Teaching in the current higher education environment: perceptions of IT academics

Abstract

This paper builds on previous research into teachers' conceptions of learning and teaching with an investigation of information technology academics. Using a phenomenographic approach to build a model of IT academics experiences and practice of teaching we aimed to identify any specific issues that academics in the IT discipline face and to assess the impact of the changing higher education environment on their teaching experiences. While there were few discipline-specific issues we did find that the current higher education environment appears to be negatively affecting the quality of teaching and learning within the IT discipline and indications are that these environmental factors are affecting academics within other disciplines. We concluded that current institutional policies, including teaching and learning quality measures and lack of resources, are compromising the way subjects are delivered. In some cases academics are discouraged from improving their teaching practice.

Keywords:

• conceptions of teaching
• approaches to learning
• quality measures
• phenomenography

Acknowledgements

The PhICER study was supported by a Special Projects Grant from the ACM Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). The authors thank Raymond Lister, Anders Berglund, Ilona Box, Chris Cope, and Arnold Pears for thinking of and running the PhICER workshop, and fellow PhICER participants Mat Bower, Angela Carbone, Bill Davey, Michael de Raadt, Bernard Doyle, Sue Fitzgerald, Linda Mannila, Cat Kutay, Mia Peltomäki, Simon, Ken Sutton, Des Traynor, and Anne Venables for their transcripts and collaboration.