaches, they believe more in the concept of professional learning in order to enhance students’ development than in learning for appreciation or for strengthening the teacher role. In the professional learning of university teachers, four types of activities were identified, of which the most typical were reflection and learning together with colleagues. Professional learning via pedagogical trainings and reading as well as via conducting research were the least relevant ones for university teachers. All in all, the student-centered teaching approaches and the professional learning activities of university teachers differed more in terms of study areas, while academics’ beliefs about professional learning varied more by teaching experience. Academics teaching in soft disciplines as well as those who teach in more than one study fields use student-centered teaching approaches more frequently. Moreover, academics from various study fields differ in their professional learning activities. Teachers from soft disciplines find professional learning via pedagogical trainings and reading as well as professional learning by reflecting more relevant, while academics from hard disciplines appreciated professional learning by doing research to a greater extent. By contrast, beliefs about professional learning depends more on teaching experience. Novice university teachers are the most open to both types of professional learning beliefs. However, it has also been identified that university teachers with more than 20 years of teaching experience find professional learning for enhancing students’ development almost as important as novices. To conclude, our scales of teaching approaches, beliefs of professional learning and professional learning activities were reliable and applicable to the Hungarian context. Furthermore, the tools developed can be effectively used to understand and diagnose the state of quality teaching in higher education. Our results also highlight those intervention points where supporting professional learning of academics can be effective (e.g. not only supporting the professional learning of novices but also that of more experienced teachers with more than 20 years of teaching experience). Furthermore, based on our results, preferable ways of professional learning for university teachers from different study areas can be identified and promoted.