EXPLORING ACADEMICS’ ESPOUSED AND ACTUAL TEACHING ORIENTATIONS AT A SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Academics have a responsibility of ensuring that teaching achieves its purpose. They are entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring students’ personal development, acquisition of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It is important that by the end of the course the students have the capacity to solve individual and societal problems. This can only be realised if the academics’ teaching orientations support learning. However, whilst academics espouse teaching orientations that support learning, in practice they employ orientations that impede meaningful learning. This study explores the concepts of learning and teaching and links them to the espoused and actual teaching orientations of academics at a university in South Africa, explaining why academics’ espoused orientations differ from orientations in use. The study adopted an inductive research paradigm that followed a qualitative research approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews from selected academics at the university and iteratively and reflexively analysed. Inadequate time, lack of skills, demotivated students and academics inability to reflect on their teaching orientations emerged as important factors to explain the discrepancy between academics’ espoused and actual teaching orientations. It also emerged that academics’ interpretation of the concepts ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ influenced their espoused teaching orientations. The study recommends among several other things professional training of the academics.

Keywords

• aacademics, teaching orientation, learning, teaching, students, South African university