The impact of academics' learning and teaching preferences on their teaching practices: A pilot study

ABSTRACT

This study investigated factors underlying the approaches to teaching and the teaching strategies adopted by lecturers in four distinct academic disciplines. It examined the relationship between the way academic staff like to learn and the way they like to teach and the reasons they use the teaching strategies they adopt in lectures. It also examined the relationship between academics' perceptions of their teaching and their students' perceptions of their teaching and investigated the relationship between academics' perceptions of what students do in lectures and their students' reports of what they do in lectures. Results suggest little enthusiasm for lectures as a teaching or learning method, but few attempts by academics to depart from the traditional lecture method, even amongst those with a personal preference for learning in groups. Marked contrasts were found between lecturer and student reports of the teaching strategies used in lectures and lecturer and student reports of student activity in lectures.