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.
Details
| Other ID | JA62DN98UY |
|---|---|
| Journal Section | Research Article |
| Authors | |
| Publication Date | February 1, 2017 |
| Published in Issue | Year 2017 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 |