Towards an Integration of Research on Teaching and Learning

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to present arguments for an integrated empirical research on teaching and learning based on previous research and the phenomenographic research tradition. From 1970 and for some years after, the main focus in phenomenographic research was on students’ approaches to and understanding of subject matter. Later, based on Variation theory and in the form of Learning studies, there has also been a focus on teacher presentation of subject matter. These 2 research foci on students’ and teachers’ treatment of subject matter, represent a good basis for integrated research on teaching and learning. Contextual Analysis is suggested as a relevant research approach to integrated research on teaching and learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching
• learning
• Phenomenography
• research methodology
• Contextual Analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lennart Svensson is professor emeritus at Lund University. He was professor of Education at the university from 1986 to 2009. From the late 1960s to the beginning of the 1986 he was Researcher and Senior Researcher at the University of Gothenburg and the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. His first main field of research was higher education and student learning. During the 1980s and 1990s he entered two new fields of research, learning at work and intercultural learning. He was one of the researchers who originally developed the research orientation called Phenomenography and has also developed a research methodology called Contextual analysis.